Dave Edstrom: President and Chairman of the Board of MTConnect Institute

Yesterday I officially took over the reigns as the President and Chairman of the Board of MTConnect Institute.  I am filling the huge shoes of John Byrd.  I was elected in March of this year at the MTConnect Board of Directors meeting.

It is a real privilege and honor to have this role.  The MTConnect Board of Directors are the thought leaders in the manufacturing industry and have been instrumental in all aspects of MTConnect.

 My first priorities are to address the MTConnect Tipping Point and Priming The Pump that I blogged about a month ago

Repeal FREAKING Don't Ask Don't Tell!

It is FREAKING insane that we are kicking valuable service people out of military service because they HAPPEN to be gay.   As of today, May 26th, 2010 there have been 13,389 men and women officially discharged from the military who happen to be gay. 

To think that we have men and women putting their lives on the line for the United States of America and we have some IDIOTS in congress who likely NEVER served in the military that believe these patriots should be kicked out is absolutely nuts.   Just one example of this is that we are losing Amercian soldiers lives because we are losing Mideast translators who, again, just happen to be gay.  John McCain's flip flop view on this is the ultimate example of what he will do in order to be elected...

As retired Four Star General John M. Shalikashvili who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997 wrote in The Washington Post over three years ago:

"Last year I held a number of meetings with gay soldiers and marines, including some with combat experience in Iraq, and an openly gay senior sailor who was serving effectively as a member of a nuclear submarine crew. These conversations showed me just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers.

This perception is supported by a new Zogby poll of more than 500 service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, three quarters of whom said they were comfortable interacting with gay people. And 24 foreign nations, including Israel, Britain and other allies in the fight against terrorism, let gays serve openly, with none reporting morale or recruitment problems.

I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces. Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job."

The Tom Toles' (of the Washington Post and who is a genius) Cartoon below is the perfect summary of how any rationale person should view Don't Ask Don't Tell:

Has The Cyber War Threat Been Exaggerated Debate

Long time friend (I don't say old friend anymore since I turned 50 last year :-)  Steve Fritzinger sent me this link for a fascinating debate on the realities of a Cyber War Threat that will take place June 8th at the Newseum.  My only issue with this is that they are charging $45 for this.  It is not the money that they are charging to attend this, but this is something that is so important to our national security that we should be having this as an open discussion in the United States and in the world.

This is being hosted by Intelligence Squared with John Donovan as the moderator.   Marc Rotenberg and Bruce Schneier are "for the motion" and Jonathan Zittran and Mike McConnel are "against the motion". The motion is The Cyber War Threat Been Exaggerated Debate.

I personally believe that the Cyber War Threat is very real, but having listened and read Bruce Schneier on many occasions, I would pay to hear Bruce's thoughts on this.  Maybe the $45 includes an all you can eat Sushi bar and all you can drink bar :-)

30,000 New CyberSecurity Jobs

There is an ad in today's Washington Post from University of Maryland University College for a BS or MS in CyberSecurity.  UMUC offers both CyberSecurity and CyberSecurity Policy BS and MS degrees.  The ad points out that there will be an estimated 30,000 new jobs in CyberSecurity which I easily believe.

I don't have a clue if this is a quality curriculum or not.  What I do know is that this is sorely needed in the computer industry.  When we have our first major cyber security attack that affects the United States or any other country in a significant fashion, then we will see these CyberSecurity job numbers jump.   This is not something that you take your typical sysadmin and ask them to "worry about security a little more".  I know that many non computer industry individuals were lulled to sleep when we did not see some of the predicted Y2K meltdowns never happened.

I would imagine that some of the nearby government security agencies (hopefully) had a great deal of input to UMUC's new CyberSecurity Programs.   This is where government and industry do need to work together as well as working with other countries.

Federal Times reported on Friday:

The Obama administration plan, to some extent, builds on the Bush administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI). Among items of interest to the federal workforce, a 12-point CNCI summary calls for:

• Continuation of the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative, meant to reduce the number of connections between government computers and the Internet.

• Deployment of an intrusion detection system of sensors across the government.

• Coordination of research and development across government.

• Development of a pipeline of skilled cybersecurity employees.

• Coordination and cooperation with the private sector to address security matters of common interest.

That last item, public-private cooperation, has drawn considerable attention. There's wide agreement that the expertise of the private sector ought to be aligned with the security needs of government.

"To secure our country from cyber attacks, we must have shared responsibility between the government and the private sector," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told the Business Software Alliance Cybersecurity Forum in April.

At the same time, some in the private sector warn that industry may not be ready to work with government and vice versa.

"There has been no effort in terms of ironing out the legalities," said Pat Clawson, CEO of security and vulnerability technologies firm Lumension.

It will be interesting to see what other universities and colleges will follow the CyberSecurity path in the CS curriculums.

Great MTConnect Video

There is a GREAT MTConnect video here that is about  7 1/2  minutes long that is well worth watching.   It does a great job with the history of MTConnect and detailing exactly how we got to the first release.  I uploaded this yesterday to YouTube after viewing it with Paul Warndorf of AMT in his office this past Friday.   Proven Productions created this.

John Edstrom's Graduation Weekend at Virginia Tech

Last weekend John graduated from VT.  I posted last Friday what I knew about his achievements (yes, I am a proud father and bragging, but bear with me for this blog post :-)   I also recorded John receiving his degree and is viewable here.

