Podcasts about Scada

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Maria Santella and Robert Murao of ICP DAS USA to learn about their new Modbus RTU, TCP, and other products in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 274 Show Notes: Special thanks to Maria and Robert for coming on the show, and to ICP DAS USA for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about these products, please see the below links: Modbus Gateways  Modbus Touch Screen Controllers   Modbus RTU DAQ Serial Port Sharing Devices  Modbus over Cellular Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Podcast: (CS)²AI Podcast Show: Control System Cyber SecurityEpisode: 132: Solving Problems at Scale: Kenny Mesker on OT Cybersecurity Strategy, Risk, and LeadershipPub date: 2026-06-02Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationKenny Mesker, OT Cybersecurity Strategist and Distinguished Engineer at Chevron, joins Derek Harp to share his remarkable journey from growing up on a farm in West Texas to becoming one of the industry's leading voices in operational technology (OT) cybersecurity.With more than 30 years of experience spanning electric utilities, SCADA systems, industrial control systems, and cybersecurity, Kenny reflects on the evolution of OT security from the days of air-gapped networks to today's interconnected digital environments. He discusses how a passion for problem-solving led him from electrical engineering into industrial operations and ultimately into cybersecurity strategy.Kenny offers practical advice for professionals looking to enter the OT cybersecurity field, explaining why hands-on operational experience remains one of the most valuable foundations for success. He also explores the challenges of IT/OT convergence, the importance of risk assessment, and how cybersecurity leaders must think beyond individual systems to protect entire organizations and critical infrastructure.Looking ahead, Kenny shares his perspective on artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, and the future of OT architectures, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges these emerging technologies will bring to industrial environments.Whether you're an engineer, cybersecurity professional, student, or industry leader, this episode provides valuable insights into building a successful OT cybersecurity career while helping protect the systems that power modern society.The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Derek Harp, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Alejandro Cabrera Muñoz, co-founder and CEO of Green Eagle Solutions, returns to discuss automating 70 GW of renewable assets and why operators are self-operating their fleets. Reach out to sales@greeneaglesolutions.com to learn more! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall: Alejandro, welcome back to the program.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Thank you so much, Allen. It’s a pleasure to be here.  Allen Hall: Well, so last time we talked, you had so much happening at Green Eagle, and it is, uh, amazing to watch the progress there. You’ve been around for quite a while now. You started, what, in 2011 working on SCADA systems. Uh, uh, there’s been a lot of evolution since then. Walk me through, like, the process where you thought, “Hey, there’s a business here.”  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Of course. Uh, we actually started officially back in 2012. It’s been a, quite a, of a long journey to, to get here. Uh, yeah, we started, uh, back, back then. We say it’s a whole new world, right? If we look backwards, like, almost 15 years. Makes me, makes me feel, like, extremely [00:01:00] old. Uh, but ne- nevertheless, um, yeah, back then we were trying to, to cover, like, a lot of issues that were based on OEM SCADAs, which by the way, we still are dealing with. But, but that, that was starting point. It was, um- It was, uh, based on understanding that the, the renewable energy industry is so complex. Every wind farm, every solar plant has different issues, different systems. Even, even the same models from the same manufacturer sometimes have complete different systems, which complicates everything. So it was very exciting to, to start our careers in a, in an industry where nothing is standard and where everyone is looking for something that is standard. So that’s, that’s where we fit in. Um, yeah, and in these years, we, we started basically creating the f- the foundations, uh, uh, on top of, uh, SCADA systems. [00:02:00] But as soon as we had that, those foundations, we realized that this sector is not gonna evolve, uh, it’s gonna cope up with the complexity, uh, of the technical complexity, market volatility, regulatory compliance. That’s not gonna be solved by just having more SCADAs. So we created a layer of automation in place, which is basically what we’ve been, um, evolving in the last 10 years now, um, with the, with the mindset and with the goal that every wind turbine should be running autonomously without having to have people behind it, uh, supervising and taking control of it. Allen Hall: Yeah, and that’s a great founding idea, but that has grown from an idea to you’re automating, what, 40 gigawatts of renewable assets right now?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Oh, we’re actually now connected to over 70 gigawatts.  Allen Hall: That’s amazing. Alejandro, that’s incredible.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: And all of them are different.  Allen Hall: Sure. So that, that’s a combination– 70 gigawatts is a combination of wind and solar and anything else? Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Yes. [00:03:00] Well, actually, one of the, one of the main, um, needs that we try to cover from day one is to be able to connect to all, um, asset classes. So we understand that, um, the challenge of operating a large portfolio for our customers, um, can only be solved if we have the ability to connect to all type of asset classes. So we can have to connect to wind turbines, inverters, trackers, substations, um, energy meters, you name it. You– we have to connect to every single asset class, um, because what’s important is how you manage that data on top of that and how you react on the anomalies.  Allen Hall: Right. Because I think a lot of operators are now considering taking your model, the Green Eagle model of s-self-operating, but they need that help, they need that insight into the operation of a solar farm or a wind farm or, or any of those assets, renewable assets, ensure those inverter-driven assets. You’re, you’re seeing– I, I think we’re seeing the same thing, which is a lot of operators decide to [00:04:00] leave full service agreements globally, and what do you think is driving that now? Uh, is it a financial decision? Is it a performance decision, or is it both?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: I think there are many factors, but I think the main driver is the financial aspects of it. I think when you, when you delegate the operations to a third-party, uh, entity They are gonna optimize their services to whatever service level agreement or availability they are committed to. And for that reason, you’re never gonna get– effectively, you’re never gonna get the extra mile. You’re never gonna get any extra from there. Um, and that’s okay when the market is– has great conditions and everything w- is going well. But we are seeing how in the last years we have, uh, a lot of market volatility, negative pricing. Everything is becoming more and more complex, so many projects are actually under stake financially. And I think that’s, um, that’s pressuring everyone to look for opportunities to squeeze their assets a little bit more or a little bit better, I would say.[00:05:00] Um, and part of that is to take operations in-house so you at least you have the opportunity to, to do, um, a better job, uh, let’s say.  Allen Hall: Yeah, and part of what we’re seeing is, at least in the United States and, and globally now, I think it’s, there’s more action globally than there has been on mergers and acquisitions. So an operator that has historically had a particular OEM in wind, you know, say it’s Vestas or Siemens or GE, whoever, Nordex, it could be any of them. Uh, when they acquire another competitor or another farm, they’re bringing in a f- a wind turbine they probably don’t know much about. And, and that’s a huge problem. And, and there’s not a lot of resources for them to grab hold of. Uh, that’s one of the marketplaces you’re trying to fill right now, right?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Of course. Uh, as I mentioned before, if something describes our sector is that nothing is standard, despite everyone is seeking standardization of everything, right? Uh, but nothing is standard for, [00:06:00] for– and that, that’s the reality. So the first thing when, when you have a portfolio and you are incorporating new assets into it, you need, um, a solution that is able to connect to all type of assets, right? Um, w-we call our solution a three-in-one solution because first of all, it acts as a second level SCADA, so you can connect everything there, uh, everything there, and you have access to all the data across all your assets. Then we have the SCADA automation layer, and then we have the data analysis layer on top of that. Okay. But let’s focus on the operations, which was, uh, your question, right? So you have a new bunch of assets. Sometimes you don’t have any documentation whatsoever, but these are Gamesas, Nordex, a bunch of them from different years. Um, the first thing that we provide is a second level SCADA, so you can connect to all of those. But We have, uh, something that we believe is very unique. So what we provide to our [00:07:00] customers is ability to automate all these assets autonomously. And what that gives you, it’s, um, set of data that can be analyzed, and we can learn from what’s working, what’s not working, beyond what the manufacturer’s gonna tell you to do, right? So we have thousands of General Electric turbines connected to our software, for instance. Um, we know what works, what doesn’t works, uh, what are the faults that can be resetted remotely, what are the ones that are not, what is the success ratio of those resets, ’cause that’s a metric that nobody else has unless you have automation in place. Uh, but we can actually understand, is it working? Is it not working? Is it creating fatigue for no reason to these turbines? So what– we have all this, this, uh, un- this knowledge and this, um, knowhow, uh, for all these models. Um- I believe one of the main, um, value that we provide to our customers is, is not only the, the solution itself, but it’s also the [00:08:00] ability to be somehow prescriptive. It’s, it’s not that we’re gonna know more about how to operate the assets than our customers, but, uh, we have a sense of what’s the benchmark, right? So I, I– And that benchmark is very, very useful for them as well.  Allen Hall: So th- that’s part of getting to scale, and 70 gigawatts is a, a lot of scale, where you have seen a number of turbines in different places operating in different environments and performing at different levels. That’s unique, right? That gives you insight into really what’s happening to a turbine or a solar asset globally and also locally. For a lot of operators that just happen to acquire or, or, or take on a- an older wind farm, uh, they tend to get stuck, right? They, they, they, they don’t tend to be able to, to find their way through those little nuances. That’s a huge financial impact to them eventually, right?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: It is. And I, and I believe that for many years this was something that in a way got, um– [00:09:00] didn’t get a lot of visibility. I think people were not fully aware of how much revenue, how much production they were losing just because they were not operating their assets at the best capacity. Um, now we have the data to prove what, what better can look like. W- uh, we have data to prove that if you follow the OEM’s, uh, protocols, you may be creating fatigue for no reason. Um, and there are improv- there are ways to improve that thing. So I think it’s, um– We are, we are opening the door for a new, complete new way to operate your, your portfolio and get more benefit from it. Allen Hall: I think that’s a very interesting aspect of the sort of the structural aspects of how a, a wind turbine performs, and a lot of that is driven by software. And you, you realize if you’re paying close attention to the OEMs that some of the software updates are not necessarily performance enhancements. They’re more of protecting the turbine because they realize they may have a problem. So it may be a slight derate, it may be a, a different sort of power curve that happens. [00:10:00] But a lot of operators don’t really sense that that is happening up close because they’re not into the details of that. That’s where Green Eagle separates itself. You are into all those details. And do you have a lot of operators just reach out for help immediately saying, “Hey, I have this Siemens Gamesa or Gamesa wind farm,” think about an older wind farm, a Gamesa wind farm Help. Just please help. Uh, whatever you can do, just show us you can do it. Do you, do you start to run a little test campaign on that site, or do you, or do you go pull back from the 70 gigawatts and 15 years of history to, to show this is what you can do with that particular asset to, to get them involved in a thinking about the problem a little bit differently? Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, I wish, I wish it was that way. Um, but what, what– It, it was that transparent, but what happens is that we’re working with the largest, uh, some of the largest utilities and IPPs in the world. So what happens is that they, they will never come to us saying, [00:11:00] “We don’t know how to operate this turbine,” or, “We don’t have enough information.” Um, the way they ask for it is like, “Are you compatible with this?” And, “Do you know… Do you have some protocols? Do you know the standard protocols to run these turbines?” Um, and that’s the way we, we start the conversation, and then they, uh, they, they get confident that we can actually help them with that. We only know about how, how much or how little they know about a specific model once we start working with them. And it’s not all or nothing. I- Ev-Even the largest manufacturer, e-even the largest utilities, their portfolio is constantly evolving. They’re incorporating new sites almost every month. So there’s always one site that they don’t, they don’t have expertise in the, in the house, so it’s, it’s normal. Like, basically not many people have expertise in some of the models from old Nordex or Gamesas or you name it. It, it’s impossible basically to have to understand all models in the world. So I think we [00:12:00] have the, the data, the benchmarks, and experience, and on top of that, the of course, the, the tools, so you can actually operate better those, those assets.  Allen Hall: So the name of your system is called ARSOS, A-R-S-O-S, and for anybody listening to this podcast, you can just Google it, and it’s gonna take you to Green Eagle. What is that product? How would, how would you define or describe that product?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, ARSOS is a suite. Um, what– The way I like to think about it is a, is a three-in-one solution, right? So it’s first of all, it acts, it, it, it fits in between the SCADA world and the REMs, uh, the REMs, uh, solutions. Okay? And they’re complete different worlds even though you see dashboards and they look the same thing. But SCADAs must be, um, must be able to be installed on premises. They require OT enterprise cybersecurity level. They can be, they should be installed on air-gapped infrastructure, so no access to internet whatsoever. [00:13:00]Um, and that they tend to be extremely complex to configure and, and, uh, adapt to every, uh, every different site. So that’s one world. Um, on the other hand, we have the, the REM solutions that are like more like a SaaS platform, like a Power- it could be Power BI, it could be like the, the normal use cases that you need it. You need something, some tools to create the reports at the end of the month to understand the performance of your assets, right? So you have these two, two worlds. So what we are proposing here is a solution that has been built for the past 15 years, but it fits right in the middle. So it covers Almost everything that you need from a SCADA and second level SCADA solution. It puts automation in place, and then it also gives you all the data so you can consume it in the best way, uh, possible, which by the way, now with, uh, artificial intelligence, it’s incredible what you can do with it. So this is basically what we have built, um, right [00:14:00] now. And the main differentiation here is that since we are in the middle, we are trying to solve all this complexity from a SCADA world with a product that is already pre-configured. So you can basically connect to your sites in a completely easy way, um, doing clicks and not a lot of complexity because it’s already pre-made for your needs. Um, because of that, the time to market is extremely much, uh, faster compared to a SCADA solution, so you can have a solution in thing, in hours and not in months. It’s, it’s not a project anymore, right? Which is, which it sounds like normal when you, when you talk about applications, it sounds like a normal thing to do, that you have a, a system running in hours or minutes. But when you’re talking about SCADAs, that’s like sci- uh, sci-fiction, right? Um, that’s what we’re bringing to, into, onto the table. It’s, it’s, uh, something that you can connect to all your assets in a seamless way, painless, and, uh, and, uh, off the [00:15:00] shelf.  Allen Hall: Well, that’s a very interesting way of framing, uh, the product because, uh, you do see both ends of the spectrum here, where y- there’s a number of companies that are offering a c- completely SaaS product, which is a very pretty dashboard, and it still relies on a human to watch this dashboard and, and to make sense of it, and it provides some insight. And then you get to the other side, which is almost a completely mechanical system, where it’s just SCADA data and, and you’re just picking up data for datas, uh, to have, basically. So you, you f- you sort of find that middle ground. The, the, the amount of software and technology that it’s in that space, though, must be huge, and what is the effect of AI bring to you? Does that help you more with just on the, on the, on the model side or just the, the statistical analysis of all the data that you have access to now?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Let me make a, um, clarification. Because since, uh, we are, we are providing automation [00:16:00] in a world that is mission critical, right? So there’s no, a lot of, there’s no room for creativity or probabilistic approach. It all has to be the deterministic, right? Uh, so when we talk about automation, we’ve always been focused on deterministic automation, so rule-based, uh, automation, and that’s what we have implemented on top of the level of the SCADAs, right? So that’s, that’s the part where you know how to deal with an asset. You have the protocols. You want to understand how they work, but you want to have certainty of what happens if the turbine is on fault and the fault is related to the gearbox temperature and so on. So you wanna make sure that there’s a reset automatically executed only if the temperature of the gearbox is under X threshold. So this very deterministic approach. Uh, but we have, uh, something, um, very unique when we go on the, on the other side, when we go on the side of the REMs. Because we not only have the data of, of the assets, we [00:17:00] not only have statuses, performance, availability, uh, production. We also have the data of how these assets, assets have been operated, right? So we know how much fatigue they have received, how they’ve been operated, um, have they received curtailments or not? How many curtailments? What were the reasons? So we can actually have a 360, uh, degree of all the data, including all the control, not only how they’re performing, but also how we are operating those assets. And we believe that this is very unique because only if you have all these 360 data, then you can actually enhance what you have on top of that. And that is where AI come, comes in, right? So AI, AI is great in, um, helping our customers in doing root cause analysis, um, dealing with anomalies are not well, um, uh, procedure. Uh, there’s no course of action that is clear, that you don’t know. It’s, they’re not like too [00:18:00] frequent to, to have one. Uh, mixing different type of data. Like I mentioned before, you have, uh, market data, you have curtailments, you have, uh, commands to stop or start a turbine. You have a lot of information there, and you can put all together. Uh, also along with the CMMS information. Um- Lastly, they get– they can pull that together to do whatever they need, right? Uh, they can build with AI. You, you can now do your own dashboards. You can create your own APMs if you wanted to. Um, and I like to think about it, like, with these new tools that you can create disposable dashboards. And, uh, the concept is that it doesn’t matter how many different dashboards you have in an APM, but tomorrow you have a, a specific case. And I think it’s amazing that now with AI and the right, uh, data structure, you can now create a dashboard, and maybe it’s just for one use case, you know? And you just build it today, look at the data. You have [00:19:00] a, um, a case study, and that’s it. May– you never use it that again. The trick for being able to, to, to create this ecosystem where you analyze the data in a completely different way is that we have been working on how to structure the data so the AI is gonna be able to understand the data itself. So once that, that layer is structured in the right way, then you can actually create your own APMs or your own dashboards as you need to.  Allen Hall: That’s fascinating. So instead of just thinking of a turbine or a, a solar field as a asset where you’re trying to maximize performance necessarily, you’re looking at it from the marketplace, the, the, uh, the shutdowns, all the, the things that are contr- overriding the performance and trying to optimize performance in this market environment, which may be very turbulent, and I think for a lot of wind operators is very turbulent, uh, at, at the minute just [00:20:00] because of the nature of the electricity grid. So you’re, you’re then thinking about Having an AI tool to help you do investigative work on the particulars, not just the global data set of how this turbine globally operates, but the specifics, that’s fascinating because that allows you then to treat each turbine as its own separate power plant, in a sense, but also to, to think about lifetime issues and how to maintain that piece of equipment in a much more efficient way. That’s remarkable.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: And you have the– With AI, you also have the capabilities to automate all these type of analysis. So once you have a specific, uh, case to be analyzed, then you can automate that case to be analyzed in a daily basis, in a weekly basis. But that’s, uh, that, that’s, uh, that’s, uh, the world that we are moving to. Allen Hall: So a lot of what’s happening at Green Eagle at the moment is being automated and, and making it easy for, for customers to get [00:21:00]onboarded to the RSO system. What does that look like today? Uh, how do, how do I get onboarded? I have an asset of I got 1,000 turbines and a couple of solar fields. What does it look like to get me started in the RSO system with Green Eagle? Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, if you’re using our cloud, it’s, it’s gonna be a process of If you have a, a portfolio of 500 gigawatts, you can connect to our, to our cloud in a matter of like one month to two months So that’s something that you can do by yourself. So, um, you can create the assets, you can create the connectivity. The connectivity is done through IP filtering or VPN tunnels. All that is from the, from the dashboards, from, from the cloud. Um, then you can, based on the model directory, you can choose which is the, the assets that you want to connect to and through what channels, whether you have Modbus, OPC, and so on. Um, but that’s a- as complex as, as it gets. Really? It’s n- it’s not easy either, because [00:22:00] you need to understand what is a Modbus, what is a OPC, but that’s what it is. It, it’s not a matter of, like, installing something on site and doing tons of, uh, complex, uh, um, configurations. You don’t need, uh, SCADA engineers to be, like, building these dashboards tailor-made for your sites and, and all that is, is something from the past in o- in our opinion. Allen Hall: So you’re not on the telephone, or you’re not on a, a online chat with the Green Eagle team, because it’s, it’s, it’s– you’ve, you’ve done enough capacity now that you’ve automated this.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: You don’t have to.  Allen Hall: That’s amazing, because I think that’s the first worry for any operator that is gonna make that leap saying, “Hey, I need a little bit of help with this wind farm or this solar site,” is that, “Oh, I gotta be on the phone. I gotta– There’s a lot of im- of onboarding that has to happen,” and you’ve eliminated that.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, first, w- I, I totally understand this hesitation. Um, many of our customers are living in, in the, in the SCADA world, right? Uh, and which w- it was probably once a pain [00:23:00] to be configured to begin with, and I think half the sector is traumatized by these processes. So I, I tot- I totally understand that that pain is, is still there, right? I understand that. But what we’re trying to do is to, to move forward and say like, “Yeah, that, that’s gone. That was the past. Now we have a different way to do it.” And if you have, uh, either new assets that you need to connect or you even consider, like, moving to something more modern, something with more capabilities, something that comes with automation in place, uh, well, we have a solution that is painless. Allen Hall: Can I discuss, or can we go back and forth about the, the use of inverter-based resources, the solar and the wind sites, in terms of the, the move from grid following to grid forming and stabilizing the grid? I think there’s gonna be a lot of changes in the way that we operate these assets over the next year. Mostly, uh, I see action in the United States from the Iberian blackout about a year ago. They’re changing the thought process of how they want to run the grid so that the wind [00:24:00] and solar can keep the grid operating. Is– Are you involved in, are you involved in that aspect of how you operate those assets and how those inverters perform and, and configuring them to, to do more of the, of the grid forming and keeping the grid stable? Alejandro Cabrera Muños: I believe, to be honest, this is more related to power plant controllers and hybrid plants. So we have, we have made several projects with, um- With a mix, uh, of, uh, wind, solar, um, and storage. And wh- but what we’re doing here, uh, to be completely honest, we are not involved in the power plant controllers. Uh, we believe that that’s an electrical device and has, uh, uh, particularities that are out of us- our scope. But what we do is to, again, we connect to all asset classes, right? So we also w- connect to the PPCs, and we can monitor the PPC, the performance of the PPC, and we integrate that into everything else, right? So [00:25:00] that’s, for us, that’s another asset that we are connecting to, and that it make– it completes the view of, um, of sites that are now, like, almost like mini portfolios at, at the same place, right? ‘Cause you have, uh, different technologies, service stations. You have so many things that you need to orchestrate as well. So we’re, we’re w- moving into, into that area as well, uh, f- with the same concepts.  Allen Hall: B- so in a, in a sense, you’re able to monitor the health or status of the grid. Because you’re connected to so many of these assets, you have a pretty good understanding of how the grid is doing at any particular moment then. Alejandro Cabrera Muños: That’s right, yeah, especially in, in Spain, of course, ’cause we’re connected to, um, over 25 gigawatts at the, uh, at, in Spain, so.  Allen Hall: Alejandro, that’s amazing.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Over 25 gigawatts at the, uh, at, in Spain. So, so that’s s- it’s almost a third of the, of the installed capacity in Spain.  Allen Hall: Is there a movement in Spain to, to use technology like yours [00:26:00] to better monitor, regulate, control the, uh, wind and solar assets so- such that they stay engaged when, when the, the grid starts to, to vary a little bit? Has anybody asked you to, to be involved with that? Because it seems like you’re the right– you’re in the right place at the right time.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: The challenge of all these grid codes, uh, in, in most of cases is just that There are tons of curtailments that are coming from many different reasons, technical restrictions, market, uh, dispatch, um, other type of compliance. Um, the, the first challenge is to just execute on them, right? So they’re coming, you need to apply on the, on the sites. Um, that was the first, the first phase. But now that we have so many gigawatts connected, and that we’re also participating in balance mechanis- balance mechanisms and ancillary services, what we are seeing is that depending on how your assets perform and how quickly they are in regulating, um, you are gonna [00:27:00] have penalties or more, uh, profitability in the participation of the markets. So that’s, that’s extremely important as well ’cause it’s, it’s quite difficult to, to measure. But we have all the– Since everything is automated, you can always track, and you can statistically understand which of the sites are performing better or worse, in what cases, and therefore you have opportunities to improve the regulation and get more revenue from it. Allen Hall: Okay. So Green Eagle then is, because of the scale that it has at the minute, can look at the grid and is involved in, in the, the grid requirements, so to speak, of, of, uh, curtailments and what assets are operating when, and also the voltage control aspects and frequency control, which is the other part of it. You, because you’re, because you have so many assets in Spain and globally, you, it’s amazing the number of assets you have. You, you then can actually, one, see health of the grid, two, [00:28:00] provide insights to operators on what that looks like. I mean, real time you could, you can do that. And then are, are, are the regulators then coming to, to you asking advice on how these assets should perform? Because it does seem like you would be a tremendous resource on how the grid is actually doing on a larger scale from a renewables standpoint.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Yeah. Well, fortunately, the, the regulator has its own also, uh, system, so it’s, uh, redundant, right? So as far as we, we are working to, to have, uh, the best system in the world, but, but it will be a lot of, uh, responsibility for us to just have the whole grid depending on us. That would be a lot of weight. Uh, but in a, in a way, in, in a, in a way, it already depends on us, uh, effectively. So, so the pressure is, is there. We have, we have talked to them, um, since we have so many customers, um, in the, in the– at this level, uh, we have to be very quick in implementing new grid codes and new [00:29:00] regulatory, uh, compliance issues and, and so on. So that’s, that’s, um… It’s a challenge, but at the same time, it’s, it’s very exciting that we are always ahead in, in this regard.  Allen Hall: Right. If, if I was an operator and I had Green Eagle as one of my, uh, helpers in a sense, uh, assistants in a sense, that helps with the, the grid code i-in terms of, one, understanding it, and two, being able to implement the changes that are coming down all the time. You have a resource there that understands it from a larger perspective because you see it from multiple operators in multiple places trying to do the same thing. That’s a huge advantage instead of you trying to na-navigate or try to understand all those grid code changes and why they’re happening and what it means to you and how do you operate your assets. So you can provide a little bit of guidance there for the operators.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Of, of course. Um, uh, the main, the main value proposition that we can have here for anyone that wants to participate or be part of the Spanish market is that we already have all this figured out. So if you wanna start from the scratch [00:30:00] with, uh, with a SCADA, industrial SCADA, well, let’s, let’s go with, let’s go with that. You’re gonna be probably traumatized in the future, right? Uh, but with us you have an off-the-shelf product that is already compliance. It, uh, h- we have already set, uh, the system certified by the TSO in Spain. So we have already gone through this process so many times, and it’s off the shelf, so you don’t have to worry about any of this. And on top of that, you have the Peace of mind that if tomorrow there’s gonna be a, a, a new change in the, in the, in a new grid code, well, which most likely is gonna happen, um, soon, uh, we have to, we have to do it. Because we have already, uh, a lot of customers that, that, that need it. So for us, it’s actually also, uh, strategic to, to be ahead and be fast in implementing these grid codes. Allen Hall: That’s amazing. That’s such a huge resource for Spain and the rest of the world. Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, I, I know people who are listening to this podcast right now are thinking, “Okay, I haven’t heard of Green [00:31:00]Eagle, but now I’m interested, and I need to f- find out more.” How do they contact you? Where do they go first? What’s the best first step?  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, they can connect, uh, directly to me through LinkedIn, or they can just write to sales@greeneaglesolutions.com.  Allen Hall: Great, yeah, and Alejandro’s available on LinkedIn, so you can f- find him there. And we’ll put his contact information in the show notes to, so you have quick access. Alejandro, you gotta come back more often because the, the things that you’re doing with Green Eagle are amazing, and, uh, the, the scale is incredible. Congratulations on that. Uh, and, and I, I, I need you to come back and tell us what the next generation looks like because I know when you guys get ahold of AI and start thinking through some of these real challenging problems, Green Eagle will have solutions. So you’re welcome back anytime.  Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Super exciting to come back, uh, when you invite me. Thank you so [00:32:00] much.

