Acquisitions, Standards, Blockchain, And More
This is the longest I have gone without posting in many years. It has been a busy week around the Manufacturing Connection office, though. I have been assigning soccer officials to games for 33 years. There were more schedule changes, injuries, and dropped games than...
NI Appoints Thomas Benjamin as Chief Technology Officer
NI (formerly National Instruments) has been making some intriguing moves in the last year or so under CEO Eric Starkloff. I wrote recently about Software as a Service and other “as-a-Service” business models. And more recently how HPE is continuing to pivot from...
35th International Maintenance Conference and Reliability Digital Transformation Conference
Now that I’ve attended one in-person trade show and conference, I’m ready for a few more. I met Terrence O’Hanlon almost 20 years ago at a conference he assembled in Chicago at Rosemont. It was impressive for a small-ish magazine called Maintenance Technology. I...
Smooth is Fast
Time out for a personal development moment. Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.Navy SEAL Saying I heard a story of a guy who got into fitness, bought a bicycle, and began riding a route as fast as he could. One day he was somewhat more tired and rode at a little slower,...
Automation Makes Today’s News
Today, I have two product releases in the automation space. Collaborative robots (cobots) were the hit of Fabtech a couple of weeks ago. I was wondering about SCARA robots—those that I first learned to program and use back in the 80s. ABB came through with some SCARA...
MES Adds SPC and Recipe Module Updates
I don't seem to receive many MES updates. This update comes from Sepasoft, a sister company to Inductive Automation that naturally features connectivity to Ignition by Inductive Automation. These updates include Statistical Process Control v 3.0 and Settings and...
Google Cloud Brings End-to-End Visibility to Supply Chains
US Presidential Candidate Ross Perot years ago described a “giant sucking sound” using a typical businessperson’s view of government. Well, I think that a digital picture of today’s supply chains would show a giant clogging mess, like a kitchen garbage disposal gone...
The State of Ransomware in Manufacturing and Production 2021
Along with market research I have also been flooded with every security firms’ research especially on ransomware. This one just in from Sophos written by Sally Adam contains information more positive about our market sector than the usual scare tactics I see. Our...
Global manufacturing industry output to hit $41.9 Tn in 2021, up from $39.3 Tn in 2020
It’s the end of a quarter, and I’m flooded with manufacturing market reports. One set of reports I look forward originates from England and Interact Analysis. Below I’ve summarized three recent reports—a market report and two insights from CEO Adrian Lloyd. I have...
Opportunity for Growth Along With Entertainment
This may seem somewhat off target, but not really. Personal growth and development are more than a hobby. I’ve taught classes, mentored, encouraged for my entire adult life. Thought in this era of divisiveness and fear and anger, this timely message and recommendation...
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