Manufacturing Hub

Vlad Romanov & Dave Griffith

We bring you manufacturing news, insights, discuss opportunities, and cutting edge technologies. Our goal is to inform, educate, and inspire leaders and workers in manufacturing, automation, and related fields.

  1. 14時間前

    Ep. 266 - Automate 2026 Reality Check: AI, Virtual PLCs, Ignition, and Plant Modernization

    After several weeks away from the podcast, Dave Griffith and Vladimir Romanov return to Manufacturing Hub to unpack their experiences at Automate 2026 and discuss what the event revealed about the current state of industrial automation. Automate showcased an enormous range of robotics, industrial AI, machine vision, software, cloud connectivity, and emerging automation technology. However, some of the most revealing conversations were not about futuristic factories. They were about PLC 5 migrations, aging SLC systems, obsolete PanelView terminals, industrial networks, basic data collection, and how platforms such as Ignition actually connect to plant floor equipment. Vlad shares what he learned from demonstrating a complete packaging line environment built around a CompactLogix PLC, an industrial computer, Ignition, and production performance data. The demonstration was designed to show how manufacturers can use OEE, downtime information, and machine states to identify production bottlenecks and determine where capital investment could deliver the greatest return. Instead, many attendees wanted to understand the underlying architecture, where Ignition runs, how it connects to PLCs, what protocols are required, and whether it can replace traditional HMI and SCADA platforms. Dave discusses his experience inside the Ignition ecosystem booth, the FactoryStack cloud demonstration, the advantages of MQTT in a difficult trade show network environment, and his Automate panel on software defined automation and the factory of the future. He also introduces Elephant, an industrial log analysis and contextualization tool being developed to help users identify meaningful patterns across Ignition gateways, reduce system noise, compare facilities, and diagnose intermittent problems. The conversation then moves across the industrial automation stack. Dave and Vlad examine virtual PLCs from Siemens, Phoenix Contact, and other vendors, including where software based control may provide value and where it may add unnecessary organizational complexity. They discuss AI generated PLC code, the limitations of translating functional specifications into reliable control applications, and why tools that produce 80 or 90 percent of an automation solution still require experienced engineers to validate the final result. They also explore AI assisted HMI and SCADA development, Ignition 8.3, MCP servers, high performance HMI design, and the risks of providing AI agents with uncontrolled access to production systems. At the MES layer, they question whether manufacturers should build custom applications through vibe coding or focus instead on creating clean, contextualized, well governed data that can support many future applications. The central conclusion is that AI tools, virtual controllers, cloud platforms, and dynamically generated applications will continue to improve. However, manufacturers still need reliable controls, secure networks, maintainable architectures, experienced people, and ownership of their operational data. The companies that establish those foundations today will have the greatest freedom to adopt whatever technologies emerge next. Dave and Vlad also preview the 2026 Ignition Community Conference in Sacramento, upcoming Manufacturing Hub conversations, new demonstrations, and several projects the community will see throughout the remainder of the year. Join us for a detailed and candid discussion about Automate 2026, Ignition, industrial AI, virtual PLCs, HMI and SCADA development, MES, MQTT, data architecture, and what manufacturers should prioritize next.

  2. 6月18日

    Ep. 265 - Automate 2026 Survival Guide: Booths, Networking, and a Production Line Demo #scada #mes

