by Gary Mintchell | Dec 2, 2024 | Business, News
I’ve been reading M.G. Siegler for years. Ever since the early days of TechCrunch. I saw this morning in his Spyglass Digest that Pat Gelsinger is suddenly out at Intel. This from Business Wire.
Intel has missed several market movements. Mobile and AI to name two. Their manufacturing processes began to lag several years ago. Gelsinger was an Intel veteran who had done well at his last gig. It was hoped he could stir things up. This latest loss from the Biden Administration’s Chips Act probably was the proverbial straw.
Business Wire:
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) today announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger retired from the company after a distinguished 40-plus-year career and has stepped down from the board of directors, effective Dec. 1, 2024.
Intel has named two senior leaders, David Zinsner and Michelle (MJ) Johnston Holthaus, as interim co-chief executive officers while the board of directors conducts a search for a new CEO. Zinsner is executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Holthaus has been appointed to the newly created position of CEO of Intel Products, a group that encompasses the company’s Client Computing Group (CCG), Data Center and AI Group (DCAI) and Network and Edge Group (NEX). Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, will become interim executive chair during the period of transition. Intel Foundry leadership structure remains unchanged.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 21, 2024 | Business, Commentary, News
Each year for perhaps 20 years, Control magazine along with the ARC Advisory Group publishes a list of the top 50 automation suppliers globally and in North America in terms of revenue. This year’s list is introduced this way.
The largest global and North American automation suppliers report artificial intelligence (AI), sustainability, advanced computing and services drive growth.
The technologies have advanced along with the general advance in compute power, standardized networking (including fieldbuses), and visualization.
What I notice is the stability of the top 50. The leaders are mostly still the leaders with the exceptions only of a couple companies that have been on acquisition paths. You still have Siemens, ABB, Rockwell, Honeywell, Emerson, and Schneider Electric.
The market has matured. Some technologies have, also. Profinet, Ethernet/IP, HART are all stable and ubiquitous. There are also CCLink and EtherCat in certain areas.
I am writing this while collecting thoughts and observations at Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair. This opportunity affords conversations with companies other than Rockwell Automation to assess the state of the industry.
One point stands out—the state of the market in North America. I notice that while Emerson and Rockwell Automation still rock, Siemens, ABB, and even Honeywell show small sales while Yokogawa is barely a blip. This coincides with the undertone talk amongst people at the various non-Rockwell stands here in Anaheim about the past year being slow.
All this is merely interesting. I’m sure that when you make automation procurement decisions, it will be based on far more than industry rank.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 18, 2024 | Business, Commentary, News
A publicist I know well sent me this news from the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). I studied politics academically during a dark period of my early life. I rate this sentiment as excellent. I rate its political expediency at nearly zero. Open letters will not a president of any stripe influence.
Perhaps all Americans who read my thoughts might send something like this to your Congresspeople wherever you live. There may be some influence on industrial policy. The problem is that they each have their own agendas, and many clash with these sentiments. (I once witnessed a meeting of Congressperson Jim Jordan with constituents hurt by the tariff policy. No one left that meeting happy. Oh, well…)
We know from Trump’s first term manufacturing industry received mixed blessings from Washington’s policies. I expect more of the same. But we’re a democracy. Give it a shot.
To: President-Elect Donald Trump
From: Association for Advancing Automation (A3)
We congratulate you on your election as the 47th President of the United States of America. As an association dedicated to leadership in automation, we very much appreciate your emphasis on strengthening American manufacturing.
We call on you as the president-elect to keep the U.S. competitive in automation and robotics and to sustain our people in well-paid employment opportunities. The U.S. lags behind many countries in automation, contributing to the loss of 46,000 manufacturing jobs in October alone. While much emphasis has been placed on American leadership in AI, the fact is we are falling behind our adversaries and competitors in the real, physical world applications of AI, such as robotics. Without leadership in the physical manifestation of AI – robotics – the US will not only lose the robotics race, but also the AI race.
To reclaim US leadership in automation and robotics, we believe our country needs a national strategy, one that not only supports automation technology innovation but clearly addresses the serious supply chain problem of providing a sufficient workforce of technicians and engineers for the robotics and automation industries.
We call on the U.S. government to partner with the robotics and automation industry to share how these technologies are used to bring back jobs to the U.S. and to increase worker productivity and safety. We also need the government to boost workforce training, robotics education and career inspiration.
Robotics and other forms of automation will ultimately enable countries to be more competitive economically and in national security and hire more people in specialized capacities. We urge you to recognize the benefits automation brings to the U.S. workforce, manufacturing and overall prosperity.
