I just got back from a fantastic week at Cisco Live in Milan. We had a packed ‘Cisco Connected Manufacturing’ pavilion at the event, showcasing the latest in demonstrations and industrial solutions for both customers and partners.
The centerpiece of the demos was how manufacturers can leverage technology such as Cisco Connected Factory to address some of the business challenges they are facing including increased competitive pressures and changing global demand. In fact, European manufacturers are turning to technology to give them a clear competitive advantage as they streamline their supply chain and factory operations as well as accelerate their new product introduction cycles. We showcased various components of the Connected Factory, including rapid response and troubleshooting, Profinet integration, IoT Factory in a box and plant network analytics.
We received great feedback and energetic interest from booth visitors. The Manufacturing demos were the highest rated at the show and were recognized multiple times in the various keynotes. I asked my colleague Todd Edmunds, Enterprise Architect, to comment:
“There was a lot of excitement around our working demonstration showing Siemens controls communicating via Profinet – including real-time Cisco IE2000 switch status inside the Siemens programming environment. All across the same network with Rockwell Automation control systems, and anything else Ethernet. Our key message that ‘we can support whatever you need on the network’ really resonated with booth visitors.”
Our various IoT solutions and products can really impact operational efficiencies and help manufacturers achieve significant outcomes such as reduction in unplanned downtime, for example. It was great to see customers understand these benefits and I think that is due to the efforts of the tireless team that brought these demo scenarios to life.
We will be bringing many of these demos and products to the Cisco booth at the upcoming Hannover Messe (April 13 to 17th in Germany). The theme of that show ‘Towards a Fully Networked Industrial Future’ dovetails nicely with our strengths and solutions.
Let me know if you were at CiscoLive Milan and drop me a comment. Thanks for reading!
Great read. Seeing that the manufacturing industry is looking to the smart model ina big way really opens up a new world of networked technology to it.
Do you have any more details for the Messe in April in Hannover? That sounds quite intriguing and I am wondering who theoarticipants are going to be…partners, manufactureres, customers?
Vivek,
we will have a Cisco booth near the Industrie 4.0 area at Hannover Messe. This will be mainly Cisco, but will have many partner components within it as well. We will also have many of our Industrial partners at the show in their booths, but with many of our products integrated into their offerings. The show is the worlds largest automation and machine builder show. you can find out more details here http://www.hannovermesse.de/home
Thanks for the heads up Douglas. It sounds really interesting and would be great to see the IoE implementation at close quarters. I for one am really intrigued by the possibility of the 19 trillion dollar value actually being realised by proactive and visionary companies world wide.