Blog - Page 6 of 40 - Joe Barkai

Apr 02

Planetary Folklore (Victor Vasarely, 1969)

Connected PLM: Making Better and Faster Product Lifecyle Decisions

By Joe Barkai Internet of Things (IoT), PLM No Comments

The industrial Internet of Things is breathing a new life into product lifecycle (PLM) practices and PLM software itself.

From its early days, the mantra and promise of product lifecycle management was anchored in the ability to harmonize all product lifecycle activities and frontload complex design and manufacturing. The promised benefits centered on accelerating design and manufacturing ramp up and reducing associated cost by identifying mistakes and resolving conflicts early on, when the cost of design change is still low. Additionally, a centralized repository of reusable designs, best practices, compliance procedures and other objects fosters reuse of enterprise knowledge and experience. These, in turn, reduce the number of design iterations, lower the cost of engineering change orders (ECOs), improve product quality, reduce warranty costs and accelerate time to market.

Mar 22

Hydrodynamic powered trip hammer machine

China to Build an Industrial Internet Standard System by 2025

By Joe Barkai Internet of Things (IoT) No Comments

China’s Xinhua news agency announced the country will establish a standard system for the Industrial Internet by 2020. Guideline jointly released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Standardization Administration establish technical standards for key elements of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), including industrial internet resources and platforms, big data and cybersecurity.

The goal is to build an integrated open standards-based IIoT system by 2025.

This announcement is bold, sweeping and vague all at the same time, and does not offer a detailed roadmap and implementation details. Nevertheless, if China is successful in achieving even part of the overall goal, it will have a major effect on the development of IIoT. China’s industrial market size and its continued growth, coupled with other government initiatives in renewable energy targets and aggressive shift to all electric cars will create a tipping point.

Mar 20

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

How to Succeed in Implementing Augmented Reality Without Really Trying

By Joe Barkai Augmented / Virtual Reality No Comments

A catchy and optimistic title, isn’t it?

But as some early adopters (yes, we are still in the early adoption phase) can attest to, implementing a successful augmented reality (AR) system can be tricky.

For decades, the bold vision of AR pioneers was limited by bulky hardware and inadequate computing power of early generation AR systems.

Today, HoloLens, RealWear and other AR hardware make wearable AR far more practical, and AR editing software such as Vuforia makes content creation and delivery within easy reach. Still, over-enthusiastic vendors of AR-based products showcase systems that look great on paper, sorry – on head-mounted display, but fail to demonstrate meaningful end-user value. The gap between increasingly more capable hardware and software and broad industry adoption continues to widen.

Mar 03

Clash of the Titans (Gustave Doré, 1866)

ABB and Dassault Systèmes Team Up

By Joe Barkai Internet of Things (IoT), PLM No Comments

ABB and Dassault Announce a Global Software Partnership for Digital Industries

On February 28, ABB and Dassault Systèmes announced they have entered into an agreement to form a “global software partnership for digital industries”: an industry-spanning global partnership to offer customers a broad software and hardware portfolio of PLM, asset health monitoring and factory automation solutions.

This partnership signals yet another major power shift in the enterprise digital manufacturing leadership, preceded by the announcement last summer of a partnership between PTC and Rockwell Automation.

The proposed partnership between ABB and Dassault Systèmes is more than yet another tit-for-tat in the highly competitive and often difficult to differentiate PLM and digital manufacturing space, although I suspect some was of it influenced this recent move.

Feb 06

How Many Autonomous Cars Will be on the Road in 2025?

By Joe Barkai Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared Vehicles No Comments

Like Sesame Street’s Count von Count, industry analysts have a compulsive love of counting things.

One favorite item to count has been Internet of Things devices or “things.” This metric has proven elusive, and, as I opined numerous times before, mostly irrelevant, because the mere number of IoT devices deployed globally does not signify the business value they provide. In other words, more devices do not mean greater business value.

Conversely, connected and automated cars (CAVs) is a good example of more-is-better. More connected, safer, and, eventually, autonomous cars will improve the efficiency of urban transportation systems and reduce private vehicle ownership, thereby preventing crashes, easing traffic congestion and reducing carbon footprint.