We look forward to working together, as industry and government, to help our businesses and citizens succeed in today’s competitive and increasingly automated workforce.
Sincerely,
Jeff Burnstein
President
Association for Advancing Automation
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 4, 2024 | Business, News, Organizations
Two pieces of news from AVEVA blessed my email client while I was vacationing the past couple of weeks. This one about their partner program. The next post reports on the customer conference held recently in Paris more specifically about the Connect platform.
Partners and Principals engage in a delicate dance. This dance sometimes works well for a while. Sometimes the partners dance to different beats. One partner doing hip-hop with the other the waltz ends miserably. I have seen a couple over the past 25 years that have successfully blended into an excellent Tango making beautiful art.
I wish this new Partner Ecosystem well. Time will tell what the beat is.
- AVEVA’s Partner Ecosystem is launching a new Partner Program offering flexibility and choice for AVEVA partners, enabled via the CONNECT platform.
- The new Program will focus on offering companies the ability to build new solutions utilizing AVEVA software components and the CONNECT industrial intelligence platform; as well as the opportunity to market the offer commercially to customers.
- The Program will also offer the opportunity for partners to join the CONNECT Ecosystem and reach an expanded pool of customers across the industrial lifecycle.
AVEVA has launched its new Partner Program called the ‘Managed Solution Provider Partner Program’ (MSP Program).
The MSP Program will cater for companies who want to partner with AVEVA beyond its existing Partner Programs and monetize their digital expertise. As an MSP, AVEVA partners will be able to create their own solution as well as the chance to market this offer commercially to their customers and AVEVA’s install base, benefitting from further reach with a marketplace listing.
The MSP Program supports partners by providing a full development and commercial toolkit, ensuring they can go to market quickly, efficiently and securely with multiple features. These features include: a solution envisioning workshop with technical experts to develop the solution; a secure platform to collect, enhance and share data with customers, via CONNECT Data Services; and the ability for partners to scale their solution with marketing support and access to AVEVA’s install base and Industrial Operator ecosystem.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 8, 2024 | Business
Blogging, writing to a Web Log, began crossing my radar by the late 90s. I was curious about what was going on. I heard of Dave Winer. He was a software developer. Developer of RSS, something I still use.
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of his blog Scripting News. And he is still going.
When we had Automation World up and running in late 2003, I began exploring. My first site was built on Winer’s Radio Userland—Gary’s Radio Weblog. The sales people at Automation World wanted to tie me to the brand, so I renamed it Gary Mintchell’s Feed Forward—the title of my monthly editorial.
When I left Automation World for the greener pastures of independent writer/analyst in the industrial and manufacturing market in 2013, the blog was renamed The Manufacturing Connection. The idea was emphasis on Connection. Over 21 years, I’ve written more than 3,500 posts.
The early days of live blogging CEO remarks were exciting. Walt Boyes, then of Control magazine and I had a fun competition going. The market has changed. All companies are now blogging and doing their own marketing. Most no longer support magazines or other media. I followed the fads of IIoT, Edge, AI, Cobots. This technology has become mature and somewhat stagnant. There are just a few software companies cranking out interesting products.
This is all a long time. Social media people came and went from Twitter (I was there in 2008), podcasts are big for a few (mine started in 2007). YouTubers are big in a few markets. It’s all cool. People who could never have had a voice now have the ability to broadcast a message. It’s all good.
Curation is a problem right now. The requirements for discernment on the part of listeners/readers is ever more important. If it’s easy for people to have a voice, it’s also easy for people to broadcast false and misleading ideas.
I’m happy to be able to do this. It’s been fun.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 18, 2024 | Business, Sustainability
A German company called Makersite has developed a product in a genre it calls product lifecycle intelligence focused on managing product sustainability. Managing sustainability for a manufacturing organization begins with product design. Makersite has expanded its strategic partnership with product design software developer Autodesk. Makersite’s sustainability and cost data will now be available to Autodesk Inventor users, enabling engineers to analyze their products’ design, sustainability, and compliance factors during the design phase. Makersite’s platform is already available for Autodesk Fusion users through the Makersite add-on.
Makersite and Autodesk’s partnership empowers product designers and engineers to innovate more sustainable products at a faster pace by putting deep-tier supply chain and sustainability data directly into their hands, inside the CAD tools they’re already using.
Since 80% of an organization’s environmental footprint is determined during the product design stage, insight into sustainability metrics during the product development process is crucial – but can make optimizing products more complex. Makersite’s solution provides AI-enhanced digital twin models of products and their supply chains, sourcing data from more than 140 material, process, and supplier databases. This brings organizations more clarity into their supply chains and insight into their overall environmental impacts.