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Nick Rosner of Schneider Electric to discuss VFD and HVAC Applications in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 273 Show Notes: Special thanks goes out to Nick Rosner of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode. Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

What does it take to modernize the systems that keep water flowing, wastewater moving, and nine million New Yorkers served every day?In this episode, we sit down with Robert "Max" Maxfield, Chief Systems Architect at AITHERAS and the architect behind New York City's SCADA modernization efforts for the Bureau of Wastewater Treatment. Max takes us inside the world of critical infrastructure, where downtime isn't an inconvenience, it's a public risk. From managing decades-old industrial systems and balancing modernization against reliability, to defending essential services against cyber threats, Max shares what it really takes to operate technology that most people never think about until it fails.We also explore the realities of AI in critical infrastructure, the cybersecurity challenges facing utilities, the surprising longevity of legacy systems, and how Max's passion for motorcycles, racing, and building machines shapes his approach to engineering. It's a conversation about technology, risk, resilience, and why sometimes the most important systems are the ones nobody notices.Robert “Max” Maxfield is the Chief Systems Architect at AITHERAS, leading the SCADA Modernization Program for NYC's Bureau of Wastewater Treatment. In this role, Max designs and deploys the systems that keep critical water infrastructure operating for nine million New Yorkers. With 20+ years in industrial controls, 27 platform certifications, and prior architect roles on national operations centers and the Doyon Utilities Alaska modernization, Max specializes in the messy intersection of legacy industrial systems, modern SCADA, cybersecurity, and, increasingly, AI. He's been published in Forbes on industrial technology, runs his own GPU lab for local model fine-tuning, and spends his off-hours on custom motorcycles, off-road racing, and drag racing. Equal parts engineer, builder, and pragmatist, Max brings a field-tested perspective on what actually works when the stakes are critical infrastructure.

Kenny Mesker, OT Cybersecurity Strategist and Distinguished Engineer at Chevron, joins Derek Harp to share his remarkable journey from growing up on a farm in West Texas to becoming one of the industry's leading voices in operational technology (OT) cybersecurity.With more than 30 years of experience spanning electric utilities, SCADA systems, industrial control systems, and cybersecurity, Kenny reflects on the evolution of OT security from the days of air-gapped networks to today's interconnected digital environments. He discusses how a passion for problem-solving led him from electrical engineering into industrial operations and ultimately into cybersecurity strategy.Kenny offers practical advice for professionals looking to enter the OT cybersecurity field, explaining why hands-on operational experience remains one of the most valuable foundations for success. He also explores the challenges of IT/OT convergence, the importance of risk assessment, and how cybersecurity leaders must think beyond individual systems to protect entire organizations and critical infrastructure.Looking ahead, Kenny shares his perspective on artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, and the future of OT architectures, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges these emerging technologies will bring to industrial environments.Whether you're an engineer, cybersecurity professional, student, or industry leader, this episode provides valuable insights into building a successful OT cybersecurity career while helping protect the systems that power modern society.

Take a Network Break! We start with listener followup and a red alert affecting  ScadaBR, an open source SCADA controller. On the news front, Forward adds predictive testing to its network digital twin software, Qumulo and Cisco team up to offer cloud-bursting for file storage, and NetBrain adds new skills and other updates to its... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with listener followup and a red alert affecting  ScadaBR, an open source SCADA controller. On the news front, Forward adds predictive testing to its network digital twin software, Qumulo and Cisco team up to offer cloud-bursting for file storage, and NetBrain adds new skills and other updates to its... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with listener followup and a red alert affecting  ScadaBR, an open source SCADA controller. On the news front, Forward adds predictive testing to its network digital twin software, Qumulo and Cisco team up to offer cloud-bursting for file storage, and NetBrain adds new skills and other updates to its... Read more »

Change management is the reason most manufacturing improvement projects quietly stall, even when the technical work is sound and the tools are right.Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith unpack their own change management war stories from across two decades in industrial automation. Vlad frames change management as understanding risk to the business and to every stakeholder, then putting the process in place that lets the organization absorb that risk. Technical feasibility is the easy half of any project. Getting humans to consistently work the new way is the half that wins or loses the budget.Vlad joined Procter & Gamble at a site rated four on P&G's Integrated Work Systems maturity scale, the highest in North America at the time. Every loss event triggered a structured root cause analysis cascade. Operator, mechanic, operations engineer, and only then the engineering department. He later moved to Kraft Heinz, which had purchased the same IWS toolkit from P&G. The tools were on the shelf. The site rating was effectively zero. He had spent his early career learning to use the tools without having to deploy them, and that gap is where most transformation programs die.Dave's lens is more political. Change management starts with one question engineers rarely ask. What is in it for the person you are asking to change? He tells the Joe story, a lead operator with more than 35 years on the floor who interrupted a connected workforce rollout meeting to point out that his team had cycled through every methodology fad of the last two decades. None had stuck. Dave's team asked what hurt the most. Joe kept training new operators who left for a dollar an hour more down the street. The fix was QR codes on equipment linked to procedures Joe recorded once. Joe went from skeptic to evangelist in one session. Find the operator with the deepest tenure, solve their pain, and let them carry the change.The episode is also honest about what well intentioned incentives do when they miss the mark. Vlad walks through an RCA rollout where management offered a fifty dollar gift card to whoever submitted the most reports each week. The team got a stack of paper. None of it shortened downtime. When real process change goes through a plant, throughput typically drops twenty to thirty percent for weeks or months. That cost has to be visible to leadership before the project starts.Two practical heuristics close the episode. As a systems integrator deploying MES and SCADA across food and beverage plants, Vlad could often predict success within the first demo by how the room reacted. Continuous improvement teams leaned in. Whiteboard sites pushed back. Dave reinforces that change has to start at the top. If the executive sponsor blows off steering meetings, the floor reads that signal. Change management is a habit, not a project, and habits are built small. Pick one workflow, prove it works, and let the next one earn its slot.Timestamps0:00 Introduction and Automate trade show preview1:30 Booth commitments: Siemens, Horner, and Tigoor6:00 Dave's Automate session and 4IR booth duty8:10 Predictions for Automate: physical AI, cobots, and the AI conversation13:10 Defining change management in manufacturing22:30 From P&G IWS to Kraft Heinz: tools versus deployment maturity28:30 What is in it for the person you are asking to change35:30 The RCA cascade at P&G compared to no process elsewhere42:30 The fifty dollar gift card incentive that backfired46:00 The Joe story: QR codes solving real operator pain58:30 Reading change management success in the first meeting1:07:00 Start small: the closing takeawayAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Lean Six Sigma: https://www.joltek.com/blog/lean-six-sigma7 Different Root Cause Analysis Techniques in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/7-different-root-cause-analysis-techniques-manufacturingDave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

“When you need these systems, they have to work 100% of the time,” says Jake Jacoby, CEO of TELCLOUD. “Our solution doesn't just meet the old copper standard — it exceeds it.” In part 35 of the TELCLOUD POTS and Shots Podcast Series, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, speaks with Jacoby about the hardware architecture powering modern POTS replacement and why reliability remains the most important requirement for life-safety communications. The discussion focuses on TELCLOUD's purpose-built POTScast 8 and POTScast 2 devices, which support eight and two analog lines respectively. Designed specifically for POTS replacement, the units support applications including fire alarms, elevators, emergency phones, security systems, fax lines, SCADA systems, and other legacy communications still dependent on analog connectivity. Jacoby explains that traditional copper phone lines historically delivered both dial tone and power directly from the carrier's central office, making them highly reliable during outages. TELCLOUD's approach replaces that infrastructure with a more resilient, modern design featuring battery backup, multiple WAN paths, LTE and 5G connectivity, and remote monitoring capabilities. Each POTScast unit includes a built-in 24-hour battery backup with optional expansion capability, along with support for multiple WAN connections including fiber, satellite, and cellular. TELCLOUD also supports Power over Ethernet deployments, allowing cellular routers from providers including Digi and ATEL to be placed up to 250 feet away from telecom closets where signal strength is stronger. Jacoby noted that TELCLOUD originally relied on existing analog telephone adapters but ultimately engineered its own hardware platform after determining that available solutions did not meet the company's performance standards for mission-critical deployments. “These devices are designed to sit in that telco room for the next 20 years,” Jacoby said. The episode also explores how TELCLOUD combines hardware, platform services, monitoring, field services, and channel support into a fully managed POTS replacement offering delivered through reseller partners globally. The “Shots” segment of the podcast featured Casa 1560 Private Selection Extra Añejo, a tequila aged more than three years in oak barrels and described by Jacoby as having notes of dark chocolate, dried fruit, and oak. For more information, visit telcloud.com or call 844-900-2270.

