We also need to consider the limits of text-based LLMs. Researcher Yan LeCun has looked at the limits of these technologies. How can they work for things like bringing a robot into the house, for example, when they are limited to digital and text and the environment is analog. Won't this take a system of models? Not just one model?

Use them, but don't be awed. Or bamboozled by CEOs. This episode is sponsored by Inductive Automation.

I pose the idea that it takes more than investment. And protection from competition really just allows local companies leeway to raise prices. What it really takes is better, bolder, visionary leadership to search out customer needs, design products they will buy, and then produce the products.

It takes more than waving a few dollars at the problem.

This podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation.

Thoughts on the industrial software market in general and Rockwell's evolution. What's happening with MES in particular.

Rockwell upgrading and building new factories using its own products and services. Rok on Rok

Repackaged cybersecurity offerings.

Software defined automation--software distinct from the target controller--can target any Rockwell control. Question about IEC 61131 and targeting anyone's control fell on deaf ears. Thoughts on that market.

Rockwell's use of AI, fitting trend of AI as automation tool, trained on the company's data.

Rockwell's use of robotics to expand horizontally throughout manufacturing.

Sponsored by Inductive Automation.

This meeting involved thinking about the future of asset data and systems interoperability. We had a system diagram. The idea was to solve a huge problem for owner/operators of process manufacturing enterprises—flowing engineering data into other software systems for operations, maintenance, and enterprise. The incumbent system was a morass of paper (or pdf documents which was much the same thing).

We did trademark searches and domain name searches and eventually settled on the Open Industrial Interoperability Ecosystem—OIIE.

I plot this history for context for the conference I attended recently—the 2^nd ADIF Workshop at Texas A&M University dubbed Driving Asset Data and Systems Interoperability Toward an Open and Neutral Data Ecosystem.

This workshop brought together owner/operators, EPCs, System Integrators, university researchers, standards organizations, and software vendors. Each group conducted a panel discussion of its needs and successes. I was there for a short presentation and to moderate the standards panel.

Professor David Jeong from Texas A&M and the session leader previewed the discussions. One of his colleagues later presented research his team has performed to provide a method for taking P&ID documentation into a standard format usable by other software systems.

The message that came to me from the panel of owner/operators (grossly summarized, as will be all the discussions) included two key words—collaborate and operationalize. They are impatient about solving this data interoperability problem. One panelist quipped, "We know the project is finished when the large van backs into the loading dock and disgorges mountains of paper."

What blows my mind is that I was moved to a position called Data Manager in 1977 to tackle the (much smaller) mountain of paper our product engineering department provided to operations, accounting, and inventory management. I led a digitalization effort in 1978 to tackle the problem. The problem not only remains, but it is immensely more complicated and critical.

The EPCs basically said that their hands were tied by the owner/operators mandating which design and engineering software to use and the inflexibility of the vendors of said design and engineering software. When owner/operators had requested digital documentation, they had responded with pdfs. Hardly interoperable data.

Our standards panel included the leader of DEXPI, whose organization has developed a method of changing P&ID data into an xlsx (Excel) format. That, of course, is a good start.

An organization called CFIHOS (see-foss) presented their take on standards. I'm afraid I got a bit lost in the slides (note: more research needed). What I gathered was that they were attempting one overriding standard—and that that work was years away. Interesting that I listened to Benedict Evans' podcast this morning. He is a long-time tech industry analyst. He remarked in another context, "It seems that where there are 10 standards and someone comes along with a standard to encompass them all, you wind up with 11 standards."

The ISA-95 was presented. This messaging (and more) standard is incorporated with the OIIE, which was presented next. Dr. Markus Stumptner of the University of South Australia presented his research work on proof of concept of the OIIE.

If we can get enough momentum focusing on this area and find some SIs willing to take the OIIE to an owner/operator, perhaps we can finally prove the business case of asset data and systems interoperability.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation, makers of Ignition — the world's most versatile industrial automation platform for connecting data, systems, and people. With the new Ignition 8.3 release, you can easily manage time-series and event data, quickly create custom graphics with onboard drawing tools, and centralize control using Ignition's new gateway interface with global search and deep link launching. Providing additional support for Git, containers, and private data protection to go along with its unlimited licensing, Ignition 8.3 takes industrial operations to the next level. Download Ignition for free.

The Irish poet/philosopher John O'Donohue discussed in Anam Cara the dignity of work and that work should benefit workers and communities as well as owners and managers.

Lean guru Keven Meyer noted in his book Simple Leader that respect for people is a pillar of Lean. When you hire someone, you are getting more than a pair of hands—you are getting a brain and experience, as well. You should make use of them.