Above is Dr. Barbara Ryder, head of the CS Department for VT, giving John one of his two awards he received at the College of Engineering's Department of Computer Science's Award Ceremony.  John was awarded the CS Service Award and a CS Scholar Award.  John completed his CS degree with minors in mathematics and business.  While at VT, John served as president of ACM; Social Chair of Upsilon Pi Epsilon   -  CS Honor Society; site coordinator, Vice President, and Treasurer of CS-Squared -   was a member of the VT Programming Team and was in VT Honors.  John interned for Microsoft and Optimal Satcom, worked for Sun Microsystems and was web developer for the Collegiate Times.  He also worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant for the Department of Computer Science. Even with all those extracurriculars, John achieved an overall GPA of 3.96 and in-major of 3.96.  Congratulations to John!

Above is our family at VT's College of Engineering's Computer Science Department's Award Ceremony. From left to right, John's aunt Julie, me, John, my wife Julie, Michael (also at VT), Tim, Ruth Edstrom and John Edstrom (John's grandparents).

 Above is John's VT Summa Cum Laude in Computer Science diploma.

Above is the first award John received.  It is the Department of Computer Science Service Award.

Above is the second award John received.  It is the Department of Computer Science Scholar Award.   John

• graduated #3 from Broad Run High School with a 4.33 GPA.  
• started off VT with 38 college credits because of the number of Advanced Placement (AP) courses he took.   
• is graduating today Summa Cum Laude in Computer Science with minors in math and business.  
• received all A's except for a single A- his entire time at VT.  
• was a Sun Microsystems Campus Ambassador - the first one ever at VT.  
• was selected Campus Ambassador of the month for Sun Microsystems.  This was a global selection among over 600 Sun Campus Ambassadors.
• worked on the Collegiate Times his first year.   
• and his room mate, Gabe Martinez, rebuilt the Collegiate Times web site when it went down during the April 16th tragedy.  
• went to Java One 2008 and met James Gosling and John Gage.
• President of VT's Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) for two years.
• had his own blog Blogs.Sun.com as a Sun Campus Ambassador that was called The Ponderings of a Hokie
• as President of the ACM, he hosted many industry thought leaders at VT's ACM evening events.
• was asked to interview students and faculty during the April 16th period for the Collegiate Times.
• was recruited and worked for Microsoft in Seattle last summer working on the next version of Windows and specializing in security.  It was a fantastic experience for him.  
• is currently working on his Masters Degree in Computer Security at VT
• VT is a GREAT school that has become even better during some extremely difficult times in the past 3+ years

Needless to say we are very proud of our oldest son.  I am also not shy about blogging how proud we are :-)

What Cloud Computing is Smart for Manufacturing

Why cloud computing is smart for manufacturing

I wrote the article below for AMT (it is available at ReliablePlant Magazine).   This was written pecifically for IMTS this fall in Chicago.  

 

International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 

What is cloud computing and why should I care if I am in manufacturing? Cloud computing simply means using remote, large Internet server farms in the same manner as if they belonged to your own company.


Here is an example.  When you use your browser to search for something, such as through Google, do you know where the servers that are processing your search request are located?  Do you even care where the servers are located?  No, of course not.  You have a browser window open, you type in what you are searching for and the results come back.  The search could have been run in California or London for all you know.  It does not matter where these servers are located because you are not using a telephone dialup to get to the Internet like back in the early 1990s.  You are using high-speed broadband.  As we all know the speed difference is significant. Instead of moving a paragraph per second, you can now move a book per second with broadband.


These tremendously large information pipes allow large groups of server farms to appear like they are local to your manufacturing shop. This is a tremendous change from what manufacturing shops had to do just 5 to 10 years ago.  Instead of having to buy large computers and purchase lots of software, with these large information pipes and Internet server farms, you can simply pay for the services you need on a "pay by the drink" basis.


This "pay by the drink" scenario will revolutionize manufacturing in the same way that the Internet has already revolutionized our everyday and business lives.  Manufacturing shops are starting to take advantage of cloud computing because it simply makes good economic sense.  You pay for what you use and do not have the additional costs and burden of managing your own data center.  Instead of large capital expenses for new computer systems, the costs will move to operating expenses and you will pay for only what you actually use.  The graphic illustration below shows how MTConnect machine tools can be connected to the cloud where detailed analytics could be run simply from a browser.

Cloud computing is real and manufacturing shops should seriously consider it to take both time and cost burdens off their businesses. Next month we will explore specific examples of manufacturing in the cloud.


The International Manufacturing Technology Show takes place September 13-18, 2010, at McCormick Place in Chicago. For more information, visit the conference Web site atwww.imts.com.

My Oldest Son John Is Graduating This Weekend From VT

We could not be any prouder of my oldest son John who is graduating from VT today.  John:

• graduated #3 from Broad Run High School with a 4.33 GPA.  
• started off VT with 38 college credits because of the number of Advanced Placement (AP) courses he took.   
• is graduating today Summa Cum Laude in Computer Science with minors in math and business.  
• received all A's except for a single A- his entire time at VT.  
• was a Sun Microsystems Campus Ambassador - the first one ever at VT.  
• was selected Campus Ambassador of the month for Sun Microsystems.  This was a global selection among over 600 Sun Campus Ambassadors.
• worked on the Collegiate Times his first year.   
• and his room mate, Gabe Martinez, rebuilt the Collegiate Times web site when it went down during the April 16th tragedy.  
• went to Java One 2008 and met James Gosling and John Gage.
• was President of VT's Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) for two years.
• had his own blog Blogs.Sun.com as a Sun Campus Ambassador that was called The Ponderings of a Hokie
• as President,  hosted many industry thought leaders at VT's ACM evening events.
• was asked to interview students and faculty during the April 16th period for the Collegiate Times.
• was recruited and worked for Microsoft in Seattle last summer working on the next version of Windows and specializing in security.  It was a fantastic experience for him.  
• is currently working on his Masters Degree in Computer Security at VT
• VT is a GREAT school that has become even better during some extremely difficult times in the past 3+ years

Needless to say we are very proud of our oldest son.  I am also not shy about blogging how proud we are :-)

Congratulations John!

