by Gary Mintchell | Sep 26, 2024 | Marketing
Satire marketing can be a dangerous thing. Attacking a competitor or failing to find humor can kill the vibes. Consistent humor not derogatory toward any particular group but only toward a way of doing business that most everyone knows lacks awareness can be quite effective.
When Quickbase marketers showed me the first sample of its “Status Co” marketing campaign, I shuddered. But they carried it off well including using it as the theme of the IMTS stand. It’s humorous while poking fun at a variety of backward ways of managing data and operations.
Here’s a link to one of the LinkedIn posts. Check them out for an example of cute marketing staying just on the right side of the line.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 6, 2024 | Marketing, News
This product is not in my sweet spot, but it’s one of those applications I’d have loved in a previous stop in my career.
Compatio AI has unveiled Compatio Configure. The tool is aimed at the electrical and industrial automation industries, providing insights into product compatibility and application relevance.
It enables staff, regardless of experience level, to configure solutions adhering to technical specifications, intricate inter-product compatibility and sales history. Configure is built on Compatio AI’s proprietary Product eXpert Engine, a graph database that integrates AI, data science and human expertise to create “Real Intelligence”.
Key features of Compatio AI’s Configure include:
- Inventory Awareness: Configure maintains real-time inventory awareness, ensuring that all product recommendations are not only technically compatible but also currently available for prompt delivery. This engagement extends seamlessly through product utilization and advocacy, delivering a cohesive and enriching ownership journey.
- Integrated Optimized Recommendations: Utilizing an advanced algorithm, Configure provides optimized recommendations that meet the specific needs of each customer, improving efficiency and satisfaction.
- Integrated Knowledge Base: A comprehensive knowledge base powers Configure, enabling it to make informed configuration and compatibility-based recommendations across the entire enterprise.
Also launched are four pre-built configurators:
- panel boards
- enclosures
- variable frequency drives (VFD)
- motor controls
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 19, 2024 | Marketing, Operations Management, Software
I can still remember the meeting to discuss technology, although I’m hazy on the exact date now but sometime in 2003. We had a new magazine. This was when ISA still had relatively large trade shows. My publisher called me. Seems there was a guy in our booth looking for the editor. He had some kind of revolutionary new software built on Java and was IT friendly.
OK, many CEOs had talked to me even in my brief career as an editor with something revolutionary. They are mostly long since exited from the market.
Steve Hechtman was different, but it took a bit of time for me to be certain. He told me about his new company Inductive Automation. It was SCADA/HMI software. I put it in a mental bin along with Wonderware and Intellution at the time. He talked about using standards that were friendly with the IT people and pricing models that would blow away the competition.
And all these years later, Inductive Automation is still thriving. They’ve built quite an ecosystem. (Yes, they are a long-time sponsor, but this is not an advertisement essay. I just happened to see this summary.)
The event that prodded me to write this brief essay was a conversation with a start-up CEO (more news coming next week about that) who had identified an underserved market niche that could be filled quite nicely. I thought about the market I principally write about and how Ignition fit. I wonder, given the maturity of the large automation companies and stagnant market, if perhaps there are other niches opening for enterprising visionaries?
This information came to me. Since I’ve often written about building products on open standards, I thought a little story of how it actually works would be instructional.
- Ignition is a practical and affordable industrial automation platform based on open technology standards that are safe to trust and easy to support.
- Based on IT standards — like SQL, Python, MQTT, and OPC UA — and works with practically anything.
- Based on the open source Java platform and modern technology languages like HTML5 and CSS to keep implementation dependencies to a minimum.
- Ignition is a system in which your equipment all plays well together and you can implement processes freely without extra fees or royalties.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 3, 2024 | Marketing, Operations Management
Changing market cycles have affected my entire career. Product category booms and busts, especially in the 80s, affected the types of positions and companies where I worked. Today, there are few jobs and companies where you can start and end your career and make a good financial living at it.
Even when I ditched the manufacturing world and became a magazine editor, the cycles still affected me (and most of us, right?).
I just replied to a marketing person who pitched a new survey release. Press releases over the past couple of years have featured more surveys than new products. There are so many surveys that I am amazed that you all can actually get work done. That company is referring to “Industry 5.0.”
The CTO of Aras, a PLM company that I visited earlier this year, described the five industry contexts:
- Mechanization
- Electrification
- Automation
- Digitalization (where we have been for the past few years)
- Cognitive (where we are beginning to reside)
Let us chart the manufacturing and production trade press. The early ones jumped on the electrification—which I translate in our space to include not only motors and drives but also early instrumentation and connectivity.
I joined the media industry with Control Engineering. That would be the toward the end of electrification with PLCs replacing relay control and drives getting smarter and motion control increasingly incorporated into the control system rather than stand alone applications.
A small group of us started Automation World, which as editor-in-chief, I defined as control plus information. Thus began better control plus improved programming, HMI/SCADA coming into its own, the fieldbus and wireless “wars,” and bringing more IT into OT.
