by Gary Mintchell | Jun 30, 2026 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Organizations
Before I could compile all my news from last week, a subsequent news item superseded this one. Long-time partners The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association International (MESA) and Tech-Clarity, Inc. are once again teaming up for an important survey on manufacturing operations. Unfortunately, MESA just sent a release announcing that they are closing as of today, June 30, 2026.
I’m not surprised. I noticed a few months ago that the last of the major sponsors, Rockwell Automation, have pulled out of sponsorship. There were no longer enough sponsors to finance the organization. I devoted many hours to MESA over the years. I also met many great people. I feel an empty space.
I contacted long-time friend Julie Fraser who assured me this research is still on.
TL;DR—Knowledge Sharing Opportunity: Complete a survey to get the results and learn from other manufacturers
[The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association International (MESA) and ]Tech-Clarity, Inc. invite manufacturers to respond to a new survey on managing manufacturing operations. Responses are confidential, and participants will get a copy of the resulting research report.
Research topics include:
- Why are companies investing in MES/MOM manufacturing operations software (MOS) now?
- What is the business value of these level 3 applications? Are implementations delivering the expected benefits? How long does it take to achieve the benefits?
- How is MES/MOM evolving? What functions such as quality, maintenance, scheduling, and analytics are separate, from one solution provider, or share a common data model? Are these systems hosted on-premise, SaaS, or a hybrid?
- What is the impact of AI at the manufacturing operations level? What are companies doing now and planning? What are they expecting? What benefits are they achieving?
- What are the best practices to maximize value from manufacturing operations software investments? What can we learn from each other? Are AI and MOS applications better together?
Most predictions are for double-digit growth in the MES market this year and beyond. Thus, these questions are pressing for both manufacturers and the solution providers who serve them. The program has five sponsors, each a leading player in this software arena: Critical Manufacturing, Infor, ISE, Parsec Automation LLC, and SAS.
Manufacturing Operations Software (MOS): Tech-Clarity defines MOS as commercial plantwide software (as defined in level 3 of the Purdue model) needed to run a manufacturing facility. MOS includes MES, MOM, and industry-specific capabilities such as eBR and eDHR. It may also encompass associated functions in quality, maintenance, scheduling, inventory, environmental, health, safety, and connected worker. MOS also refers to new approaches, such as factory operating systems, composable manufacturing software, industrial data intelligence/AI, and platforms with applications.
Tech-Clarity’s Julie Fraser and Rick Franzosa are leading the research program, supported by MESA’s Knowledge Committee, headed by Chris Monchinski, and the rich community of five sponsors.
“The desire to leverage AI in manufacturing operations is adding to the allure of having trustworthy manufacturing operations data in context. We see growing interest in ensuring that production IT and OT data, as well as quality, scheduling, maintenance, and worker support data, all flow smoothly. We’re looking to understand the details of how companies want to do that,” says Fraser, Vice President of Research for Operations at Tech-Clarity and MESA’s leader of the Smart Manufacturing Community.
MESA’s International Knowledge Committee Chair Chris Monchinski of InflexionPoint states, “Getting MES or MOM systems ready for AI may have many dimensions. While they are the best foundation for this work at level 3 of the Purdue model, many implementations are not quite ready for the rigors of AI’s data needs.”
“MES has been delivering solid benefits for many years. The question is where manufacturers are focusing their investments and projects, and how AI both forces the need and accelerates progress for these systems,” says Tech-Clarity’s Vice President of Research for Manufacturing, Rick Franzosa.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 21, 2026 | Generative AI, Manufacturing IT, Podcast, Services, Software
Nothing in industrial technology news annoys me more than the hype around artificial intelligence—AI. I recorded this podcast on the eve of the Automate trade show and conference in June 2026.
Looking to for realistic use of Industrial AI, I’m bringing in an interview with a practitioner. Bryan DeBois is Director of Industrial AI at RoviSys, one of the largest independent system integrators. He has 20 years in MES, historians, and plant floor software. He leads teams that operationalize AI and data infrastructure in live plants, working with the C suite and ops to turn goals into running systems.
We look at definitions of AI. Then turn to the technology development from when RoviSys developed its AI practice in 2019 pre-LLMs. RoviSys took autonomous AI beyond predictive applications. Hiring deep manufacturing expertise, they can use AI to assist the human in the loop to make constrained decisions. DeBois discusses real-world applications. He then leads us through the beginning of a project.
