Automation Minutes - Gary Mintchell

Many times in my career I have hired into a company during the initial surge of a market. Good jobs. Excitement. Opportunity to work on new things. Then the market matured or collapsed usually due to external forces such as technology changes or consumer behavior.

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?

Gary discusses the current state of the automation and control market. Why it seems to be a stable market and why the media in the market are shrinking. He riffs from Seth Godin blog

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.

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I've seen successes of industry standards. I've also seen industrial standards struggle to break through the logjam of large companies drive to lock customers into their ecosystem. What is the latest of OPAF and what is the meaning of Schneider Electric's announcement of a product built with with Red Hat and IBM and development of a new computer communication standard?

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

Boeing is a company that has lost its way. I have no idea why the board has not sacked the CEO. The 737MAX program was a fiasco and continues to haunt the company. The 787 program ran way behind schedule costing the company billions. This is what happens when you ignore product and serving customers instead focusing solely on financial numbers. We are a business company not an engineering company, said one Boeing CEO. How right he was. They can't build an airplane anymore. But they can still count, I guess.

I went to this year's Honeywell User Group with many questions. They were all answered as you will hear. There were many questions begging for answers as I traveled to Florida. What was Honeywell HIVE, and how does it relate to the ExxonMobil initiated Open Process Automation group? What is Honeywell Digital Prime and what customer problems does it address? What successes have Honeywell achieved with sustainability initiatives? Honeywell was an early mobility developer. What has progressed in that regard? What role does Honeywell see for AR and VR?

I presented a Webinar on April 5. You can find it here https://www.manufacturingtechnologytoday.com/frs/23189866/going-beyond-digital-transformation--the-real-innovations-in-manufacturing/email . I talked about how digital data isn't new, my 1978 project, how we need to watch for disruption coming from anywhere, the importance of people, and how you, yes you, can and should be a change agent.

Perhaps if President Nixon had read 500 books rather than watching 500 movies during his time in office... What happened to all the free time we were supposed to get from increased productivity? Oliver Burkeman discusses time management in Four Thousand Weeks. And no, it's not a new system. Plus Karels and Miller wrote Steel Toes and Stilettos, a story of Lean Transformation of three manufacturing plants. It's The Goal for a new generation.

231 Are You Being Served?

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.

230 AR and VR

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.

229 Flying in the Clouds

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.

Sometimes we clutter our minds with what we think we know and leave no room for learning new things. In the process, we fixate on an idea and miss the simple and most elegant explanation.

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 .

Imagine laying railroad tracks west from the US east coast and meeting up with a crew laying railroad tracks from the west coast only to discover that the width between the rails was different. Standards make a huge difference.

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.

Get outside. Get outside into nature, a park or something, to refresh your mind and body. Get outside your preconceived ideas and prejudices for better thinking. Mary Donelan came to KMC Systems to use Lean to improve productivity. She had to overcome existing prejudices that improvements meant reducing workforce. She exemplified the basic Lean principle of Respect for People leading personal growth along with improving productivity allowing the company to take on more work. Then I wondered about adding software and knowledge workers and any impact on productivity. This leads to considering Cal Newport's new book A World Without Email and a look at improving knowledge worker workflow. Finally, a challenge to Americans about adopting standards and productivity-enhancing methods. Thanks to long-time sponsor Inductive Automation.

According to the legend, the cup holding the wine Jesus toasted his friends with at his Last Supper the next day held some of his blood from the crucifixion. Joseph of Arimethea had possession of that cup and wound up in Britain. Whereupon it was "lost." In 1182 a poem was circulated with the story of the Holy Grail. It was bound up with the Arthur legends and then was found in a Monty Python video and later the prize of Indiana Jones (and the Last Crusade).

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.

I caught up with Tom Bradicich, PhD, VP of HPE Labs and an HPE fellow recently to get updated about Converged Edge, IoT, and bringing the Line of Business people and the CIO organization into common cause. I met Tom at NI where he was an early evangelist for data--he talked about Big Analog Data. He had come from IBM and then left NI to return to the IT world with Hewlett Packard and then with Hewlett Packard Enterprise after the split. At HPE, he led the team developing the Edgeline, a converged Edge product that brought in IoT from the OT side of the business to a powerful compute platform. Later at HP Labs led the team to develop Edge-as-a-Service, if you will, that converges LOB and CIO organizations for solving business problems.

I first heard about the world's largest manufacturing trade show, Hannover Messe, in the mid-80s when our group of VPs of a small automation company conspired to find ways for me to send the president out on meaningless sales calls. I sent him to Hannover in 1986. I have attended many times over the past 20 years. I recorded this podcast April 17 the Saturday following the 2021 digital edition of the event. Festo held the first press conference I attended flooding me with information among which were the bionic swift and its vast education initiatives. Schneider Electric talked about its Automation Expert, the answer to OPAF's quest for separating hardware and software in control. The rest of my week was primarily software as companies talked about the impact of unstructured data from IoT on industrial software.

222 Build In Resiliency

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.

"We tend to overestimate risk and under estimate value when we're evaluating digital technology implementation," stated a keynoter during the 25th annual ARC Advisory Group Forum. Another keynoter told us that if we are evaluating digital transformation initiatives using a spreadsheet, we are off base. Some things have too great a risk of not doing. A Wall Street analyst told us that over the past year industrial software companies outperformed industrial companies. Software for digital transformation is where it's at. Check out the new Schneider Electric initiative promoting software defined control based on IEC 61499. This is an outgrowth of the Open Process Automation initiative that seems to be gathering some momentum. Software is eating the world--or at least the industrial one.

219 Quality Without Wires

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.

