This video on YouTube from the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition explains in eight short minutes what Smart Manufacturing is all about. I have been trying to lend what support I can to the effort, as has my friend Walt Boyes of Spitzer & Boyes.
One of the more popular and discussed sessions at Emerson Global Users Exchange 2014 focused on working with and transferring process control knowledge to young people born in the 80s–The Millennials. The presenters were fellow “old guy” with new ideas and Emerson’s Chief Blogger Jim Cahill and a certified Millennial Danaca Jordan who is a staff engineer for Eastman Chemical. Oh, I should mention she has a BS in Chemical Engineering.
The point of the session was to present ways of communicating with (the preposition is chosen purposely) these younger engineers entering the industrial workforce. Unfortunately (but good for discussion) a couple of aging Boomers in the audience challenged the Millennials as being too shallow and deficient in critical thinking skills. Did I mention she had a BS in Chem E?
When we were young, the learning model was tell/listen. The bosses and teachers knew everything, and we were to come to the fount of wisdom and partake. I think it’s only partly because of young and technical, but also what we’ve learned about learning that there is a better way. Therefore the first point they made was that learning is a collaborative effort. “It can’t be boomer shoving things out of his brain.” The three parties to the learning environment all contribute something. The company provides tools and time; experts knowledge and direction; trainees topics and feedback. Millennials view managers as coaches and mentors rather than content experts. They view learning as a shared responsibility.
As for format of training, the (and most of us, I think) want short, accessible, searchable content. YouTube how-to videos of 5-15 minutes. By the way, they commonly skip the first 30 seconds of introduction and bio which is non value add. For example, Danaca was in the plant without the other point experts when there was a problem with a Coriolis meter. She went to YouTube, found a MicroMotion how-to video, and solved the problem. In the old days, an engineer would have fumbled around for hours trying to figure it out.
They pointed to a few resources for starters including the MicroMotion YouTube channel, OSIsoft learning channel, MIT Open Courseware.
Interaction is third principal. Use documentation that allows comments. Incorporate forums and wikis.
If you are involved with transferring knowledge to young engineers–and I hope you are–then take these lessons to heart and practice.
Starkloff, Fettweis, Salvo, Hatch
The third day keynote session at NI Week always features the achievements of students, academics and futurist thinkers. Eric Starkloff, National Instruments’ executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, introduced the session by reminding us of the “Engineering Grand Challenges:” health, sustainability, security, and joy of living. “How do we inspire and train future engineers to tackle these problems?” he challenged the audience.
Dave Wilson: director of academic programs for NI, took us back to issue of time first introduced in CEO James Truchard’s Day One keynote. “Time pieces are infinitely more complex today,” he noted. “And look at transportation. Early automobiles were fundamental systems; new ones, such as the Tesla S, are significantly more complex.”
So how do we train engineers to keep up and expand on these increasingly complex problem? “Do Engineering” is the theme. We get better through practice. Especially practice with something that maintains consistency over time. NI’s graphical programming system is used by young people with Lego Mindstorms up through engineers solving complex problems. NI’s new MiniSystems help students continue to learn. Over time, NI has reached 4,000,000 “future systems designers”.
Research competition using MyRIO has involved students in 65 countries, 850 universities, 20,000 students. This year 3,250 teams 25 countries entered the student design competition. Three finalists were invited to NI Week. A team from UNC Charlotte developed a NASA launch project for reusable rockets. Students from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology developed the EureCar, a self-driving car. Introducing the winner, Wilson noted that today’s engineers often take cues from biology such as the study of geometries of soles of frogs for designing tires. This finalist, students from ETH Zurich, took cues from marine life. Studying cuttlefish, the winners build a submarine propulsion mechanism enabling study of marine life without as much disruption as current robots submarines using myRIO and LabView.
Turning to academics, Wilson introduced a trio of professors from MIT. One led a team that developed the world’s largest range high-speed atomic force microscope. Another took the NI technology used in that project and scaled it down for graduate engineering student labs. And the Engineering Impact Award, which attracted 120 papers, went to the third MIT professor who developed “Portable Labs” a small FlexRIO board and with a vibrating strip of metal and magnet for undergraduate students to learn mechatronics. “We know that students want to do engineering not just sit and listen about it.” Amen to that. And, you, too, can own a FlexLab for myRIO for <$50 from MIT.