Watch on YouTube.
Listen on your favorite podcast app or on my Website.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 18, 2026 | Edge, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
Rockwell Automation ’s software group has undergone substantial change over the past few years. It seems to have settled into a groove lately. I’d imagine that its story at this year’s Automation Fair in November in Boston should be interesting.
The TL;DR of today’s announcement—New product offers a unified execution architecture, bringing intelligence, resilience and enterprise scalability to modern manufacturing operations
Rockwell Automation announced June 18, 2026 the availability of FactoryTalk ResilientEdge, a next-generation execution architecture designed to support autonomous manufacturing operations across highly-automated environments.
Built on FactoryTalk Optix and integrated across Rockwell Automation’s portfolio, including Plex Manufacturing Execution System (MES), FactoryTalk ResilientEdge creates a single execution layer that spans machines, people and production systems. The platform delivers predictable, low-latency execution at the edge along with cloud capabilities that enable analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) training and enterprise orchestration. The combination of edge and cloud means that operations are continuous even if connectivity is lost.
The edge-to-cloud interaction comprises the bulk of such announcements lately. Connection points, of course, constitute the key interface for real action.
FactoryTalk ResilientEdge turns advanced manufacturing capabilities into a standard operating infrastructure by unifying plant models, connectivity, execution and intelligence into a single framework. Within FactoryTalk ResilientEdge, users will find a variety of innovative features: shared production model, native and interoperable connectivity, real-time edge execution with embedded business logic, cloud-scale analytics, and AI. The result is an execution system that eliminates the divide between Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT), dramatically reducing the complexity of deploying and evolving modern manufacturing operations.
“At a time when 95% of manufacturers are advancing AI and machine learning initiatives, FactoryTalk ResilientEdge enables a new class of manufacturing execution,” said Anthony Murphy, vice president of product management, Rockwell Automation. “Manufacturers can scale automation, intelligence, and autonomy across their operations while preserving the economic and scalability advantages of the cloud, helping manufacturers deploy faster and lower their total cost of ownership.”
Three key points
- Enabling AI-Driven Autonomy—Modern automation initiatives require reliable execution, structured data flow and scalable architecture as the foundation for advanced analytics and AI initiatives. FactoryTalk ResilientEdge delivers a resilient execution layer that supports advanced analytics, AI and closed-loop optimization without compromising plant-level performance.
- Secure, Interoperable and Built to Scale—FactoryTalk ResilientEdge helps manufacturers modernize operations by improving operational resiliency, optimized for Rockwell Automation ecosystems while remaining open and interoperable across heterogeneous production environments. The security, interoperability and scalability of the new offering is a testament to Rockwell’s elastic MES solutions.
- Faster Deployment and Lower Lifecycle Cost—By reducing integration complexity, centralizing monitoring and supporting modular scalability, FactoryTalk ResilientEdge can lower lifecycle costs and accelerate deployment. FactoryTalk ResilientEdge capabilities can be deployed as needed, supporting companies who phase their modernization strategy.
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by Gary Mintchell | Jun 12, 2026 | Commentary, Generative AI
Secularism, scientism, rationalist Richard Dawkins wants to end any influence of “religion.” In doing so, he actually tries to start a new religion. This new secular religion most likely began with French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes. The coterie of Silicon Valley Generative AI leaders follow those unfortunate footsteps.
Pope Leo XIV unhesitatingly issued a 42,000-word encyclical, ”Magnifica Humanitas,” in response to the challenges of artificial intelligence.
Cultural technology critic and professor of computer science Cal Newport wrote, “Last week, Pope Leo XIV released I’m still digesting the full document, but early summaries indicate that the Pope is not ready to meekly acquiesce to the AI future that we’ve been told is inevitable.”
Leo wrote, “With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty, and the world once again will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell.”
I’ve been involved with automation for more than 40 years. Its value has always been as a tool to remove humans from dangerous jobs, enhance consistent quality, and eventually providing necessary data to feed business systems. They are best when used to build up the common good.
I wrote a longer philosophical piece last week on the subject. I continue to caution us not to be distracted by the hype. Do not become distracted or distraught by momentary whims in media or by “influencers.”
Just as I wrote on another blog last week about how I’d love to see a huge outbreak of humility amongst us.
Is there some hope in the discourse? Newport concludes his essay this way.
