Remaking Industry

Once a topic for technology futurists, machine learning and AI are now being used daily in discrete and process automation applications. Running ML algorithms on a standard machine controller offers a way to automate continuous improvement in process optimizations with faster reactions and far less data transmitted than purely cloud-based approaches. On the programming side, AI tools such as ChatGPT are now being used to assist in control-system programming to suggest entire code segments, complete code and debug it. In this episode, we connect with Daymon Thompson, automation product manager—North America, with Beckhoff Automation, to explore how you can take advantage of these trends.  

We're all enamored with AI and tools like ChatGPT, which are proving to be hugely successful in the modern manufacturing facility. But cyber-attackers are using these technologies, too, to empower their methods of accessing your industrial facilities. In this episode, we chat with Daniel dos Santos, head of security research with Forescout Technologies, to learn how bad actors are using smart tools to cause big trouble. 

In this episode we connect with Tom Burke, global strategic advisor for the CC-Link Partner Association, to explore the current state of time-sensitive networking in manufacturing and focus on a case study of a Polish Toyota plant using this approach to increase availability of production lines, improve transparency of data, and integrate multiple devices from different vendors.

In this episode, we connect with Susan Nangle, SICK digital solution consultant, to explore new approaches to condition monitoring and spotlight new capabilities emerging as more manufacturers embrace tools and techniques that are enabling unprecedented visibility into asset performance. 

In this episode, we chat with OccamSec CEO Mark Stamford who regrets to inform us that we didn't learn a darn thing from the Colonial pipeline hack two years ago. (He does offer some solutions to get industrial cybersecurity up to speed.) 

In his downtime from being CEO of EOT, Matt Oberdorfer pens books. His latest explores the traits common to front-runners with digitalization programs. In this episode, we chat with Matt about trailblazing into the IIoT, the hurdles that emerge when leading the way, and the lessons we can all learn from those with the courage to push into our grand digital future. 

Inflation is awful. And it affects not just those of us in line at the grocery store, but manufacturers, too, who must balance rising production costs with the demands of customers who are already strapped. In this episode, we look at the current state of inflation through the industrial lens with Ross Meyercord, CEO of Propel Software. We discuss methods to weather this current financial storm and examine how digitalization of processes can help.     

For all of the robotic wonders on display throughout the miles of aisles at the ProMat 2023 event in March in Chicago, the focus for the vendors, the solution-providers, the manufacturers and the distribution-center personnel in attendance was decidedly human.

In this Smart * installment of the Remaking Industry podcast, Editor in Chief Chris McNamara marvels at the breadth of tools and topics under the "digitalization" banner and looks back, briefly, at prepping for his prom back in the early 90s. 

In this episode, we chat with Epicor's Kerrie Jordan about findings in their new workforce-focused survey. We dive into what attracts people to modern workplaces, what turns them off, and why the smart business owner does everything he or she can to make the tools in use similar to the devices workers use in their personal lives. Click here to access the report.