Starkloff introduced the three technology leaders, Mark Hatch, Joe Salvo and Gerhard Fettweis, who each had a short presentation followed by one of the few good panel discussions I’ve seen.
Leader of maker movement, Mark Hatch, CEO of TechShop, author of “The Maker Movement Manifesto”, and recipient of many awards for leading innovative maker communities in many cities, asked attendees, “What will you make? It’s cheaper now than ever before to innovate and make new things.”
Joe Salvo heads GE Global Research, which founded the Industrial Internet Consortium that NI recently joined. The goals of IIC are to break tech silos, bring physical/digital worlds together, and realize promise of M2M. Industrial Internet evolving manufacturing from the systems age. The global community is now connected both in business and socially. First people connected through cellular phones. Then he asked, “How many friends does your computer have? My computer has an active night life after I go to bed getting updates, etc. We have formed enormous value by connecting people, now include all the “things” think of the value that will be created. We are in a New Industrial Revolution with advanced manufacturing using the digital thread. FIrst we replaced back breaking work, then replaced routine work, now brilliant machines and brilliant minds coming together to work jointly.”
Technische Universitat Dresden professor Gerhard Fettweis has cofounded 11 startups. He is now researching wireless for the development of 5G cellular. Showing juxtaposed pictures from the introduction of Pope Benedict to the introduction of Pope Francis just a few years later reveals how the wireless community has changed the planet and glimpse of future. In the first picture one mobile phone is seen in the crowd. In the second, it seems everyone has a smart phone or tablet taking pictures of the event. He is researching a tactile internet where man and machine can meet in real-time control. This will require network latency down to 1 msec.
What are you doing to advance the world?
A Tale of Two Manufacturing Conferences
Reaching customers and prospects with a company’s message and involving them in educational and networking events evidently is becoming more difficult. Manufacturing technology trade shows—the staples of the 80s and 90s—are just about extinct. Some still exist, albeit in quite smaller form factors and with different twists.
Some vertical industry shows, such as packaging and oil & gas, still thrive. Others are on the downward slope.
The movement toward large single-company user conferences, spurred many years ago by Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair replacing its appearance at control shows, has spread like kudzu. On the other hand, I’ve seen a few of those start to shrink.
What does it take to get people out of the office/plant even though there are many benefits? What do you think?
The PAS technology conference is next Tuesday. Eddie Habbibi, CEO, sent me a slide with five reasons to attend a live event.
ABB is taking a different approach. Last year it announced that it would turn its annual Automation and Power World event into a biennial event. There must have been some pressure within the company to do something. On June 4, it is sponsoring an online education event Optimizing technology for the changing face of industry.
ABB says the digital conference agenda reflects results of ABB’s recent survey of customer concerns; Aging workforce, cost pressures and infrastructure. The event will take place live online on June 4 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. EDT. The conference grants exclusive access to ABB’s global experts as they share their knowledge and experience virtually, making the information available around the world in real time.
Online presentations will offer best practices and practical guidance on today’s most pressing business and operational issues in automation and manufacturing. ABB recently conducted a survey among customers to determine their top concerns. The most pressing issues within electric utility and industry were found to be an aging workforce, cost pressures and infrastructure. In fact, more than 70 percent of respondents identified an aging workforce as their chief concern.
From the press release: Participation in the live, digital conference provides networking opportunities with ABB subject matter experts and industry peers, as well as an opportunity to earn Professional Development Hours (PDHs).
The conference will feature 25 sessions and 60 speakers. All sessions will be archived and available for on-demand viewing so those who are unable to attend live sessions of interest can still benefit from the valuable educational content at any time following the events. Registration is free for industry professionals.
Keynote speaker, Richard Worzel, best-selling author of “Who Owns Tomorrow?” will address how the world is changing and what manufacturers need to do about it.
The conference is organized around six learning tracks:
June’s event will focus on automation, with a second power-focused SmartStream Digital Conference scheduled for November 2014.
The past few months have found me swamped with work. And then I had a severe seasonal allergy attack that left me without energy for a few days last week. I can’t believe it’s Thursday afternoon already this week.