    Automate 2026 lands in Chicago next week, and Dave and Vlad break down how to work the show floor, where to network, and what to expect from their live booth demos. Automate is the largest automation trade show in North America, and a four day event rewards preparation. Dave and Vlad share tactics refined over five years of attending together. The floor opens at 10:00 AM on Monday, and registration lines have swung from a five minute wait to nearly two hours, so arriving early matters. Monday morning and Thursday are the quietest days to reach specific vendors, while Tuesday and Wednesday draw the heaviest crowds. The hosts also favor the official show app over a paper map for finding booths and session rooms across multiple halls. The real value of a show like Automate often lives in the networking. Dave points to the A3 networking event on Monday, a ticket of roughly 45 dollars, and the Manufacturing Champions happy hour on Tuesday organized by Chris Luckey and Jake Hall. Vlad's advice is structural: build a checklist before you arrive. He researches each company, finds the booth number, and tracks every connection in a spreadsheet so the week becomes a series of deliberate meetings instead of aimless wandering. For anyone with ten or more booths on their list, setting up meetings in advance is the highest leverage move you can make. The centerpiece of the conversation is the live demo Vlad built for the Teguar booth. It pairs a Rockwell CompactLogix PLC with an Ignition gateway running on a Teguar industrial PC, and it simulates a food and beverage packaging line with five assets: filler, capper, labeler, case packer, and palletizer. The line overview screen shows real machine states including faulted, starved, backed up, and running, and the whole point is to make the bottleneck visible. When the case packer needs six bottles from the labeler but the labeler cannot keep pace, you watch the downstream asset flip between starved and running in real time. It is a practical illustration of why line balancing and constraint analysis drive real ROI on a production floor. Under the hood the stack is modern. The Teguar IPC runs Ubuntu with Portainer managing containers for Ignition 8.3, Ignition 8.1, and a MariaDB database for alarm history. Ignition 8.3 ships new drivers for Rockwell, Siemens, Mitsubishi, and Omron controllers along with OPC and MQTT, and each asset carries ten randomized faults written in both Ignition and PLC logic. Vlad built it for everyone from engineers to the decision makers running SCADA and MES projects. Dave and Vlad will also shoot content at the Siemens booth on Tuesday and the Horner Automation booth on Wednesday, and Dave is moderating a Wednesday session on software defined automation and the factory of the future. Timestamps0:00 Welcome and Automate 2026 preview1:50 First timer tips and arriving early for registration3:10 Networking events worth attending: A3 and Manufacturing Champions4:40 Building a trade show checklist to maximize your time7:00 Manufacturing Hub at the Siemens and Horner booths9:50 Vlad's live production line demo at the Teguar booth15:40 The line overview screen and five packaging assets17:30 Fault handling and finding the bottleneck20:10 Inside the stack: Ubuntu, Portainer, Ignition, MariaDB23:50 Random fault simulation and PLC driver options27:00 Who should come see the demo29:40 Vendors Vlad is tracking and closing thoughts ReferencesAutomate 2026: https://www.automate.orgIgnition by Inductive Automation: https://inductiveautomation.comHorner Automation: https://hornerautomation.com About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/ Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Connecting an Allen Bradley PLC to Ignition: https://www.joltek.com/blog/connecting-allen-bradley-plc-ignitionManufacturing Line Speed Optimization: https://www.joltek.com/case-study/manufacturing-line-speed-optimization Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

  3. 6月11日

    Ep. 264 - Why AI Loves Automation: Siemens on Digital Twins, Guardrails, and Orchestration