Join OMICRON experts Daniel Gebhardt and Hendrik Schleifer for Part 2 of our Energy Talks mini-series on continuous online PD monitoring. Discover how these systems track insulation issues 24/7, filter noise using PRPD and 3PARD technology, and integrate into SCADA networks. Learn how continuous defect tracking and automated alerts deliver the trend analysis needed to optimize asset planning, ease workloads, and ensure greater peace of mind.

Parce que… c'est l'épisode 0x301! Shameless plug 3 au 5 juin 2026 - SSTIC 2026 24 et 25 juin 2026 - Troopers 26 et 27 juin 2026 - leHACK 19 septembre 2026 - Bsides Montréal 1 au 3 décembre 2026 - Forum INCYBER - Canada 2026 24 et 25 février 2027 - SéQCure 2027 Description Dans cet épisode, Georges Badro, consultant chez Mandiant à Paris spécialisé dans les infrastructures critiques et les systèmes industriels, explique le fonctionnement et la sécurisation des sous-stations électriques. Architecture du réseau électrique Le réseau électrique se décompose en trois zones : la génération (centrales hydrauliques, nucléaires, thermiques, renouvelables), le transport et la distribution. Le réseau de transmission permet de limiter les pertes d'énergie et surtout d'équilibrer production et consommation afin de maintenir une fréquence stable. Contrairement à un réseau d'eau, un réseau électrique exige un équilibre permanent entre ce qui est produit et ce qui est consommé, sous peine de l'endommager. Les sous-stations sont les nœuds névralgiques de ce réseau de transmission : ces grands parcs clôturés que l'on aperçoit au bord des routes centralisent et redistribuent l'électricité. On y trouve des transformateurs et des disjoncteurs, ces derniers permettant d'ouvrir ou de fermer le courant. Aujourd'hui, ces équipements ne sont plus opérés manuellement mais via du contrôle numérique : interfaces homme-machine (IHM), contrôle à distance, RTU (Remote Terminal Units servant de passerelle vers le centre de contrôle), relais de protection et de contrôle (qui lisent tension, intensité et fréquence pour automatiser des décisions), postes d'ingénierie et équipements réseau. Interconnexion croissante et surface d'attaque Badro insiste sur la disparition de l'« air gap » d'autrefois. Les sous-stations sont désormais interconnectées avec les centres de contrôle, des tiers, des partenaires, parfois directement à internet, voire avec le cloud pour la maintenance prédictive. L'architecture type comprend un réseau IT, une DMZ séparant l'IT des systèmes industriels (OT), un centre de contrôle régional ou national (avec historians, serveurs SCADA, bases de données) relié aux sous-stations via VPN ou MPLS. Chaque sous-station est configurée différemment. Certaines connexions exploitent le Powerline Communication (PLC), qui utilise les câbles électriques existants pour transmettre des paquets TCP/IP. Cette multiplication des accès distants, justifiée par la difficulté d'intervenir physiquement dans des zones rurales, augmente considérablement le risque. Les protocoles courants incluent IEC 104, DNP3 et GOOSE. Scénario d'attaque en Red Team Badro détaille l'approche Red Team de Mandiant, précisant qu'un véritable attaquant ne prendrait pas les mêmes précautions. L'attaque commence généralement par un accès initial à l'IT via phishing ou exploitation de vulnérabilités. Suit une phase de reconnaissance : énumération du domaine, recherche de documentation sur les partages réseau et wikis, fichiers de configuration aux extensions spécifiques, mots de passe en clair (notamment de VPN) et schémas d'architecture. L'accès au réseau OT s'obtient ensuite via un VPN, l'exploitation de flux autorisés au firewall, ou la compromission d'hyperviseurs hébergeant des VM IT et OT. Plutôt qu'un scan NMAP destructeur, l'équipe privilégie une reconnaissance furtive : écoute passive du trafic, analyse des adresses IP et MAC, utilisation de logiciels légitimes d'opérateurs et de scripts spécialisés (Modbus, DNP3). Les vulnérabilités exploitées sont souvent basiques : mots de passe par défaut sur interfaces web, SSH ou Telnet, parfois sur des fonctionnalités cachées utilisées par les fournisseurs et inconnues des équipes. À partir d'une IHM, l'attaquant remonte vers les relais de protection, cibles plus insidieuses permettant des dégâts coûteux. Compromissions réelles Badro compare deux attaques réelles. En Ukraine en 2015, l'attaque a démarré sur l'IT par phishing (malware Black Energy via macro), récupéré des mots de passe VPN, accédé aux IHM, RTU et switchs Moxa, puis ouvert les disjoncteurs et déployé des firmwares corrompus pour empêcher la reprise de contrôle. En Pologne en décembre 2025, l'attaque a ciblé directement l'OT en exploitant une CVE connue mais non corrigée pendant plusieurs semaines sur des firewalls exposés à internet. L'attaquant s'est étendu aux RTU, relais, IHM et convertisseurs série-Ethernet via des comptes par défaut, a lancé des scans locaux, uploadé des firmwares corrompus, supprimé des fichiers système des relais et déployé des wipers sur les IHM. Le constat marquant : malgré dix ans d'écart, les mêmes vulnérabilités basiques persistent. Si l'entrée dans les réseaux IT s'est durcie, le côté OT reste comme l'IT « d'il y a très longtemps » — peu de mots de passe robustes, peu de contrôles — par préjugé d'isolement et par des pratiques de maintenance figées. Attaques avancées et défense Au-delà de la simple ouverture d'un disjoncteur, des attaques plus subtiles ciblent la logique des relais : modifier des valeurs de déclenchement, fausser une LED, ou altérer la fonction de réenclenchement automatique. Ces manipulations restent invisibles jusqu'à une condition rare (un arbre tombant sur une ligne) et sont très difficiles à diagnostiquer sans journalisation. Côté défense, Badro recommande : changer les mots de passe par défaut (et alerter si l'ancien est réutilisé), maintenir à jour les systèmes exposés à internet, restreindre les accès SSH/HTTP à des points spécifiques, contrôler les flux PLC venant des centrales, et surtout établir une visibilité réseau et événementielle à tous les niveaux. La prévisibilité des réseaux OT facilite la définition d'une baseline et la détection d'anomalies. L'approche consiste à décomposer chaque système, comprendre les fonctions et leurs interfaces internes/externes (par exemple le GPS spoofing), puis concevoir protections et détections adaptées — en protégeant avant tout le disjoncteur, élément le plus critique. Collaborateurs Nicolas-Loïc Fortin Georges Badro Crédits Montage par Intrasecure inc Locaux réels par Google Paris

Shawn Tierney meets up with Rylan Pyciak of Cleveland Automation Systems to discuss Control System Migrations and more in this episode of The Automation Podcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 272 Show Notes: Special thanks to Rylan for coming on the show, and to Cleveland Automation Systems for sponsoring this episode! Below you’ll find more information on what we discussed: Read “A Decade in the Automation Industry: Reflecting on 10 Years of Change” Read “The Lost Art of Industrial Troubleshooting: Why Real Problem Solving Still Matters” Explore “The ROI Calculator” – A Free Resource for Maximizing Your Investments with Data-Driven Insights Explore “How to Write a URS” – A Free Guide for Writing Specifications That Drive Automation Success Explore CAS Services – How Our Engineers Help You Keep Pace with Industry Changes Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Change management in manufacturing breaks down at the people layer, not the technology layer. This episode explains how engineering leaders actually drive adoption.Ronald Sherrod is a Staff Automation Engineer at Regeneron deploying a global event based architecture and Unified Namespace rollout across pharmaceutical operations. Ron, Vlad Romanov, and Dave Griffith dig into the parts of change management that rarely make it onto vendor decks. Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub for weekly conversations with industrial automation practitioners.Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/digital-transformation-in-manufacturingMastering the Unified Namespace for Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/mastering-unified-namespace-uns-a-guide-to-data-driven-manufacturing-transformationRon makes a point that is rarely stated this directly. The organization implementing the change is the one responsible for it. OEMs and system integrators deliver the box. Consultants help interpret it. Auditors do not call the machine builder when something goes wrong on the floor of a regulated pharmaceutical plant. They walk into the manufacturer and ask whether the audit trails hold up, whether the predicate rule was met, and whether the product is safe for patients. That responsibility cannot be outsourced, even when the technical work is.That framing changes how engineering managers should think about RFP scope. If the scope is loose, the integrator absorbs the risk and prices accordingly. If the scope is rigorous, bids come back tight and comparable. Negotiating power changes with the size of the buyer. A large pharmaceutical company can dictate hypercare windows, on site commissioning support, and structured training. A small to mid sized manufacturer often cannot, and the result is the metaphorical Ferrari on the plant floor that only ever gets used for grocery runs. Capital was deployed. The technology works. The operation never adopted it.The episode also goes deep on tribal knowledge and the industrial elder, the technical anchor who carries the institutional history of a unit or process and is often more valuable than the Excel file on a network drive. Senior operators know why a pipe was rerouted fifteen years ago and why a procedure looks irrational on paper but works perfectly in practice. With 59 percent of frontline skilled workers over 55 planning to retire within five years per the Schneider Electric 2024 workforce survey, capturing that knowledge is now a leadership priority, not an engineering task.On planning, Ron walks through how he runs user story workshops with operators, manufacturing leaders, engineers, and developers in the same room, producing a shared data contract that defines what information moves where, who needs it, and why. He cites a successful SCADA deployment that worked because the organization had inertia, operators had asked for the problem to be solved, and the team was closing a real gap rather than chasing a trend.Ronald Sherrod is a Staff Automation Engineer at Regeneron, a chemical engineer by training who moved from oil and gas into pharma and now works on event driven architecture, UNS, and robotics initiatives. Ron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdsherrod/Timestamps0:00 Welcome and Episode Intro1:50 Ron's Career: Oil and Gas to Pharma at Regeneron4:30 Defining Change Management and Its KPIs8:30 Change Management vs Operational Excellence11:50 Who Owns Change Management on Industrial Projects17:00 Negotiating Power: Large vs Small Manufacturers20:30 Why Capital Projects End Up Mothballed22:10 Tribal Knowledge and Learning From Operators26:00 Why Industrial Projects Fail29:00 The Industrial Elder and Passing Knowledge Through People31:30 AI Generated Documentation in Manufacturing35:50 Project Planning and the RFP Process47:50 A Successful SCADA Deployment and User Story Workshops54:30 Predictions, Career Advice, and Smart GlassesAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/Dave Griffith is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

Inductive Automation cofounders Colby Clegg and Carl Gould go deep on the origins of Ignition, the road to 8.3, and what AI means for industrial automation.Vlad and Dave host Colby Clegg, CEO, and Carl Gould, CTO, of Inductive Automation together for the first time to trace the full arc of the company. The story begins in 2003, when Sacramento systems integrator Steve Heckman brought Colby and Carl in to build the missing glue layer between OT data and modern IT tooling. What began as logging values into SQL databases became Factory PMI and eventually Ignition.A key thread is why Ignition broke through when larger automation vendors had superior distribution. Colby points to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. Incumbents could not match Inductive's unlimited per gateway pricing or partner with integrators because their own services groups competed with them. Carl adds the culture piece. Inductive refused to gate downloads, kept the module SDK open, made education free, and ran a public forum when competitors called it reckless, a posture they once called innovation without permission.Ignition 8.3 takes center stage, arriving after a deliberate five year gap from 8.1. Carl frames it as the completion of work that began with 8.0 in 2018. Gateway configuration is now stored in open, readable formats on disk, the gateway web interface was rewritten, and the platform supports orchestration, environmental separation, and infrastructure as code workflows Carl expects to become table stakes. The release also adds event streams, a revamped historian, and perspective drawing tools. For integrators still on 8.1, 8.3 is the version built for distributed deployments across many gateways.On AI, Carl is candid that the new MCP server module is intentionally a minimum viable product. It ships as a raw toolkit for integrators to author MCP primitives that expose Ignition data to agentic systems like Claude Code. First party MCP tools are coming, but Inductive wants to define the guardrails before shipping an API surface they will support for years. Carl frames AI as a new axis of software possibility, comparable to the shift from DOS to Windows. Colby ties it back to legacy SCADA conversion, framing the security and reliability gains as a national security issue. The episode closes with notes on the Inductive ecosystem, including a new collaboration with Tiger Data behind TimescaleDB, plus career advice on soft skills, context, and agentic coding tools.About Colby Clegg and Carl GouldColby Clegg is the CEO and cofounder of Inductive Automation, the California based company behind Ignition, the cross platform SCADA, MES, and IIoT software used by manufacturers and integrators worldwide. Carl Gould is the CTO and cofounder, leading product and engineering direction across Ignition. Both joined founder Steve Heckman in 2003 and have shaped the platform's open, integrator first philosophy ever since.Inductive Automation: https://www.inductiveautomation.comTimestamps0:00 Introduction1:00 Meet Colby Clegg and Carl Gould2:00 The origins of Inductive Automation in 20038:00 Going to market and the Innovator's Dilemma10:30 Innovation without permission as company culture18:50 Ignition 8.0 and the leap to Perspective26:00 The five year journey to 8.338:00 The MCP server module and AI in Ignition45:30 AI in the control plane and guardrails52:30 Tiger Data and the technology ecosystem1:02:30 Career advice for the next generation1:06:40 What is ripe for innovationReferencesIgnition Community Conference: https://icc.inductiveautomation.comAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to reduce the risk of modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladromanov/Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Colby Clegg on Ignition 8.3 and Industrial Automation: https://www.joltek.com/blog/industrial-automation-colby-clegg-ignition-8-3Connecting Allen Bradley PLCs to Ignition: https://www.joltek.com/blog/connecting-allen-bradley-plc-ignitionDave Griffith is a cohost of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

“These are purpose-built devices,” says Jake Jacoby, CEO of TELCLOUD. “They're UL listed, certified, tested, and designed specifically for this business.” In the latest episode of the TELCLOUD POTS and Shots Podcast Series, Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, speaks with Jacoby about the hardware that makes modern POTS replacement possible. Jacoby showcases two TELCLOUD devices: the POTScast 8 LTE PC228 LTE, which supports eight analog lines, and the POTScast 2 LTE PC222 LTE, which supports two. Both are designed to support legacy and life-safety systems such as elevators, fire alarms, security systems, fax lines, SCADA applications, modems, and emergency phones as copper lines are phased out. The POTScast platform combines analog support with modern LTE and WAN connectivity, including broadband, Wi-Fi as WAN, satellite, and cellular. Each device includes 24-hour battery backup, helping ensure that critical communications continue even when building power fails. Jacoby also explains TELCLOUD's modular design. Because cellular signal is often weak inside telecom rooms, TELCLOUD supports Power over Ethernet, allowing routers from partners such as Ericsson, Peplink, Digi, InHand, ATEL, and Seego to be placed up to 250 feet away for better reception. The episode closes with the Shots segment, featuring Herencia Historico Grand Reserve Extra Añejo, a five-year-aged, small-batch tequila from Jalisco presented in a distinctive handcrafted bottle. For more information, visit telcloud.com or call 844-900-2270.

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Phillip Swinson and Mike Stoup of ISA Tampa to discuss the upcoming Florida Automation Expo in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 271 Show Notes: Special thanks to our Members who support our work! To learn more about memberships, checkout this link. Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

VOV1 - Theo dự báo, phụ tải điện toàn tỉnh Ninh Bình năm 2026 có thể đạt tới 2.531MW, tăng 13% so với năm 2025. Chính vì vậy, Công ty Điện lực Ninh Bình đang tích cực triển khai đồng bộ nhiều giải pháp nhằm đảm bảo cung cấp điện an toàn, ổn định, phục vụ phát triển kinh tế, xã hội địa phương. # Để đáp ứng nhu cầu sử dụng điện tăng cao trong mùa nắng nóng, Công ty Điện lực Ninh Bình chú trọng áp dụng công nghệ chuyển đổi số vào công tác quản lý vận hành. Trung tâm điều khiển xa của công ty hoạt động liên tục 24/7, thực hiện giám sát, điều khiển toàn bộ các trạm biến áp 110kV không người trực và lưới điện trung áp thông qua hệ thống SCADA. Nhờ đó, các thông số vận hành được theo dõi liên tục theo thời gian thực, giúp phát hiện sớm các dấu hiệu bất thường, kịp thời đưa ra phương án xử lý, cô lập nhanh khu vực sự cố và khôi phục cấp điện trong thời gian ngắn nhất.Ông Nguyễn Văn Hùng, cán bộ quản lý Trạm 110Kv Yên Khánh, Công ty Điện lực Ninh Bình, cho biết: "Giờ đã tự động hóa trực ở đây chỉ là giám sát tại chỗ còn thao tác thì trên trung tâm điều khiển thực hiện. Hàng ngày các ca trực đến kiểm tra khu vực camera không giám sát được, so với trước cũng giảm nhân công và cũng an toàn hơn".

