By 
any conceivable measure, it has been a particulary vicious winter across the U.S.
Buffalo kicked things off with a 70-inch plus storm last November. Syracuse has seen snow continuously since Jan. 29. And the Boston area has been repeatedly hammered – seeing over 95 inches of the white stuff so far this year – with more on the way.
Winters 
can be harsh in Potsdam, N.Y. Located near the Canadian border, the town averages 66 inches of snow per year — and spends nearly three months blanketed in an inch or more of the white stuff. The average temperature in January and February: 19 degrees.
That sort of winter weather can wreak havoc on utility lines and other pieces of above-ground power infrastructure, putting lives at risk. To mitigate those dangers, city officials, General Electric and the Department of Energy are studying how an old-school energy concept and the Internet of Everything can work together to keep the lights (and heat) on.
It’s 
3 a.m. one night during the holiday break, and a problem with a crucial piece of equipment escalates at an important customer’s warehouse.
Not long ago, this would have been a three-alarm crisis for the manufacturer, service provider and customer — that is, once somebody finally noticed the problem. But the rise of connected devices and the Internet of Things means service organizations are increasingly able to respond to issues proactively, before a major problem develops.
A 
rare winter storm walloped Atlanta in late January, bringing the city to a standstill. Thousands of motorists found themselves stranded in their cars, while thousands more children spent the night in their classrooms as officials struggled to clear the roads.
It’s not a scene any city wants to repeat. But if the blizzard that dropped more than 70 inches of snow last month on Buffalo is any indicator, this winter could be brutal across the U.S. As a result, some cities are turning to the Internet of Everything to keep traffic moving and citizens informed.
There’s 
a learning curve that comes with creating next-generation IOE devices and services — and as they become a bigger part of our world, they’ll also force changes in how we educate and train our next-generation workforce.
A 2011 McKinsey report estimated the United States faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep data analytics skills, with an even larger gap for managers. Some companies, such as GE, have taken to training data specialists internally, while UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, Columbia University and others have launched data science programs.
Everyone 
has a fingerprint, a voiceprint and other identification methods — but an individual “financialprint,” enabled by the Internet of Everything, has the potential to accomplish more than making positive IDs. Financialprints, or the collective pattern of financial transactions, have been used for decades for security when it comes to credit cards. But now banks are using your transactional signature to help predict fiscal well-being as well as to offer suggestions to optimize your financial position.
Six 
Sigma has been a go-to management tool for manufacturers since Motorola developed it in the mid-1980s — and popularized later on by Jack Welch at General Electric. The methodology, which seeks to streamline manufacturing efficiency and minimize variability. As the IOE enmeshes itself into manufacturing processes and devices, though, and pieces of assembly-line equipment begin talking to each other, will that force companies to rethink their approach to quality assurance?
Experts suggest that given the history and success of Six Sigma, there’s little chance of it going away, and it’s likely that the approach could evolve as the data collected from IOE-connected devices offers a new level of granularity on products — including, in some cases, products that have left the plant.
There 
are 246 robots putting together Jeep Wranglers and other vehicles in Toledo, Ohio. And they never shut up.
The robots talk to each other. They talk to the other devices on the assembly room floor. And they give the people overseeing them regular reports about what’s going on.
The 
importance of the color green at John Deere extends far beyond its distinctively hued logo.
Green crops and fields are pretty essential to its business model — and to help farmers ensure they see a lot of green, both when they look out the window and at their bank accounts, the farm equipment giant has launched an IOE-based platform called Field Connect.
Smart 
devices can only get smarter if the chips powering them get more powerful. And that’s leading to a renewed arms race among microchip manufacturers.
Both Intel and ARM have introduced new processors for integrated devices — from refrigerators to cars — designed to help connected devices generate and transmit data. And both are hoping the technology serves as a building block for a wide variety of applications.
Chris Morris: Journalist 