    AI can finally write back to the plant floor, but only if you can trust it. Chris Stevens and Annemarie Breu of Siemens explain how orchestration makes that safe. Industrial AI has reached a turning point. Manufacturers can already collect data, contextualize it, and surface insights, but the hardest step has always been turning insight into action on real control equipment. Chris Stevens and Annemarie Breu of Siemens explain how an orchestration layer finally closes that loop. Annemarie frames the tension clearly. Automation depends on determinism, while large language models are probabilistic by design, so the goal is to bring that discipline into AI and validate any suggestion before it changes a set point. Most executive conversations start with return on investment, and two forces are making the case easier to prove. The workforce shortage has stretched the expected payback window from 18 months toward 36 months, and when a line cannot run for lack of people every idle minute costs thousands of dollars. The other driver is overall equipment effectiveness, since most plants run near 70 percent OEE and even a fraction of a percent of gain can justify a project. Energy is a standout case too. A BorgWarner sustainability effort used a digital twin to flatten demand peaks and reportedly paid for itself in under six months, even as data center growth pushes electricity demand higher through 2040. On trust and safety, Annemarie borrows a principle from industrial safety. Just as fail safe IO modules rely on two channel evaluation, every AI suggestion is validated against a state machine, a workflow, or a physics based digital twin before the orchestration layer passes it to a controller. With virtual commissioning and soft PLCs a change can be tested virtually, approved by a human in the loop, and only then written to control, an approach PepsiCo and NVIDIA echoed at CES when they called the digital twin a must have. Making AI real, the pair argue, comes down to discipline, clear scope, acceptance criteria, and focused 90 day challenges, plus the change management and user experience that drive adoption. Their favorite quick win is preventive maintenance driven by machine data, which both BorgWarner and Maersk tied to millions in savings. About Chris StevensChris Stevens is President of US Automation at Siemens, where he leads a roughly one billion dollar business spanning software, services, and hardware. He brings more than 25 years across Siemens Digital Industries, starting in the field selling assembly and test equipment, moving into the software and digital twin world, and returning to automation to bring the hardware and software sides of the business together. About Annemarie BreuAnnemarie Breu is a senior technology leader at Siemens Digital Industries focused on automation software deployment and customer technology partnerships in the US. She began at Siemens about a decade ago as a systems engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area, working with consumer electronics manufacturers on virtual commissioning and digital twins. Her work today centers on bringing the determinism and reliability of automation into industrial AI. Timestamps0:00 Introduction and Automate 2026 preview2:50 Meet Chris Stevens and Annemarie Breu9:30 The first AI question is always ROI14:00 Workforce gaps and OEE drive the business case19:30 Energy management and the data center demand surge23:20 Data, sensors, and contextualization requirements28:00 Guardrails, hallucinations, and two channel validation32:40 The digital twin and the human in the loop37:40 How partners and integrators move up the stack45:30 What it takes to make AI real on the floor55:50 Preventive maintenance as a quick win59:40 Predictions, career advice, and book picks About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/ Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Edge Computing and the Value of AI in Manufacturing Data: https://www.joltek.com/blog/edge-computing-ai-value-manufacturing-dataIT and OT Architecture Integration: https://www.joltek.com/services/service-details-it-ot-architecture-integration Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

  4. 6月4日

    Ep. 263 - Why Industrial Protocols Win on Business Not Technical Merit, with Horner Automation

