One Sheared Bolt = One Crushed Left Hand and Single Points Of Failure (SPOFs) on my bike

It was a beautiful fall day, so instead of driving to grab a sandwich and driving the three or four miles, I thought I would just jump on my bike and ride there.

One attosecond I'm up and riding and enjoying the beautiful fall weather, in the next femtosecond I am knocked out very briefly and lying face down.

Above is the seat bolt, which is the single bolt that kept my bicycle seat on the bike, which sheared off and this is the culprit that caused me to have this accident.  Turns out they make double bolt seat holders.

In the photo above, you see a round indentation and that was a small metal pipe that would HAVE hit and gone through the side of my head. Then to the right of that is where my helmet hit a rock, so having the helmet on and properly adjusted definitely saved my skull.

The big concern I had was my new right titanium hip.  My surgeon specifically told me,  "Dave, whatever you do, do not fall riding a bike because it could be a real mess in terms of trying to fix it".

I fell hard on my right-hand side and slammed my head against the ground, as well as the helmet against rock and a pipe sticking out of the ground, really bruised up my right rib cage bruised and sprained my right wrist and shattered my left hand.  So I wanted to get to the hospital where they did the hip replacement so I did what any person would do and I called Uber :-) after about 15 x-rays and a CT scan of ahead it was determined that the only real damage was my left hand so I was a very very very lucky.  The right hip was okay and I essentially sacrificed, unknowingly, my left hand save my right hip.

The photo above in the one below give some indication of my broken first metacarpal in four pieces

Above you see the metacarpal between thumb and the palm, it's broken in half and then it's also broken two other pieces again so there's four broken pieces.   Below you see the four small titanium rod that the doctor used to put it back together.  Those will have to come out again with surgery in the next few months

 Above is after surgery Thursday night and below is me heading home give me a thumbs up with my good hand.

After all of this I decided to take a close look at my Trek 7500 to see what other single points of failure (SPOFs) that I had and I found three other bolts that if they went I would lose control my bike.  They are circled in red below.  My bike is a ($850) 2009 model and looking at the 2017 hybrid bikes out today, if you spend over $750 you no longer see these Single Points Of Failure.  You should check your bikes out for single points of failure as well. 

Time for new bike and a new helmet (helmets are like airbags in that if you have an accident you have to replace them) for me.

Above and below is my hand at one week.

Above is my removable "Batman" cast.

Above is my x-ray - looking great - at 3 weeks.  Below is my hand at 3-weeks.

Below is my hand at 7 weeks.  This was three days after my surgery to remove the four pins.

Below is Julie when she came in to visit me right after my 18 minute surgery to remove the four pins.   Occupational therapy starts this upcoming Friday.

Even after short surgeries where the put you under, you need to remember to drink lots of water afterwards and take colace to keep your system moving.

At the seven week mark I got a good checkup (one week after the pins were removed).  I was told to use heat in the am and ice in the pm.  If either of those made things worse, then stop and only use what makes my left hand feel better.  I was also told that during surgery, he bent my thumb completely over so the ligament is fine, the bone is fine (still healing) but it will require OT and there will be pain as I work through this.

I see the Dr. again on January 17th, 2017 -- update the checkup went great.

Below is the Trek DS3 I purchased and heavily modified so it can be my new "Harley FatBoy" with NO Single Bolts Of Failure  - NSBOF :-)

I had my last day of OT on February 13th, 2017.   I am back to "normal" in terms of thumb motion, but not my normal range of motion.  The Dr. and the PT tell me it will take a year for it to come all the way back.

I had my last visit with my orthopedic surgeon on April 17th, 2017 and he reiterated to keep up my OT and in October of 2018 wherever my left hand will be at that point will be my new "normal".

Final Lunch With DEV at MEMEX at Montana's - THANKS DEV!

I created a tradition at MEMEX when a software intern's last day was coming up, we took them to Montana's Restaurant and I MADE them wear the Montana horns.  I once told an intern that I would withhold their pay if they did NOT wear the horns - he put on the horns :-)

I knew that when I took my very talent Software and Hardware Development Group out to lunch, there was only one choice and I knew (heard from my son Tim who wore them as well :-)  that I would HAVE to wear the horns, which I enjoyed :-)

From left to right:  Mike, Terry, Gowtham. Jeremy, Ryan, me in horns, Tim, Brian, Doug and Anusha.  Not pictured is Ken who works remotely.

