by Gary Mintchell | Oct 13, 2025 | Cloud, Manufacturing IT, Software
Another example of a long-term partnership between a large software company and a smaller, innovative software company. This one links AVEVA (think former Wonderware and Schneider Electric) and TwinThread. I cannot believe I haven’t written more about TwinThread before. I know I’ve talked with the founder/CEO Erik Udstuen, whom I knew at Mountain Systems and GE. They were early into the race for a specifically industrial cloud platform.
This news concerns something called an Advanced Analytics solution. This solution targets improving operational efficiency, product quality, and energy usage. They say this underscores the value of AI-powered analytics in driving smart, sustainable industry.
AVEVA Advanced Analytics is a no-code, cloud-native Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution designed to transform raw industrial data into actionable insights. When integrated with CONNECT —AVEVA’s industrial intelligence platform—and our hybrid offerings AVEVA PI Data Infrastructure or AVEVA Operations Control, the complete solution empowers industrial teams with real-time, predictive analytics to make informed, proactive decisions.
Key Benefits Realized by Customers:
- Improved Product Quality: Manufacturers have achieved up to 100% first-pass yield, significantly reducing scrap and rework.
- Increased Uptime: Deployment has led to a 12% rise in equipment uptime, improving overall production efficiency.
- Energy Optimization: Clients report an average 4% reduction in energy consumption, supporting both cost reduction and sustainability goals.
- Accelerated ROI: Several organizations experienced a tenfold return on investment within their first year of adoption.
Making a bow toward competition featuring innovative pricing opportunities for customers, the note: AVEVA Advanced Analytics is available through the flexible and scalable AVEVA Flex subscription program, making it easy for businesses of all sizes to adopt cutting-edge analytics, and scale up to build upon successes.
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 10, 2025 | Generative AI, Robots, Technology
I’ve been trying to guide AI discussion toward useful applications rather than overly hyped general visions. Let the people dealing in billions of dollars promote themselves. For those who have real work to do, look into the details of AI news to discern real benefits. Perhaps this news from ABB fits that model. This news also follows the trend of larger companies investing in specialist companies in order to drive additional benefits for their products and solutions.
In this case, ABB (robotics) has invested in LandingAI in order to improve the company’s robotic applications for customers. Oh, and we get a new TLA (three-letter acronym). Note the specific examples.
In brief:
- Strategic investment secures ABB’s use of LandingAI’s vision AI capabilities, such as LandingLens, for robot AI vision applications
- Pre-trained models, smart data workflows and no-code tools reduce training time by 80% and accelerate deployment in fast-moving sectors including logistics, healthcare, and food & beverage
- First of its kind collaboration marks a major step towards ABB Robotics’ vision for Autonomous Versatile Robotics – AVR
This first of its kind collaboration will integrate LandingAI’s vision AI capabilities, like LandingLens, into ABB Robotics’ own software suite, marking another milestone in ABB’s journey towards truly autonomous and versatile robots.
“This announcement is the latest in our decade-long journey to innovate and commercialize AI, benefitting our customers by enhancing robot versatility and autonomy to expand the use of robots beyond traditional manufacturing,” said Sami Atiya, President of ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation. “The demand for AI in robotics is driven by the need for greater flexibility, faster commissioning cycles and a shortage of the specialist skills needed to program and operate robots. Our collaboration with LandingAI will mean installation and deployment time is done in hours instead of weeks, allowing more businesses to automate smarter, faster and more efficiently.”
As part of the collaboration ABB has made a venture capital investment through ABB Robotics Ventures, the strategic venture capital unit of ABB Robotics, driving collaboration and investment in innovative early-stage companies that are shaping the future of robotics and automation. Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.
LandingAI’s LandingLens is a vision AI platform that enables the rapid training of vision AI systems to recognize and respond to objects, patterns or defects with no complex programming or AI expertise required.
