As the global recovery from the first Covid-19 lockdowns gathers steam, this episode looks at what themes will emerge from this phase. This is a crucial period in the trajectories of many Industrial companies, and the decisions and strategic directions taken today will be what separates the Covid-19 winners from the losers over the next 2-5 years.

To unpick some of the winning themes and the role of manufacturing digitalisation in them I am joined by an esteemed guest in Tomipekka Lehtonen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomipekkalehtonen). Tomipekka wears multiple hats within the IBM Services' Industry 4.0 practice ranging from Nordics leadership for the Intelligent Connected Operations practice to the Global leadership in driving Connected Manufacturing.

Here is my conversation with him.

Over the past weeks, I have been thinking about the impact Covid-19 is going to have on the Industrial sector.. to a large extent I think of this pandemic more as an accelerant than as a change-agent. In that its not necessarily going to lead to new themes developing, but massively increase the speed of adoption of what was already coming, and push some of these transformations much higher on the agenda of the executives.
A key word which I think will define the upcoming digital disruption is Hybrid.
- So traditional industrial products are going to have to evolve fairly rapidly into hybrid products & services delivering their value across both the physical and digital realms.
- Manufacturing will become hybrid between traditional and additive
- Supply chains going hybrid between global and local, and last but not the least
- Resources will be humans augmented by Cognitive processes and systems.
We make sense of the possibilities in conversation with Sven Strassburg (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sven-strassburg-a142441/), the European Architect of Watson IoT.

In this episode we explore how IoT and AI technologies can help companies restart or ramp-up their operations as the first Covid-19 lockdown comes to an end.
Companies need to make sure their workers are kept safe, first and foremost, and I believe there is a big role for technology to play here. It can not only help give the workers (and the regulators) the confidence that the Industrial companies are doing the best to keep the employees safe, but these new measures can be the enablers to make sure the operations keep running when the next lockdown comes along.
We look at the more common use cases which companies are implementing using technology as well as the measures they need to take to make sure they avoid any missteps regarding worker privacy.

What should you do from an architecture standpoint to make sure that you have the right foundation in place for delivering innovation across your OT-IT landscape? How do you keep it secure? What role does Cloud have to play in it? How about Open Standards?

And.. what does architecture have common with rubbish collection and bin men??

In this very engaging episode we uncover these themes in conversation with IBM's Distinguished Engineer, and Industrial CTO - Paul Homan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/homanpaul/).
Views expressed are personal; not those of our employer's.

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Music credit:

Timeless by Scandinavianz https://soundcloud.com/scandinavianz
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
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If you are looking at an Industry 4.0 which has the combination of ease of deployment, quick go live, low cost as well as a good payback, you could do worse than consider AI based Quality Inspection.
Recent advancements in AI tech have meant that these kind of projects can be deployed without the need of programmers or indeed data scientists. All you need are a bunch of images and an SME to label them!
Find out more in this episode.
As always, thoughts are mine and not my employer's.

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Music credit:

Timeless by Scandinavianz https://soundcloud.com/scandinavianz
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_timeless
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lDAq3M34tdk

AI is a natural fit for supply chains. Since this is an area replete with all kinds of structured and unstructured data spread across a multitude of data sources and business partners, its very difficult for any human to be able to make short-term, data-based decisions.
In order to increase the resilience of the manufacturing operations, especially in times of disruptions and crises, the traditional Just-In-Time based planning processes predicated upon Supply and Demand are inadequate. AI can help improve inventory visibility, can help predict impact on supply times from disruptions and help manufacturers adapt to dynamic situations through intelligent optioneering to mitigate the impact of shortages.
In this episode we look at how Industrial companies can leverage the power of AI to increase the robustness of their supply chains.

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Music credit:

Timeless by Scandinavianz https://soundcloud.com/scandinavianz
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_timeless
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lDAq3M34tdk

The machines are talking to us, and if we're to make the most of the opportunity of Industry 4.0, we need to understand what they're saying in the language of 0s and 1s. In this episode we specifically look at unmasking the additional capabilities which differentiate the Industry 4.0 world from the machine-to-machine (M2M) interactions that underpinned Industry 3.0.
Helping us unpack the topic is Sven Strassburg, Lead European Architect for Watson IoT at IBM. Sven has a ton of experience in crafting solutions for enabling IIoT applications and provides some very interesting perspectives about creating a human-machine dialogue!
You can reach Sven on his LinkedIn profile here - https://cutt.ly/QriUxLj.
As always, the views expressed on the podcast are my own, and not my employer's.
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Music credit:
Timeless by Scandinavianz https://soundcloud.com/scandinavianz
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_timeless
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lDAq3M34tdk

Manufacturing to the Power of AI
In this episode we specifically look at unmasking how Data Sciences and AI techniques are being applied by manufacturers looking to get the hidden insights within their data. In addition to the how, we also look at the why, the what and the who of bringing Advanced Analytics to the shop floor.
Helping us unpack the topic is Ben Amaba, the CTO at IBM within its Data Science Elite team with a focus on Industrial and Engineering sectors. Ben's one of the best people I've met who can explain complex AI concepts by using real life examples and boiling it down to the basics.
You can reach Ben on his LinkedIn profile here - https://cutt.ly/ReND9Xc, or over Twitter @BenAmaba.
As always, the views expressed on the podcast are my own, and not my employer's.
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Music credit:
Timeless by Scandinavianz https://soundcloud.com/scandinavianz
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_timeless
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/lDAq3M34tdk
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