It is worth repeating parts of my press release because it is the TALENTED individuals above that made ALL of it a reality!

In his statement, Dave Edstrom said, "I came to MEMEX almost three years ago, as the CTO to run the Software and Hardware Development division, be an evangelist, and help MEMEX grow. I am extremely proud of what has been accomplished in that time period. At IMTS 2016 we introduced new industry leading products MERLIN Tempus, MERLIN Tempus Enterprise Edition, the MTC-One, Financial Overall Equipment Effectiveness, and MERLIN DNC. I believe these products will pay dividends for many, many years to come. With this strong array of new products, MEMEX will continue to extend its lead as the market innovator and the market leader in measuring manufacturing excellence. I want to be clear, while I am resigning from MEMEX as the CTO, I am not going to another company, and certainly not a competitor. I am quite lucky in that I can take an extended time off to travel, to see friends, relatives, and just kick back. I was very fortunate to have worked with the best development team in the industry at MEMEX and could not be more proud of their smart, creative, and hard work. I wish everyone at MEMEX the absolute best!"

Thanks DEV!

What Motivates Us To Work? TED Talk by Dan Ariely

A very talented software developer sent this to me.

I really enjoyed this very popular TED talk "What Motivates Us To Work?"

Below is the description from the TED talk:

"What motivates us to work? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work."

I especially enjoyed the experiments,  the "Ikea Effect" and the Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx discussion.

The Perfect Corvette Weekend in Ocean City MD

Julie, Michael, Tim and I spent a long weekend a week ago in Ocean City, Maryland and it was the absolute perfect weekend.  We had perfect weather - 70s and not a cloud in the sky - with warm water temperatures where you could easily swim if you wanted to.

The best restaurant for crabcakes is the The Crabcake Factory - where we had a great lunch.

     We stayed at the 12th floor at the Sea Watch condo where our 3 bedroom condo had great views of the moonrise at dawn above and the bay sunset below overlooking Gold Coast Mall.

Above is a 360 degree view of Corvettes at the Beach in OC, MD.




Above is Tim surf fishing.

I went on a metric century (100km or 63 miles) since I did not ride in the Seagull Century because it was raining and with my titanium hip, I don't take chances on falling on my bike.

Below is a 360 degree view of Herring Point, Delaware:

Below was our Monday lunch at Dayton's Famous Fried Chicken, Thrasher's Fries, Dough Roller Pizza and Dumser's Dairyland for ice cream afterwards.  You can see the boardwalk is almost empty and the weather was absolutely perfect!

MEMEX's New League of IIoT Solutions

Thank You for visiting the MEMEX booth at IMTS 2016 We appreciate the opportunity to share with the new league of IIoT solutions we unveiled at IMTS 2016. Developed using state-of-the-art technologies these solutions aim at increasing your productivity, throughput and profits.     MEMEX offers you a quick recap and all the promised literature MERLIN Tempus MERLIN Tempus offers a new generation of tools and a dynamic configurable dashboard that provides a complete view of your shop floor. Developed using state-of-the-art technologies, MERLIN Tempus delivers green-light metrics and analytical capabilities that effectively reduce downtime while increasing throughput and profits. Adding to the powerful tools of MERLIN Tempus, the Enterprise Edition brings to you the complete OEE and other metrics along with a dynamic visual job scheduler capable of running multiple operation step jobs. With it’s modular architecture, seamlessly incorporate the future Smart Manufacturing technologies into the platform. Download Literature MERLIN DNC MERLIN DNC is a new plug-in for MERLIN, the IIoT communication platform, that connects your CNC machine tools for efficient transfer of CNC programs and other data. With MERLIN DNC load, run (drip-feed) and save CNC programs with up to 1,000 machines simultaneously. It works with machines equipped with Ethernet, RS-232C and tape reader communication interfaces. Download Literature MERLIN FOEE Financial Overall Equipment Effectiveness (FOEE ) enables an organization to link its shop floor performance to actual profit dollars. Furthering Data-Driven Manufacturing initiatives and building on the foundation of OEE, FOEE compares and displays the financial percentage of profit value of products manufactured in a product run relative to potential world class product run performance. Download Literature MERLIN MTC-One MEMEX's MTC-One is a new breed of IIoT hardware allowing manufacturers to equip their machine tools, assembly, production or processing lines with the true power of edge computing, utilizing MTConnect. Take control of your shop floor and optimize your Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) by monitoring up to 110 optional sensor devices with a single MTC-One. Furthermore, leverage MTC-One's dual Ethernet ports or optional wireless capability to dramatically reduce production interruptions and minimize costs associated with ethernet cable installation. Download Literature MERLIN Continuous Improvement Roadmap The MERLIN Continuous Improvement (CI) program, coupled with the MERLIN software platform, is a comprehensive CI implementation roadmap that enables organizations to successfully embrace and adopt CI culture. Complete with integrated templates, reports, and problem solving tools, the MERLIN CI Roadmap drives productivity and process improvement, thereby assisting manufacturers in achieving world class Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) as expediently as possible. Download Literature Contact Gord at MEMEX to further explore how the MERLIN platform can help you achieve the true potential of Data-Driven Manufacturing along with IIoT centeric business outcome. Phone: 905-635-3040 Email: Gord@MemexOEE.com