Episode Summary: In this episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, Benoy Thanjan speaks with Kellie MacPherson, Executive Vice President of Compliance and Risk at Radian Generation and a board member of the Solar Energy Industries Association. Kellie is one of the leading experts in NERC compliance and cybersecurity for renewable energy assets. In this timely conversation, she explains why the May 15, 2026 NERC deadline matters for solar, storage, and wind projects, especially inverter-based resources around 20 MW and above. Kellie breaks down what NERC is, why the registration threshold is changing, and why simply filling out a registration form is not enough. She explains that projects brought into scope need to be audit-ready, with policies, procedures, equipment settings, cybersecurity controls, and compliance programs in place. The conversation also covers cybersecurity risks facing renewable energy assets, the importance of basic cyber hygiene, the role of inverter settings and SCADA systems, and why renewable energy projects must be treated as critical infrastructure as they become a larger part of the electric grid. Benoy and Kellie also discuss her background, her work at Radian Generation, her role on the SEIA board, entrepreneurship, building a compliance business, and how she uses LinkedIn and podcasting to educate the industry.   Biographies Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, solar developer and consulting firm, and a strategic advisor to multiple cleantech startups. Over his career, Benoy has developed over 100 MWs of solar projects across the U.S., helped launch the first residential solar tax equity funds at Tesla, and brokered $45 million in Renewable Energy Credits (“REC”) transactions. Prior to founding Reneu Energy, Benoy was the Environmental Commodities Trader in Tesla's Project Finance Group, where he managed one of the largest environmental commodities portfolios. He originated REC trades and co-developed a monetization and hedging strategy with senior leadership to enter the East Coast market. As Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners, Benoy crafted project finance solutions for commercial-scale solar portfolios. His role at Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund with 125 MWs of U.S. renewable assets, involved evaluating investment opportunities and maximizing returns. He also played a key role in the sale of the firm's renewable portfolio. Earlier in his career, Benoy worked in Energy Structured Finance at Deloitte & Touche and Financial Advisory Services at Ernst & Young, following an internship on the trading floor at D.E. Shaw & Co., a multi billion dollar hedge fund. Benoy holds an MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from NYU Stern, where he was an Alumni Scholar.   Guest Information Kellie MacPherson Kellie MacPherson is Executive Vice President of Compliance and Risk at Radian Generation and a board member of the Solar Energy Industries Association. She has deep experience in NERC compliance, cybersecurity, renewable energy operations, and grid reliability. At Radian Generation, Kellie leads compliance and risk services for renewable energy owners, developers, and operators.   Stay Connected: Benoy Thanjan Email: info@reneuenergy.com  LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com Website: https://www.solarmaverickpodcast.com/   Kellie MacPherson LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelliemacpherson/ Website: https://www.radiangen.com
 Radian Generation podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/navigating-the-grid/id1697573026   Solar Maverick Podcast Updates In this episode, Benoy Thanjan shares key updates with the Solar Maverick community, including upcoming events, speaking engagements, and ways to stay connected. Benoy is hosting the Summer Solstice Fundraiser on June 4th in Jersey City at Hudson Hall, bringing together the clean energy community for an evening of networking and impact. The event supports Let's Share the Sun, a nonprofit delivering solar and energy storage solutions to underserved communities in Puerto Rico, including families with critical 24 hour energy needs. The event will run from 6 PM to 10 PM and includes food, networking, and a special program at 8 PM featuring insights from the Let's Share the Sun team, delegation participants, and event sponsors.  This will be Benoy's third delegation in the past year, and he highlights the importance of meeting beneficiaries firsthand and seeing how solar is transforming lives. Those interested in attending or sponsoring are encouraged to reach out directly or register here:  https://luma.com/jl734ggi On May 14, Benoy will be speaking at the ACORE Finance Forum 2026 in New York City on a panel focused on scaling behind the meter solar and storage for commercial and industrial and digital infrastructure. The discussion will explore the growing demand for energy driven by AI and data centers. https://acore.org/events/finance-forum/ Listeners can also visit www.solarmaverickpodcast.com to explore recent episodes and insights from leaders across the solar, storage, and energy industries.   Please provide 5 star reviews      If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and share the Solar Maverick Podcast so more people can learn how to accelerate the clean energy transition.    Reneu Energy Reneu Energy provides expert consulting across solar and storage project development, financing, energy strategy, and environmental commodities. Our team helps clients originate, structure, and execute opportunities in community solar, C&I, utility-scale, and renewable energy credit markets. Email us at info@reneuenergy.com to learn more.            

Change management decides whether your MES or digital transformation project lasts, or quietly gets shut off six months after go live.Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith sit down with Logan Terry, who leads digital transformation at LSI, to dig into change management as the deciding factor in any automation or MES rollout. Logan defines change management as a methodical approach to moving an individual, team, or organization from a current state to a desired future state. The closer a system sits to where decisions are actually made, the more change management it requires, which is why MES is the single hardest place to land a project successfully.Much of the episode digs into why change management is rarely scoped properly. In competitive RFPs, the integrator who includes a robust change management line item often loses to the lowest bid, and end users frequently do not know how to evaluate that line item even when it is offered. Logan starts every client engagement with a direct question: what does your continuous improvement practice look like internally? If the client cannot sustain the change after handover, the project is on borrowed time no matter how clean the FAT and SAT looked.Logan walks through one of the most useful failure stories on the show this year. His team delivered a technically perfect OEE dashboard for a production line. Six to nine months later, every terminal was shut off. The postmortem surfaced two missed details. Maintenance was never folded into the design, and a single failed photo eye broke throughput calculations with no manual reconciliation path, which destroyed operator trust in the data. The second miss was behavioral. Showing a 30 percent OEE against a 90 percent ideal demotivates the floor, while reframing the same number as 80 percent of a realistic 36 percent target turned out to be a cleaner motivator.Looking forward, Logan sees vendors moving away from monolithic 14 function MES suites toward modular, use case specific deployments, which compresses change management scope from twenty five workflows to five or six. On AI, he argues that managing generative agents in production is closer to managing a team of people than managing software, with continuous validation replacing one time qualification. He cites the line that AI does not make bad data worse, it makes it more convincing. LSI now uses AI assisted coding agents and React based prototypes to shrink design cycles from three or four weeks of Figma work down to three or four days.About Logan TerryLogan Terry leads digital transformation at LSI, a multinational systems integrator with roughly 400 resources across 13 North American locations and offices in Asia Pacific. A mechanical engineer by training, Logan spent a decade in PLC, HMI, and SCADA development before moving into digital transformation consulting and joining LSI in late 2024. His work spans advanced SCADA, MES, analytics, and BI integrations.LSI: https://www.logicalsysinc.com/Timestamps0:00 Introduction2:15 Logan's background and the LSI digital transformation practice7:25 Defining change management9:00 Why MES requires the most change management13:00 How young engineers stumble into change management24:30 Starting with decisions and workflows before technology35:00 Internal CI capability as a project gating factor43:30 OEE dashboard turned off six months after go live46:30 Behavioral psychology of how operators read numbers54:50 Modular MES replacing monolithic platforms58:00 Generative AI and continuous validation1:11:00 AI assisted prototyping shrinking design cyclesAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirromanov/Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/digital-transformation-in-manufacturingManufacturing Execution Systems and Business Strategy: https://www.joltek.com/blog/manufacturing-execution-systems-business-strategyDave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/Subscribe to Manufacturing Hub: https://www.manufacturinghub.liveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/manufacturing-hub-networkYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ManufacturingHub

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Christine Bush of Schneider Electric to discuss What’s New and Next in Robotics in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 270 Show Notes: Special thanks goes out to Christine Bush of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode. Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Enjoying the content? Let us know your feedback!Today's episode is one of those stories that really does hit home. Not a bank breach. Not some government leak. I want to talk about the water coming out of your tap.On March 14th, 2026, hackers dropped ransomware on a water treatment plant in Minot, North Dakota. Staff walked in that morning, saw a ransom note sitting on a server screen, and had to unplug the whole thing. For the next sixteen hours, plant operators were physically walking through the facility, reading gauges by hand — old school, the way it was done decades ago — while the FBI got the call.The city says the water stayed safe. Nobody got sick. But this incident ripped the cover off a problem the cybersecurity community has been warning about for years: water infrastructure is dangerously exposed. And most people have no idea.Today I want to unpack what happened in Minot, why water utilities are such soft targets, what SCADA systems actually are and why they are so difficult to defend, and what defenders and regulators are doing — and should be doing — about all of this.- https://therecord.media: North Dakota Ransomware Water Plant- https://www.cisa.gov: CISA — Adapting Zero Trust Principles to Operational TechnologyBe sure to subscribe!  You can also stream from https://yusufonsecurity.comIn there, you will find a list of all previous episodes in there too.

Joseph Blackman sat down with Ignatius Jean, the Executive Director of CAWASA, to discuss the complex landscape of regional water management across the Caribbean. Ignatius Jean detailed CAWASA's vital role in supporting 12 Caribbean water utilities through networking, training, and strategic partnerships with organizations like the Caribbean Development Bank and UN Habitat. The conversation explored the geographic diversity of the region—ranging from desalination in the north to mountainous surface water in the south—and the governance hurdles utilities face when balancing political demands for access with the reality of aging infrastructure. Key talking points included the development of the Caribbean Water Utilities Insurance Composite to build resilience, the impact of climate change on water scarcity, and the urgent need to integrate new technologies like SCADA and AI through professional certification. Ignatius Jean also addressed the workforce challenge of attracting young talent to a rewarding field where the mission of public health often outweighs the competition of higher-paying industries. Give the show a listen and remember to thank your local Public Works Professionals.

Industrial AI is moving past the chatbot phase. From the Hannover Messe show floor to system integration workflows, here's what end users actually want now.Vlad just returned from his first Hannover Messe, the largest industrial automation and manufacturing trade show in Europe. The takeaway that defined the week was a shift in how end users open conversations. A year ago, every booth visit started with the question, do you have AI? This year every vendor has some flavor of AI, so the question has flipped back to the one that actually matters. How does your product solve a specific problem in my plant? Vlad and Dave unpack what that shift means for vendors, integrators, and the end users buying these tools.On the end user side, the reality is mixed. Most knowledge workers in manufacturing have access to Microsoft Copilot and use it for better emails and meeting notes. Everything else is still mostly experimentation. While auditing PLC and SCADA logic on a recent project, Vlad expected the customer to insist on a hardened on premise model with a Dell IPC and dedicated GPUs. Instead, they shrugged and said put it in ChatGPT, the boilerplate logic has no real IP. Data governance on the carpeted side of the business is mature. On the OT side, it barely exists, and that gap matters as more plant floor data flows toward AI tools.For systems integrators, AI is compressing timelines on slow, repetitive work. Tag validation, electrical drawing automation, screenshot to bill of materials extraction, and functional spec to PLC starting points are all in active development. The tradeoff is that some of these tools save four weeks of manual auditing but require a couple of weeks to set up correctly, and a probabilistic LLM still demands human signoff on safety and control logic. Senior engineers benefit most because they already know what good output looks like. The bigger industry question is what happens to the junior to senior pipeline if entry level work disappears.Hardware tells a different story. Moore's Law, first proposed in 1965, held for about 60 years before chip density at three nanometers and heat budgets broke the cost curve. GPUs on the consumer side have been roughly stagnant since the Nvidia 30 series. On the industrial side, demand for radical hardware change has been low. PLCs, switches, IO modules, and field protocols look much like they did twenty years ago. IO Link, the protocol that should be a baseline for any Industry 4.0 deployment, was founded in 2006. Image recognition has unlocked pick and place applications that used to be too expensive to engineer the traditional way.The workforce thread runs underneath all of this. UPS recently negotiated voluntary buyouts of roughly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per driver to remove tens of thousands of positions, while large technology firms continue to lay off staff and reinvest in data centers.Timestamps0:00 Introduction1:50 Hannover Messe scale, halls, and country delegations7:20 Booth diversity from startups to hyperscalers and the German military12:20 Why end users have stopped asking, do you have AI19:00 The 1% on the bleeding edge versus the rest of industry25:50 End users sending boilerplate PLC code through ChatGPT29:20 Data governance on the OT side32:50 AI inside systems integration workflows39:50 Workforce shifts: UPS buyouts, FAANG layoffs, and reskilling47:20 Hardware innovation, Moore's Law, and the industrial side59:50 SCADA, MES, ERP, and AI generated dashboards1:03:30 Upcoming shows: Automate 2026, ICC, and moreReferencesHannover Messe: https://www.hannover-messe.deAutomate 2026: https://www.automateshow.comIgnition Community Conference: https://icc.inductiveautomation.comRockwell Automation Fair: https://www.rockwellautomation.com/automationfairAbout Your HostsVladimir Romanov is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and the founder of Joltek, an independent manufacturing and industrial automation consulting firm specializing in modernization strategy, digital transformation, and workforce development. Joltek works with manufacturers and investors to de-risk modernization and build the internal capability to sustain results.Connect with Vlad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirromanov/Want to go deeper? Vlad and the team at Joltek have covered related topics here:Edge Computing, AI, and the Value of Manufacturing Data: https://www.joltek.com/blog/edge-computing-ai-value-manufacturing-dataSystems Integrators in Manufacturing: https://www.joltek.com/blog/system-integratorsDave Griffith is a co-host of The Manufacturing Hub Podcast and founder of Capelin Solutions, an industrial automation firm helping manufacturers adopt smart manufacturing technology. He brings 15 years of experience in industrial automation and digital transformation.Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegriffith23/

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation to learn about their new Modular PLCs in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 269 Show Notes: Special thanks to Chuck Ridgeway of Horner Automation for coming on the show, and to Horner Automation for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about these products, please see the below links: Horner Automation’s YouTube Channel Horner Automation’s LinkedIn Horner Automation’s Modular Controllers Horner Automation’s OCS360 Cloud Service Horner Automation’s Academic Program Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Felipe Polido of Reframe Systems to learn how they are using Automation to change the process of building homes in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA/join. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast, Free Edition: Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here. Watch the Members’ Extended Edition: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Joseph Blackman welcomed Gerry Vasquez, the water quality and systems lead operator for the city of South Gate, California, to the podcast where Gerry described his role managing water production, regulatory compliance, and customer service for a dense community of 89,000 residents. Gerry discussed his daily routine of morning tailgate meetings and SCADA monitoring, as well as the unique challenges of maintaining water infrastructure in an urban environment, such as addressing copper theft from backflow devices and managing "hit hydrants" due to heavy traffic. Key talking points included Gerry's career journey inspired by the 2008 recession and a mentor's advice to enter essential utilities, his transition from field work to office leadership, and his commitment to continuous improvement through involvement in organizations like the AWWA. Gerry also emphasized the importance of public works professionals as 24/7 first responders and shared motivational advice for others to grow by becoming "comfortable with being uncomfortable". Give the show a listen and remember to thank your local Public Works Professionals.

Something shifted for us this year: the more we commit to doing less, the more we're actually building. Nikki, Courtney, and Allie get together for a real catch-up on work, life, and what's next for Automation Ladies, with stories that range from bigger robotics and better work-life balance to a brand-new view outside a bayou window in Louisiana.We also dig into OT SCADA CON and why it keeps feeling more like a community than a conference. OT SCADA CON runs July 22-24 at the Endress+Hauser Houston Campus in Pearland (south of Houston), and we share what's new this year: fresh speakers, updated sections, the same 30-minute talk format, and the kind of fun that makes people stay late (taco trucks and karaoke included). If you care about operational technology, industrial automation, controls engineering, and modern data skills, you'll especially want the part about databases and process historians and why that knowledge still runs so much of industry.Then we get practical about AI in manufacturing. No hype, no magic: we talk about where tools like Claude and OpenAI Whisper are finally saving real time, from generating documentation and polishing write-ups to building a custom raffle app that runs the way we want. We also lay out the guardrails we take seriously: review everything, don't leak sensitive information, and follow your company AI policy.We wrap with where you can find us at Automate and other events, how we're expanding the show with more correspondents, and our push for more live demo episodes (including a PID loop tuning software demo). Subscribe, share this with an automation friend, and leave a review so more people can find women-led conversations in industrial automation.Support the show__________________________________________________________________

Send us Fan MailCheck us out at:  https://www.cisspcybertraining.com/Get access to 360 FREE CISSP Questions:  https://www.cisspcybertraining.com/offers/dzHKVcDB/checkoutGet access to my FREE CISSP Self-Study Essentials Videos:  https://www.cisspcybertraining.com/offers/KzBKKouvA single disgruntled admin can do more damage with “normal” IT tools than many attackers can with malware, and that reality changes how we should think about both security and careers. I start with a true insider attack story where legitimate administrative access was used to lock out users, disrupt operations, and attempt extortion, then I break down the practical controls that reduce insider threat risk: least privilege, immutable backups, privileged activity alerting, and real segregation of duties.From there, I share the cybersecurity career roadmap most people never get. Instead of pushing everyone into the same crowded paths, I talk through high-demand roles with less competition, especially GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) and OT/ICS security. If you're breaking into cyber, we cover how risk assessments, policy writing, audit coordination, and vendor risk management can become your unfair advantage, even with a non-traditional background. If you're drawn to critical infrastructure, we dig into why IT plus OT security skills are rare, how to start learning SCADA and industrial environments, and why the salary upside is real.For mid-career and senior pros, we shift into what actually unlocks leadership: risk quantification, FAIR methodology, supply chain security, cloud security architecture, and speaking the language of the board through metrics and a risk register. If you want to move toward CISO or virtual CISO work, this is about becoming a business risk advisor, not just the person who runs tools. Subscribe, share this with a friend building their cyber career, and leave a review. What role are you aiming for next?Gain exclusive access to 360 FREE CISSP Practice Questions at FreeCISSPQuestions.com and have them delivered directly to your inbox!  Don't miss this valuable opportunity to strengthen your CISSP exam preparation and boost your chances of certification success. Join now and start your journey toward CISSP mastery today!

