Gary On Manufacturing - Gary Mintchell

Gary recaps the recent ODVA annual general meeting. Keynoter Paul Maurath of P&G corporate engineering discussed laboratory testing of EtherNet/IP with APL. He asked for more configuration and device description help. ODVA tech group engineers have been very busy with OPC UA mapping, TSN, and CIP for discrete devices. It was great to meet again.

Gary discusses ideas around corporate sustainability and looks at what three automation companies are doing--ABB, Rockwell Automation, and Schneider Electric.

Gary ponders the state of the automation and control market riffing off the ARC Advisory Group / Control Global Top 50 by sales. Is this a mature market? New entrants seem to be acquired by incumbents as an innovation strategy by the larger companies. What does a mature market mean?

How are your New Years Resolutions coming? Quit already? Try a few tips from Gary about improving life and career this year.

I love irony. Like when people click on my consulting link and want to sell me consulting instead of asking me to consult. Also a quick trip around the Fabtech and Additive Manufacturing Trade Show, the size of The Manufacturing Connection--your number one resource. Sponsored by Ignition by Inductive Automation.

Rick Bullotta posted a provocative comment on LinkedIn predicting a shakeup in the industrial software business with the hyperscaler cloud companies acquiring a chunk of those now owned by OEMs or the few independent ones. I've thought about this for a long time. What do you think?

231 Are You Being Served?

While thinking about the proliferation of as-a-service models of business, thoughts of that 70s and 80s British comedy TV show came to mind. Are you being served? Proved feasible by Salesforce and then adopted by many including recently HPE as the strategy for the entire company, we are witnessing automation companies exploring the as-a-service business model. I wonder how far it will go.

230 AR and VR

AR, MR, VR, XR--what R we supposed to make of all this technology. We've been playing with the idea for more than 20 years when I first reported on a new product that promised to connect a line technician with a remote expert (using video camera) and show work instructions (augmented reality). At the time legendary blogger Robert Scoble in 2013 or so predicted we'd all be wearing Google Glass. That device would tell us whom we were about to meet on the street so that we could greet them by name and ask relevant questions. The immersive experience of visual reality is great for gamers and perhaps for operator and maintenance training. This technology is here, just unevenly distributed.

229 Flying in the Clouds

A beginning student pilot must only fly on clear days where the ground is always visible. Following much additional training, the student can achieve instrument rating and can "fly in the clouds."

Manufacturing and production companies are moving to flying in the clouds perhaps much more quickly than they moved to any other technology. Of course, I'm talking about cloud computing.

I recently sat in the ROKLive Rockwell Automation event. They discussed two recent acquisitions, Fiix and Plex, both of whom will move Rockwell into the cloud. Good moves.

Tech doesn't change industries, says analyst Benedict Evans. People in the industry use tech to change the industry. Witness how Ethernet went from nice IT thing to a necessary network on the factory floor. Or mobile phones went from "can we control them" to "everyone has one and it changed workflows forever." Same will happen with Augmented Reality (AR). Just watch.

This podcast is sponsored by Ignition from Inductive Automation. Check out Ignition 8 and the upcoming Ignition Community Conference.

Sometimes we clutter our minds with what we think we know and leave no room for learning new things. In the process, we fixate on an idea and miss the simple and most elegant explanation.

I had received a news release from a manufacturing software company so full of jargon that I could barely decipher it. In the midst of the stuff was the claim that there are 40,000 IIoT professionals. Huh? I figured that they renamed engineers and technicians who wire all the field devices into a new profession. Why? Why make things more complicated than they are?

The best bet is to apply Occam's Razor wherever it fits--the simplest explanation is often the best. This podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation. Check out this year's Ignition Community Conference.