Articles about a worker shortage due to Boomer retirements have been a staple of trade magazine editorial ever since I became an editor in 1998. Some twenty-seven years later, those articles and news releases keep coming.

I learned about a new product from Derek Crager, Founder & CEO of Practical AI for onboarding and mentoring new employees. There is irony here, in that Crager touts himself as developer of an award-winning training program at Amazon—yes, the place that thinks it can replace its workers with robots. But, we will go beyond that thought for now.

His solution? Just-in-time guidance—the right step at the exact moment of need, while hands are on the task. When a technician can ask and do in the same breath, training becomes throughput. That's the difference between teaching a concept and multiplying your best expert across every line and shift.

He called on his experience at Amazon to develop something called Pocket Mentor: A Phone Call to Your Best Expert. This is a hands-free, eyes-free mentor your team reaches by phone, anytime, on the floor or in the field. No app. No Wi-Fi. No passwords. Just tap & say, "Talk me through it" — and we will.

Check out TheManufacturingConnection.com for more thoughts.

I recorded this as I was leaving Inductive Automation's Ignition Community Conference 2025 in Sacramento. The event team performed wonderfully moving ICC from the smaller Harris Center in Folsom to the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento with double the attendance. Lots of energy, many partners. The event had to be credited a success. Of course, the highlight was introduction of Ignition 8.3. This update included many long-sought additions. Note: Inductive Automation has been a long-term sponsor for my work. However, we do not have an "influencer" relationship, that is, they do not pay me for writing content. They just appreciate my work. If this information is useful, please pass along.

I hit recreation vehicles at a high point followed by high inflation and gasoline price surges. Then a consumer product company where Consumer Reports published a poorly researched article—but the external market also changed. Then PC peripherals. The latest was automation where a few of us started a magazine to cover it. The market was good for about 10 years. Then we went into brief cycles of IIoT, edge, networks, collaborative robots, IT companies looking at the manufacturing market.

This podcast began life in 2007 as Automation Minutes. I morphed it into Gary on Manufacturing to make it more general. That was more than 10 years ago. Must be time for another change.

That all is quite mature now. 

Where do you think the offsetting new technologies or customer behavior will lead now? Or, is the market just going to begin to either consolidate further or split? What do you think?

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.

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. 

My sponsor is Inductive Automation. Check out their flagship product Ignition and the Cloud and Edge editions.

If you would like to get a message out to about 200,000 people, you, too, could be a sponsor. Reply to this email to find out more about sponsorship opportunities.

Sponsors Inductive Automation inductiveautomation.com and Magic Mind, magicmind.com/garym and use code GARYM20.

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. That's magicmind.com/garym with the code GARYM20.

This podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation. https://www.inductiveautomation.com

While thinking about the proliferation of as-a-service models of business, thoughts of that 70s and 80s British comedy TV show came to mind. Are you being served? Proved feasible by Salesforce and then adopted by many including recently HPE as the strategy for the entire company, we are witnessing automation companies exploring the as-a-service business model. I wonder how far it will go.

AR, MR, VR, XR--what R we supposed to make of all this technology. We've been playing with the idea for more than 20 years when I first reported on a new product that promised to connect a line technician with a remote expert (using video camera) and show work instructions (augmented reality). At the time legendary blogger Robert Scoble in 2013 or so predicted we'd all be wearing Google Glass. That device would tell us whom we were about to meet on the street so that we could greet them by name and ask relevant questions. The immersive experience of visual reality is great for gamers and perhaps for operator and maintenance training. This technology is here, just unevenly distributed.

A beginning student pilot must only fly on clear days where the ground is always visible. Following much additional training, the student can achieve instrument rating and can "fly in the clouds."

Manufacturing and production companies are moving to flying in the clouds perhaps much more quickly than they moved to any other technology. Of course, I'm talking about cloud computing.

I recently sat in the ROKLive Rockwell Automation event. They discussed two recent acquisitions, Fiix and Plex, both of whom will move Rockwell into the cloud. Good moves.

Tech doesn't change industries, says analyst Benedict Evans. People in the industry use tech to change the industry. Witness how Ethernet went from nice IT thing to a necessary network on the factory floor. Or mobile phones went from "can we control them" to "everyone has one and it changed workflows forever." Same will happen with Augmented Reality (AR). Just watch.

This podcast is sponsored by Ignition from Inductive Automation. Check out Ignition 8 and the upcoming Ignition Community Conference.

I had received a news release from a manufacturing software company so full of jargon that I could barely decipher it. In the midst of the stuff was the claim that there are 40,000 IIoT professionals. Huh? I figured that they renamed engineers and technicians who wire all the field devices into a new profession. Why? Why make things more complicated than they are?