Copyright © 2016 MEMEX Inc., All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have indicated an interest in MEMEX IIoT manufacturing productivity products. Our mailing address is: MEMEX Inc 3425 Harvester Rd, Suite 105 Burlington, ON L7N 3N1 Canada

Dave Edstrom Resigns as the CTO of MEMEX to Pursue Personal Interests

October 12, 2016 07:00 ET

BRIEF-Dave Edstrom resigns as the CTO of Memex to pursue personal interest... on Reuters

Reuters is the news and media division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing ...

Dave Edstrom Resigns as the 

CTO of MEMEX to Pursue 

Personal Interests

COO of U.S.A. Operations to Serve as Interim CTO

BURLINGTON, ON--(Marketwired - Oct 12, 2016) - Memex Inc. ("MEMEX" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: OEE) announces that Dave Edstrom has resigned as the CTO of MEMEX effective Monday, October 10^th 2016. Dave Edstrom started with MEMEX in January 2014 and will continue in a transition role over the next 30 days. Rick Mosca, the current COO of MEMEX U.S.A. operations, has stepped in to serve as interim CTO of MEMEX.

Rick Mosca has over 30 years of software engineering experience. He started as a developer and has successfully held several technical leadership positions. Additionally, he has run software engineering divisions at Fortune 500 companies and held the position of a principal at a custom software engineering consulting firm.

Over Mr. Edstrom's tenure as MEMEX's CTO, he has played a fundamental role in MEMEX's technology development initiative. His legacy at MEMEX includes: MERLIN Tempus; MERLIN Tempus Enterprise Edition, the next generation of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) communication platform; MERLIN OPTIME, a free gateway to Real-Time manufacturing analytics; along with MERLIN MTC-One, a new breed of IIoT hardware.

In his statement, Dave Edstrom said, "I came to MEMEX almost three years ago, as the CTO to run the Software and Hardware Development division, be an evangelist, and help MEMEX grow. I am extremely proud of what has been accomplished in that time period. At IMTS 2016 we introduced new industry leading products MERLIN Tempus, MERLIN Tempus Enterprise Edition, the MTC-One, Financial Overall Equipment Effectiveness, and MERLIN DNC. I believe these products will pay dividends for many, many years to come. With this strong array of new products, MEMEX will continue to extend its lead as the market innovator and the market leader in measuring manufacturing excellence. I want to be clear, while I am resigning from MEMEX as the CTO, I am not going to another company, and certainly not a competitor. I am quite lucky in that I can take an extended time off to travel, to see friends, relatives, and just kick back. I was very fortunate to have worked with the best development team in the industry at MEMEX and could not be more proud of their smart, creative, and hard work. I wish everyone at MEMEX the absolute best!"

