Register now to learn what every IT Professional should know about Manufacturing and Production System Plant Floor Networks

Join an educational webcast from Cisco and Rockwell Automation

Tomorrow, February 16, 2012
11:00am–12:00pm Central Time

Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Gregory Wilcox, Manufacturing, plant floor environments, plant floor networks, production systems, Rockwell Automation, Scott Friberg, webinar

I just finished an interview on the topic of “Cloud in Manufacturing” with a German machine-building and factory automation magazine. The interview ran an hour longer than scheduled—an indication of the publication’s interest, as well as its lingering doubts about whether cloud services truly can benefit “real manufacturing.”

We discussed an abundance of cloud-related ideas – most pertaining to obvious areas such as web presence in marketing, after-sales application hosting to make field engineers more productive, and collaboration as a service to enable partners and suppliers to work together more effectively on large projects.

The uncharted cloud territory, however, is the area that manufacturers see their “core”: the physical making of things. Can cloud play a role in supply chain management (yes, it can)? Will there be a cloud service for motion control (due to latency and determinism considerations, not yet) and for asset management and MIS applications (yes)? Read More »

Tags: Cisco, cloud, Cloud Computing, cloud services, context, control, core, Governance, IBSG, Manufacturing, manufacturing industry, security

Please Welcome Dirk Schlesinger to the Manufacturing Industry Blog

It is with great pleasure that I introduce Dirk Schlesinger as our latest Manufacturing Industry Thought Leader. Dirk has a distinguished career at Cisco and is currently senior director and global manufacturing lead of the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG).

In this role, Dirk helps leading manufacturers become more competitive by transforming their businesses through leading processes and innovative technology enablement. He has extensive knowledge in the areas of business process reengineering, asset development and productivity improvement, as well as post-merger integration. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Dirk Schlesinger, IBSG, Internet Business Solutions Group, Manufacturing, manufacturing industry, thought leader

This is Cisco Live UK: Day 5

So we’ve had an absolute blast over the last 5 days here in London at Cisco Live. We saw thousands of visitors, customers, and industry thought-leaders.

One of the most unique things we saw was the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car (SSC).  This car is part of a project to break the land speed record by traveling at a target speed of 1050 miles per hour! The project’s mission is to “To confront and overcome the impossible using science, technology, engineering and mathematics.” That’s quite a mission statement! The Project Director is Sir Richard Noble, who also took part in a keynote address at Cisco Live UK.

In the video below, Peter Granger speaks to Jonathon Cooke, who was displaying the actual SSC and its jet engine on the event floor. Jonathon is studying Mechanical Engineering at Bath University and is one of the ‘Ambassadors’ for the project (part of the ‘Ambassador’s Program’).

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, Bath University, bloodhound, Bloodhound SSC, Bloodhound Super Sonic Car, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, industrial, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, Jonathon Cooke, Land Speed Record, Manufacturing, Peter Granger, Richard Noble, Sir Richard Noble

Day 4 at Cisco Live UK has wrapped up!

Here I am talking to Mark Daniels of Rockwell Automation. Mark is the Rockwell Automation Ltd. Business Manager, Architecture and Software, based in Milton Keynes in the UK. Mark is talking about the Cisco Live Demonstration of Motion Control. During this session the Robot is ‘resting’ to lower the ambient noise levels (still some noise from the pneumatics, sorry!) The Robotic arms rapidly grab pucks and sort and order them cleverly. The Interesting part is that the controls are all Ethernet IP enabled and Cisco and Rockwell jointly developed the Allen Bradley switch that enables the data and information to travel over standard IP.

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, industrial, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, Manufacturing, Mark Daniels, Peter Granger, Rockwell Automation, Stratix 8000

This is Cisco Live UK: Day 4, Part 1

Now this is really cool. Have you been wondering why the social media activity for Cisco Live UK has been so quick, responsive, and high-quality?  Well, today we’re going to show you why. Peter was invited to step inside the Cisco Social Media Studio at Cisco Live UK, which is the social media nerve center for the event. It is here where they are creating “one of the most customer-aware events in the world.”

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, facebook, flickr, GPJ Experience Marketing, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, Kenny Lauer, Manufacturing, Peter Granger, social media, social media listening, Social Miner, twitter, youtube

This is Cisco Live UK: Day 3, Part 3

You’ll remember in my previous blog (part 1) that we said that the Workforce Enablement demonstration shows the integration between OSISoft (one of Cisco’s Partners in the industrial telemetry and asset management field) integrated with Cisco cross-architectures: so we have Borderless networks, Data Center and Collaboration technologies. We also have an application called CEBT – which is a workforce enablement application (Collaboration-Enabled Business Transformation Introduction brochure -- click here)

So in the demo we see a Wind turbine going out of specification. The demo shows live dynamic telemetry data. Steve Matthews resets the data to cause a malfunction and cause an alert. You see the data change – the top right bar goes from green to yellow, basically a temperature alert. An SMS message is transmitted and, in this case, a telephone rings alerting the Control Room staff. Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, CEBT, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, M2M, Manufacturing, OSIsoft, Panduit, Peter Granger, Rockwell Automation, Steve Matthews, Workforce Enablement

Here’s Cisco Live: Day 3, Part 2

Today I had the pleasure of talking with Steve Matthews about Cisco’s Industrial Workforce Enablement demo. Steve is a Cisco consulting engineer with expertise in Borderless Networks; he is based in Manchester, UK.

In this video Steve is telling me about the demo that features real time data analysis and Cisco UC and networking technologies that enable real-time events to be captured and/or acted upon. We are using the application software to capture real time data from, in this case, a wind farm, and that data is both analyzed and stored and alerts are sent.

