Kevin Ashton
Kevin Ashton is a British technologist who, while working on supply chains at Procter and Gamble in 1999, coined the phrase Internet of Things and co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT.
What they did and why it matters
Ashton connected RFID tags to the internet as a way to see inventory automatically, an idea that now drives sensor-based tracking across supply chains. At Procter and Gamble he wanted to fix empty shelves by tagging products so their location was known without manual scans, and the Auto-ID Center developed the Electronic Product Code and low-cost RFID standards. Today's RFID programs in apparel, real-time shipment trackers, and connected warehouse equipment follow from that work. Brands evaluating item-level RFID weigh tag costs against better inventory accuracy and fewer stockouts.