24/7 Wall St Reports: Jonathan Schwartz Worst CEO in American History

I was sent a very interesting article from a friend that lists (in the opinion of 24/7 Wall St.) the top ten worst CEOs of all time in American history.

It includes some of the easy to guess usual suspects, such as Ken Lay of Enron, John Sculley of Apple, Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom, and John Rigas of Adelphia Communications.  Those names would likely appear on most individuals top ten lists.  Below is the text regarding Jonathan Schwartz on 24/7 Wall St. that has Jonathan Schwartz as the worst CEO in American history:

1.   Jonathan Schwartz. By the time Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle for $7.4 billion, Jonathan Schwartz, the hip, blogging, ponytail wearing CEO, had ruined the firm’s prospects so badly that acquisition was its only option.

In the early 1980s, the company was founded by a small group of engineers and its CEO, Scott McNealy.  During his tenure, Sun Microsystems grew to become one of four dominant players in the server and processor space, which also included Oracle, HP and IBM. Prior to Schwartz’s appointment by McNealy, Sun was a largely profitable and competitive company.

Schwartz’s promotion to CEO in April 2006 was followed by a long series of losses. Despite its strong position, Sun started to fall apart as it lost market share in its main server business to HP and IBM.  The company’s shares fell from almost $27 to under $4 from late in 2007 to late 2008; Sun also later fired nearly 6,000 people, or about 18% of its employees.

In 2008, in an attempt to diversify, Sun bought MySQL AB, the company offering the popular open source database. The acquisition did not work.  As Sun’s share of the server market continued to fall, Schwartz tried to improve market adoption of its Java software, which never brought in much revenue.  Despite some success, the problem was that Java is free and Sun never came up with a realistic model to monetize it.

Larry Ellison went on to state in an interview his true feelings on Jonathan Schwartz:

Reuters published an article in which Mr. Ellison firmly stated that mismanagement and “madness” wrecked Sun.

Some of Larry Ellison's comments were:

“Their management made some very bad decisions that damaged their business and allowed us to buy them for a bargain price.”

And this is my favorite quote by Larry Ellison:

“The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn’t succeed. Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.”

Larry Ellison is 100% accurate.  Great blogs do not make great companies and certainly do not show great leadership.  Larry Ellison is a brilliant businessman.   

Spinal Tap Trivia :-)

I heard this on a Unwigged and Unplugged Concert by Spinal Tap that I watched today.   During the middle of the concert, Spinal Tap has a question and answer session.  An interesting question and answer was the following:

• QUESTION:  How much was scripted and how much was pure improv during the shooting of Spinal Tap?
• ANSWER:   EVERYTHING was improv except for two lines:
1. "I say, Tap into America."
2. "Straight from Hell, Spinal Tap."

It is an amazing to think that the number one cult film of all time was shot by turning on the camera and just make up the lines as it was shot.

Changing a Battery in a C5 Corvette and Charge System Fault error

Above is my home made "memory tool" that keeps the many settings in car radio when you are changing the battery.  You can buy these with the male 12 volt car outlet connector on it with a 9v volt connector for about $17.   Or, if you are like me and cheap, you build your own with two 6 volt lantern
batteries, put them in a series for half the price.  What I like about this is it is 12v and a greater amperage if you take longer than expected to change your car battery.  I do not like to waste my time resetting 24 of my favorite radio stations and the many settings inside today's car radios.  With today's aftermarket car radios, you have so many different devices that you can connect, that after you get everything working perfectly, the last thing you want to do is re-enter all of that back in just because you needed a new battery or had to clean some corroded connections on your car's electrical system.

I am documenting this because my C5 Corvette was getting random "Charge System Fault" warnings on the Driver Instrument Console and I decided to fix it today.  I had a 6 year old Optima battery that was in there and I decided to spend $110 and get a Sears DieHard Gold instead this time.  Sears stopped selling the Optima because (as I was told by multiple Sears employees) Sears had too many exchanges of Optima batteries over the years.  I did get 6 years out of mine, so I can not complain.  I also steered away from Optima because of the less than pleasant experience I had with Optima when my oldest son had a problem with his Optima.  Luckily, Advance Auto was very nice and took back the faulty Optima after I went up there with him.

On a C5 Corvette, there are two possible outlets to plug your memory tool into.  You want to use the 12volt outlet in the arm rest as that is unswitched.  The 12 volt connector below your radio is switched.  What this means if you plug your memory tool into the 12 volt outlet below the car radio, it can not provide the 12 volts to the overall system to keep all the settings in your car radio because it is switched off when the ignition is turned off.   Use the 12 volt outlet below the arm rest which is unswitched.

Above is a photo of the switch near the front bumper that is for the hood light that comes on with a switch when the hood is raised.  You want to unplug this as well because this will needlessly eat up the power from your memory tool.