"Dave Edstrom came here from the MTConnect Institute as President and Chairman of the Board, and author of 'MTConnect: To Measure Is To Know' as MEMEX's first CTO," said CEO and President David McPhail. "Dave Edstrom made it clear from the beginning that he wanted to 'put a dent in the manufacturing universe.' Under his leadership, I believe we have done that with all of our new products. Dave was a prolific writer, speaker, and thought leader for MEMEX. Dave was selected as one of 30 visionaries around the globe by Smart Manufacturing Magazine, and he certainly has been a visionary for us. We wish him the best as he takes an extended break from the work life."

About MEMEX:
MEMEX, the developer of MERLIN, an award winning IIoT technology platform that delivers tangible increases in manufacturing productivity in Real-Time, is the global leader in machine to machine connectivity solutions. Committed to its mission of "Successfully transforming factories of today into factories of the future" and encouraged by the accelerating adoption and success of MERLIN, MEMEX is relentlessly pursuing the development of increasingly innovative solutions suitable in the IIoT era. MEMEX envisions converting every machine into a node on the corporate networks, thereby, creating visibility from shop-floor-to-top-floor. MEMEX, with its deep commitment towards machine connectivity, offers solutions that are focused on finding hidden capacity by measuring and managing Real-Time data. This empowers MEMEX's customers to effectively quantify and manage OEE, reduce costs and incorporate strategies for continuous lean improvement. For further information, visit www.MemexOEE.com

Contact Information

• 
  Media Contact
  Memex Inc.:
  
  David McPhail
  CEO
  Phone: 519-993-1114
  Email: Email Contact
  
  Rashi Rathore
  Marketing Specialist
  Phone: 905-635-3040 ext 103
  Email: Email Contact
  
  Investor RelationsSean Peasgood
  Investor Relations
  Phone: 416-565-2805
  Email: Email Contact
  

The IIoT or Industry 4.0: Who will win? - Dave Edstrom & David McPhail's article at Manufacturing Automation

I am often ask do discuss, write or present on the topic of IIoT or Industry 4.0: Who will win?  Myself and David McPhail wrote an article on this hot topic for Manufacturing Automation.

Below are some of the highlights from our article.

"At Memex, we are frequently asked questions about both the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0. The questions usually start off, “What do you see happening in [IIoT/Industry 4.0]?” The conversation will quickly zero in on their real concern, which is to find an answer to the question: “What and when should I be doing something with [IIoT/Industry 4.0]?”

Conceptually, are either IIoT or Industry 4.0 really new in manufacturing? The answer to that question is an emphatic “no.” One only needs to go back 36 years to the Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) effort led by GM to see just one standardization attempt applied to manufacturing. For either to be successful, they must provide a net bottom line benefit for the dollars invested by delivering tangible and measurable business outcome(s).

At Memex, we would argue what is changing even faster is that manufacturing is catching up, and even surpassing, other industries in truly understanding what is happening on the plant floor. Only two to four per cent of all shops or plants are monitored, a fact Dave Edstrom, Memex CTO, picked up when surveying the industry during his time as president and chairman of the board of the MTConnect Institute. When asked, most plant or shop managers will state their plant utilization is in the 65 to 75 per cent range. When hardware/software is deployed that can properly quantify this number, it is shown time and again to be actually 25 to 32 per cent. A significant inflection point for both IIoT and Industry 4.0 is MTConnect. A fact that cannot be overstated is that the open and royalty-free manufacturing interconnectivity standard MTConnect has been a huge enabler for manufacturing and provides the viable highway for information sharing from the shop floor to the top floor."

Below is where we discuss the critical importance of the platform.

"Now that we have provided the definitions directly from the sources and the relevant context, let’s look at how we would respond to the next question, “What does Memex see happening in [IIoT/Industry 4.0]?” For many, IIoT means that after a plant has attached all of their manufacturing equipment, they come to the conclusion that data analysis begets more data analysis and they want to start adding sensors — everywhere. These sensors include coolant, vibration, temperature, humidity, motion, current and amperage, to name just a few. These sensors come into play after shops have electronically connected to their major assets, such as machine tools and operators. This attention on connecting everything in manufacturing underscores the importance of interoperability, the first design principle of Industry 4.0.