I’m just not seeing a lot of news lately. It was so bad that I asked a friend at a PR agency if I had dropped off their list. “No,” she said, “there just hasn’t been much news.”
A lot of training I’ve had in manufacturing is about how to think. Take a look at some of the facets of Lean training: getting away from your desk and observing; asking “why” five times; imagining the process.
That intrepid character from the fertile mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of the nineteenth century has suddenly become popular again showing off his unique skills of thinking. There have been a couple Sherlock Holmes movies, some BBC mini-series, and an American TV drama, “Elementary.”
Science/psychology writer Maria Konnikova has leveraged the resurgence of popularity with readable, yet deep dive, into Holmes’ mind. “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes” should be the essential reading of today’s young engineers much like “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was for a previous generation. It’s a guidebook on thinking and problem solving.
She talks about how we start out “thinking like Watson”, that is, seeing but not observing. “What Holmes is really telling Watson when he contrasts seeing and observing is to never mistake mindlessness for mindfulness, a passive approach with active involvement.”
Just like we would train an engineer to pay attention to facts and processes when troubleshooting a manufacturing problem, Konnikova says, “Choice of attention–to pay attention to this and ignore that–is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences. As Ortega y Gasset said: ‘Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who you are.’ ”
So how can we train our brains to think like Holmes? This question occupies Konnikova’s book, and her answer can be summed up in one word: mindfulness. Mindfulness is “staying in the present moment and learning how to concentrate and how to focus your mind so that it really can avoid any distractions, can avoid anything that might kind of get it off track.”
This “scientific method of mind” makes use of the brain as an “attic” in the sense that the space in the brain is a finite resource. To think like Sherlock you need to optimize your mental resources and then figure out how you can take the things you’ve stored and access them in a way where you can “see the bigger picture and not just these random components” that you put there.
Sherlock Holmes is what you would describe as a lifelong learner. The scientific method doesn’t have an end. “It’s going to be a constant feedback loop,” Konnikova tells us. Sherlock approaches a situation with a prepared mindset, but his method requires thousands and thousands of hours of practice. Our brains have an extraordinary ability to grow and expand. The key to thinking like Sherlock is to train your brain in ways that expand your imagination.
But this whole process is much more than attention to detail (the right details) and accessing your “attic” storehouse of information.
To make everything work, you must have powers of imagination. You must quiet the mind and let the imagination go to work weeding out the obviously bad answers and then combining the remaining facts into new ways that eventually lead to a solution.
Konnikova concludes with this very important thought, “If you get only one thing out of this book, it should be this: the most powerful mind is the quiet mind. It is the mind that is present, reflective, mindful of its thoughts and its state. It doesn’t often multitask, and when it does, it does so with a purpose.”
Companies are trying many methods and programs to get university students involved in manufacturing and production. Here are details of one from Honeywell.
Honeywell has launched the annual UniSim Design Challenge, a series of process design competitions which recognize young talent from across three regions: Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa).
Each regional competition will reward innovative concepts that use Honeywell’s UniSim Design process simulation software, which is freely available to anyone teaching at a university or college. Students are tasked with creating a new design or model showcasing a process problem and their UniSim Design-based solution. The top entries from each competition will win a trip to their regional Honeywell Users Group (HUG) event, taking place in the United States for HUG Americas, Australia for HUG Asia Pacific, and The Netherlands for HUG Europe, Middle East and Africa, later this year.
The HUG events give students a unique insight into the process industries, as well as the opportunity to network and present their projects to attendees and potential employers. Sponsoring tutors also receive the opportunity to attend the event, as well as a training course at one of Honeywell’s world-class automation colleges. The prize covers travel, accommodation and registration costs for the event.
Vimal Kapur, vice president and general manager for Honeywell Process Solutions, said, “Each year we look forward to offering a global arena for students to debut their talents to a variety of process companies, and are always exceptionally impressed by the caliber of candidates who take part. With a need for talent across all parts of the industry, Honeywell aims to provide a platform to nurture and inspire students about the opportunities in the science, technology and engineering disciplines. The UniSim Design Challenge is an excellent opportunity for students to develop their skills and learn more about the industry.”