Above is the light built into the hood that should be off.

Above is a photo that is in the lower right of the C5 battery compartment.  Because of this location, it has a tendency to become corroded pretty quickly if you do not clean it right and protect it.  After you remove the battery (taking the ground off first, then the hot lead, then hold down bolt) you can clean this ground.  This ground is (naturally) tied into the ground lead that goes to the battery.

You should pull up on the plastic housing (nothing is keeping it down on the upside bolt above) and then take it off to properly clean it.  I would recommend using a Dremmel tool to get all the corrosion off both sides as well as running it through the center of the two round spade plugs that you will find.  Above you can clearly see the large black round spade plug and to the left you can see the silver looking wire that also has a round spade plug on it.  Clean them until they are shiny. Take a small metal brush to the actual bolt itself to make sure that is clean.  When you are done, make sure you get all the metal shavings and corrosion off with a clean rag.  I like to use denatured alcohol as well here, then dry it off.  The bolt will not get shiny as it is made of brass (I think).

Above is the finish product.  BUT, before you put the battery back in, clean up any corrosion that is in the bottom of the tray.  Also, take a good, close look at the inside of the positive (red) and negative ground (black) connectors.   There is likely corrosion on those connectors as well.  Clean them up with a good metal brush until they are shiny.  Remember that ground is first off and last on when you are dealing with a car battery.

Above is Corrosion Block and is what I prefer to use to keep corrosion away on battery terminals and ground points in a car.  It is highly recommended by the boating crowd and has worked out well for me.

With my Corvette, there were multiple issues that could have been causing the "Charge System Fault" warnings on the Driver Instrument Console:

• The two round spade connectors that go to ground in the lower right of the battery compartment were very corroded.
• The positive or hot connector on the battery was slightly corroded.
• The Optima battery was 6 years old and probably on the slow death spiral.

Everything is perfect now :-)

Daemon by Daniel Suarez

I was listening to TWiT (This Week in Technology by Leo Laporte) and everyone highly recommended the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez.  What got my attention on the podcast was the high praise they had for the technical acumen of Daniel Suarez in his writing.  In other words, Daniel Suarez is a true geek :-)

A daemon is computer science terms is a background process that runs all the time.  Daemon is an abbreviation for Disk And Execution MONitor.

I decided to get the 15+ hours unabridged audio book.  This forced me to do some very long bike rides to finish it in just three rides.  I highly recommend this book.  It is 640 pages if you buy it.  The audio version is very well done.  I could honestly see this being made into a movie.  Daemon is a high tech thriller that is based on sound technical details.  This is 5 star (top) book at Borders.  I prefer Borders over Barnes and Noble - no charge to join the Book Club is why...

Manufacturing grows at fastest pace in 6 years.....

MSNBC is quoting the Associated Press below:

NEW YORK - May 3rd, 2010

The U.S. manufacturing sector expanded at the fastest pace in nearly six years in April, as factories continue to lead the economy's rebound.

The Institute for Supply Management, a private trade group of purchasing executives, said Monday its manufacturing index rose to 60.4 last month from 59.6 in March. It's the ninth straight month of growth. A level above 50 indicates expansion.

It is the fastest pace of growth since June 2004 when the index was at 60.5. 

See full article here....

Automated Energy Monitoring of Machine Tools Article

Dr. David Dornfeld and Dr. Athulan Vijayaraghavan have written a great article titled, Automated Energy Monitoring of Machine Tools. 

Dr.  Vijayaraghavan is the CTO for System Insights.  Dr. Vijayaraghavan obtained his Ph.D from UC Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering in Manufacturing with a minor in Computer Science.  Dr. Dornfeld is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the Director of the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability at University of California.

Below is the abstract for the article:

Reducing the energy consumption of machine tools can significantly improve the environmental performance of manufacturing systems. To achieve this, monitoring of energy consumption patterns in the systems is required. It is vital in these studies to correlate energy usage with the operations being performed in the manufacturing system. However, this can be challenging due to complexity of manufacturing systems and the vast number of data sources. Event stream processing techniques are applied to automate the monitoring and analysis of energy consumption in manufacturing systems. Methods to reduce usage based on the specific patterns discerned are discussed.

I have highlighted above what I believe are the key aspects of this article.   It is this actual (not theoretical or approximated) correlation that becomes extremely valuable information for everyone in the manufacturing food chain.   This article provides a case study with specifics on the importance of an architecture that incorporates rules engines and complex event processing (CEP) when analyzing how much actual energy a given machine tool is using for a specific operation.    The authors discuss the importance of MTConnect as an open and royalty free mechanism for gathering of the data.

It is papers, such as this one by these two distinguished thought leaders, Dr. Vijayaraghavan and Dr. Dornfeld, that are the key building blocks for manufacturing in the 21st Century.

Steve Jobs Thoughts On Flash

This is a very detailed and thoughtful explanation directly from Steve Jobs on why Apple does not support flash.

Below is a snippet from Jobs 1,700 word article.   IMHO, the most compelling reason is battery life:

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

GNT: Generation of New Technology Website

Every day I get a google alert of anything going on with MTConnect.   Today I received one from an interesting web site called GNT: Generation of New Technology.