What both of these efforts are trying to establish is to be the platform for manufacturing. What is a platform? Microsoft Windows, Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Apple’s OS X are all examples of platforms. A platform is not just the operating system, but it is also the rules of the road in terms of interoperability between systems, security, licensing, interfaces, reference implementations, working groups and countless other critical aspects of a platform. Building a platform that becomes an industry standard is extremely difficult and expensive."

 A question that we ask in the article.  Note that I always wanted to get my favorite Woody Allen quote in my writing and I do here :-)

"What should a shop owner or plant manager being doing today with either IIoT or Industry 4.0?

The tremendous interest in both Industry 4.0 and IIoT are proving the point that many of us in manufacturing have known for years manufacturing is ripe for analytics. Both Industry 4.0 and IIoT fall into the data-driven manufacturing camp. Woody Allen once said, “If you live in a country run by a committee, make sure you are on the committee.” Your level of involvement today with these efforts should directly reflect the possible outcomes and the tangible net business benefits to your business. If you are running a large plant with many software developers, you might want to invest some of a software developer’s time into either investigating these efforts or possibly joining Industry 4.0."

We finish up with the critically important question:

"What steps should a plant manager take with either IIoT or Industry 4.0?

• Realize these efforts are a means to an end, not an end in itself.
• The bottom line with any effort in manufacturing should answer the fundamental question, “How does this help me improve my efficiency so I can make more parts and more profits with less resources in less time?”
• Far and away, the best investment of time is to truly understand what is happening on your plant floor. The way to accomplish this is with a shop floor monitoring system. The ROI of shop floor monitoring is measured in weeks and months, delivering an average of 300 per cent Internal Return Rate of capital — the percentage is based on the information we track from our customers.
• When it comes time to connect your assets on your shop floor, use MTConnect as the interconnectivity standard.
• If you are one of the less than five per cent who have completely connected your plant floor and can see exactly what is happening on any given manufacturing asset at anytime and from anywhere, then you should start looking into where it makes sense to work with Industry 4.0.

In our opinion, IIoT for manufacturing is really about adding sensors to manufacturing and the basic challenge is interoperability; interoperability is always the challenge in computers.

Will IIoT or Industry 4.0 be the MAP of the 21st century and end up in the graveyard of industrial standards initiatives that promised much but didn’t deliver, or will both truly be worthy of the term “revolution?” Only time will tell, but our bet is it doesn’t matter what you call it, if you are not connecting your plant’s assets to be monitored, then it is not if you will go out of business, but when. "

Nice Article on MTC-One at Modern Machine Shop

There is a nice Article on MTC-One at Modern Machine Shop.

Jedd Cole - Assistant Editor, Modern Machine Shop wrote the article titled:

Memex introduces the MTC-One, an MTConnect connectivity board for legacy machine tools and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices.

Mr. Cole starts off:

"Memex introduces the MTC-One, an MTConnect connectivity board for legacy machine tools and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices. The MTC-One is Memex’s third generation of MTConnect connectivity boards and is designed to leave no machine behind when it comes to legacy connectivity on the plant floor. The board’s powerful ARM SOM microprocessor is capable of running Linux, MTConnect adapters, agents and other IIoT software such as Complex Event Processing (CEP) as well as other applications that might be needed to connect to and process data from devices."

The Great Robert De Niro on Donald Trump

Robert De Niro said it better than anyone else on planet earth regarding Donald Trump....

"Amazing Grace" -- Grace Hopper, THE Queen of Code

I really enjoyed this short documentary film on "Amazing Grace" at mental_floss by Chris Huggins.

As the site states:

"Grace Hopper was a computing pioneer. She coined the term "computer bug" after finding a moth stuck inside Harvard's Mark II computer in 1947 (which in turn led to the term "debug," meaning solving problems in computer code). She did the foundational work that led to the COBOL programming language, used in mission-critical computing systems for decades (including today). She worked in World War II using very early computers to help end the war. When she retired from the U.S. Navy at age 79, she was the oldest active-duty commissioned officer in the service. Hopper is a hero of computing, and a brilliant role model, but not many people even know her story.

In this short documentary from FiveThirtyEight (yes, the political stats people), we learn about Grace Hopper from several biographers, archival photographs, and footage of her speaking in her later years. If you've never heard of Grace Hopper, or you're even vaguely interested in the history of computing or women in computing, this is a must-watch:"