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Mohua Ghosh of Schneider Electric to learn about their AI Assistant for PLC Code Generation in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA join. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast, Free Edition: Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here. Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Vestas hasn’t shared SCADA data after a South Korea turbine collapse, citing an expired warranty. Plus workers at Nordex in Iowa are concerned about tariffs. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Transcript The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strikeTape.com. And now your hosts. Allen Hall Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes. And Fergus is here. Hi. Welcome to our top story. This week is a wind turbine collapse that happened in South Korea at the Changpo Wind Power Complex in Yeongdeok, and the turbine lost a blade. There’s some video here that was recorded when the turbine collapsed, so it happened a couple of months ago, and investigators have been trying to determine the cause of that failure. They’re having a little bit of difficulty because they would like to access the SCADA system of that turbine because that would have a lot of more information about [00:01:00] how the tower was operating at that particular moment. And they’re having trouble in that it is a Vestas turbine and Vestas has not released the SCADA data and it’s citing an expired warranty. Now, Rosemary, this leads to a lot of problems because obviously there’s a ton of sensors in wind turbines today, and they can help determine causes of failures pretty rapidly. But without it, you’re just really looking at video in this particular collapse. Rosemary Barnes It’s amazing that you can look at video. The video is far more useful than the SCADA data is, probably. Um, yeah, it’s, well, I’ve never actually, like, I’ve worked on a lot of RCAs and I’ve never actually got to see video footage of the incident, so that’s actually really cool that they’ve got this dash cam footage. Looking at it now, you can, um, see the lower, probably two thirds of the turbine tower, so you can see the blades coming past. I wish the video would start just like 10 seconds earlier. [00:02:00] Um, because maybe you can see a bit of wobble in the tower. You can see that one of the blades is already missing a tip, or the tip kind of flies off anyway, so maybe it was bent. So definitely looks to me like the root cause was that there was a blade failure. The, um, part of the blade broke off, caused a rotor imbalance, which then meant that one of the blades hit the tower and then it’s really easy for a tower to buckle once it’s got some damage in it. So that, that in itself, like, that’s not an uncommon scenario. Um, and yeah, for sure, like you would ask for the SCADA data, but, uh, I don’t think it’s accurate that they’re saying. There must have been a faulty sensor or something because when there’s a rotor imbalance, it should stop, um, stop the turbine. But I do know from experience, it does not always stop the turbine quickly enough to stop this happening. So, um, I’m not, I’m not sure that the SCADA data would tell you anything [00:03:00] groundbreaking. However, I think it is very interesting Vestas are very publicly not sharing because it’s out of warranty because to me, access to the SCADA data is a key part of being able to operate your turbine safely. And you don’t sell a turbine — like you might sell a turbine with a two year warranty, sure, but that doesn’t mean that you are selling a turbine that can only be operated safely for two years. That’s just like absolutely insane and contrary to — at least a lot of the world’s laws, there’s laws around, you know, how safely you can operate equipment, and especially energy generation assets have specific laws about that. You have to be able to operate them safely and yeah, from what we can see here, like you can’t get access to the SCADA data. So in, in this case, I don’t know if there was a problem with the turbine controller that contributed to this problem. I, I mean, I’m, I’m always a bit surprised that a turbine can shake itself apart and it’s not, you know, there isn’t a sensor in there that can stop it in time to stop the collapse because if you take just the population of turbines that have collapsed, which is, you know, [00:04:00] very, very few from considering the whole global population, but looking at those ones that have collapsed, it’s pretty common way that it happens is from, um, part of a blade falling off and then a rotor imbalance causing the tower to, um, start wobbling and the blades to hit the tower. Allen Hall So would it be in the control laws, Rosemary, where the shutdown would happen in terms of detecting vibration or motion? Maybe swing of the tower? Would that would then drive a safety circuit? Rosemary Barnes At a certain, at a certain level? Um, ’cause all of those, like the rotor does get in a bit of imbalance. The tower does accelerate in, you know, four and a half side to side, that all happens and can happen like quite, quite a lot as well. Like if you’re inside a wind turbine and when they stop it, um, then it makes like a very noticeable shudder right as that stops. And if you do an emergency stop, um, hopefully not while, you know, hopefully you’re not inside the tower when it goes from full, um, operation [00:05:00] to stopping as soon as, as quickly as possible. But that does make a big, um, jump. So, you know, like it’s not shutting down every time that there’s some kind of imbalance or, um, tower acceleration. But yeah, it just, the thing is, it’s, you just, they’re big and heavy, right? And there’s just so much inertia in the system that things can’t happen that fast. Like even if the control system can respond really quickly, it doesn’t mean that it can respond — like it can actually physically stop things before it’s had, you know, even one rotation to hit the tower, um, can be enough. What’s really interesting is that it could be a control system problem, right? That would — that they have now learned. There’s some faulty logic they need to replace it across the wind farm. But Vestas is saying, we’re not gonna tell you if that’s the case or not, because you can’t access this data. And I think that that is really interesting because like I’m constantly frustrated by how little, um, cooperation you can get for root cause analysis and like you can [00:06:00] understand it, no one wants to share their data, but it is in theory covered by laws, at least in, uh, Australian states. You, you know, that you, you’re required to provide information to operate the assets safely for its lifetime. And I, it just, to me is really highlighting that that’s not the case. It’s, it’s not an unusual situation, is kind of what I’m saying. Um, it’s very common that they don’t wanna cooperate, and I’m surprised that they’re happy to say that so, so publicly. Allen Hall Well, the threshold needs to be set somewhere when investigators are looking into an accident like this. I always think you try to help the investigators as much as you can. In the airplane world when there’s an accident, that’s one of the first things that happens is they go pull all the data from the aircraft and then go search through it and see what happened. In the wind turbine world, that’s not necessarily the case, but there is a lot of data at all the OEMs, and it’s not necessarily locked into the turbine. It’s usually remote access, so it would be very easy to give access to [00:07:00] investigators. So it’s, it’s curious to me as to why there’s any hesitation at all if the Korean investigators wanna see the data, just give it to ’em. Rosemary Barnes Yeah. Especially because like from just the brief look that I’ve had, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna turn out that there’s some problem with the turbine controller. If Vestas aren’t to blame, it would be much easier for them to just privately release the data under an NDA and say, look, hey, it’s nothing. It’s not here. But I will say that, um, in the RCAs that I’ve worked on, safety regulators can compel data from the owner and the operator, but it’s not so clear that they have the right to get data from the manufacturer. When you’ve got full service agreements, you can get that because the manufacturer is the operator. But in this case, if Vestas had nothing to do with the operation, then like, I don’t know what the laws are in South Korea, but it is possible at least that they don’t have any right to compel Vestas for the data. Um, for the data. And I think that [00:08:00] is wrong. And, um, this, you know, will hopefully highlight to people, safety regulators around the world — hey, you know, do we need to be changing this regulation a little bit to make sure that when you sell a wind turbine, or you know, any, anything else, any other big bit of industrial equipment, when you sell it, you have to — you have to provide enough information for the life of the wind turbine to operate it safely. Doesn’t mean you need to give away all your trade secrets, but it needs to be safe. And part of that is when you have a catastrophic failure, you do need to make sure that this is not gonna repeat itself across the whole wind farm or across, you know, every turbine of this type in the world. That’s why you do a root cause analysis after the fact. Like you’re not saving this turbine. It’s in like absolute pieces on the ground, right? Like the most value you’ll ever get out of this turbine again is probably recycling the steel. Um, that’ll be the most value. So you don’t do the root cause analysis for the lost asset. You do it to make sure that you understand what’s happened and you are [00:09:00] able to, um, know ahead of time if this is a risk for future assets. Um, and you can’t, yeah, you cannot do that if you don’t have all the data. So, yeah. Very interesting. Allen Hall Like we talked about at the WOMA conference a few months ago, access to SCADA data is paramount for a lot of operators. And, uh, when contracts are assigned, a lot of times that is not lined into the contract — that I will have full access to the SCADA data — and it can be, which I think a lot of operators don’t even consider. So that’s a negotiated item for most contracts and most wind turbine purchases. Especially in Europe now with the new data laws in Europe. I think all the OEMs have to provide that data regardless if there’s an accident or not. You just have — yeah, I think they have to give full access. The means of doing it, I think it’s being implemented this year. Well, it sounds like talking to operators they are just getting some of that data, but once that door opens in Europe, do you think the rest of the world will probably follow? Rosemary Barnes Yeah, I mean, it’s one thing, like they don’t want you reverse engineering their [00:10:00] IP. That’s, that’s basically it. All their trade secrets. Allen Hall Could you do that? I mean, that, that, that’s always the, the, the real issue, right? So I hear that quite a bit from OEMs. We don’t want you to reverse engineer the turbine, but can you do that from the SCADA data? That seems like an impossible task. Rosemary Barnes I also don’t think that anybody is doing anything that tricky, that it’s really gonna be worth the, the effort, you know. And it’s one thing, like it’s annoying — you can’t access the control system. Um, so you can’t make improvements, you know, like you could get a bit more yield out of your wind farm if you can start doing things like wake steering or, you know, changing the speed of operation to, um, you know, depending on environmental conditions, and those, like you, you can improve your operations a bit from that. And so it’s been annoying that you, you can’t actually do those cool projects because you can’t get into the control system. And you know, there exist companies that will come in and take a, a, you know, 10-year-old wind turbine, rip out the control system, put in a new [00:11:00] one, and people go through that whole painful, expensive process just so that they can get control over operation and the data. And that’s, that’s annoying. And, you know, maybe getting an extra, you know, I don’t know, two or 3% AEP out of your wind farm is a big deal. But, um, you know, that’s on the one hand. But on the other hand, when it comes to being able to safely operate your asset, it just shouldn’t be any question. You know? And I don’t know why a manufacturer would be really digging their heels in on this because like I do see, and I hope that this is the kind of incident that makes safety regulators go, hey, you know, this isn’t, this isn’t cool. This is not okay, that we don’t have the information we need to make sure that these turbines are safe across the rest of the, um, the country, you know. Like an overzealous safety regulator could easily be like, oh, okay, well we don’t have a root cause, we can’t rule out that there’s not a fleet-wide problem — all of these Vestas turbines across, um, South [00:12:00] Korea have to shut down now. You know, like that, that is a potential outcome that could happen. That would be terrible for Vestas. Um, so I just don’t understand why they don’t just give the data. — SPONSOR: PES WIND MAGAZINE — Allen Hall As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial — and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PESwind.com today. Allen Hall Well, a wind turbine factory in West Branch, Iowa just reopened after sitting idle for 12 years and already its workers are worried about tariffs. Nordex restarted the facility in July of last year to manufacture nacelles and drivetrains for the American and Canadian markets. [00:13:00] Orders are strong for this Nordex facility. Alliant Energy awarded Nordex contracts for up to 190 turbines — that’s pretty good — representing over 1,060 megawatts of capacity, the largest single award in the company’s 25-year history in American operations. Uh, but the concerns at the Nordex facility at the moment have to do with tariffs, where a lot of the components that are coming into the factory are running into hefty tariffs, which makes the margins really tough for Nordex to operate that plant. Uh, so the tax advantages of having a facility in the United States are really being offset by some of these extra taxes that are being levied on wind turbine components. Uh, this is not the only facility in Iowa that must be thinking hard about this. The TPI facility in Iowa that is going through the bankruptcy hearings at the moment. [00:14:00] There’s an offer from a company to buy that facility, or acquire that facility, and a couple of the TPI facilities down in Mexico. As it stands, GE is backing the Iowa plant in case those initial purchases of those factories fall through — GE would like to have the Iowa factory, most likely for tax purposes, because some of the projects probably depend upon the tax advantages of building particularly blades and large components like nacelles in the US. So Iowa is a real key here. The restart and some of the increased operations in the United States are indicative of how things are going, I think, globally in the wind energy world, where factories have been closed or they’ve been considering closing a number of factories in Europe and trying to find key places to manufacture components where maybe the tariffs are lower or the operational costs are lower, or [00:15:00] labor costs are lower. Uh, we’re seeing a real big shuffle at the moment. Do you think that this is gonna settle up very quickly? ‘Cause it does seem like there is a migration to the UK because of the amount of money being spent in the United Kingdom, and a migration out of Northern Europe, and probably a migration out of America over time. Rosemary Barnes I mean, it’s interesting how much governments are playing a role. You know, government policies are playing a role in where manufacturing is happening. Um, I think it’s not even like you would’ve said until really recently that you put factories where labor is cheap. And, you know, for the really big components, you want to get roughly close to where the final project is, or at least close to a port so that you can get on a ship and, you know, ’cause um, overland transport is an issue. Um, but now I don’t even think that the labor is the main factor anymore, and maybe even [00:16:00] the geographical location in the world is not even the biggest issue now. It’s about, you know, where are the favorable conditions, and whether that’s because, you know, because of tariffs. And so I do think that we see in the UK the biggest thing that they have — it’s certainly not cheap labor, right? Um, it is, it’s pretty well located for a lot of projects. Um, the UK government has got a good, um, plan for, you know, a decade or more into the future. Right. You know, they’ve also executed on some of those, so we know that it’s not all just talk, and they’ve got some pretty good certainty about these projects and how the economics are going to work out. Allen Hall The UK is a good example of, of maybe a process that’s going well at the moment, but the long-term prospects I think is where everybody gets a little bit nervous. This thing that happened in America like two years ago where everybody was really excited about creating new factories — and then we get down the line a little bit and now we’re not happy to have factories. It really depends upon how [00:17:00] dedicated the government is and how many, uh, barriers they put in to prevent the money from going away. Right? When you lock in long-term funding where it doesn’t put the projects at risk, then it’s great, but if it can be wiped away by the next administration or just the passage of a single bill, then it just makes it really risky. Rosemary Barnes I think I just wanted to make the point that, you know, labor is expensive in the UK, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have manufacturing, even, you know, like wind turbine blades at least are a very labor intensive thing to manufacture compared to most things these days. Um, but even then it’s not the most important thing anymore. So, you know, um, any country has the ability to put in place the ingredients that would be needed to get, uh, manufacturing of wind turbines in their own country. Um, so, you know, it’s a choice to a large extent, but people are scared to commit long term. You know, the manufacturers are scared to [00:18:00] commit a factory. Countries are scared to commit to a pipeline ’cause they don’t wanna be, you know, interfering in the market. But it’s just, it’s a big lumpy market that just makes it hard for people to want to invest and commit. And so, you know, if you want that manufacturing in your country, then you can, you can get it if you give confidence. Allen Hall At what point do you make decisions about manufacturing for wind turbines or even solar panels in your country with what’s happening in the Middle East? Does that really change the dynamic quite a bit, where the incremental cost delta of making it in-country is totally worth it with the knowledge that you’ll be free of all, uh, connections to the Middle East and the turmoil that does seem to happen there every couple of years. Rosemary Barnes It’s not like a direct enough link that it’s gonna make people make that decision overnight. We’re not buying our wind turbines from the Middle East currently, right? So, you know, existing turbine supply chain. So I think [00:19:00] it could definitely make you wanna turn up the pace at which you buy wind turbines and install them. And if you’ve got, you know, um, bigger pipelines, then it nudges you more and more towards local manufacturing. I guess that people are nervous in general of relying on other supply chains, um, or supply chains from overseas, but it’s a huge difference between, you know, relying on liquid fuels, which are, you know, arriving every day and you need them to continue arriving every day. And if one strait gets closed and that’s a 20% decline in the, you know, volume that can be moved around — you know, try and take 20% of, um, demand out of the system — and that’s obviously huge. But if you had the same thing, if it was wind turbine blades being transported through the strait, then, um, you know, it’d be no new wind farms [00:20:00] this year. It wouldn’t be that all of your existing wind turbines have to be turned off — like they keep on running. It’s just that the future doesn’t grow as fast as you would like it to. So I think it’s just like a much slower timeframe for shocks if you are relying on, um, wind turbines and solar panels, even if they’re made overseas. I still think that it is worth considering, like for security, like if you got into a big long war, and especially with, um, China because they’re the ones that make most of, uh, solar panels and batteries — at least, not wind turbines, although they are a major manufacturer, they’re not the majority for projects outside of China. Most countries are investing in some, you know, local capability to make things, you know, like Australia is investing in capacity to make solar panels, even though we know that we’ll never make them as cheap as China. The US also has done a lot to encourage local manufacturing of solar panels. Um, everybody is [00:21:00] trying to make batteries. Um, so yeah, I think we are doing that. I heard on a podcast, I think it was the Energy Transition Show, reference to, you know, every country does their study about what is net zero gonna cost. Um, and whatever the study was done in the UK, the amount that the energy transition was gonna cost — net zero by 2050, what is the cost to the economy — um, and it was, I can’t remember the number, some amount of trillions. They pointed out that that is the same as one crisis. Like what we’re going through now costs about that same amount of money. Um, you know, one fuel crisis. So it’s like if you can save yourself from one crisis, um, yeah, if you can insulate yourself from one crisis, it’s paid for itself. Do we really think that in the next 24 years — and it’s not just over 24 years, it’s, you know, it’s forever after that — do you think that there’s only gonna be one? No way. There’s gonna be lots. So I’m hopeful that, [00:22:00] um, this crisis is gonna get people thinking, hey, we can insure against this sort of thing by electrifying, um, that, you know, we’ve had oil shocks before. We’ll have them again in the future. I mean, in Australia, like, I’ve heard international commentary saying things like, you know, Australia will be a winner out of this because we’re such a big exporter of LNG. But in reality in Australia, there are petrol stations that don’t have any diesel — um, like, you know, lots of them. So people with diesel cars are driving around and around and around to, um, you know, find somewhere where they can buy fuel. And in a just delicious piece of irony, like back two or three elections ago, um, the conservative party was having this point of difference with the more progressive party — the Labor party — that, you know, they wanted to promote EVs, and the coalition said they’re gonna ruin your weekend. They’re gonna end, they’re gonna end the [00:23:00] weekend, I think was the saying, because yeah, like EVs, you can’t go camping or whatever with an EV. And now we’ve got the Easter long weekend and people are legitimately saying I can’t find fuel to drive to my plans for the Easter weekend. So now it’s diesel specifically — you know, fossil fuel cars in general — that are ending the weekend. You know, people have had their weekend ended by, um, not having an EV this time around. So I think that it should really reframe people’s thinking, refocus us. Allen Hall But isn’t that what eventually happens — is that the realism hits, and so no matter what your ideology is or your thought process, you still have to deal with what’s happening on the ground at any particular moment. And this is not the first time these events have happened, they’re not gonna be the last time that they’ve happened. Your best mode of operation is to decouple from these events as much as [00:24:00] you can. Where I think the UK is headed. Obviously Norway has, in a sense, decoupled itself because of the amount of electric vehicles that it has and the natural resources that it has. Honestly, every country — every major country — if they can decouple, is going to try to decouple. Just to stop, uh, because it has seemed like in the United States, well, since the 1970s, it’s just been this rocky road. And the discussion — at least you hear discussions here now more recently about what are we doing? We just keep doing the same thing and we end up with these trillion dollar spends to create some new future, and the future never really shifts all that much. Should we be involving ourselves in this? In terms of energy production, I think you see more of a push for more independent energy production and decoupling, which I think Australia’s headed to and could do. The UK is [00:25:00] trying to do it, and other countries are trying to do it. If you have enough of an economy to do it, when energy is one of those things, I think you just can’t not do it — you would need to be involved in solar and wind. You need to be involved in batteries and you need to be involved in LNG if you can do it, you need to be involved in nuclear if you can pull it off. All of the above is gonna be the answer for a lot of countries to get out of the strait. Rosemary Barnes I think the US is a bit different though, because, um, unlike many countries, you could become more energy secure or entirely energy secure without electrifying. I think that you, you have enough of the various different kinds of, um, fossil fuels that you could. Uh, and I’m sure that will be the response as well in the, at least immediate future in the US. Whereas other countries who don’t have that option, we’re forced to move into the future. And I think that, you know, is better for us in the long term. Allen Hall Well, this is the thing about Australia — and we pointed out at WOMA — [00:26:00] is Australia is leading the world in a lot of ways, and electrification is one of them. So the rest of the world is watching what happens in the way that Australia goes about it. A lot of wind, even more solar, and some batteries — and how that plays out’s gonna affect where the rest of the world goes. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. And if you have found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. So for Rosie — Yolanda and Matthew are on holiday — I’m Allen Hall and we’ll see you here next time on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:27:00] Podcast.  