What came up today as new, was when Sun Microsystems officially joined the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group.  The article, which came out September 3rd, 2008, is the one that I wrote while I was the Global Chief Technologist for Sun Microsystems.  I am not sure why it came up as new today, unless the page that this article sits on was "touched" and google's crawler picked it up as new.  This article brings out some very important points that are worth repeating:

Interoperability from Design Studio to Shop Floor
MTConnect is an essential first step to connect these production islands and will open up new markets and opportunities for the manufacturing technology industry. Bringing unprecedented interoperability from design studio to shop floor, MTConnect helps enable third-party solution providers to develop software and hardware that make the entire manufacturing enterprise much more productive.

With MTConnect, the manufacturing technology industry can mirror the success of the information technology industry, where common, open industry standards are used to design hardware and software technology to enable different manufacturers’ products to work with each other.  Just as large compute farms are used to accurately model microprocessors today, MTConnect should help enable the vision of "art to part, first-time correct" by taking advantage of large compute clusters. 

There is an interesting article as well on Android called:

Andy Rubin: Android’s open nature is its strength

What is interesting about this to me and the logical tie in to this post about the importance of being open. is Andy Rubin is an Android Architect.  The article states:

For Andy Rubin, things are about to change, and it wont be long before open systems like Android will start to overtake closed versions like Apple’s system, for the simple reason "that it is a matter of numbers. When you have numerous OEM manufacturers in various product categories, then it is only a question of time."

Proprietary versus Open and Royalty Free Protocols

I have called the previous attempts for a standard mechanism for machine tools to communicate the "Country Club Approach To Protocols" where you have to "pay to join the MASTER PROPRIETARY Country Club and then you have to pay to play wherever and whenever you play golf."

Let me expand on the golf analogy.  I chose this sport because my parents live and die for golf.  As a child, I would always look forward to going to the mailbox to get the postcards they would send from their exotic vacations they would take around the globe to try out different golf courses.  When my sister and I were older, they allowed us to come along when we proved we could carry their bags for 18 holes.   I have wonderful memories of being a 125 pound 12 year old carrying around an 80 pound golf bag for 18 holes in 105 degree heat, but I digress :-)  Back to the golf analogy.

Below are the specifics of a PROPRIETARY PROTOCOL and following the golf analogy:

• With a proprietary protocol they do not own just THE MASTER Country Club, they own ALL of golf.
• The first step is that You have to PAY to join THE MASTER PROPRIETARY Protocol Country Club
• You Pay Each Time You Play, WHEREVER  AND WHENEVER YOU PLAY!
• It does not matter if you want to invest your own money to build your own Country Club or public golf course, you STILL HAVE TO PAY THE MASTER PROPRIETARY Protocol Country Club for the right to build a golf course and the MASTER Country Club determines the fees you must charge each golfer.
• The MASTER PROPRIETARY proprietary protocol controls all aspects of the game, the country clubs, public golf courses, design of golf clubs, who can teach golf, etc....

Let's look at the difference at the MTConnect OPEN and ROYALTY FREE Golf Club:

• It is FREE to join the MTConnect OPEN and ROYALTY FREE Golf Club.
• You are free to play golf anywhere and at any time and there is NO FEE back to OPEN and ROYALTY Free Golf Club.
• There are rules that are freely available for anyone to read and follow to make sure that the game of golf is consistent.  For example, you can not hit a golf ball with a baseball bat instead of a golf club.  
• There is no FEE back to the MTConnect OPEN and ROYALTY Free Golf Club if you want to create your own golf course, your own golf clubs, golf bags, golf balls, etc.
• There are agreed upon rules that are widely available so that golf balls are not self-powered for example :-)
• If you create and build your own golf course, clubs, balls, etc., you are free to charge or not charge whatever you like.

Hopefully this golf analogy gives you a better idea on the differences between proprietary and open protocols.   The other analogy that I like is from Scott McNealy, Founder of Sun Microsystems.  Scott liked to say that "a proprietary protocol is like having a private company own the alphabet".   Imagine if you had to pay a fee for each time you used the letter "d" or "e" in any type of writing?  Or worse, imagine if the company that owned the alphabet would decide to get rid of the letters "d" and "e" so all of your books were no longer readable?  Sound familiar?   Open protocols almost always win and proprietary protocols almost always lose....

MTConnect's Tipping Point - Priming The Pump

We are absolutely at a tipping point with MTConnect.  MTConnect is an open and royalty free standard that enables machine tools to speak in a common language.  As Doug Woods, President of AMT likes to say, "MTConnect allows different devices, common connection." The speed of MTConnect's creation is remarkable to say the least.  I have been involved in numerous standard efforts in my 31+ year career in computers and no standard has moved as quickly.  The obvious and logical reason for this was the incredible need for an open and royalty free standard in manufacturing.

While MTConnect's adoption rate has been amazing, we are at an inflection point where priming the MTConnect pump can take MTConnect to the next level.  I am going to discuss the specific next steps of what we must do in order for MTConnect to be truly ubiquitous.


Yesterday, Saturday April 17th, I discussed the current state of machine tool standards and how similar it is to the PC industry in the 1980s.

If you did not read yesterday's blog, please do.  The net of my blog yesterday is that we have seen this movie before in the computer industry in the 1980s when a new open and royalty free standard was on the verge of taking off.  We learned a lot back in the 1980s in terms of what is needed to really to kickoff innovation and reduce cost in an industry.   There are many lessons learned that I discussed yesterday. Today's blog is about applying those lessons learned to the machine tool industry in 2010.


