Nice Article on "Data, Digital Threads and Industry 4.0"

The article, "Data, Digital Threads and Industry 4.0" at proto labs,   brings out the importance of MTConnect:

"Much of the communication capability among this and other equipment is fueled by a more recent development in communications known as MTConnect. This open source protocol is to the factory what HTML is to websites. Without it, sharing information between the dozens of different control builders would be exceedingly difficult, and the Industrial Internet of Things — that subset of the IoT concerned with manufacturing — would come to a screeching halt."
 
I am really glad that the article points out the fantastic job that President Obama has done with manufacturing.  Other politicians give lip service to manufacturing, but Obama has done more for manufacturing then any other president. Period.

The paragraph below discusses this point:

"So great is the potential of digital manufacturing and the IIoT for improving the American economy that President Obama has gotten in on the action. Recognizing the threat of foreign competition and the outflow of U.S. jobs to low labor cost countries, he charged leaders of industry, academia and the government with finding ways to reinvigorate the country’s manufacturing sector. The National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, or NNMI, was born of those efforts. The organization has a broad charter, encompassing development of advanced technologies such as additive manufacturing, development of lightweight metals including magnesium and titanium, advanced composites manufacturing, nanotechnology, and more, but one of its chief focus areas is “creation of a smart-manufacturing infrastructure and approaches that integrate low-cost sensors into manufacturing processes.”

This is a nice quote by MEMEX's CEO Dave McPhail on the huge amounts of data in IIoT:

"One company leveraging the massive amounts of data available from the shop floor is industrial communication technology provider MEMEX Inc., a business partner with Cisco, Okuma, Mazak and others. As CEO David McPhail points out, multinational management consulting firm Accenture estimates that capital investments in IIoT and the productivity gains that should follow could add $6.1 trillion to the United States’ cumulative GDP by 2030. “That’s a huge number, and we believe the IIoT represents no less than the next Industrial Revolution.”