The best bet is to apply Occam's Razor wherever it fits--the simplest explanation is often the best. This podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation. Check out this year's Ignition Community Conference.

Open standards, open APIs, and open source all enable interoperability and all make life better for users. My discussions over the past couple of years indicates that US engineers are falling behind in the encouragement and use of these technologies. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope the new generation of engineers pick up these ways of working and move American manufacturing forward. And the rest of the world, too.

In 1979, Dan Bricklin connected a spreadsheet for the new personal computer product, and the pursuit of the Holy Grail was transformed in the computer age to the pursuit of the killer app. We still live in the age of the pursuit of the killer app. IT companies with their IoT and Edge compute married to predictive analytics thought they found that Killer App in predictive maintenance.

I think that stopping with predictive maintenance as THE app is far too shortsighted. There is far more to be gained by combining with more applications that will help make manufacturing more profitable for the enterprise.

How would you like to be the chief automation engineer when an automated assembly line goes down and it gets daily reports in The New York Times and the CEO camps out on the production floor until you get it fixed and that CEO is the world's smartest man--Elon Musk?

Too often we build projects, automation and otherwise, without any resiliency. They are brittle. They break easily.

Like the system Airbus considered with its extra-huge airliner that required every airport to upgrade runways and terminals.

Or, like us, when we don't build resiliency into our careers and our lives.

Even worse--the anxiety and brittleness of our children pushed to succeed above all else.

Build in some resiliency in your life and go make a difference.

Are you teaching quality today? That question started a young English teacher into a journey that led to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But really, I wanted to talk about quality and wiring. I visited a prospect who was interested in a press control automation system. When I went into the plant to look at one of their presses, I saw a haphazard (and hazardous) wiring job on the control panel. I left as soon as I could. But wiring can be exceedingly expensive in many plants. Wireless became an attractive alternative. We had WirelessHart soon to be partly replaced by WiFi. Now, the latest cellular technology, 5G, when made into a private network coordinating with WiFi6, composes a powerful IoT and digital transformation communication system.

The question for you today is are you contributing to building quality, ethical products that serve your customers and society?

On a personal development note, I leave you with Seven Daily Habits from Richard Koch in The 80/20 Principle.

What became of this education system?

Hi This is Gary.

This podcast is brought to you with support from Inductive Automation. Discover a whole new view with Ignition 8 by Inductive Automation. Packed with features for the modern control system like unlimited licensing, high-powered tags, and a mobile-first flexible design environment for all devices, Ignition 8 supports enterprises of any size. See all ignition has to offer at https://inductiveautomation.com/ .

Did the system you grow up in seem like the one I did? It was more like you were groomed to sit still, follow orders, give back the answer the teacher wanted, don't make waves.

It was designed originally to give just enough basic skills in English and math so that mostly boys could fill the slots in the new Industrial Age. Girls, I guess, were expected to be home with babies, laundry, and cooking. See the 1950s TV sitcom The Life of Reilly about a couple of guys working for an airplane manufacturer.

Later, some boys needed more skills in accounting and engineering so that they could fill the bureaucratic slots in the larger enterprises. Check out My Three Sons where the father was an engineer at an airplane manufacturing company.

Me? Even at an early age, I wanted to know Why? How do you know that? I went to school, graduated high school and then university. However, most of my education to this day is outside of academia. That microscope I got at about 10 that opened up a whole new world I was living with and didn't know. Later I discovered model rockets. I learned something about trigonometry so that we could calculate how high the rocket went. Or when I discovered electronics. And circuits. At 15 I could look at a schematic and tell at a glance a tuner circuit from an amplifier circuit, and do the math. And antennas. Calculating band and frequency and length of antenna.

So, I understand Albert Einstein's comments about the importance of curiosity and imagination. Far more important than formal learning. Seek out those who question and dream and wonder and sketch out what might be.

This leads to the idea of lateral thinking. Disruption to a market often comes from out of nowhere. Currently I'm studying Internet of Things (the current buzz) and a variety of software applications used in industry. But I stumbled into looking at all the possibilities of 5G cellular technology. Thanks to an HPE company, Aruba, I've seen how companies from totally outside the space could, if they have vision, come up with business models riffing off the technology to turn significant parts of the industrial software ecosystem on its head.

I may be wrong—I'm just as good as any other human at predicting the future, as in not. But the thought exercise is worth it.

This podcast is brought to you with support from Inductive Automation. Discover a whole new view with Ignition 8 by Inductive Automation. Packed with features for the modern control system like unlimited licensing, high-powered tags, and a mobile-first flexible design environment for all devices, Ignition 8 supports enterprises of any size. See all ignition has to offer at https://inductiveautomation.com/ .