    Industrial network protocols decide whether a machine talks or stays silent. Chuck from Horner Automation breaks down how they win, fade, and converge. Chuck has spent 36 years at Horner Automation and lived through what the industry once called the fieldbus wars. Before Horner became known for its all in one controllers, it spent a decade building specialty IO modules for GE Fanuc during the era of DeviceNet, SDS, InterBus S, PROFIBUS, and CANopen. His core argument is that most of those early protocols were technically fine. The ones that became standards won on the commercial weight of the companies backing them, not on superior specifications, with EtherCAT a rare exception that succeeded largely on technical merit. Trust is the recurring theme. Industry adopts slowly, and for years Ethernet was dismissed as too unreliable and not deterministic enough for control until Ethernet/IP, PROFINET, and Modbus TCP proved themselves. Today the market has settled around a big four set of protocols, and Chuck does not expect it to narrow further. For high speed motion he points to EtherCAT and PROFINET IRT as the implementations he most respects, since both step away from standard Ethernet at the device level to reach submillisecond timing. The episode is also a reality check on building your own hardware. Chuck and Dave describe how custom development routinely costs teams hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and how the real trap is obsolescence and maintenance rather than the first build. On the product side, the standout is FPD-Link, a serialization technology borrowed from automotive that carries video, touch, and power over one coaxial cable. Working with Safe Fleet, a maker of ambulances and fire trucks, Horner now mounts rugged displays up to seven meters from the PLC while still programming everything as one device. Looking ahead, Chuck argues that every PLC should now be treated as a data device first, because digitizing the process is the prerequisite for doing anything useful with AI. He also flags cybersecurity as the next burden for application engineers, with new mandates forcing both manufacturers and integrators to implement protections that were once optional. At Automate, Horner is showing HMI Connect and a 300 dollar CPU 151 that packs 18 IO points, wireless connectivity, and edge capability into a micro PLC. About Chuck and Horner AutomationChuck is a technical brand ambassador at Horner Automation, where he has spent 36 years across applications, product management, and education. An electrical engineer who started in the automotive industry, he now produces in depth tutorials on industrial protocols for the Horner APG YouTube channel. Horner Automation is a privately held controls manufacturer best known for its all in one PLC and HMI controllers, edge ready PLCs, and rugged hardware for industrial and mobile applications. Timestamps0:00 Introduction2:20 Chuck's Background and 36 Years at Horner Automation9:20 End User Engineer vs OEM Manufacturer Perspective13:20 New at Automate: HMI Connect and the CPU 151 Edge PLC21:30 The Fieldbus Wars and the History of Industrial Protocols24:20 What It Takes to Implement a Protocol Stack29:30 Why Protocols Win: Commercial Force vs Technical Merit32:40 Will Industrial Protocols Ever Converge?40:30 High Speed Motion: EtherCAT, PROFINET IRT, and Ethernet/IP44:40 FPD-Link: Rugged Remote HMI for Ambulances and Fire Trucks55:00 PLCs as Data Devices and the Push Toward AI1:02:40 Cybersecurity Mandates Coming for Application Engineers ReferencesHorner Automation: https://www.hornerautomation.com About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/ Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Understanding Plant Networks: https://www.joltek.com/blog/understanding-plant-networks-how-industrial-connectivity-evolvedIndustrial Ethernet Reliability: https://www.joltek.com/blog/industrial-ethernet-reliability Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

  5. 5月28日

    Ep. 262 - The Human Side of Manufacturing Change: Incentives, Pain Points, and Operator Buy In

    Change management is the reason most manufacturing improvement projects quietly stall, even when the technical work is sound and the tools are right. Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith unpack their own change management war stories from across two decades in industrial automation. Vlad frames change management as understanding risk to the business and to every stakeholder, then putting the process in place that lets the organization absorb that risk. Technical feasibility is the easy half of any project. Getting humans to consistently work the new way is the half that wins or loses the budget. Vlad joined Procter & Gamble at a site rated four on P&G's Integrated Work Systems maturity scale, the highest in North America at the time. Every loss event triggered a structured root cause analysis cascade. Operator, mechanic, operations engineer, and only then the engineering department. He later moved to Kraft Heinz, which had purchased the same IWS toolkit from P&G. The tools were on the shelf. The site rating was effectively zero. He had spent his early career learning to use the tools without having to deploy them, and that gap is where most transformation programs die. Dave's lens is more political. Change management starts with one question engineers rarely ask. What is in it for the person you are asking to change? He tells the Joe story, a lead operator with more than 35 years on the floor who interrupted a connected workforce rollout meeting to point out that his team had cycled through every methodology fad of the last two decades. None had stuck. Dave's team asked what hurt the most. Joe kept training new operators who left for a dollar an hour more down the street. The fix was QR codes on equipment linked to procedures Joe recorded once. Joe went from skeptic to evangelist in one session. Find the operator with the deepest tenure, solve their pain, and let them carry the change. The episode is also honest about what well intentioned incentives do when they miss the mark. Vlad walks through an RCA rollout where management offered a fifty dollar gift card to whoever submitted the most reports each week. The team got a stack of paper. None of it shortened downtime. When real process change goes through a plant, throughput typically drops twenty to thirty percent for weeks or months. That cost has to be visible to leadership before the project starts. Two practical heuristics close the episode. As a systems integrator deploying MES and SCADA across food and beverage plants, Vlad could often predict success within the first demo by how the room reacted. Continuous improvement teams leaned in. Whiteboard sites pushed back. Dave reinforces that change has to start at the top. If the executive sponsor blows off steering meetings, the floor reads that signal. Change management is a habit, not a project, and habits are built small. Pick one workflow, prove it works, and let the next one earn its slot. Timestamps0:00 Introduction and Automate trade show preview1:30 Booth commitments: Siemens, Horner, and Tigoor6:00 Dave's Automate session and 4IR booth duty8:10 Predictions for Automate: physical AI, cobots, and the AI conversation13:10 Defining change management in manufacturing22:30 From P&G IWS to Kraft Heinz: tools versus deployment maturity28:30 What is in it for the person you are asking to change35:30 The RCA cascade at P&G compared to no process elsewhere42:30 The fifty dollar gift card incentive that backfired46:00 The Joe story: QR codes solving real operator pain58:30 Reading change management success in the first meeting1:07:00 Start small: the closing takeaway About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/ Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Lean Six Sigma: https://www.joltek.com/blog/lean-six-sigma7 Different Root Cause Analysis Techniques in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/7-different-root-cause-analysis-techniques-manufacturing Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