Through this collaboration, ABB Robotics will reduce robot vision AI training & deployment time by up to 80 percent. Once deployed, system integrators and end users can retrain the AI for new scenarios on their own, unlocking a new level of versatility. This is a critical step in scaling robot adoption in dynamic environments, beyond traditional manufacturing, especially in fast-moving sectors such as logistics, healthcare and food and beverage. ABB is already piloting LandingAI’s technology and actively working to integrate it into existing vision AI applications, including item-picking, sorting, depalletizing and quality inspection.
More information about RobotStudio with generative AI assistant:
- RobotStudio Al Assistant provides real-time, step-by-step guidance for robot programming
- More intelligent and easy-to-use generative Al interface creates faster, easier commissioning and boosts productivity
- Another step in enhancing robot accessibility and versatility beyond traditional manufacturing
Powered by a Large Language Model (LLM) that understands and interprets human language, RobotStudio AI Assistant draws from ABB’s comprehensive library of manuals and documentation to deliver high-quality, context-rich responses to questions, enabling users to set up faster and find rapid answers to questions and technical challenges.
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 8, 2025 | Generative AI, News, Technology
I wrote recently about my mixed feelings about AI-generated conversations for such situations as customer support and service. This news brings artificial human voice conversations to the receptionist. This is probably better than the “press 1 if…” interfaces we’ve experienced for the past 40 years. It’s remains impersonal, but a touch more friendly. This is another news item from Deepgram, about whom I’ve written many times in 2025.
Deepgram announced that Abby Connect, a premier virtual receptionist service, has successfully launched its new AI Receptionist product line built on Deepgram’s real-time speech-to-text technology.
Note the wording of “human first impression.”
For more than 20 years, Abby Connect has built its reputation on creating a warm, human first impression for every call. But scaling that personal service 24/7 – while managing rising client demand and costs – presented a major challenge. Abby Connect turned to Deepgram to help strike the right balance between efficiency and empathy.
After evaluating Google Cloud Speech-to-Text, AWS Transcribe, AssemblyAI, and Whisper, Abby Connect found Deepgram’s performance to be unmatched:
- Accuracy in the Real World – Deepgram outperformed competitors on noisy calls, including from HVAC job sites.
- Low Latency for Natural Conversations – Sub-300ms streaming latency enabled real-time, two-way AI dialogue without delays.
- Ease of Integration – Developer-friendly APIs and transparent pricing simplified rollout.
- Domain Customization – Tuned for industry-specific terminology, from legal to medical.
Abby Connect is now exploring how to extend Deepgram-powered transcription into even more advanced conversational AI, including large language models trained on call data to detect intent, measure sentiment, and enable smarter escalations.
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 7, 2025 | Edge, Networking, News
The post before this one looked at a survey done on usage of private 5G and edge networks. This news looks at a test bed in Switzerland to allow startups and nonprofits to try out a network without incurring infrastructure costs. Like most test beds, the work strives to encourage innovation within an ecosystem. This one focusing on energy, mobility, health, and manufacturing.
Nokia, together with Datwyler IT Infra, Intel, and the Switzerland Innovation Park Biel/Bienne (SIPBB), unveiled a pioneering hub for startups and nonprofits to accelerate industrial digitalization through advanced private 5G and AI-powered edge solutions. This initiative will drive breakthrough innovations in efficiency, safety, and sustainability across key industries such as health, mobility, energy, and manufacturing.
At SIPBB, innovators will have access to a full-scale deployment environment offering private 5G connectivity. The infrastructure includes Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) private wireless networks, MX Industrial Edge (MXIE), and future-ready applications such as Nokia MX Workmate, the industry’s first OT-compliant Gen AI solution for connected workers. These technologies, alongside Intel Xeon Scalable processors and edge AI capabilities, such as visual positioning and object detection, provide a real-world testbed open to nonprofit research and startup collaboration without the usual cost or deployment challenges.