We are seeing the same thing already in response to solving problems due to Covid-19. I take a look at a variety of responses just in the first couple of months of the crisis.

This podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation and its flagship Ignition 8.

This podcast is brought to you with support from Inductive Automation. Discover a whole new view with Ignition 8 by Inductive Automation. Packed with features for the modern control system like unlimited licensing, high-powered tags, and a mobile-first flexible design environment for all devices, Ignition 8 supports enterprises of any size. See all Ignition has to offer at inductiveautomation.com

Check out my blog at https://themanufacturingconnection.com

This podcast is sponsored by Ignition by Inductive Automation.

Today we do the same tasks, except that everything is digital. The drawings are all digital files, the BOM--digital, sorting/costing/checking all faster and digital. We adapt and adopt technology to do things better.

The problem remains--leadership and management of the systems to implement all these technologies in order to reap the rewards.

That--is the challenge before us.

I helped start a magazine with the stated editorial goal of writing about the intelligent application of automation.

After several years of Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, Industry 4.0, digital twins, digital transformation, I think it is past time to look at our projects in terms of how do we employ technology intelligently for improved profitability, work conditions, quality, customer satisfaction, supplier satisfaction, and environmental sustainability.

Thank you to my sponsor for another year--Inductive Automation.

Data must be discovered, gathered, trusted, secured, analyzed, and used. It is the basis of the Digital Transformation and used for the Digital Twin and Internet of Things.

Then I digress into youth sports and how some leagues, coaches, and parents still don't get it.

My concerns:
1. Confusing robots and automation
2. Not understanding the jobs that were replaced
3. Advances in manufacturing that greatly enhance the quality of jobs
4. Confuse correlation with causation

It has been said that computers are great at generating questions. They just can't figure out the right question. Engineers are problem solvers. That is 99% of their education. Thing is—are they solving the right problem.

Businesses have adopted the open office architecture for many years. It solves a business cost problem—get more people per square foot. They publicly justify it, though, as solving the people collaboration problem. But they create a people productivity problem. The signal v noise blog from BaseCamp called Library Rules proposes an interesting solution. The open office has existed for centuries. And it works fantastically. It's called a library. Check out library rules for your open office dilemma.

Solving technology problems is a lot of fun for engineers. They look at everything as a technology problem. But then there are problems that are not technology. Such as people problems. Take a look at Facebook's problems right now. They are not technology; they are ethical.

A generation of engineers have worked hard at solving process control problems. I reflect on a chat I had with Schneider Electric process automation leaders Gary Freburger and Peter Martin about solving business problems in addition to technology problems.

Youth sports as a metaphor for mentoring. What are you doing to bring young people along?

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover conference. A melding of enterprise-grade compute at the edge, Internet of Things practice, and deep dive into manufacturing. Example from off-shore, refinery, and other manufacturing.

Siemens Mindsphere coming of age at Automation Summit and a visit to the Norwood large motor manufacturing plant.

My first experience with HPE through Edge computing.
IoT has a prominent executive champion.
Several executives are devoted to manufacturing solutions.
Remote Visual Guidance augmented reality.
Blockchain possibilities.
Starter kit for HPE Edgeline for manufacturing.
Partnerships in the DNA.
Vision system for assembly checking.

They work hard at it, and they have cultivated lots of connections.

This podcast discusses the idea of  connections from that conference. It also explores the idea of "sources go direct" where anyone can take a message to the public these days. You don't need a gatekeeper. Maybe you connect with people like me to reach a broader audience. Individuals and marketers with energy and ability can build their own audiences and avoid getting misquoted by reporters or having a 60-minute interview boiled down to a sentence in an article.

Here are a few URLs for more information.

Overview

Connecting multiple tools to the phone app

Gary discusses leadership speaking styles. How should a leader show emotion?

Here's a video essay from NI Week. Day 3 keynotes feature students and a noted guest. This year's keynote was not a disappointment. Three groups of college students accepted various challenges including building an electric car (and driving it cross-country), building a more environmentally friendly car, and finally building a car that a blind person can drive. Finally, Dr. Mishio Kaku, noted theoretical physicist and TV personality, discussed the future. 

He closed with an interesting thought that relates to my dialoge with Martin Ford by discussing the types of jobs that will dominate in the future.

Here's a video essay from NI Week. Day 3 keynotes feature students and a noted guest. This year's keynote was not a disappointment. Three groups of college students accepted various challenges including building an electric car (and driving it cross-country), building a more environmentally friendly car, and finally building a car that a blind person can drive. Finally, Dr. Mishio Kaku, noted theoretical physicist and TV personality, discussed the future. 

He closed with an interesting thought that relates to my dialoge with Martin Ford by discussing the types of jobs that will dominate in the future.