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Steven Mustard to talk about his new book on Operational Technology (OT) System Risk Management in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. To learn more about becoming a member, visit https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA/join. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast: Note: To support our work and keep new episodes coming, consider becoming a member here. Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Links to Steven’s Book: Amazon Link Publisher Link Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Carl Gould, CTO and co-founder of Inductive Automation, joins hosts Phil Seboa and Ed Fuentes for an in-person conversation recorded in Australia ahead of the Ignition Everywhere event in Brisbane.Carl traces Ignition's journey from FactorySQL in 2003 to the 8.3 release, which introduces file-based configuration, Git and GitOps compatibility, Perspective offline mode, and a new architecture for managing distributed OT systems at scale. He breaks down the three design principles that have guided the platform from day one (cost, convenience, and capability), shares his evolving take on AI in industrial automation, and explains why he calls the IT/OT divide "a fictional line."In this episode, we discuss:The 8.3 release: file-based config, GitOps, deployment modes, and Perspective offlineScaling from thousands of tags to millions with distributed, decoupled architecturesWhy AI in industrial automation is a means to an end, not a product in itselfThe community and culture behind Ignition's worldwide growth---------------------------This episode is proudly made possible by PLCnext TechnologyPLCnext Technology is the ecosystem for industrial automation consisting of open hardware, modular engineering software, a global community, and a digital software marketplace.Learn more at:⁠⁠⁠https://www.plcnext-community.net/news/synergy-edge-cloud/---------------------------FlowFuse at Hannover Messe 2026Discover how FlowFuse empowers you to build, deploy, and scale industrial automation -- your way. Visit FlowFuse at Hall 014, Stand K26 during Hannover Messe (April 20-24, 2026) and experience live demonstrations of FlowFuse connecting the entire industrial stack -- from PLCs on the shop floor to MES, ERP, and cloud services -- enabling real-time industrial connectivity, data integration, and AI-powered operations.Let's transform industrial data together -- live, integrated, and in real time.Claim your free pass and learn more: https://flowfuse.com/events/hannover-messe-2026/---------------------------Carl Gould is the CTO and co-founder of Inductive Automation. He has been building and guiding the Ignition platform since 2003. Under his leadership, Ignition has grown from a SQL connectivity tool into a comprehensive platform used across industries worldwide for SCADA, HMI, MES, and IIoT applications.Connect with Carl Gould on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-gouldLearn more about Inductive Automation: https://inductiveautomation.comConnect with Phil on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/philseboa/⁠Connect with Ed on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/edfuentes/

Sam Russem is the Vice President of Business Development at Kanoa. Sam is passionate about the concepts of Smart Manufacturing, Industry 4.0, and Digital Transformation: studying, discussing, evaluating, developing, and planning how we can apply innovations in computing, networking, and data to the manufacturing space. Sam believes that Smart Manufacturing technologies can improve our everyday lives by delivering new and innovative products to market safely, efficiently, and at lower cost than ever before. In 16+ years in manufacturing and automation Sam has a lot of hands-on experience with a wide range of technologies from PLC and SCADA-based control systems and to advanced data collection historians, IoT devices, MES, and analytics in industries ranging from food and beverage to pharmaceuticals to renewable energy. Today, Sam leverages that experience along with the latest trends and techniques in the market to bring Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 to manufacturers around the world through professional consulting, product management, and thought leadership. The Industry 4.0 Podcast with Grantek delivers a look into the world of manufacturing, with a focus on stories and trends that lead to better solutions.   Our guests will share tips and outcomes that will help improve your productivity. You will hear from leading providers of Industrial Control System hardware and software, Grantek experts and leaders at best-in-class industry associations that serve the Data Centers, Life Sciences, CPG and Food & Beverage industries.

Industrial AI is getting a lot of attention in manufacturing right now, but one of the biggest questions is still the most practical one. How do you turn plant data, process knowledge, and operational constraints into something that actually creates value? In this episode of Manufacturing Hub, Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith sit down with Konstantin Paradizov of Eukodyne for a detailed conversation on what industrial AI looks like when it is applied by people who understand manufacturing, MES, process improvement, data architecture, and the realities of the plant floor.What makes this discussion especially valuable is that it does not stay at the surface level. Konstantin shares how his background moved from pharma into food and beverage, how Lean Six Sigma and process thinking shaped his approach, and why many of the best opportunities in manufacturing still begin with understanding the actual workflow before talking about software. The conversation explores a theme that comes up again and again in industrial transformation: the biggest gains often do not come from adding more technology first. They come from understanding the problem clearly, identifying what information matters, validating assumptions with the people doing the work, and then using the right mix of tools to move faster.A major part of this episode focuses on the real use of AI in consulting and discovery. Konstantin explains how his team uses secure transcription workflows, on premises AI infrastructure, cloud models, masking of sensitive information, iterative validation, and ROI driven reporting to create high value outputs in a fraction of the time that would have been required even a year or two ago. This is an important point for manufacturers, system integrators, software teams, and plant leaders. AI is not just something that sits in front of an operator as a chatbot. It can be used behind the scenes to accelerate analysis, strengthen recommendations, shorten discovery, improve documentation, and reduce the cost of getting to a better answer.The technical section of this episode is especially strong for anyone working in industrial automation, OT data systems, or applied AI. The discussion covers on premises compute, Nvidia based edge hardware, Linux environments, Docker containers, RAG workflows, vector databases, knowledge graphs, MQTT pipelines, HiveMQ, Mosquitto, n8n, Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini, OpenRouter, and the tradeoffs between frontier models in the cloud and smaller or open models deployed closer to the process. One of the clearest takeaways is that manufacturers should not start with the biggest model or the most exciting headline. They should start with the problem, the constraints, the data path, and the economics of the solution.Vlad also pushes on an issue that matters to almost every manufacturer trying to prepare for AI. If you collect massive amounts of plant data into historians, cloud platforms, and enterprise systems, is that enough to create value later? Konstantin's answer is thoughtful and realistic. More data alone does not automatically lead to better outcomes. You still need filtering, context, prioritization, architecture, and a disciplined way to separate signal from noise.Learn more about Joltek here:https://www.joltek.com/serviceshttps://www.joltek.com/services/service-details-it-ot-architecture-integrationConnect with our guest:Konstantin Paradizovhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantin-paradizov/Learn more about Eukodyne:https://eukodyne.com/Follow Manufacturing Hub for more conversations on industrial AI, digital transformation, OT architecture, SCADA, MES, industrial data strategy, systems integration, and the future of manufacturing technology.Timestamps00:00 Welcome and introduction to industrial AI applications01:50 Konstantin's background from pharma to manufacturing05:30 Why food and beverage offered major process improvement opportunities08:10 How to identify the right manufacturing opportunities to pursue13:10 Using AI to accelerate discovery, documentation, and customer value21:20 The on premises AI hardware stack and model selection strategy30:10 Why iterative validation still matters more than a first AI answer39:00 Claude Code, developer workflows, and practical AI tool stacks48:20 On premises versus cloud AI and how to think about the tradeoff54:10 Small models, low cost hardware, and edge deployment realities01:05:00 Plant data, historians, filtering, and separating signal from noise01:14:50 Predictions for industrial AI, career advice, and final recommendationsReferences and resources mentioned in the episodeMaintainXhttps://www.maintainx.com/Solve for Happyhttps://www.mogawdat.com/booksGeorge Orwell 1984https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/326569/1984-by-george-orwell/George Orwell Animal Farmhttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/561805/animal-farm-by-george-orwell/

Manufacturing Hub is back with Episode 252, where co hosts Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith break down what an AI survival guide should actually look like for manufacturing and industrial automation professionals. This is not a hype conversation about replacing people with magic software. It is a grounded discussion about what AI tools can do today, where they fail, why context and data quality matter so much, and how industrial teams should think about experimentation without losing sight of real operating constraints.In this episode, Vlad and Dave unpack the evolution many engineers and technical leaders have already felt in real time, from early prompt engineering, to agent based workflows, to MCP servers, skills, context management, and the growing cost of tokens and infrastructure. The conversation moves beyond generic AI commentary and into the reality of plant floor environments, where success depends on process knowledge, data architecture, OT constraints, cybersecurity, governance, and clear business value. One of the strongest themes throughout the episode is that manufacturers cannot skip the hard work of structuring data, understanding workflows, and defining use cases simply because AI tools are moving quickly.Vlad brings a very practical industrial lens to the discussion. Drawing on years of hands on experience across controls, manufacturing systems, plant modernization, and digital transformation, he explains why industrial AI has to start with operational context. A maintenance team, an engineering team, and a quality team do not need the same data, do not ask the same questions, and should not be handed the same AI workflows. That distinction matters. This conversation also highlights why the best industrial AI implementations will likely come from teams that combine domain expertise with strong technical execution, rather than generic AI shops trying to force a solution into environments they do not fully understand.Dave adds an important systems and adoption perspective, especially around cost, scaling, management expectations, and the danger of trying to prompt your way past foundational architecture work. Together, Vlad and Dave explore why manufacturers are interested in AI, why many are afraid of being left behind, and why so many projects still stall once they hit the realities of obsolete equipment, weak data models, fragmented systems, and unclear ownership of information. They also discuss deterministic logic versus LLM behavior, reporting workflows, industrial dashboards, PLC code generation concerns, and the practical question every manufacturer should ask before investing: what problem are we solving, for whom, and what is the measurable return?For those new to Vlad, he is an electrical engineer and manufacturing leader with deep experience across industrial automation, controls, data systems, OT architecture, modernization strategy, and plant operations. Through Joltek, Vlad works with manufacturers on digital transformation, IT OT architecture and integration, modernization planning, operational improvement, and technical workforce enablement. Learn more here:Joltek: https://www.joltek.com IT OT Architecture and Integration: https://www.joltek.com/services/service-details-it-ot-architecture-integrationIf you are a plant leader, controls engineer, systems integrator, OT architect, SCADA or MES practitioner, or simply someone trying to separate useful AI workflows from noise, this episode will give you a much more realistic framework for thinking about industrial AI adoption.Timestamps00:00 Welcome back and why this episode matters01:00 Setting up the industrial AI theme for the coming weeks03:10 From prompt engineering to structured AI workflows05:30 AI agents, parallel workflows, tokens, and context windows09:00 MCP tools, Playwright, and what new integrations unlock16:20 How Vlad researches AI and where useful information actually lives22:00 Real manufacturing problems versus AI in search of a problem29:40 Why industrial data architecture is harder than most people think37:00 OT expertise, workforce enablement, and who should build solutions45:40 Practical advice for manufacturers starting the AI journey50:30 Data governance, hallucinations, infrastructure, and cybersecurity57:20 What looks promising today in reporting, dashboards, and industrial applications

