IEN: What strides do you see in: Ease of integration? Flexibility and scalability?
Monday: I see the death of today''s complex engineered solutions that now enable various proprietary devices on the factory floor from various manufacturers to communicate with each other and with enterprise systems. These highly complex and custom-configured hardware and software data bridges are difficult and expensive to install and maintain, and have the potential for enterprise security risks and viruses.
These engineered solutions will give way to a new generation of data appliances. As ubiquitous as a router or a modem, data appliances will provide complete compatibility between proprietary factory floor devices, as well as enterprise systems, to eliminate sophisticated custom software programming. Simple drag-and-drop operation will be used to setup various devices to enable users, not third-party programmers, to establish needed configurations across the factory floor and throughout the enterprise.
These appliances will feature an advanced security system impervious to common viruses and tampering similar to what we see with today''s ATMs. The basics for developing this type of data appliance are available today and our company is in the forefront of introducing this new technology.
IEN: What improvements can users expect in: Computer technology, networks, and related products and services? Software? Machine self-diagnostics? Ethernet? Standards? Web-based manufacturing? Wireless? Elsewhere?
Monday: What we see today as highly complex, will be simplified tomorrow. Tremendous advances in the development of truly user-friendly control, networking, security, diagnostic, trending, and enterprise software are leading the way. In the past manufacturers have looked for hardware advances as a competitive advantage; many hardware technologies have become commodities with just incremental advancements.
Tomorrow''s difference will be a high level of software-driven functionality that can be easily personalized, highly compatible with other software tools, and very easy to use by the novice.
In the not too distant future, there will be self-repairing, autonomic systems that will sense impending failures and then repair them with sophisticated technologies to lengthen product service life and improve customer satisfaction.
IEN: Will product management continue to gather momentum? How about collaborative manufacturing?
Monday: With the toothpaste out of the tube in regard to global competition and the associated marketing, design, manufacturing, pricing, distribution, and regulatory pressures, the answer, of course, is yes. As manufacturers strive to gain a competitive advantage via globalized products with a regional focus, driving down development, manufacturing, and support costs, highly efficient supply chains, and increasing regulations, collaborative product management and manufacturing between manufacturers, their suppliers and sales channels, as well as customers will be critical to success.
IEN: Which R & D advances are closest to commercialization?
Monday: Ruggedized hard disk drives currently under development will become a breakthrough for mobile equipment and appliances by enabling a greater amount of data storage. Today''s appliance information storage and functionality is limited by the relative fragile nature and size of today''s rotating disk drives.