I moved to a new state a few months ago and have been searching for a good local, independent coffee shop with ethically traded coffee--in vain. So, I go to Starbucks a few times a week. The concept of quality at Starbucks is not the coffee, which is probably why people doctor it with flavored sugars and milk. Its quality has always been environment. One of my first jobs was with Airstream, manufacturer of quality recreation vehicles. Everyone in the company was aware of the need for quality.

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.

The first writer to seriously look at the new phenomenon of data-driven analytics in baseball found himself allowed to sit in the locker room of the major league baseball team. He observed the players. Something naggged at his consciousness. Then it dawned on him—they didn't look like athletes. Showering, getting dressed, no one really looked like a standout athlete. Yet, they were winning. Yes, said data-driven baseball exec Billy Beane, everyone else evaluates how players look. We look at their performance and indicators that they have future potential. But I really wanted to discuss Digital Transformation. And to transform digitally, you need to be (digital) data-driven.

The original visionaries who established the modern education system in the early 20th Century were following and expanding upon a vision of the founders of the USA—an educated population is essential for the success of a democracy and for a fruitful life.

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/ .

Years ago machine and process safety were first ignored and then addressed as an add-on Then engineers began evaluating the problem and engineered safety from the beginning design. Not only was safety enhanced, but also reliability and productivity improved as well.

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.

Whether you are building machines to a spec or some other product or you are a systems integrator or supplier--experience shows that those who think laterally and find a value add are more likely to get more business from good customers. I even share a story about a software developer who started playing with 3D printing and then organized a manufacturing line to produce face masks for Polish hospital workers in response to SARS CoV 2. Check out The Podcast https://thepodcast.fm/episodes/206 .

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

When I would go to NI Week, National Instruments would always talk about solving big problems. I began to approach the history of digital transformation that same way. GM had a problem involving the changeover of machines from one model year to the next. It took too long to change the machines due to the relay logic. They went to Odo Struger of Allen-Bradley and Dick Morely who then founded Modicon for a solution. Each built a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) to solve the problem and the race was on. We can then look at all the digital advances from then to now as the solving of successively more difficult problems. Today we have IoT, data science, edge computing, analytics, visualization, AR, VR. And we go on. It is a journey not a destination.

This podcast is sponsored by Ignition by Inductive Automation .

This episode is an interview with Yuval Boger, CMO of Wi-Charge, who talks about wireless remote power for charging IoT devices with light. There was a gap between this and my last podcast. In the interim, we sold a house, bought a house, and moved to another state--all at the beginning of the covid-19 rise and the shelter-in-place orders. It has been crazy times. Now, we've plenty of time to get used to the new house. I hope everyone listening is doing well.

In the late 1970s I worked in an engineering department where one of my responsibilities was the custodian and distributor of all engineering data. In addition, I did all the corporate new product quoting--such things as UPS truck bodies and the bodies for the original Atlanta Airport People Movers. Everything was paper and manual. Drawings to bills of material to routings to costing.

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.

You are an engineer in a factory or plant. The machine or process is down. Production has stopped. The general manager is yelling. The CEO has vowed to investors, customers, and media that he'll sleep in the plant until production is back up. I've never had it as bad as the people at Tesla with Elon Musk beating on them, but I've lived that life.

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 .

It’s all about data. No matter if I attend an IT conference, like recently at Hitachi Vantara, or an OT conference, such as recently at Emerson Automation and Schneider Electric (Foxboro and Triconex), we are discussing and learning about data and digital technologies.

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.

If we are ever going to finally bring IT and OT together, indeed break through all of a company’s silos, it will be through adopting coaching as a key component of the manager’s tool kit. I reference Trillion Dollar Coach by Schmidt, Rosenberg, and Eagle—a book about legendary Bill Campbell and how his coaching made the difference for executives at Google, Apple, and many more Silicon Valley companies. I also take a look at another Bill—Bill Gates—whose 10 top tech trends and 10 top challenges to solve appeared in this spring’s MIT Technology Review.

There are some things that drive me up the metaphorical wall. Especially concerning discussions of automation and jobs. I’ve contemplated this issue for years. Lately there was an issue of the Axios Future newsletter . There are times when they stop at a macro level with no understanding of underlying facts. That’s a common problem with both economists and journalists.

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

As march into Women’s History Month, I welcome Isabel Yang, CTO at Advanced Energy Industries. As a minority woman in a C suite position at a publicly traded manufacturing company, Isabel has a plethora of unique insight on her path to success as well as advice for all women looking to spearhead their careers. “I believe women need to shape their own destiny in their careers and lives. Now more than ever, we must work to establish a set of core skills early in our careers and gradually grow ourselves into experts, then progressively branch out to learn about adjacent areas or new areas to acquire new skills.”

Without standards, shipping by ship, train, and truck would be chaotic. Just so, developing manufacturing standards such as OPC, FDT, EDDL, ISA88, and ISA95 has had great benefit to manufacturers and producers. The Open Process Automation Forum, part of The Open Group, consists of users and developers of technology hoping to build a standard of standards lowering total cost of ownership and total cost of upgrading.

178 What Problem Are You Solving

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.

Salesforce has a platform manufacturing companies are beginning to use to link customers, service, dealers, and manufacturing.

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.

HPE’s stand at Hannover reflected the company’s focus on manufacturing.

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.

When I left magazine media, I thought about where the industry was heading. It's all about connections, I thought. So, I found a domain name The Manufacturing Connection. Last week I was at the Industry of Things conference in San Diego. Organized from Berlin, Germany, they still attracted an outstanding speaker lineup and attendance at 2-3 times that of typical media conferences in the space.

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.