“Thankfully, in recent weeks, there has been a marked shift in how technology executives talk about AI. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called BS on executives claiming they’re laying people off due to AI, calling the excuse ‘lazy’ and ‘just a way for them to sound smart.’ Perhaps even more surprising, just last week, Sam Altman admitted he had been ‘pretty wrong’ about his previous predictions that AI would automate large numbers of jobs.”
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 9, 2026 | Data Management, Edge
When the three people I knew formed HighByte in the Industrial DataOps market, I thought they had a good thing going. Perhaps revenues have not rocketed as much as hoped, but they keep moving. They added work in unified data namespace. This partnership just announced with Siemens is a good deal for both companies.
In short:
- Partnership delivers unified data infrastructure for industrial operations, combining Siemens Industrial Edge, HighByte Intelligence Hub and Intelligence Center X
- Customers can seamlessly connect, contextualize and consume industrial data to build AI models, agents and applications at scale
- HighByte Intelligence Hub now available on Siemens Industrial Edge Marketplace
Siemens is expanding the capabilities of its Industrial Edge ecosystem through a partnership with industrial software company HighByte. The collaboration enables customers to seamlessly connect, contextualize and transform data from both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) sources, helping them to get value from industrial data.
HighByte Intelligence Hub is an industrial data operations software solution, designed specifically for data modeling, orchestration and governance. It is now available as an official application on the Siemens Industrial Edge Marketplace. Customers can efficiently consume and reuse industrial data sets from HighByte to build AI models, agents and applications at scale, using Siemens’ recently announced Intelligence Center X software.
HighByte Intelligence Hub runs natively on Industrial Edge, where application and configuration management is handled. The solution integrates directly with the Industrial Edge’s Connectivity Suite, enabling users to connect to a wide variety of OT data sources including PLCs, SCADA systems, and industrial protocols. HighByte’s DataOps functionalities extend this connectivity to IT data sources, creating a unified data infrastructure that spans the entire production operation.
A key capability of the integrated solution is data contextualization and pipelining. Using HighByte Intelligence Hub, users can apply flexible and scalable transformation rules to process data from multiple sources across IT and OT domains, adding business context and converting raw operational data into meaningful information. These contextualized datasets can then be made available to IT services in a transparent and scalable manner, with HighByte serving as a true Unified Namespace provider that standardizes data access across the organization. Beyond making OT data available to IT systems, HighByte Intelligence Hub can also be used to adjust machine setpoints in a secure and reliable way, by sending commands from IT data sources – such as manufacturing execution systems (MES) – back to PLCs via Industrial Edge’s Connectivity Suite.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 5, 2026 | Software
Deepgram continues to roll out extensions to its real-time voice AI platform.
- Deepgram and Fortanix are the first to bring confidential computing to real-time voice AI, allowing organizations to protect sensitive conversations and AI models even while they are actively being used.
- Until now, you could protect data when it was stored and when it was moving. The hard part was protecting it while the AI was actually using it. That’s what we’re solving here for real-time voice AI.
- Sensitive enterprise data and proprietary model IP remain private during active inference, with no exposure to underlying infrastructure
From the press release:
Deepgram and Fortanix announced a partnership that will enable enterprises to run voice AI in their own environment on their own terms while ensuring their most sensitive data is securely protected. Under terms of the agreement, Deepgram can leverage Fortanix Confidential AI and NVIDIA Confidential Computing to add an additional layer of advanced security to self-hosted environments to ensure that its proprietary model weights, built on business-critical intellectual property, can be deployed while protecting against model theft or inappropriate use.
For enterprises, especially those in highly regulated industries, security requirements continue to tighten. Organizations handling patient conversations, financial transactions, or classified information increasingly require that sensitive audio and AI model weights remain protected not only at rest and in transit, but also during active processing in their own environments. This level of protection enables organizations to build highly-secure real-time voice applications without sacrificing on performance.
The on-premises solution runs Deepgram’s voice AI models with Fortanix Confidential AI on NVIDIA Confidential Computing-enabled GPUs, creating a hardware-isolated environment where both audio data and model weights remain encrypted and protected throughout active use. NVIDIA GPUs with Confidential Computing enable AI workloads to process sensitive data inside a trusted execution environment — a capability traditional infrastructure cannot provide. By bringing together best-in-class voice AI models, hardware-rooted isolation, and a jointly engineered, pre-integrated stack, the partnership delivers a level of in-use data protection that, until now, has not been practical to deploy at enterprise scale.