It is impressive just how quickly and effectively the initial phases of MTConnect have been accomplished.  From my perspective, below are the phases of MTConnect:

• Phase 1:  The Economic Wake Up Epiphany
• Dave Edstrom did this at AMT's 2006 Annual Meeting
• Phase 2:  The Industry Call To Action
• Dr. Patterson did this at AMT's 2006 Annual Meeting
• Phase 3:  The Funding and Commitment of an Open and Royalty Free Standard
• AMT's Board of Directors made this commitment at AMT's 2006 Annual Meeting
•  Phase 4: AMT Technology Issues Committee assisted in the creation of the MTConnect standard.
• This started at UC Berkeley in January 2007.
• The MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG) created the standard.
• The first release of MTConnect came out in December 2008.
• Phase 5: MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTCTAG) is established
• Phase 6: The first release of MTConnect…
• Phase 7:  Initial Customer Deployments of MTConnect
• This phase has already started with some great early success stories.
• Phase 8:  Mass Adoption of MTConnect
• This is the tipping point and we are just entering this phase in April of 2010.
• Phase 9:  Manufacturing Art to Part, Cradle to Grave Digital Life Cycle Integration
• A number of the leading manufacturing, machine tool, software and industry leaders already are seeing many realistic possibilities in this phase.  The age old adage of you can not manage what you can not measure - is the DNA of any truly efficient system.  Integrating MTConnect into the enterprise will take time and cost out of the equation.
• Larger manufacturing shops, that are using MTConnect, would also like to see their partners (which may be smaller machine shops) start using MTConnect as the open and royalty free mechanism to send data up the supply chain.  This becomes much easier with MTConnect.
• As the smaller shops implement MTConnect monitoring capabilities, expose the process capability and and use statistics in their decision making that will be a catalyst in their ability to thrive in the market place.  The smaller shops that are not doing this will find it more difficult to meet every increasing quality and production time demands.

Just as priming a pump on a gasoline engine "gives" the engine some fuel before the starter is engaged to start the engine, we need to prime the MTConnect pump.  How do we prime the MTConnect pump?

We must make it easy for the small machine shop to embrace MTConnect.  

The first step is enlisting the help of MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTCTAG) members.  Let me list the three steps that are needed to make MTConnect easy to embrace for the small machine shop:

• Provide free to very low cost MTConnect reference point adapters and agents for the most popular controllers:

• Fanuc 11M
• Mazak M32
• Siemens 840D
• Let's be specific on how we should do this.  
• We need software developers, who are part of MTConnect, to work together to build Reference Ports for each of the three adapters and agents above.
• What is a Reference Port?
• A Reference Port is software that provides basic and fundamental capabilities.  This Reference Port is open source software.  A Reference Port can be thought of the building blocks for a company to either:
• The first example would be to take the Reference Port and expand upon it to provide a commercially viable software.  This commercially viable software can be given away or sold.  This is a decision that the company will make depending on their business model.
• The second example is the company would take the Reference Port and use it to understand the basic and fundamental tasks in which this Reference Port software is accomplishing.  This will help the company as they write their own software to accomplish the same required functionality as well as to expand the capabilities.  This commercially viable software can be given away or sold.  This is a decision that the company will make depending on their business model.
• In the context of MTConnect, a Reference Port would not be accessed by customers, nor would a Reference Port be deployed by anyone.   Customers will demand support and they only mechanism to get support is from a company, not from the MTConnect Institute.   The MTConnect institute does not compete with its members.  This is an important differentiation from some of the other standards efforts.  Continue reading below for the real point for a Reference Port.
  
• What is the real point of the Reference Port as it relates to the challenge of priming the MTConnect pump for small manufacturing shops?
• The basic premise is to help the MTConnect machine tool builders, the software companies, and partners by providing a Reference Port that will shorten the time they need to work with and commercialize the three most popular controllers.    As we see an increasing number of adapters/agents for these most popular controllers hitting the market, the economics should follow other markets with the price of these adapters continuing to drop in price.
• There clearly needs to be a culture shift in the pricing of adapters in the machine tool market.  Vendors who believe that the end game is to charge a lot for adapters and the installation of adapters are missing the big picture and harming the overall market.
• Those companies who will win in the MTConnect market will realize that it will be the ability to tie together machine tools into the entire enterprise, to their partners, to their customers and the rest of the world.  Charging lots of money for adapters and adapter installation stifles the MTConnect market, but more importantly it stifles companies ability to make even more money by providing the connectivity and the value added services that customers are literally begging to see happen in the machine tool market place.

• Provide free to very low cost software than can easily ingest MTConnect machine tool feeds:
• The important point here is that MTConnect uses XML and HTTP which means it is extremely easy for software to support reading MTConnect data.
• We need to increase the number of software companies who are MTCTAG members.
• We need to look at the many cloud computing solutions that are coming out.
• Let's be clear, this is not to take anything away from the software vendors who will be selling their solutions.  This is to prime the pump.
• Increase the number of companies who can assist these small shops get started with MTConnect.
•  We have Will Sobel's company, Systems Insights, that have been real thought leaders in MTConnect and installing MTConnect.
•  We need more companies around the globe which have the ability to help small companies with MTConnect deployments.
• We need more MTConnect workshops. 
• We need an MTConnect Developers Forum.
• We need an MTConnect Users Conference.
• We need MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTCTAG) members to start bringing software developers from their respective companies to MTCTAG meetings.

Below is a graphic showing the three areas we need to start building up to support the smaller shops that are want to start to take advantage of MTConnect.  I like to think of this as a three legged stool where each leg has equal importance.

