Jun 15, 2021

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...

May 26, 2021

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....

May 9, 2021

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...

Apr 29, 2021

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...

Apr 17, 2021

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...