Gary On Manufacturing – Gary Mintchell

Looking at Google v DOJ and Apple v EU, Gary draws lessons for industrial automation.

Many times in my career I have hired into a company during the initial surge of a market. Good jobs. Excitement. Opportunity to work on new things. Then the market matured or collapsed usually due to external forces such as technology changes or consumer behavior.   I hit recreation vehicles at a high point followed by high inflation and gasoline price surges. Then a consumer product company where Consumer Reports published a poorly researched article—but the external market also changed. Then PC peripherals. The latest was automation where a few of us started a magazine to cover it. The market was good for about 10 years. Then we went into brief cycles of IIoT, edge, networks, collaborative robots, IT companies looking at the manufacturing market.   This podcast began life in 2007 as Automation Minutes. I morphed it into Gary on Manufacturing to make it more general. That was more than 10 years ago. Must be time for another change.   That all is quite mature now.    Where do you think the offsetting new technologies or customer behavior will lead now? Or, is the market just going to begin to either consolidate further or split? What do you think?

Gary offers observations on the continuing saga of former GE executives running Boeing changing the culture from engineering-driven to Wall Street-driven. Also thoughts on good manufacturing leadership.

Gary discusses the current state of the automation and control market. Why it seems to be a stable market and why the media in the market are shrinking. He riffs from Seth Godin blog  The Drift to Normal. As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. I have arranged a special deal with energy drink makers Magic Mind. Listeners can visit https://www.magicmind.com/garym and get up to 56% off your subscription for the next 10 days with my code GARYM20. After 10 days, you can still get 20% off for one time purchases and subscriptions.  My sponsor is Inductive Automation. Check out their flagship product Ignition and the Cloud and Edge editions. If you would like to get a message out to about 200,000 people, you, too, could be a sponsor. Reply to this email to find out more about sponsorship opportunities.

Gary discusses productivity, slow productivity movement, busyness or pseudo-productivity. Sponsors Inductive Automation inductiveautomation.com and Magic Mind, magicmind.com/garym and use code GARYM20.

I've seen successes of industry standards. I've also seen industrial standards struggle to break through the logjam of large companies drive to lock customers into their ecosystem. What is the latest of OPAF and what is the meaning of Schneider Electric's announcement of a product built with with Red Hat and IBM and development of a new computer communication standard? I have arranged a special deal with energy drink makers Magic Mind. Listeners can visit https://www.magicmind.com/garym and get up to 56% off your subscription for the next 10 days with my code GARYM20. After 10 days, you can still get 20% off for one time purchases and subscriptions. That’s magicmind.com/garym with the code GARYM20. This podcast is sponsored by Inductive Automation. https://www.inductiveautomation.com

Boeing is a company that has lost its way. I have no idea why the board has not sacked the CEO. The 737MAX  program was a fiasco and continues to haunt the company. The 787 program ran way behind schedule costing the company billions. This is what happens when you ignore product and serving customers instead focusing solely on financial numbers. We are a business company not an engineering company, said one Boeing CEO. How right he was. They can't build an airplane anymore. But they can still count, I guess.

Gary gives leadership growth tips based on Dan Lyons "The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World" and David Brooks "How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen."

After attending several technology supplier user conferences this summer and fall, a colleague asked why suppliers are emphasizing software. I ponder this question in this podcast essay. And ask what the new breed of engineers will bring with new ideas. Maybe Arduino control platforms? Worth asking.

Do digital tools have the effect of adding more things to our plate rather than helping us get things done? Gary looks at how software helped him get productive and then seemed to bog down and still accomplish a lot, but it seems slower over all. Even more, what is more important—getting more done or doing what is impactful?