  6. 5月21日

    Ep. 261 - Change Management in Manufacturing: Operators, Tribal Knowledge, and the Industrial Elder

    Change management in manufacturing breaks down at the people layer, not the technology layer. This episode explains how engineering leaders actually drive adoption. Ronald Sherrod is a Staff Automation Engineer at Regeneron deploying a global event based architecture and Unified Namespace rollout across pharmaceutical operations. Ron, Vlad Romanov, and Dave Griffith dig into the parts of change management that rarely make it onto vendor decks. Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub for weekly conversations with industrial automation practitioners. Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/digital-transformation-in-manufacturingMastering the Unified Namespace for Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/mastering-unified-namespace-uns-a-guide-to-data-driven-manufacturing-transformation Ron makes a point that is rarely stated this directly. The organization implementing the change is the one responsible for it. OEMs and system integrators deliver the box. Consultants help interpret it. Auditors do not call the machine builder when something goes wrong on the floor of a regulated pharmaceutical plant. They walk into the manufacturer and ask whether the audit trails hold up, whether the predicate rule was met, and whether the product is safe for patients. That responsibility cannot be outsourced, even when the technical work is. That framing changes how engineering managers should think about RFP scope. If the scope is loose, the integrator absorbs the risk and prices accordingly. If the scope is rigorous, bids come back tight and comparable. Negotiating power changes with the size of the buyer. A large pharmaceutical company can dictate hypercare windows, on site commissioning support, and structured training. A small to mid sized manufacturer often cannot, and the result is the metaphorical Ferrari on the plant floor that only ever gets used for grocery runs. Capital was deployed. The technology works. The operation never adopted it. The episode also goes deep on tribal knowledge and the industrial elder, the technical anchor who carries the institutional history of a unit or process and is often more valuable than the Excel file on a network drive. Senior operators know why a pipe was rerouted fifteen years ago and why a procedure looks irrational on paper but works perfectly in practice. With 59 percent of frontline skilled workers over 55 planning to retire within five years per the Schneider Electric 2024 workforce survey, capturing that knowledge is now a leadership priority, not an engineering task. On planning, Ron walks through how he runs user story workshops with operators, manufacturing leaders, engineers, and developers in the same room, producing a shared data contract that defines what information moves where, who needs it, and why. He cites a successful SCADA deployment that worked because the organization had inertia, operators had asked for the problem to be solved, and the team was closing a real gap rather than chasing a trend. Ronald Sherrod is a Staff Automation Engineer at Regeneron, a chemical engineer by training who moved from oil and gas into pharma and now works on event driven architecture, UNS, and robotics initiatives. Ron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdsherrod/ Timestamps0:00 Welcome and Episode Intro1:50 Ron's Career: Oil and Gas to Pharma at Regeneron4:30 Defining Change Management and Its KPIs8:30 Change Management vs Operational Excellence11:50 Who Owns Change Management on Industrial Projects17:00 Negotiating Power: Large vs Small Manufacturers20:30 Why Capital Projects End Up Mothballed22:10 Tribal Knowledge and Learning From Operators26:00 Why Industrial Projects Fail29:00 The Industrial Elder and Passing Knowledge Through People31:30 AI Generated Documentation in Manufacturing35:50 Project Planning and the RFP Process47:50 A Successful SCADA Deployment and User Story Workshops54:30 Predictions, Career Advice, and Smart Glasses About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/ Dave Griffith is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

