ABB Names New Country Managing Director
ABB has appointed Maryrose Sylvester as Country Managing Director (CMD) and Head of Electrification for the United States, effective August 1, 2019. In the CMD role, she will succeed Greg Scheu, who will support a smooth transition until his retirement at the end of...
Industrial Automation User Conference Week
My wife’s family took me off for a week-long vacation to the beach last week. Eight days of much needed rest after a bunch of travel and a hectic (meaning wet) spring soccer season. Last week was also Rockwell Automation TechED. That conference was once open only to...
Navigating a New Industrial Infrastructure
The Manufacturing Connection conceived in 2013 when I decided to go it alone in the world from the ideas of a new industrial infrastructure and enhanced connectivity. I even had worked out a cool mind map to figure it out. Last week I was on vacation spending some...
Make Things Cheaper or The Wal-mart Effect
I have been reading a good book that I highly recommend. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan. This short, concise book packs much thought and makes you also think. Here, for example, is rule 44 out of 64: With food, as with so many things, you get what you...
Taking Accelerated Computing from the Cloud to the Edge
Check out a couple of interesting computing technology trends currently. On the one hand exist a few companies that exist on a solid business of I/O with a controller who also explore bringing IT technology into the OT world. On the other hand are companies who have...
Moxa To Support OPC Foundation’s United Architecture Field Level Communications Initiative
Things have been quiet on the OPC/UA and TSN front for about a year. I wrote a preliminary white paper a couple of years ago (link on my blog to download) based on a proposal brought by a number of German companies to OPC almost without warning. Since then, the group...
Survey Sees 4th Industrial Revolution Moving From Buzz to Reality
The popular saying holds that the future is here just unevenly distributed. According to a survey released by PWC and The Manufacturing Institute, that thought is certainly true about the Fourth Industrial Revolution (which PwC labels 4IR but many others label...
Siemens and Chonicle Partner For Cyber Security
Cyber Security got a shout-out during the Siemens Spotlight on Innovation forum in Orlando last week. Leo Simonovich, VP and Global Head, Industrial Cyber and Digital Security at Siemens Gas and Power, and Mike Wiacek, co-founder & CSO of Chronicle (an Alphabet...
Government versus Business
I saw this note in today’s Espresso from The Economist, “France’s finance minister pledged to save jobs under threat at General Electric’s plant in the country’s north-east. The American industrial conglomerate, which made a loss of $23bn last year, had said it would...
Innovation—A Word Often Loosely Used
People send about a dozen press releases per day to me, only slightly fewer on weekends. Many boast innovation in products, services, or pricing models. The word comes dangerously close to over use. Siemens, however, consistently shows how users in a large variety of...