Helping smaller companies in U.S. with cyber defense
Cyber criminals are increasingly setting their sights on today’s digitized manufacturing industry as an entry point into government and commercial supply chains.
Cyber criminals are increasingly setting their sights on today’s digitized manufacturing industry as an entry point into government and commercial supply chains.
Smart sensors, already an integral feature of many manufacturing plants that are integrating IT and OT, are now making their way into the supply chain where they monitor reliability and shipping conditions, improve predictive maintenance and make just-in-time delivery (the innovation from the 1980s) easier.
The U.S. needs to build a national infrastructure in engineering and manufacturing R&D that parallels its scientific infrastructure. While it makes all the sense in the world, it is not happening.
When I graduated with an engineering degree some decades ago, I learned that the organizations I was going to work for had internal communication problems. This was especially true for those that designed and manufactured complex machinery such as engines, aircraft, or automobiles.
SME’s Smart Manufacturing Hub will be part of IMTS this year. Smart Manufacturing asked past Hub speakers to imagine what manufacturing will look like in 2030. Here are their visions:
Technological gains, young ambassadors, apprenticeships help. But manufacturers’ training investment remains a problem.
Blockchain, the distributed, encrypted, tamper-evident ledger platform that gave rise to Bitcoin, has birthed a new, foundational market concept to execute business transactions, Karim Lakhani, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said as he led a panel talk on blockchain tech for supply chains at Automate 2019.
Many organizations struggle with applying new technology in their manufacturing operations. SME conducted the Manufacturing Technology Harmonization Study to understand how companies approach this challenge of integrating smart manufacturing, big data, and both new and old capital equipment in a cost-effective and practical implementation.
In the U.S., we are not seeing any specific localized disruption yet, although I’m watching New Jersey where it could be on the cusp. There are a lot of manufacturing facilities there in pharmaceuticals and chemicals, and therefore that’s an area I think we should be paying attention to.
Q&A with Chirayu Shah, Marketing Manager, HMI Software, Rockwell Automation