Financial Post Article--> How tiny Memex got two industry giants to endorse its manufacturing connectivity platform

This is a fantastic article in the Financial Post on how Memex got one of the largest machine tool companies in the world, Mazak, and the world's largest networking company, Cisco, to come together with this little company in Canada called Memex to create SmartBox.

The author, Rick Spence, absolutely nails it in his article:

How tiny Memex got two industry giants to endorse its manufacturing connectivity platform

The article by Mr. Spence starts out:

"David McPhail, the CEO of Burlington, Ont.-based Memex Inc., loves showing off a new white paper from Mazak, the Japan-based machine-tool giant. Even though its title, “Complete Digital Factory Integration and the IIOT” (Industrial Internet of Things) suggests most  people will find it less than a thrilling reading.

But McPhail cares mostly about the cover, and its three company logos. The stylized word mark of Mazak, with 7,800 employees and 10 factories worldwide, appears on the left side; on the right, inspired by the Golden Gate Bridge, sits the logo of Cisco, the San Francisco networking giant with 72,000 employees; and tucked proudly between the two is the logo of tiny Memex, with 39 employees and sales of $2.1 million.

This kind of exposure doesn’t happen by accident. The eight-page brochure promoting a new “Smart Box” that enables digital connectivity between manufacturing tools represents eight years of work by McPhail and his team. Their Merlin communications platform collects operating data from each piece of equipment and displays it in a dashboard that lets manufacturers boost efficiency by monitoring performance, maintenance and inventory in real time."

I also greatly appreciate the shout out by Dave in the article:

"Soon after, Memex went public on the TSX Venture Exchange, largely so it could raise funds and issue options to attract top talent. One of its key wins: chief technology officer Dave Edstrom, who helped develop the open-source standard for machine-to-machine communications as president and chairman of the MTConnect Institute."

This article really explains how Memex is putting a dent in the manufacturing universe!