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Johann Kotze of Rockwell Automation to learn what’s new in FactoryTalk View 15 & 16 in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join or https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA join. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast, Free Edition: Note: Below member’s will also find an ad-free and extended edition of this episode. To unlock the ad free extended episode, you can become a member here. Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Hany Fouda of Schneider Electric to discuss What’s Driving Open Automation initiatives in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 264 Show Notes: Special thanks goes out to Hany Fouda of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode. Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with John DeTellem of Siemens to walk through the steps of migrating an existing S7 PLC and its Program to TIA Portal v21 in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 263 Show Notes: Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode. For more information please see the below links: TIA Portal V21 Sales & Delivery Release TIA Portal V21 Technical Slides TIA Portal V21 Trial Download TIA Portal in the Cloud TIA Portal Documentations Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Allen, Rosemary, and Yolanda, joined by Morten Handberg from Wind Power LAB, recap WOMA 2026 live from Melbourne. The crew discusses leading edge erosion challenges unique to Australia, the frustration operators face getting data from full service agreements, and the push for better documentation during project handovers. Plus the birds and bats management debate, why several operators said they’d choose smaller glass fiber blades over bigger carbon fiber ones, and what topics WOMA 2027 should tackle next year. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com and now your hosts. Welcome to the Uptime Winner Energy podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Pone, Rosemary Barnes, and the Blade Whisperer, Morton Hamburg. And we’re all in Melbourne at the Pullman on the park. We just finished up Woma 2026. Massive event. Over 200 people, two days, and a ton of knowledge. Rosemary, what did you think? Yeah, I mean it was a, a really good event. It was really nice ’cause we had event organization, um, taken care of by an external company this time. So that saved us some headaches, I think. Um. But yeah, it was, it was really good. It was different than last year, and I think next year will be different again because yeah, we don’t need to talk about the same topics every single year. But, um, yeah, I got really great [00:01:00] feedback. So that’s shows we’re doing something right? Yeah, a lot of the, the sessions were based upon feedback from Australian industry and, uh, so we did AI rotating bits, the, the drive train blades. Uh, we had a. Master class on lightning to start off. Uh, a number of discussions about BOP and electrical, BOP. All those were really good. Mm-hmm. Uh, the, the content was there, the expertise was there. We had worldwide representation. Morton, you, you talked about blades a good bit and what the Danish and Worldwide experience was. You know, talked about the American experience on Blades. That opened up a lot of discussions because I’m never really sure where Australia is in the, uh, operations side, because a lot of it is full service agreements still. But it does seem like from last year to this year. There’s more onboarding of the technical expertise internally at the operators. Martin, [00:02:00] you saw, uh, a good bit of it. This is your first time mm-hmm. At this conference. What were your impressions of the, the content and the approach, which is a little bit different than any other conference? I see an industry that really wants to learn, uh, Australia, they really want to learn how to do this. Uh, and they’re willing to listen to us, uh, whether you live in Australia, in the US or in Europe. You know, they want to lean on our experiences, but they wanna, you know, they want to take it out to their wind farms and they ga then gain their own knowledge with it, which I think is really amicable. You know, something that, you know, we should actually try and think about how we can copy that in Europe and the US. Because they, they are, they’re listening to us and they’re taking in our input, and then they try and go out. They go out and then they, they try and implement it. Um, so I think really that is something, uh, I’ve learned, you know, and, and really, um, yeah, really impressed by, from this conference. Yeah. Yolanda, you were on several panels over the, the two days. What were your impressions of the conference and what were your thoughts [00:03:00] on the Australia marketplace? I think the conference itself is very refreshing or I think we all feel that way being on the, on the circuit sometimes going on a lot of different conferences. It was really sweet to see everybody be very collaborative, as Morton was saying. Um, and it was, it was just really great about everybody. Yes, they were really willing to listen to us, but they were also really willing to share with each other, which is nice. Uh, I did hear about a few trials that we’re doing in other places. From other people, just kind of, everybody wants to learn from each other and everybody wants to, to make sure they’re in as best a spot as they can. Yeah, and the, the, probably the noisiest part of the conferences were at the coffees and the lunch. Uh, the, the collaboration was really good. A lot of noise in the hallways. Uh, just people getting together and then talking about problems, talking about solutions, trying to connect up with someone they may have seen [00:04:00]somewhere else in the part of the world that they were here. It’s a different kind of conference. And Rosemary, I know when, uh, you came up to with a suggestion like, Hey. If there’s not gonna be any sales talks, we’re not gonna sit and watch a 30 minute presentation about what you do. We’re gonna talk about solutions. That did play a a different dynamic because. It allowed people to ingest at their own rate and, and not just sit through another presentation. Yeah. It was made it more engaging, I think. Yeah, and I mean, anyway, the approach that I take for sales for my company that I think works best is not to do the hard sell. It’s to talk about smart things. Um, and if you are talking about describing a problem or a solution that somebody in the audience has that problem or solution, then they’re gonna seek you out afterwards. And so. There’s plenty of sales happening in an event like this, but you’re just not like, you know, subjecting people to sales. It’s more presenting them with the information that they need. And then I, I think also the size of the conference really [00:05:00] helps ’cause yeah, about 200 people. Any, everybody is here for the same technical kind. Content. So it’s like if you just randomly start talking to somebody while you’re waiting for a coffee or whatever, you have gonna have heaps to talk about with them, with ev every single other person there. And so I think that that’s why, yeah, there was so much talking happening and you know, we had social events, um, the first two evenings and so. Mo like I was surprised actually. So many people stayed. Most people, maybe everybody stayed for those events and so just so much talking and yeah, we did try to have quite long breaks, um, and quite a lot of them and, you know, good enough food and coffee to keep people here. And I think that that’s as important as, you know, just sitting and listening. Well, that was part of the trouble, some of the conference that you and I have been at, it’s just like six hours of sitting down listening to sort of a droning mm-hmm. Presenter trying to sell you something. Here we were. It was back and forth. A lot more panel talk with experts from around the world and then.[00:06:00] Break because you just can’t absorb all that without having a little bit of a brain rest, some coffee and just trying to get to the next session. I, I think that made it, uh, a, a, a more of a takeaway than I would say a lot of other conferences are, where there’s spender booze, and. Brochures and samples being handed out and all that. We didn’t have any of that. No vendor booze, no, uh, upfront sales going on and even into the workshop. So there was specific, uh, topics provided by people that. Provide services mostly, uh, speaking about what they do, but more on a case study, uh, side. And Rosie, you and I sat in on one that was about, uh, birds and bats, birds and bats in Australia. That one was really good. Yeah, that was great. I learned, I learned a lot. Your mind was blown, but Totally. Yeah. It is crazy how much, how much you have to manage, um, bird and wildlife deaths related to wind farms in Australia. Like compared to, I mean, ’cause you see. Dead birds all the time, right? Cars hit [00:07:00] birds, birds hit buildings, power lines kill birds, and no one cares about those birds. But if a bird is injured near a wind farm, then you know, everybody has to stop. We have to make sure that you can do a positive id. If you’re not sure, send it away for a DNA analysis. Keep the bird in a freezer for a year and make sure that it’s logged by the, you know, appropriate people. It’s, it’s really a lot. And I mean, on the one hand, like I’m a real bird lover, so I am, I’m glad that birds are being taken seriously, but on the other hand, I. I think that it is maybe a little bit over the top, like I don’t see extra birds being saved because of that level of, of watching throughout the entire life of the wind farm. It feels more like something for the pre-study and the first couple of years of operation, and then you can chill after that if everything’s under control. But I, I guess it’s quite a political issue because people do. Do worry about, about beds and bats? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought the output of that was more technology, a little or a little more technology. Not a lot of technology in today’s world [00:08:00] because we could definitely monitor for where birds are and where bats are and, uh, you know. Slow down the turbines or whatever we’re gonna do. Yeah. And they are doing that in, in sites where there is a problem. But, um, yeah, the sites we’re talking about with that monitoring, that’s not sites that have a big, big problem at sites that are just Yeah, a few, a few birds dying every year. Um, yeah. So it’s interesting. And some of the blade issues in Australia, or a little unique, I thought, uh, the leading edge erosion. Being a big one. Uh, I’ve seen a lot of leading edge erosion over the last couple of weeks from Australia. It is Texas Times two in some cases. And, uh, the discussion that was had about leading edge erosion, we had ETT junker from Stack Raft and, and video form all the way from Sweden, uh, talking to us live, which was really nice actually. Uh, the, the amount of knowledge that the Global Blade group. Brought to the discussion and just [00:09:00] opening up some eyes about what matters in leading edge erosion. It’s not so much the leading edge erosion in terms of a EP, although there is some a EP loss. It’s more about structural damage and if you let the structure go too far. And Martin, you’ve seen a lot of this, and I think we had a discussion about this on the podcast of, Hey, pay attention to the structural damage. Yeah, that’s where, that’s where your money is. I mean, if you go, if you get into structural damage, then your repair costs and your downtime will multiply. That is just a known fact. So it’s really about keeping it, uh, coding related because then you can, you can, you can move really fast. You can get it the blade up to speed and you won’t have the same problems. You won’t have to spend so much time rebuilding the blade. So that’s really what you need to get to. I do think that one of the things that might stand out in Australia that we’re going to learn about. Is the effect of hail, because we talked a lot about it in Europe, that, you know, what is the effect of, of hail on leading edge erosion? We’ve never really been able to nail it down, but down here I heard from an, [00:10:00] from an operator that they, they, uh, referenced mangoes this year in terms of hail size. It was, it was, it was incredible. So if you think about that hitting a leading edge, then, uh, well maybe we don’t really need to, we don’t really get to the point where, so coding related, maybe we will be structural from the beginning, but. Then at least it can be less a structural. Um, but that also means that we need to think differently in terms of leading edge, uh, protection and what kinds of solutions that are there. Maybe some of the traditional ones we have in Europe, maybe they just don’t work, want, they, they won’t work in some part of Australia. Australia is so big, so we can’t just say. Northern Territory is the same as as, uh, uh, um, yeah. Victoria or uh, or Queensland. Or Queensland or West Australia. I think that what we’re probably going to learn is that there will be different solutions fitting different parts of Australia, and that will be one of the key challenges. Um, yeah. And Blades in Australia sometimes do. Arrive without leading edge protection from the OEMs. [00:11:00] Yeah, I’m sure some of the sites that I’ve been reviewing recently that the, the asset manager swears it’s got leading edge protection and even I saw some blades on the ground and. I don’t, I don’t see any leading edge protection. I can’t feel any leading edge protection. Like maybe it’s a magical one that’s, you know, invisible and, um, yeah, it doesn’t even feel different, but I suspect that some people are getting blades that should have been protected that aren’t. Um, so why? Yeah, it’s interesting. I think before we, we rule it out. Then there are some coatings that really look like the original coating. Mm. So we, we, I know that for some of the European base that what they come out of a factory, you can’t really see the difference, but they’re multilayer coating, uh, on the blades. What you can do is that you can check your, uh, your rotor certificate sometimes will be there. You can check your, uh, your blade sheet, uh, that you get from manufacturer. If you get it. Um, if you get it, then it will, it will be there. But, um, yeah, I, I mean, it can be difficult to say, to see from the outset and there’s no [00:12:00]documentation then. Yeah, I mean. If I can’t see any leading edge erosion protection, and I don’t know if it’s there or not, I don’t think I will go so far and then start installing something on something that is essentially a new blade. I would probably still put it into operation because most LEP products that can be installed up tower. So I don’t think that that necessarily is, is something we should, shouldn’t still start doing just because we suspect there isn’t the LEP. But one thing that I think is gonna be really good is, um, you know, after the sessions and you know, I’ve been talking a lot. With my clients about, um, leading edge erosion. People are now aware that it’s coming. I think the most important thing is to plan for it. It’s not right to get to the point where you’ve got half a dozen blades with, you know, just the full leading edge, just fully missing holes through your laminate, and then your rest of your blades have all got laminate damage. That’s not the time to start thinking about it because one, it’s a lot more expensive for each repair than it would’ve been, but also. No one’s got the budget to, to get through all of that in one season. So I do really [00:13:00] like that, you know, some of the sites that have been operating for five years or so are starting to see pitting. They can start to plan that into their budget now and have a strategy for how they’re going to approach it. Um, yeah. And hopefully avoid getting over to the point where they’ve missing just the full leading edge of some of their blades. Yeah. But to Morton’s earlier point, I think it’s also important for people to stop the damage once it happens too. If, if it’s something that. You get a site or for what, whatever reason, half of your site does look like terrible and there’s holes in the blade and stuff. You need to, you need to patch it up in some sort of way and not just wait for the perfect product to come along to, to help you with that. Some of the hot topics this week were the handover. From, uh, development into production and the lack of documentation during the transfer. Uh, the discussion from Tilt was that you need to make sure it is all there, uh, because once you sign off. You probably can’t go back and get it. And [00:14:00] some of the frustration around that and the, the amount of data flow from the full service provider to the operator seemed to be a, a really hot topic. And, and, uh, we did a little, uh, surveyed a about that. Just the amount of, um, I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, it was bordering on anger maybe is a way. Describe it. Uh, that they feel that operators feel like they don’t have enough insight to run the turbines and the operations as well as they can, and that they should have more insight into what they have operating and why it is not operat. A certain way or where did the blades come from? Are there issues with those blades? Just the transparency WA was lacking. And we had Dan Meyer, who is from the States, he’s from Colorado, he was an xge person talking about contracts, uh, the turbine supply agreement and what should be in there, the full service [00:15:00] agreement, what should be in there. Those are very interesting. I thought a lot of, uh, operators are very attentive to that, just to give themselves an advantage of what you can. Put on paper to help yourself out and what you should think about. And if you have a existing wind farm from a certain OEM and you’re gonna buy another wind farm from ’em, you ought to be taking the lessons learned. And I, I thought that was a, a very important discussion. The second one was on repairs. And what you see from the field, and I know Yolanda’s been looking at a lot of repairs. Well, all of you have been looking at repairs in Australia. What’s your feeling on sort of the repairs and the quality of repairs and the amount of data that comes along with it? Are we at a place that we should be, or do we need a little more detail as to what’s happening out there? It’s one of the big challenges with the full service agreements is that, you know, if everything’s running smoothly, then repairs are getting done, but the information isn’t. Usually getting passed on. And so it’s seems fine and it seems like really good actually. Probably if you’re an [00:16:00] asset manager and everything’s just being repaired without you ever knowing about it, perfect. But then at some point when something does happen, you’ve got no history and especially like even before handover. You need to know all of the repairs that have happened for, you know, for or exchanges for any components because you know, you’re worried about, um, serial defects, for example. You need every single one. ’cause the threshold is quite high to, you know, ever reach a serial defect. So you wanna know if there were five before there was a handover. Include that in your population. Um, yeah, so that’s probably the biggest problem with repairs is that they’re just not being. Um, the reports aren’t being handed over. You know, one of the things that Jeremy Hanks from C-I-C-N-D-T, and he’s an NDT expert and has, has seen about everything was saying, is that you really need to understand what’s happening deep inside the blade, particularly for inserts or, uh, at the root, uh, even up in, with some, some Cory interactions happening or splicing that It’s hard to [00:17:00] see that hard to just take a drone inspection and go, okay, I know what’s happening. You need a little more technology in there at times, especially if you have a serial defect. Why do you have a serial defect? Do you need to be, uh, uh, scanning the, the blade a little more deeply, which hasn’t really happened too much in Australia, and I think there’s some issues I’ve seen where it may come into use. Yeah, I think it, it, it’ll be coming soon. I know some people are bringing stuff in. I’ve got emails sitting in my inbox I need to chase up, but I’m, I’m really going to, to get more into that. Yeah. And John Zalar brought up a very similar, uh, note during his presentation. Go visit your turbines. Yeah, several people said that. Um, actually Liz said that too. Love it. And, um, let’s this, yeah, you just gotta go have a look. Oh, Barend, I think said bar said it too. Go on site. Have a look at the lunchroom. If the lunch room’s tidy, then you know, win turbine’s gonna be tidy too. And I don’t know about that ’cause I’ve seen some tidy lunchroom that were associated with some, you know, uh, less well performing assets, but it’s, you know, it’s [00:18:00] a good start. What are we gonna hope for in 2027? What should we. Be talking about it. What do you think we’ll be talking about a year from now? Well, a few people, quite a few people mentioned to me that they were here, they’re new in the industry, and they heard this was the event to go to. Um, and so I, I was always asking them was it okay? ’cause we pitch it quite technical and I definitely don’t wanna reduce. How technical it is. One thing I thought of was maybe we start with a two to five minute introduction, maybe prerecorded about the, the topic, just to know, like for example, um, we had some sessions on rotating equipment. Um, I’m a Blades person. I don’t know that much about rotating equipment, so maybe, you know, we just explain this is where the pitch bearings are. They do this and you know, there’s the main bearing and it, you know, it does this and just a few minutes like that to orient people. Think that could be good. Last, uh, this year we did a, a masterclass on lightning, a half day masterclass. Maybe we change that topic every year. Maybe next year it’s blade design, [00:19:00] certification, manufacturing. Um, and then, you know, the next year, whatever, open to suggestions. I mean, in general, we’re open to suggestions, right? Like people write in and, and tell us what you’d wanna see. Um, absolutely. I think we could focus more on technologies might be an, an area like. It’s a bit, it’s a bit hard ’cause it gets salesy, but Yeah. I think one thing that could actually be interesting and that, uh, there was one guy came up with an older turbine on the LPS system. Mm. Where he wanted to look for a solution and some of the wind farms are getting older and it’s older technology. So maybe having some, uh, uh, some sessions on that. Because the older turbines, they are vastly different from what we, what we see in the majority with wind farms today. But the maintenance of those are just as important. And if you do that correctly, they’re much easier to lifetime extent than it will likely be for some of the nuance. But, you know, let. Knock on wood. Um, but, but I think that’s something that could be really interesting and really relevant for the industry and something [00:20:00] that we don’t talk enough about. