A Recap of Digital Manufacturing at Cisco Live

Cisco Live has come and gone and now is a time to reflect on the incredibly crazy few days and see what was discussed. Business outcomes were top of mind for our customers and analysts, and we had no shortage of them.

We kicked off the week talking to our analysts at CSCAPE and the big theme was customer stories. We had Voith, a machine builder with a focus on the Pulp and Paper industry, talk about implementing a collaboration suite. They now know what’s going on and can troubleshoot without having to fly somebody to fix problems due to remote capabilities from Cisco and our partner LibreStream. This brings a huge value to their customers who are in remote areas and allows them to save time and expense.

Another customer we had was Fanuc who talked about how they’re implementing their zero downtime offering based on predictive maintenance algorithms. They have 6500 machines currently pushing data to the cloud to allow savings of anywhere from three minutes to hours of downtime. Which when you look at $20,000 per minute of downtime, that starts adding up to a huge return on investment very quickly.

Next our CTO Zorawar Biri Singh shared how digitization requires companies to transform processes, empower their workforce, and personalize their customer experience.

He also shared:

“If you aren’t building deep learning/machine learning capabilities into your products, you aren’t relevant”

Our VP of Growth Initiatives Ruba Borno then spoke at her session, Business Case for Digitization. Here are some of the takeaways:

Unlocking the digital economy requires security in the network along with analytics.

Data is becoming perishable – act on it or trash it. Cisco’s Jasper brings together LTE, WiFi, LoRa, Bluetooth, Zigbee and more.

There are 3 stages of digitization and digitization requires digital culture:

Notable Quote: “Be the agility you want to see”

The full presentation is available here.

Ruba and Rowan Trollope also stopped by our booth and we were able to capture this video with her.

On Tuesday my teammate Scot Wlodarczak presented on our work with Daimler Trucks by sharing this video and giving us insight into their transformation at the breakout session Cisco Digital Manufacturing Solutions in Practice at Daimler Trucks.

Here are a few of the takeaways:

Daimler trucks installed pervasive wireless connectivity which lets employees and machines stay connected across the entire factory.

DTNA defined and established an automation architecture practice to bridge the traditional gap between IT and OT (Operational Technology, i.e. controls and automation) job functions.

Daimler Trucks now has real-time visibility across production operations. Data is now transmitted securely to managers and helps them make better, faster decisions and keep plants running more efficiently.

At the first guest keynote, Jason Silva blew the crowd away which was an absolute must-see (recording here – thank me later). The quotes below should speak for themselves:

“Technology is the human mind turned inside out. We use technology to overcome our boundaries.”

“Our brains evolved in a world that was linear and local. Our intuition is linear. We don’t live in a linear and local world anymore. We live in a world that is globally interconnected and that is exponential in its nature. Technology evolves in exponential rates.”

“If you take 30 linear steps, by step 30 you get to 30. If you take the same 30 steps but you do it exponentially, by step 30 you’re at a billion. That is the reason that the smartphone in our pocket today is a million times cheaper and a million times smaller yet a thousand times more powerful than what used to be a $60M supercomputer that was half a building in size 40 years ago and you needed special permission to get access to it. Now it fits in your pocket. Tools to change the world are in everybody’s hands.”

At the end of Wednesday I hosted a session called: The Case for Machine Intelligence. Here are some of the highlights:

There hasn’t been an Uber or Airbnb in the Manufacturing industry yet.

A 2% increase in OEE is a 1% increase in profit – That’s a CFO discussion.

Machines were not built for the internet and complexity stands in the way of digitization.

I shared 8 digital manufacturing use cases and the payoffs:

Finally the conference ended with a closing keynote by Kevin Spacey:

“Create something that you find compelling and others will too. Don’t try to create for the masses. Tell your own story. Tell what you know. That’s what gets me to share content.”

“Place a bet on those who are not afraid to challenge the powers that be.”

“For those of us climbing to the top of the food chain there can be no mercy. There is but one rule – hunt or be hunted.”

As you can see, it was an incredible week full of excitement, content, and some fun. To feel like you were there, check out our twitter feed of the show here. In fact if you were there, it is impossible to see every presentation due to timing so check out the session archive to see what you missed. See you next year!

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