How do we make this happen?

• The MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTCTAG):
• Creates a MTConnect Fast Start Implementors Guide Group:
• The new working group will also include software developers from MTCTAG companies.  This is very important that we infuse MTConnect with software developers to help write the guide.  Dave Edstrom will be the lead for this MTCTAG Working Group.  Paul Warndorf will be sending out the email to kick this effort off.
• The Guide will address:
1. Provide guidance on which legacy adapters should be MTConnect enabled, as well as which older machine tools might not make sense for MTConnect.
2. Write reference Adapters and Agents for the most popular controllers.
3. Provide Application Software Guidance.
4. Assist in recruiting new ISVs.
5. Assist in increasing the number of companies which have MTConnect expertise.

This is the start of Phase 8 for priming the MTConnect pump.   This is very important for MTConnect to become the ubiquitous, open and royalty free standard that will truly revolutionize manufacturing.

History Is Repeating Itself: 1985 PC Industry - 2010 Machine Tools

Sometimes history repeats itself in different industries.   We are seeing history repeat itself in the 2010 machine tool industry following the same open standards path as we witnessed in the mid 1980s with the PC industry.  What I am referring to was the state of the computer industry prior to TCP/IP, Ethernet and NFS becoming standards for communication and information sharing.   We are seeing it again in 2010 in the Machine Tools industry.

Back in the early 1980s, here is what you had to go through to get your PC networked:

1. Decide on what network software you wanted to purchase:
• Plan to spend $100 to $300 per PC
2. Decide on what networking interface card (NIC) that you needed
• Plan to spend $200 to $500 per PC
3. Decide on what server file sharing and printer sharing software you needed:
• Plan to spend at least $1,000
4. If you also wanted to integrate other systems such as Macs, Wangs, Convergent Technology systems, DEC systems, HP, Data General, then plan on spending a LOT OF MONEY on different types of adapters, gateways, software and hardware.  Even then, it took a small army to make it all work....

A small company with 60 employees would easily spend $50,000 on just networking software and network interface cards.  This, of course, does not include routers, cables and installation. Then,  after you locked in whether or not you were a "Novell shop", or a "Netware shop" or a "Banyan Vines shop", or "IBM Token Ring" or insert 1980s technology here shop".  You would also have to worry about providing a gateway to other protocols.  It was a mess!


So what happened to change this mess?  Sun Microsystems created NFS which was an open and royalty free standard for file sharing.  Anyone could implement NFS!  NFS was (and is) a HUGE SUCCESS by any standard.   Did some companies sell NFS?  Yes.  Was it at the same ridiculous price that the proprietary vendors were selling their proprietary network software for in the market?  Absolutely not.   Did many companies simply roll networking into their software so they could sell higher value applications?  Absolutely!  The smart and innovative companies realized that the by providing a standard interface and open protocol they could move up (as well as down) the value chain by offering new choices for customers.

Customers, of course, loved it.   The market expanded tremendously.  What about the vendors who sold their proprietary software and hardware?  Some of the smart companies realized that the value to customers was moving up the value chain as well as providing the best implementation of NFS.  The smart companies adjusted accordingly and did extremely well.  There were those companies, as there always are, who held onto their proprietary technologies, did not embrace change and went out of business.

Think about the real value of any network.   There is a famous law in the computer industry called Metcalfe's Law.   Metcalfe's law states that the value of any network is proportional to the the number of users of the system  squared(n²).  Simply stated, the overall value of a network grows at a tremendous rate with each addition.   Here is an example that everyone can relate to today - the smart phone.  For those of you too young to remember, it used to be that the phone company was the only place you could buy your phones.   When the government opened that market up, how many individuals at ATT aka "Ma Bell" were glad to see this?  Do you think there very many ATT employees who were thrilled because there would be new innovative phones as well as new applications?  Probably not too many :-)   Who won?  Well, first customers won!   Second, innovative companies won!

The good news today is that the government is not involved in dictating what the machine tool industry needs to do in terms of open and royalty free standards.  This desire for open and royalty free standards is coming first from customers and second from the machine tool industry itself.  The machine tool vendors includes both hardware and software vendors.


Here is another way to think about the economics of this situation today in the machine tool market.  The rising tide of MTConnect will lift all manufacturing companies except those that continue to hold onto the old and proprietary standards.  MTConnect is not evolutionary, it is revolutionary.   I have always said that the first step to make a revolution in manufacturing and to truly realize the "Holy Grail" of manufacturing, which is "Art To Part, First Time Correct", is a common open and royalty free standard for machine tools to speak to the manufacturing floor, the enterprise and to the Internet.   It will be at this point that true innovation will start and machine tool productivity really takes off.  You can not manage what you can not measure as Lord Kelvin once so eloquently stated.

With MTConnect, we are on the verge of witnessing the same transition on manufacturing floors for machine tools as when the old, expensive proprietary adapters gave way to an open and royalty free standards!  We have seen this movie before in the computer industry.   As Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, liked to say, "you can either be the windshield or the bug - it is better to be the windshield."  Embracing MTConnect allows you to be the window.  

Tomorrow I will blog on the challenge of how to address the MTConnect Tipping Point and How To Prime The Market.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Today is the anniversary of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the families, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives on April 16th, 2007 in this senseless tragedy.....

The picture below was on the Collegiate Times in 2007 at VT:

There is a permanent memorial at VT. The Collegiate Times has a nice article describing the memorial.

