Automation

I’ve spent the last decade deploying machine learning models where the rubber meets the plant floor: on PLC‑adjacent gateways that need to run reliably 24/7, speak industrial protocols, and survive long maintenance cycles. In this article I’ll walk you through a pragmatic architecture for an AI inference pipeline that meets industrial constraints — deterministic latency, limited compute/memory, 0‑touch updates, and strong...

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When I run pilots for collaborative robots (cobots), the primary question I hear from plant managers and line supervisors is simple: “How can we test this without breaking takt time?” Disrupting production to evaluate a new automation concept is a non‑starter in most facilities. Over the past decade I’ve led multiple low‑cost, low‑risk cobot pilots that preserved throughput while generating actionable data. Below I share a practical,...

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I’ve seen more than a few OPC UA projects stall, degrade, or simply fail to deliver the “single source of truth” that everyone expected. The promise — secure, interoperable, semantically rich industrial data — is real. But in practice, implementations fall short because of a mix of architectural shortcuts, misunderstood capabilities, and operational blind spots. Below I share the pragmatic causes I’ve repeatedly encountered and, more...

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I’ve designed and commissioned mid‑scale conveyor systems for automotive tier suppliers, food packaging lines, and electronics assembly plants. One of the most common questions I hear from engineers and plant managers is: Which control platform should we standardize on — Rockwell, Siemens, or Beckhoff? The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer — which follows — walks through the practical tradeoffs I use when advising clients....

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