Digitalization began 10 or so years ago with things like improved networking, connecting and dispersing more intelligent devices called Industrial Internet of Things (just a marketing euphemism), databases, analytics, improved visualization.
Some people (or marketers) think that some form of Artificial (Augmented?) Intelligence will capture the next phase. What I see is a marketing term that tries to capture attention. What I seldom see are definitions of the varieties of AI. Do they mean machine learning and neural networks that we’ve used for decades? Do they mean large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, Co-Pilot?
Perhaps the cognitive will actually be “autonomous.” Examples could be autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) or self-driving automobiles and trucks. I’ve referenced a paper emanating from ABB about the coming of “autonomous control.”
What I’ve tried to do at Automation World (until the changes of 2011-12) and then at The Manufacturing Connection since 2013 is to explain the changing technology and application ecosystem through the lens of news that comes my way—products, applications, surveys.
Thank you to the 200,000 of you who stop by to look every month. That number is small compared to consumer influencers or other such social media types. But it is a large number in the market I’m trying to serve.
There’s not much income in this space anymore. But it’s still fun writing about better ways to make stuff. There are few companies left that will sponsor such writing and thinking. A big thank you to Inductive Automation for its long-time support. Over the years, I’ve worked on custom industry research and analysis for several clients. Also my current client, Quickbase and former clients Dell Technologies and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. (The IT companies discovered that manufacturing may not be as lucrative a market as they thought.)
What’s next? We’ll see. I’m focusing more on empowering individual humans more than ever.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 5, 2024 | Marketing, Podcast
This is from my recent newsletter. You can sign up for delivery by clicking on the envelope icon in the right sidebar.
Several colleagues have traveled close to my new location, and we’ve shared some good meals with great conversation. Inevitably they asked for my observations on the state of the automation market.
Part of my answer, in short, would be to quote from a recent Seth Godin blog post, The Drift to Normal. As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average.
He continues, “That’s because each new customer, each new supplier and each new employee wants or needs something a little more normal, at least sometimes. The drift to normal can only be countered by persistent effort, usually at the cost of some element of short-term scale.”
Here are a few points that capture my thinking:
- Mature Market
- We’re building few or no new plants—and the USA seems to be declining in activity with European and Asian automation companies for the most part showing reduced interest
- Customers are not switching systems
- Automation supplier consolidation
- Innovative startups look for lucrative buyouts as their end game
- Technology is stable
- Technology is also consolidating
- Effects of the changes:
- Automation companies have reduced need for outside marketing partly due to spread of technology
- Primary emphasis is on sales and service—keeping present customers satisfied, if not happy
- Technology development involves tweaking current products and innovating through acquisition
- Geographical retrenchment
For example, let us look at a brief history of National Instruments, nee NI, nee Emerson Test and Measurement. Three technical innovators created a startup with a vision of software defined instrumentation. They created a creative, entrepreneurial culture. For several years there was great energy, growth in business, growth in technology development.
Then one year I noticed that the technology keynote at the annual user conference sounded more corporate. Less, “Gee Whiz” technology. People started to trickle away—either encouraged or seeing the changes. The leaders deliberately changed the culture toward corporatism preparing for an eventual sale. Then the sale happened to the epitome of corporate management in the market.
Note: not a criticism, but an observation. And it’s happening all through the market.
I have released a couple of podcasts on my platform at automation.libsyn.com. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast (my favorite), direct download, or from your podcatcher of choice.
Check out some thoughts on Standards and on Slow Productivity. My just released podcast includes a number of thoughts about the current state of the automation market.
I have arranged a special deal with energy drink makers Magic Mind. Listeners can visit https://www.magicmind.com/garym and get up to 56% off your subscription for the next 10 days with my code GARYM20. After 10 days, you can still get 20% off for one time purchases and subscriptions.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 22, 2024 | Marketing, News
Amazon Web Services just keeps growing in our market space. In this news Verusen, supplier of MRO optimization and collaboration products, announced joining the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program, a co-sell program for AWS Partners that provides software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS.
The AWS ISV Accelerate Program enables Verusen to accelerate value for manufacturing customers by directly connecting with Verusen with the AWS Partner Network and Sales organizations. AWS provides Verusen with co-sell support and benefits to meet customer needs through collaboration with AWS field sellers globally. Co-selling provides better customer outcomes and ensures AWS and its partners’ mutual commitment.
“Verusen is delivering industry-leading solutions to AWS customers worldwide, working with AWS Account Executives and Solutions Architects providing access to simplified transactions via AWS Marketplace,” said Scott Matthews, Verusen’s CEO. “Now, customers can achieve multiple benefits by accessing Verusen’s next-generation MRO optimization platform in AWS Marketplace.”
Verusen’s inventory policy optimization, global material search, network and supplier collaboration, and data deduplication capabilities allow existing AWS customers to enhance their tech stack further to transform their end-to-end MRO materials management processes digitally. Manufacturers gain significant visibility to their entire MRO landscape through Verusen’s easy access to purpose-built MRO optimization solution utilizing cloud infrastructure.