My memories of last April 16th started with a phone call from my wife. Julie called and said, "just wanted to let you know that John is fine." At the time I was on my SunRay reading email while on a con call when she called my cellphone. She never calls me during theday since she is a school teacher. "Why would John not be be fine?" I asked. She asked me if I was watching TV or listening to the news. Of course I was not watching TV or listening to the news. She explained what was going on. I immediately interrupted the Sun folks on the con call and quickly said, "I had to get off the call, there was a shooting at my son's school."

It was then that I turned on the TV and was shocked to see the peaceful and beautiful VT campus on the news. I started getting emails, phone calls from literally around the world checking on John. You sometimes forget in casual conversation that you mentioned something about your kids that your friends and colleagues remember. Every time a call came, I paused the DVR. I was getting the current updates from friend, colleagues\s and family all around the world via email and non stop phone calls. As the numbers kept rising, it became more and more surreal.

 My son John was working for the Collegiate Times during his freshman year.  He put together a very nice week long history of events starting on April 16th through April 23rd that shows what happened each day.

I can not imagine the horror the students and faculty must have felt. There was an article in the post today by Nick Miroff, titled, "A Year Later, Virginia Tech Is Still Healing" is a well written article worth reading. As Miroff points out:

"Virginia Tech students have learned to talk about it in shorthand, if they talk about it at all. This Story

• A Year Later, Va. Tech Is Still Healing
•  Special Report: Va. Tech Shootings 
•  Essay: In Blacksburg, An ER Physician Still Tries to Heal
•  Blog: Va. Tech Students Remember  
•  VT: One Year Later - Living With Chow 

• 
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

They do not use the words massacre, or shootings, or rampage. They call it "April 16th," and sometimes not even that. To say "four-sixteen" is enough. Everyone knows." 

I have been back to VT many times since April 16th, 2007 both as a parent and working for Sun Microsystems where I have given talks and brought down Sun's thought leaders to speak at VT's ACM where my son John is President.  Each time, the first thing I do is visit the memorial

          Governor Kaine has did a good job demanding there was the VT Task Force.  Governor Kaine stated:

"On April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech University suffered a terrible tragedy. Today, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families and the entire Virginia Tech community.

"In the year that has passed since that horrible day, we have grieved for those we lost and prayed for the comfort of their loved ones. We have rejoiced in the recovery of those who were injured. We have been inspired by the unfaltering hope and Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech. And we have renewed our commitment to do even more to learn lessons from that day and to make our campuses and communities safer.

"As I think about the victims' families, I am at a loss for words to express what is in my heart. The courage and strength they have shown in the face of such tremendous, tragic loss is awe-inspiring. We have been inspired by the resilient Hokie spirit of Virginia Tech, both in Blacksburg and around the world. Since that tragic day last April, the unshakeable sense of unity and hope demonstrated by the Hokies has touched the lives of people around the world. Their focus on pulling together to support their school and each other in the days after the shooting, and their commitment to public service through the VT Engage program in the months that followed has moved us all.

"We still have work to do. A continued commitment to improvement is the best tribute we can pay to those who lost so much. And as we move forward, we will continue to be inspired by those in the Hokie Nation."

VT seems to have made the right changes. The VT Task Force seemed to not pull any punches when it came to how the University should have dealt with the events on the morning of April 16th, 2007. As the AP reported and I FULLY AGREE with Governor Kaine about purchasing firearms at gun shows. Virginia needs to get its act together.  This loophole is INSANE!

"Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed mandated background checks yesterday for everyone who attempts to purchase firearms at gun shows - legislation that he called critical to helping prevent future tragedies like the shootings at Virginia Tech. Many families of those killed or injured in the April shootings have called on legislators to close Virginia’s so-called gun show loophole, which allows people to purchase firearms from unlicensed sellers at gun shows without having to submit to background checks. Under current Virginia law, only licensed dealers are required to run background checks on customers.
“If by doing this, we can keep one family from having to go through what these families have suffered, it will be the best thing that the legislature will do this year,” Kaine said at Virginia State Police headquarters, surrounded by several of the victims’ families."

Hopefully the healing will continue for those directly affected...

The New Hybrid CNC Programmer/Machinist

The President of AMT - The Association for Manufacturing Technology, Doug Woods, sent out a link to a GREAT CNN video by Tony Harris titled "The New Face of Blue Collar Workers".

The video highlights a company in Greenville, SC called ADEX Machining Technologies, LLC

What is extremely impressive about ADEX is the new position they created. Traditionally, you have CNC programmers and machinists which are separate positions.   Adex has created a hybrid role where employees must be accomplished CNC programmers AND skilled machinists.  The CNN video interviews a number of Adex employees.  Each employee make it very clear that, by wearing both hats, it gives them the satisfaction of both designing parts and then actually creating the part.  

One of the Adex founders made the statement that for each open position they had 100 applicants who applied.  They still had great difficulty finding qualified employees.   The reason is the need for the combined skill set.  As technologies such as MTConnect greatly improve machine tool efficiency, this new hybrid position will become the norm and not the exception.   It is very, very cool to see this rebirth of manufacturing.  As the video indicated, this might be exactly what manufacturing needs to bring the young, gamer generation into manufacturing.  

This is not your father's manufacturing industry anymore.  This really is the new face of blue collar workers.  Also, these new workers are making $50,000 to $80,000 in South Carolina.