How the EU’s recent USB-C standardisation regulation impacts Apple

13

October

2022

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On October 4, 2022, The European Parliament voted in an overwhelming majority in favour of forcing USB-C as the universal charging port across a broad range of consumer electronics, including Apple’s iPhone which still uses its own Lightning connector technology apart from other smartphones. According to the European Union, the legislation is part of the wider European Union’s efforts to make products within the EU more environmentally friendly, to reduce electronics waste, and to simplify consumers lives (Guarascio, 2022).

By 2024, all devices covered by the legislation and sold in the 27 European countries will be required to use the universal USB-C port to enable charging over a cable. Under the new rules, manufacturers will be forced to include USB-C ports in all smartphones, laptops, tablets, headphones, and other electronics. The charging speeds are also being harmonised for devices with faster charging capabilities, which would enable users to charge their devices with the same speeds using any compatible charger (Guarascio, 2022).

Apple and USB-C

Currently, only the newer generation Apple MacBooks (2015 or newer), iMacs (2016 or newer), and iPad Pros and Airs (2018 or newer) have USB-C ports. Other Apple products, such as the AirPods, Apple Watch, and Mac accessories like the Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard do not have a USB-C port and still rely on the Lightning connector. The new EU regulation will require newer generations of these products to be changed as well.

Prediction

While the EU’s new laws would apply only in European countries, the latest changes would only force Apple to move towards USB-C worldwide, as it would be illogical for Apple to solely sell iPhones with a USB-C connector in Europe. However, many analysts think that Apple will temporarily switch to USB-C in its iPhone line-up for one year before going all wireless, and thus, ditch the wired charging connector at all (Gurman, 2022). This would be a risky and crucial decision, since quite some electronic devices still require a wired connection to phones to transfer data, such as many basic car infotainment systems which only support a wired version of Apple CarPlay and/or Android Auto.

References

Guarascio, F., 2022. Apple forced to change charger in Europe as EU approves overhaul. [online] Reuters. Available at: <https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-parliament-adopts-rules-common-charger-electronic-devices-2022-10-04/> [Accessed 12 October 2022].

Gurman, M., 2022. Apple’s Move to USB-C Is Just a Stopgap Before Its Wireless Future. [online] Bloomberg. Available at: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-10-09/will-the-iphone-15-get-usb-c-port-will-apple-aapl-release-a-wireless-iphone-l91edtxt>

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The power of process mining in improving business processes

3

October

2022

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What is process mining?

Process Mining is a technique where organisations gather transactional data from the activity/event logs of their (ERP) systems in order to gain an objective view of how their business processes are operating and how they could be improved (White, 2020). Process mining has been used effectively to analyse the current state of business processes, to determine areas for improvement, and to evaluate the improvement outcomes. Besides, the technique helps companies to develop an in-depth understanding of the underlying causes, as well as the effect they have on their Key Performance Indicators (Davenport and Spanyi, 2022).

Tools

There are different tools available for process mining, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some of the most popular tools include Disco, ProM, Celonis, and SAP Signavio. With these process mining tools, organisations can shift from the confidence-based approach to Business Process Management (BPM) and progress towards the data-driven approach, basing their changes on live factual data.

Process mining tools really take advantage of the data mining concept in particular in order to find concrete answers to questions regarding any identified challenges or situations within companies. However, compared to process mining, data mining does not give a complete picture of a business process, including bottlenecks. In contrast, process mining allows business users to retrieve visual process maps and models of their processes from the company’s data and enhance those process overviews/maps and models to reveal the inefficiencies, sources of delays, rework, and defects, and other operational pain points leading to an inefficient process.

How process mining can improve business processes

Source: (Becker, 2022)

Together, activity and process mining can provide a comprehensive view of the company’s processes, and help to identify opportunities for improvement, for example, on customer support, financial, HR, or supply chain processes. Using machine learning algorithms, process mining tools calculate combinations of various attributes and conduct root-cause analyses, which helps to detect operational inefficiencies. After the analysis, it can help assist in improving the business’ efficiency and can help organisations reduce costs and improve performance by identifying root causes for poor-performing processes, uncovering, and visualising compliance violations, monitoring processes, and anticipating problems. Once the improvements needed and actions needed are identified for the organisation from the results, process mining also provides the means for easy monitoring the effects of changes to the business processes (Raiola, 2021). 

To conclude, by mining data from event logs of (ERP) systems, instead of using interviews and estimations, process mining uncovers where workarounds, shadow processes, bottlenecks, and compliance issues are occurring, and plays a crucial role in improving business operations and risk reduction.

Prediction

As process mining is still somewhat new and companies have difficulties understanding and identifying its value, it will not be adopted much in the coming five years, even though, there are successful use cases in which it has helped reducing resources. However, as it carries a lot of potential and more companies are starting to become data-driven and focus on their big data, I think that this methodology will be used more in the following ten years.

References

Becker, R., 2022. What is process mining and how does it work?. [online] SEEBURGER Blog. Available at: <https://blog.seeburger.com/seeburger-goes-process-mining-an-adventure-in-optimization/> [Accessed 1 October 2022].

Davenport, T. and Spanyi, A., 2022. What Process Mining Is, and Why Companies Should Do It. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2019/04/what-process-mining-is-and-why-companies-should-do-it> [Accessed 1 October 2022].

Raiola, R., 2022. How to improve business processes using process mining. [online] MEGA. Available at: <https://community.mega.com/t5/Blog-EN-Business-IT/How-to-improve-business-processes-using-process-mining/ba-p/26672> [Accessed 1 October 2022].

White, S., 2022. What is process mining? Refining business processes with data analytics. [online] CIO. Available at: <https://www.cio.com/article/193601/what-is-process-mining-refining-business-processes-with-data-analytics.html> [Accessed 1 October 2022].

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