  7. 5月14日

    Ep. 260 - Why Ignition Is Winning: Colby Clegg and Carl Gould on SCADA, Open Access, & Industrial AI

    Inductive Automation cofounders Colby Clegg and Carl Gould go deep on the origins of Ignition, the road to 8.3, and what AI means for industrial automation. Vlad and Dave host Colby Clegg, CEO, and Carl Gould, CTO, of Inductive Automation together for the first time to trace the full arc of the company. The story begins in 2003, when Sacramento systems integrator Steve Heckman brought Colby and Carl in to build the missing glue layer between OT data and modern IT tooling. What began as logging values into SQL databases became Factory PMI and eventually Ignition. A key thread is why Ignition broke through when larger automation vendors had superior distribution. Colby points to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. Incumbents could not match Inductive's unlimited per gateway pricing or partner with integrators because their own services groups competed with them. Carl adds the culture piece. Inductive refused to gate downloads, kept the module SDK open, made education free, and ran a public forum when competitors called it reckless, a posture they once called innovation without permission. Ignition 8.3 takes center stage, arriving after a deliberate five year gap from 8.1. Carl frames it as the completion of work that began with 8.0 in 2018. Gateway configuration is now stored in open, readable formats on disk, the gateway web interface was rewritten, and the platform supports orchestration, environmental separation, and infrastructure as code workflows Carl expects to become table stakes. The release also adds event streams, a revamped historian, and perspective drawing tools. For integrators still on 8.1, 8.3 is the version built for distributed deployments across many gateways. On AI, Carl is candid that the new MCP server module is intentionally a minimum viable product. It ships as a raw toolkit for integrators to author MCP primitives that expose Ignition data to agentic systems like Claude Code. First party MCP tools are coming, but Inductive wants to define the guardrails before shipping an API surface they will support for years. Carl frames AI as a new axis of software possibility, comparable to the shift from DOS to Windows. Colby ties it back to legacy SCADA conversion, framing the security and reliability gains as a national security issue. The episode closes with notes on the Inductive ecosystem, including a new collaboration with Tiger Data behind TimescaleDB, plus career advice on soft skills, context, and agentic coding tools. About Colby Clegg and Carl GouldColby Clegg is the CEO and cofounder of Inductive Automation, the California based company behind Ignition, the cross platform SCADA, MES, and IIoT software used by manufacturers and integrators worldwide. Carl Gould is the CTO and cofounder, leading product and engineering direction across Ignition. Both joined founder Steve Heckman in 2003 and have shaped the platform's open, integrator first philosophy ever since.Inductive Automation: https://www.inductiveautomation.com Timestamps0:00 Introduction1:00 Meet Colby Clegg and Carl Gould2:00 The origins of Inductive Automation in 20038:00 Going to market and the Innovator's Dilemma10:30 Innovation without permission as company culture18:50 Ignition 8.0 and the leap to Perspective26:00 The five year journey to 8.338:00 The MCP server module and AI in Ignition45:30 AI in the control plane and guardrails52:30 Tiger Data and the technology ecosystem1:02:30 Career advice for the next generation1:06:40 What is ripe for innovation ReferencesIgnition Community Conference: https://icc.inductiveautomation.com About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to reduce the risk of modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/ Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Colby Clegg on Ignition 8.3 and Industrial Automation: https://www.joltek.com/blog/industrial-automation-colby-clegg-ignition-8-3Connecting Allen Bradley PLCs to Ignition: https://www.joltek.com/blog/connecting-allen-bradley-plc-ignition Dave Griffith is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