The demonstration shows the integration between OSISoft (one of Cisco’s Partners in the industrial telemetry and asset management field) integrated with Cisco cross-architectures: so we have Borderless networks, Data Center and Collaboration technologies. We also have an application called CEBT – which is a workforce enablement application. Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, CEBT, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, M2M, Manufacturing, OSIsoft, Panduit, Peter Granger, Rockwell Automation, Steve Matthews, Workforce Enablement

Day 3 at Cisco Live UK is underway!

One thing we truly appreciate about Cisco Live UK is the global nature of our attendees. Not only do we get to see our eclectic, enthusiatic, and worldly customers, but also we get to see our Cisco counterparts from all over the globe.

Take for example Ahmed Farrag. Ahmed is the Director of Business Development for Emerging Solutions Ecosystems, and he is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. We first met Ahmed at Cisco Live US last year. This year, he was very impressed with the customer presence from Emerging Markets, the Middle East, and EMEAR (Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia):

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, 2012 olympics, Ahmed Farrag, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, EMEAR, Emerging Solutions Ecosystems, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, london, M2M, Manufacturing, OSI, Panduit, Peter Granger, Rockwell Automation

So we’ve wrapped up another exciting day in London!

Today we saw Padmasree Warrior’s keynote address “Zero to Zetta,” learned more about Cisco’ World of Solutions, met a lot of great customers, and saw a lot of great demos! 

One of the demos we had on display today was our “Converged Industrial Wireless” demonstration. In the video below, you will see Mark Bakker, our Business Development Manager for Industrial Automation for Solutions Ecosystems, talk about his experience at Cisco Live UK. He also talks about all of Cisco’s partnerships in Industrial Automation, including Honeywell, Rockwell, Panduit, and OSIsoft and our work with Secure Wireless Networking. If you speak Dutch, please send us a translation of what he says at the end!

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, Dave Bell, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, M2M, Manufacturing, Mark Bakker, OSI, Panduit, Rockwell Automation, Tony Alexander

Day 2 at Cisco Live UK is rapidly underway!

It has been quite an exciting day, and it started with me traveling on a  red double-decker red bus and then on  ‘the tube’ -- well, we are in London!

Cisco Keynote

Cisco’s CTO Padmasree Warrior delivered her keynote speech, “Zero to Zetta,” on the macro industry trends driving the industry today. She discussed many of today’s hottest IT topics, from the relentless explosion of devices and content on the Internet, the rapid ascent of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), to the new models of consumption of cloud computing. Within this backdrop, she talked about Cisco’s unique architectural approach to innovation and its focus on building the Intelligent Network to optimize the infrastructure in light of the changes facing the industry today.

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, 1550 Access Points, byod, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Cius, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, David Maez, Device Multiplicity, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, ISA100, M2M, Manufacturing, One Network, OSI, Padma Warrior, padmasree warrior, Panduit, Peter Granger, Rockwell Automation, wifi, WirelessHART

Cisco Live UK Demos

At Cisco Live UK, we will have four areas of demonstrations, and we’ll be telling you about all four over the next few days.

In this video, Cisco’s Dave Bell talks about Converged Plantwide Ethernet, which is built in conjunction with our partner Rockwell Automation. The demo also features Cisco Resilient Ethernet Protocol:

Also, we’ll be showing an Industrial-style cabinet with Industrial Switching housed with Panduit closet equipment. We’ll be bringing viewers more demonstrations over the coming days featuring partners like Rockwell, Panduit, OSISoft and Honeywell.

Come visit our booth to see the following demonstrations: Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, Dave Bell, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, M2M, Manufacturing, OSI, Panduit, Rockwell Automation

Cisco Live UK has begun!

We’ve been busy setting up our booths in preparation for Cisco Live UK. Check out this video of us hard at work setting up shop and getting our demonstrations ready for visitors eager to learn more about Cisco’s Industrial Solutions:

Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, Cisco, Cisco Live UK, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, honeywell, Industrial Infrastructure, Industrial Intelligence, Industrial Work Enablement, M2M, Manufacturing, OSI, Panduit, Rockwell Automation

We’ve been telling you about Cisco Live UK and the Cisco Industrial Booth for a couple of weeks now. Well, Cisco Live UK 2012 is finally here at the ICC London ExCeL, One Western Gateway, Royal Victoria Dock, London, which is a major relatively new Conference and Exhibition Venue.

Held from January 30^th through February 3^rd in London, we have have our very own Cisco Industrial Solutions booth especially aimed at helping manufacturers and companies in many industrial sectors with their networking and business challenges. See later on in the blog for a map fo exactly where the booth is in the World of Solutions.

We have plenty of demonstrations planned there covering: Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, booth, cisco live, cisco live uk 2012, Converged Industrial Ethernet, Converged Industrial Wireless, demonstrations, demos, Industrial Data Management, Industrial Machine to Machine, Industrial Solutions Booth, Manufacturing, Workforce Enablement

Recent articles  indicate that manufacturing activity in the U.S. continues to expand and  global industrial production  is  positive in spite of softness in a few geographies. This is a great rebound from the trough of 2009.  Productivity gains have  fueled much of the recent rebound and leading companies are looking for more. Several years ago a leading manufacturing company, GE, asked Cisco to develop a new collaborative environment for distributed teams.

Leaders have implemented new  working environments, such as the  Cisco Active Collaboration Room.  Now there is a movement to bring  forward the next environment for team productivity, rapid decision making, and distributed collaboration. The development of  new  working environments will accelerate, driven by a need to enable  distributed teams for innovation, business management, and optimization. As mobility and the benefits of  rapid analysis and decision making increase, the work environments will change dramatically as described in the Fortune magazine article,  “What will the future workplace look like?” Read More »

Tags: active collaboration room, Cisco, Future Workplace, IBSG, innovation, Manufacturing