IEN: How quickly is industry adopting e-manufacturing?
Sink: Watching companies adopt new technology is like watching liquid chromatography separate the color components of black ink: over time, the distance grows further and the distinctions grow sharper. There are commodity industries like steel and lumber where a few customers are still using relays to solve logic, and there are high-value industries like semiconductor where equipment builders diligently search for innovative methods and tools, and even Artificial Intelligence is not uncommon.
IEN: What are the major challenges in the move toward e-manufacturing?
Sink: The greatest one is probably the thin technical staff of users. There''s a lot of learning curve to absorb with a small number of people.
IEN: How are they being addressed?
Sink: In many cases, they are simply NOT being addressed. Other times, the board of directors decides, "OK, we''re going to use SAP," or some such thing. They throw lots of money and processes at reworking the entire data structure of the company. It''s not often that e-manufacturing is viewed from the bottom up, it''s usually top down. Frequently people whose expertise is in the low level process don''t see the big picture. But there are exceptions, and the benefits of a fully considered e-manufacturing and logistics strategy can be enormous. Example: PRI Automation in MA (www.pria.com) sells AI-based material handling systems for semiconductor wafers, fully implementing device networking, distributed control, and enterprise level data acquisition. The stuff ain''t cheap, but the stakes are huge in their industry.
IEN: Which industries are the most involved in e-manufacturing? The least involved? Why?
Sink: Pharmaceutical: Government regulations require tracking lots of data, so it''s a natural. Semiconductor: the product is so valuable on an hourly production basis, there are few expenses that can be spared if they truly produce a benefit. Commodity producers in highly competitive markets who have gotten behind the eight ball will probably never catch up. They''ll fall prey to the winners, who normally have invested heavily in technology.
IEN: What innovations are in store for users?
Sink: Products are slowly being redefined as communication devices, not just widgets. In 2-3 years most industrial devices will have Web servers. More and more PDA-based tools are diagnosing and configuring factory equipment.
IEN: How are software and computer hardware being improved?
Sink: At the lowest level of product design, the rage in the embedded market is "System on a Chip" -- putting multiple functions on a single piece of silicon. Digital Signal Processing SoC''s sport microcontrollers and communication channels; Synergetic''s chip combines five communication ports (including CAN, Profibus, Ethernet) with a processor and RAM; numerous approaches to "embedded Web server" are emerging, and Open Source software is driving down the cost and time to market for sophisticated devices.
IEN: How are concerns regarding firewalls/security being answered?
Sink: Some companies are very concerned about this. After a long emergency flight to Taiwan, one of our OEM customers tried to take a laptop PC into a facility to troubleshoot DeviceNet. The customer steadfastly refused to let him in with a PC because of security issues; he had to return later with a handheld dedicated, NON-PC tool (DeviceNet Detective). One of the areas of resistance to industrial Ethernet is security issues.