The new trial site enables several industrial use cases, including predictive maintenance powered by real-time analytics to minimize downtime and material waste, push-to-talk and video communication tools to keep teams connected without on-site travel, and AI-enhanced safety monitoring to improve situational awareness and worker safety. Energy-efficient automation ensures consistent productivity with reduced environmental impact. Additionally, the site features natural human-machine interaction through Gen AI-driven digital assistants, allowing workers to communicate with machines using intuitive, conversational language.
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 7, 2025 | Edge, Networking
Conflicting reports have come my way regarding how private wireless, especially 5G, have penetrated manufacturing sites and how useful they have been coordinating with edge devices. Nokia have release the results of a study completed with GlobalData. The study reveals surge of ROI and AI-enabled use cases with on-premise edge and private wireless.
In brief
- 87% of enterprises adopting private wireless and on-premise edge saw ROI in one year.
- 81% of enterprises found setup costs lower than other options and 86% reported reduced ongoing costs.
- 94% of industrial enterprises deployed edge with private wireless that support AI-driven applications in 70% of the cases.
- 94% of industries reduced carbon emissions—41% by over 20%—and 89% reported energy savings.
The report draws on insights from 115 industrial enterprises across manufacturing, energy, logistics, mining, and transportation in Australia, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States.
David de Lancellotti, Vice President of Enterprise Campus Edge Sales at Nokia, says: “Nokia and Global Data’s latest research helps leaders build strong business cases for digitalization by showing how private wireless and on-premise edge not only reduce costs but also accelerate scalable transformation with measurable improvements in worker safety, productivity, security and environmental impact.”
AI’s potential in industrial settings hinges on access to high-quality, real-time data; 94% of industrial enterprises have deployed on-premise edge technology alongside private wireless. This combination enables secure, low-latency connectivity in complex environments and pervasive sensor coverage, even in hard-to-reach areas, supporting AI-driven use cases like predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and digital twins in 70% of surveyed enterprises.
BASF, a leading chemical company, deployed Nokia private wireless at its Antwerp facility to advance its digitalization strategy and enable reliable, high-performance connectivity across its six-square-kilometer premises. The private network supports AI- and sensor-driven use cases like real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, enhances automation and efficiency, improves worker safety, and reduces environmental impact.
Steven Werbrouck, Expert Network Connectivity at BASF, says: Private 5G has been a game changer for BASF Antwerp. We’re unlocking automation, strengthening occupational safety, accelerating innovation, and meeting ROI targets in just two years. We have become a front-runner for the wider group with learnings that will deliver value at multiple BASF group locations.”
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by Gary Mintchell | Oct 3, 2025 | Automation, Commentary, Generative AI
Q: Why are we building out this new technology?
A: Because we can.
Better Q: What good will this new technology bring to society?
Voice AI and Voice assistant (also assistance) press releases keep coming my way. They extol how realistic the conversations with (nonhuman) voice AI are becoming. Companies will be able to use these more extensively for customer support.
I understand how challenging finding employees for this sort of work has become. Especially that they would like to be paid. The operations expenditure for a voice assistant is quite low after a modest capital expenditure. Makes it attractive to MBAs.
Just today I was trying to find the source of a problem between my WordPress site (with WP Engine) and Cloudflare. Three weeks ago a DNS update at WPEngine (I think) shut down my site. I searched around looking for an answer. Updated some DNS settings on Cloudflare, and my site was back up.
But there were still little problems. Now my site is showing no statistics. Went to WPEngine. It had forgotten who I was. (Another story). Went to Cloudflare. Checked DNS settings versus what I saw on WPEngine. Updated for the second time in a month.
But support? All I got were generic tree-structure questions and perhaps an AI chat bot. No real help.
I appreciate the technology behind Deepgram, about whom I’ve written five times this year (here, here, here, here, and here). But as a consumer, I’m not all that sanguine about the use of the technology. Just because we can do it, will that make customer service and support more human and helpful?