  8. 5月7日

    Ep. 259 - Logan Terry of LSI on Change Management: The Soft Side of SCADA, MES, & ERP Projects

    Change management decides whether your MES or digital transformation project lasts, or quietly gets shut off six months after go live. Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith sit down with Logan Terry, who leads digital transformation at LSI, to dig into change management as the deciding factor in any automation or MES rollout. Logan defines change management as a methodical approach to moving an individual, team, or organization from a current state to a desired future state. The closer a system sits to where decisions are actually made, the more change management it requires, which is why MES is the single hardest place to land a project successfully. Much of the episode digs into why change management is rarely scoped properly. In competitive RFPs, the integrator who includes a robust change management line item often loses to the lowest bid, and end users frequently do not know how to evaluate that line item even when it is offered. Logan starts every client engagement with a direct question: what does your continuous improvement practice look like internally? If the client cannot sustain the change after handover, the project is on borrowed time no matter how clean the FAT and SAT looked. Logan walks through one of the most useful failure stories on the show this year. His team delivered a technically perfect OEE dashboard for a production line. Six to nine months later, every terminal was shut off. The postmortem surfaced two missed details. Maintenance was never folded into the design, and a single failed photo eye broke throughput calculations with no manual reconciliation path, which destroyed operator trust in the data. The second miss was behavioral. Showing a 30 percent OEE against a 90 percent ideal demotivates the floor, while reframing the same number as 80 percent of a realistic 36 percent target turned out to be a cleaner motivator. Looking forward, Logan sees vendors moving away from monolithic 14 function MES suites toward modular, use case specific deployments, which compresses change management scope from twenty five workflows to five or six. On AI, he argues that managing generative agents in production is closer to managing a team of people than managing software, with continuous validation replacing one time qualification. He cites the line that AI does not make bad data worse, it makes it more convincing. LSI now uses AI assisted coding agents and React based prototypes to shrink design cycles from three or four weeks of Figma work down to three or four days. About Logan TerryLogan Terry leads digital transformation at LSI, a multinational systems integrator with roughly 400 resources across 13 North American locations and offices in Asia Pacific. A mechanical engineer by training, Logan spent a decade in PLC, HMI, and SCADA development before moving into digital transformation consulting and joining LSI in late 2024. His work spans advanced SCADA, MES, analytics, and BI integrations.LSI: https://www.logicalsysinc.com/ Timestamps0:00 Introduction2:15 Logan's background and the LSI digital transformation practice7:25 Defining change management9:00 Why MES requires the most change management13:00 How young engineers stumble into change management24:30 Starting with decisions and workflows before technology35:00 Internal CI capability as a project gating factor43:30 OEE dashboard turned off six months after go live46:30 Behavioral psychology of how operators read numbers54:50 Modular MES replacing monolithic platforms58:00 Generative AI and continuous validation1:11:00 AI assisted prototyping shrinking design cycles About Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirromanov/ Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/digital-transformation-in-manufacturingManufacturing Execution Systems and Business Strategy: https://www.joltek.com/blog/manufacturing-execution-systems-business-strategy Dave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/ Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

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番組について

We bring you manufacturing news, insights, discuss opportunities, and cutting edge technologies. Our goal is to inform, educate, and inspire leaders and workers in manufacturing, automation, and related fields.

情報

  • クリエイター
    Vlad Romanov & Dave Griffith
  • 配信期間
    20年 - 26年
  • エピソード
    249
  • 制限指定
    不適切な内容を含まない
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Vlad Romanov & Dave Griffith
  • 番組のWebサイト
    Manufacturing Hub

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