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true because I, I’m working on a lot of old wind turbines now, and that has been, um, quite a challenge for me because they’re design and built in a way that’s quite different to when, you know, I was poking, designing and building, uh, wind turbine components. So that’s a good one. Other people mentioned end of life. Mm-hmm. Not just like end of life, like the life is over, but how do you decide when the life end of life is going to be? ’cause you know, like you have a planned life and then you might like to extend, but then you discover you’ve got a serial issue. Are you gonna fix it? Or you know, how are you gonna fix it? Those are all very interesting questions that, um, can occur. And then also, yeah, what to do with the. The stuff at the end of the Wind Farm lifetime, we could make a half day around those kinds of sessions. I think recycling could actually be good to, to also touch upon and, and I think, yeah, Australia is more on the front of that because of, of your high focus on, on nature and sustainability. So looking at, well, what do we do with these blades? Or what do we do with the towers of foundation once, uh, [00:21:00] once we do need to decommission them, you know, what is, what are we going to do in Australia about that? Or what is Australia going to do about that? But, you know, what can we bring to the, to the table that that can help drive that discussion? I think maybe too, helping people sort of templates for their formats on, on how to successfully shadow, monitor, maybe showing them a bit mute, more of, uh. Like cases and stuff, so to get them going a bit more. ’cause we heard a lot of people too say, oh, we’re, we’re teetering on whether we should self operate or whether we continue our FSA, but we, we we’re kind of, we don’t know what we’re doing. Yeah. In, in not those words. Right. But just providing a bit more of a guidance too. On that side, we say shadow monitoring and I think we all know what it means. If you’ve seen it done, if you haven’t seen it done before. It seems daunting. Mm-hmm. What do you mean shadow monitoring? You mean you got a crack into the SCADA system? Does that mean I’ve gotta, uh, put CMS out there? Do I do, do I have to be out [00:22:00] on site all the time? The answer that is no to all of those. But there are some fundamental things you do need to do to get to the shadow monitoring that feels good. And the easy one is if there’s drone inspections happening because your FSA, you find out who’s doing the drone inspections and you pay ’em for a second set of drone inspections, just so you have a validation of it, you can see it. Those are really inexpensive ways to shadow monitor. Uh, but I, I do think we say a lot of terms like that in Australia because we’ve seen it done elsewhere that. Doesn’t really translate. And I, if I, I’m always kind of looking at Rosemary, like, does it, this make sense? What I’m saying makes sense, Rosemary, because it’s hard to tell because so many operators are in sort of a building mode. I, I see it as. When I talked to them a few years ago, they’re completely FSA, they had really small staffs. Now the staffs are growing much larger, which makes me feel like they’re gonna transition out an FSA. Do we need to provide a little more, uh, insight into how that is done deeper. [00:23:00] Like, these are the tools you, you will need. This is the kind of people you need to have on staff. This is how you’re gonna organize it, and this is the re these are the resources that you should go after. Mm. Does that make a little si more sense? Yeah. That might be a good. Uh, idea for getting somebody who’s, you know, working for a company that is shadow monitoring overseas and bring them in and they can talk through what that, what that means exactly. And that goes back to the discussion we were having earlier today by having operators talk about how they’re running their operations. Mm. And I know the last year we tried to have everybody do that and, and they were standoffish. I get it. Because you don’t want to disclose things that your company doesn’t want out in public. And year two, it felt like there’s a little more. Openness about that. Yeah, there was a few people were quite open about, um, yeah, talking about challenges and some successes as well. I think we’ll have more successes next year ’cause we’ve got more, more things going on. But yeah, definitely would encourage any operators to think about what’s a you A case study that you could give about? Yeah, it could just be a problem that’s unsolved and I bet you’ll find people that wanna help you [00:24:00] solve that problem. Or it could be something that you struggled with and then you’re doing a better job and Yeah, I mean the. Some operators think that they’re in competition with each other and some think that they’re not really, and the answer is somewhere, somewhere in the middle. There are, you know, some at least small amounts of competition. But, you know, I just, I just really think that. We’re fighting against each other, trying to win within the wind industry. Then, you know, in 10, 20 years time, especially in Australia, there won’t be any new wind. It’ll just be wind and solar everywhere and, and the energy transition stalled because everyone knows that’s not gonna get us all the way to, you know, a hundred percent renewables. So, um, I do think that we need to, first of all, fight for wind energy to improve. The status quo is not good enough to take us through the next 20 years. So we do need to collaborate to get better. And then, yeah, I don’t know, once we’re, once we’re one, wind has won, then we can go back to fighting amongst ourselves, I guess. Is Australia that [00:25:00] laboratory? Yeah, I think I, I say it all the time. I think Australia is the perfect place because I, I do think we’re a little bit more naturally collaborative. For some reason, I don’t know why, it’s not really like a, a cultural thing, but seems to be the case in Australian wind. Um, and also our, our problems are harder than, uh, than what’s being faced elsewhere. I mean, America has some specific problems right now that are, you know, worse, but in general, operating environment is very harsh Here. We’re so spread out. Everything is so expensive. Cranes are so expensive. Repairs are so expensive. Spares spare. Yeah, spares are crazy expensive. You know, I look every now and then and do reports for people about, you know, what, what’s the average cost for and times for repairs and you know, you get an American values and it’s like, okay, well at a minimum times by five Australia and you know, so. It, there’s a lot more bang for buck. And the other thing is we just do not have enough, um, enough people, enough. Uh, we’ve got some really smart people. We need a lot more [00:26:00] people that are as smart as that. And you can’t just get that immediately. Like there has been a lot of good transfer over from related industries. A lot of people that spoke so that, you know, they used to work for thermal power plants and, um, railway, a guy that spoke to a guy had come in from railway. Um. That’s, that’s really good. But it will take some years to get them up to speed. And so in the meantime, we just need to use technology as much as we can to be able to, you know, make the people that good people that we do have, you know, make them go a lot further, um, increase what they can do. ’cause yeah, I don’t think there’s a single, um, asset owner where they couldn’t, you know, double the number of asset managers they had and, you know, ev everyone could use twice as many I think. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think something that we really focused on this year is kind of removing the stones that are in people’s path or like helping at least like to, to say like, don’t trip over there. Don’t trip over here. And I think part of that, like, like you mentioned, is that. [00:27:00] The, the collaborative manner that everyone seemed to have and just, I think 50% of our time that we were in those rooms was just people asking questions to experts, to anybody they really wanted to. Um, and it, it just, everybody getting the same answers, which is really just a really different way to, to do things, I think. But more than, I mean, we, we we’re still. We’re still struggling with quality in Australia. That’s still a major issue on, on a lot of the components. So until we have that solved, we don’t really know how much of an influence the other factors they really have because it just overshadows everything. And yes, it will be accelerated by extreme weather conditions, but. What will, how will it work if, if the components are actually fit, uh, fit for purpose in the sense that we don’t have wrinkles in the laminates, that we don’t have, uh, bond lines that are detaching. Mm-hmm. Maybe some of it is because of, uh, mango size hails hitting the blades. Maybe it’s because of extreme temperatures. Maybe it’s [00:28:00] because of, uh, uh, yeah. At extreme topography, you know, creating, uh, wind conditions that the blades are not designed for. We don’t really know that. We don’t really know for sure. Uh, we just assume, um, Australia has some problems with, not problems, but some challenges with remoteness. We don’t, with, uh, with getting new, new spares that much is absolutely true. We can’t do anything about that. We just have to, uh, find a way to, to mitigate that. Mm-hmm. But I think we should really be focused on getting quality, uh, getting the quality in, in order. You know, one thing that’s interesting about that, um, so yeah, Australia should be focused more on quality than anybody else, but in, in, in the industry, yeah. Uh, entire world should be more focused on quality, but also Australia. Yeah. But Australia, probably more than anyone considering how hard it is to, you know, make up for poor quality here. Um. At the same time, Australia for some reason, loves to be the first one with a new technology, loves to have the biggest [00:29:00] turbine. Um, and the, the latest thing and the newest thing, and I thought it was interesting. I mean, this was operations and maintenance, um, conference, so not really talking about new designs and manufacturing too much, but at least three or four people said, uh. Uh, I would be using less carbon fiber in blades. I would not be, not be going bigger and bigger and bigger. If I was buying turbines for a new wind farm, I would have, you know, small glass blades and just more of them. So I think that that was really interesting to hear. So many people say it, and I wasn’t even one of them, even though, you know, I would definitely. Say that. I mean, you know, in terms of business, I guess it’s really good to get a lot of, a lot of big blades, but, um, because they just, people, I don’t think people understand that, that bigger blades just have dramatically more quality problems than the smaller ones. Um, were really kind of exceeded the sweet spot for the current manufacturing methods and materials. I don’t know if you would agree, but it’s, it’s. Possible, but [00:30:00] it’s, it, you know, it’s not like a blade that’s twice as long, doesn’t have twice as many defects. It probably has a hundred times as many defects. It’s just, uh, it’s really, really challenging to make those big blades, high quality, and no one is doing it all that well right now. I would, however, I got an interesting hypothetical and they’re. Congrats to her for, for putting out that out. But there was an operator that said to me at the conference, so what would you choose hypothetically? A 70 meter glass fiber blade or a 50 meter carbon fiber blade, so a blade with carbon fiber reinforcement. And I did have to think quite a while about it because there was, it was she say, longer blades, more problems, but carbon blade. Also a lot of new problems. So, so what is it? So I, I ended up saying, well, glass fiber, I would probably go for a longer glass fiber blade, even though it will have some, some different challenges. It’s easier to repair. Yeah, that’s true. So we can overcome some of the challenges that are, we can also repair carbon. We have done it in air, air, uh, aeronautics for many, many years. But wind is a different beast because we don’t have, uh, [00:31:00] perfect laboratory conditions to repair in. So that would just be a, a really extreme challenge. So that’s, that’s why I, I would have gone for carbon if, for glass fiber, if, if I, if I could in that hypothe hypothetical. Also makes more energy, the 70 meter compared to it’s a win-win situation. Well, it’s great to see all of you. Australia. I thought it was a really good conference. And thanks to all our sponsors, uh, til being the primary sponsor for this conference. Uh, we are starting to ramp up for 2027. Hopefully all of you can attend next year. And, uh, Rosie, it’s good to see you in person. Oh, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s exciting when we are actually on the same continent. Uh, it doesn’t happen very often. And Morton, it’s great to see you too, Yolanda. I see you every day pretty much. So she’s part of our team, so I, it’s great to see you out. This is actually the first time, me and Rosie, we have seen each other. We’ve, we’ve known each other for years. Yeah. Yeah. The first time we actually, uh, been, been, yeah. Within, uh, yeah. [00:32:00] Same room. Yep. And same continent. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s been awesome. And also it’s my first time meeting Yolanda in person too. So yeah, that’s our first time. And same. So thanks so much for everybody that attended, uh, woma 2026. We’ll see you at Woma 2027 and uh, check us out next week for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Recorded live at the Wind Operation and Maintenance Australia 2026 conference, Allen, Rosemary, Matthew, and Yolanda are joined by Thomas Schlegl for a panel discussion on where the Australian wind industry is headed over the next five years. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Alright, let’s get started. This is the, the final event of this three day marathon. Uh, where will we be in five years? And I have, uh, pretty much everybody from the Uptime podcast and Thomas Schlagel from eLog Ping. Uh. Uh, Rosie and I had a big argument before we all came about what we were going to be in five years, and Rosie’s and my opinion differed quite a bit just on, that’s, uh, that’s what led to me suggesting the personality test because yes, and that was, that’s actually a really good suggestion. So I know something about myself now, but, uh, I, I think talking to people here, watching the presentations. And having an American slash European perspective on it. I think every, everybody can chime in here. Australia’s probably on a better pathway than a lot of places. Yeah. Well, I know I’ve been back in Australia for about [00:01:00] five years, five years. Before that I was in Denmark. I left Australia. Because I was so like in despair about the state of renewables and also manufacturing and just doing smart engineering in Australia. Um, so yeah, when I came back five years ago, I was a bit shocked at how different things were in Australia. And I was also, you know, like I will say that it, we were, we were behind like way less mature than other, um, markets in terms of how we operated our wind energy assets. Um, and it’s changed so much in five years, so like a half day, if I’m making predictions for where we’ll be in five years time, I have to, you know, like use that as a, it, it’s probably gonna be more than you would think in five years, just based on how far we’ve already come in, in five years. Um, so yeah, I think that five years ago people were trusting a lot more in the full service agreements. Um, definitely there’s very few people who are still naive that that’s just, you know, um, a set and forget kind of thing that you [00:02:00] can do and not worry about it. Everybody’s now aware that you need to know, um, about your assets and we’re already to the point where there are like a lot of asset managers know so much, um, and, you know, have become real experts and really wasn’t, wasn’t the case five years ago. So. I’m hopeful for that. Um, you know, that it, it will continue and yeah, probably at a faster pace than, um, what we see elsewhere. I think Australia is a really attractive market, not just for developing new wind projects, but also for developing all of the kinds of supporting technologies, which is, you know, like a lot of the people here either using or developing those kind of technologies. And some of our challenges here make it the perfect place to, yeah, develop new text because. Things are, it’s really expensive to do repairs here. Um, the operating conditions are harsh and so things wear out and it just means that it’s, you can put together a positive business case for a new tech here much sooner than you could overseas. So I’m really [00:03:00] hopeful that we see, you know, like a whole lot of innovation, um, in, in those kinds of technologies that are gonna help wind energy get a lot more mature. And even hearing some of the answers from last year to this year, you see that shift. Uh, I was really shocked last year how much reliance there was on. The FSA and now I hearing a lot more discussion about, all right, we need to be shadow monitoring. We need to be looking at the, the, the data coming off, trying to hack, break into the passwords to get to the SCADA system, which was new, but I feel like very Australian thing to do. Matthew, you’ve been in the small business in Australia for, for several years in the wind business. What do you see? I mean, you’ve been in it like for five years now. Plus actually more than that, uh, I actually did my first wind farm around 20 oh 2001. Okay. Or 2002. Um, that was from a noise perspective. So I, I’ve seen things, you know, the full cycle. Um, you know, there were many years of [00:04:00]despair, the whole, um, stop these, stop these things. I’m actually featured, I was featured on Stop these things. So, um, don’t, don’t Google it. It was pretty horrible. So, um, we did a lot of work around infrasound and noise impacts and so there was many years which were, were pretty horrible. Um. Over that time, I sort of relate to my daughter. My daughter’s turning 21 soon. She is a beautiful girl, turning into an adult, a wonderful adult, and it’s, I think the wind industry is really growing, maturing, growing up, and you know, is wonderful to see. And I think we are, we’re only gonna get better, stronger. And I think one may, one note I made here is that now they’ve got wind, solar batteries. I just think it’s unstoppable, so I’m super optimistic that we’re only gonna keep, you know, raising that bar. Well, if you look at where Australia is compared to a lot of the places on the [00:05:00] planet, way ahead, in terms of renewable energy. I mean, you’ve got basically $0 in electricity for, because of how much solar there is, plus the batteries are coming in and, and the transmission’s coming online. And I’m talking to some people about, uh, what these new developments look like. If you’re trying to develop some of these projects in the United States, you’re not gonna be able to do them. There’s, there’s too many regulatory hurdles, and it seems like Australia has at least opened some of the doors to explore. Uh, people in America, the companies in Europe are gonna be watching Australia, I think in, in terms of where we go next. Because if Australia can pull off pretty much a renewable grid, which is where you’re headed, others will follow because it’s just a lower cost way of running a, running an electricity grid system. Yeah. Now I need to perform my, um, regular role of being a Debbie Downer. Um, I, I think that there’s, there’s big challenges and it’s definitely not, um, a case of [00:06:00] the status quo now is good enough to carry us through to a hundred percent renewables. Um, there are some big, big problems that need to be solved. Like, uh, solar plus batteries in Australia is, is going amazing and it’s gonna do a lot. It’s not gonna, it will be incredibly hard to get to, you know, a fully renewable grid that way. The problem with wind is at the moment, I mean, it’s getting more expensive to install wind now and we don’t only need to install new wind farms, we’ve also got existing wind farms that are retiring. So we need to either extend those or we need to, um, you know, build new wind farms in their place. So we do need to get better there. And then I think that the new technologies, like, you know, I’m the blades person and the bigger blades are bigger problems like, like dramatically. I don’t think that your average, um, wind farm owner or wannabe wind farm owner is aware, like actually how many more problems there are with big blades compared to smaller ones and. I think that, like I said earlier, I [00:07:00] think Australia’s a great place to get those technologies, um, you know, developed. But we, we need to do that. That’s not like a nice to have and oh, everything will be a little bit better, but if we can’t maintain our assets better and get more out of them, um, we also need improvements with manufacturing. But it’s not really an o and m thing. I won’t talk too much about it. But yeah, I think that like we can’t be remotely complacent. Well, I think in, in Europe, uh, Thomas, you actually spent several months in Australia, and you’re obviously from Austria, so it’s an Austria Australian connection. Do you see the differences between the Austrian market, the German market, and what’s happening here in Australia? What, what do you think of the comparison between the two? So, what I, what really was fascinating from was the speed of, um, improvements we see here in Australia. It. Um, just for me, wind industry in my young industry, sorry, was always rather slow in Europe and [00:08:00] like not really adopting. Um, and here, sorry. For example, last year you asked the question how many. Of the audience to use sensors for shadow monitoring and no hand was raised right. It was zero silence. And uh, this year we even had a few percentage on, on sensors on the, on the cido. So you see only within a year like this gradually graduated, improvements are happening and I think that makes such a, um, speed in, in improvements and that will. Close to the rescue again. Thank you. And that, um, that will bring Australia to a big advantage. Um, especially I think overtaking, uh, at a certain point, and it would be great to see in five years from now, um, maybe Europeans, Austrians, uh, coming to Australia to. [00:09:00] To learn and not the other way around. Yeah, and, and especially with Yolanda working for the biggest energy company in Denmark, uh, in America, you see how Americans react to change and, and the reluctance to move forward on some of the things we talked about this week, which are, do seem to be moving a little bit quicker. There is more an acceptance of CMS systems here. And on in the States, it seems like you have to really fight. A lot of times to get anybody to listen, to do something because it’s all, it’s financially driven in some aspects, but it’s sort of like, we don’t do that here, so we’re not gonna listen to it. What’s been your experience being on a, this is your first time in Australia, what, what has been your experience this week and what have you learned? I was very pleasantly surprised by just the amount of collaboration that everybody really wants to have here and the openness to, to do so, and to learn from each [00:10:00] other, um, and to accept just, you know, if you’ve seen an issue and or someone else has seen an issue, then you can really learn from each other. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to silo yourself as much as, as you typically do in the United States. I mean, it is a different culture, right? And so it’s just. Honestly, hats off to, to Australians for, for being able to, to work with each other, so, so well, yeah. The discussions out at the lunchtime and the coffee area were uniquely different than what we generally will see in the United States. And Matthew, you’ve been around a lot of that too, where it kinda gets a little clique. But here, I mean, obviously, I mean, not just human nature, but on some level I felt like, oh, there’s a lot of interaction happening and it’s really loud. So people are engaging with one another and trying to learn from one another, or at least connect. And I, I think in a lot of times in Europe, there’s not a lot of the connection until the, the drinking starts, you know, at about 10. Uh, but. Uh, Matthew, did you see that too? [00:11:00] Like I was really pleasantly surprised. That was a good thing to see here. Yeah. And in my former life as a consultant, I dealt with, you know, construction, uh, road rail, you know, I mining a whole range of industries. And, um, one of the reasons why I’ve stayed in wind is ’cause I, you know, I love the people, you know, I love you all. So, or, um, but no, I think, um, the. The collaboration, the willingness to talk, um, the willingness to share ideas. And I think, I think I’ve been super, super, super happy about the way the panels have run, you know, everyone’s willing to share. Um, yeah, I’m, I’m just stoked. Yeah, Rosie, this is all your fault, honestly, because Rosie was always the, the contrary opinion. So I would say something and Rosie would feel obligated to say something as the opposite. But when, when we all started this discussion about, uh, a, a wind turbine conference, you had been to a bad wind turbine conference in Australia and I had been to a really bad one in the States and we were just, okay, that’s enough. And the movement [00:12:00] toward, let’s get some information, let’s everybody interact with one another. Let’s, we will give all the presentations to people at the end of this so you can access data. You’re not spending a ton of money to come. That was a, a big part of the discussion, like, I’m spending $5,000 to listen to sales presentations for three days. I don’t want to do that anymore. We try to avoid that in this conference. Hopefully, if you notice that and, and, and. I guess the conference board is up here right now. Are we gonna do Woma 2027? Are we gonna decide that today? Or. Yes, yes, the website is live. Um, I also wanna take this opportunity to, um, thank the, the sponsors of the event. And I hope that you’ve noticed that it’s not like these aren’t the sponsors of normal events where they’re like, okay, we’ll give you a bunch of money and then we’re gonna stand up and talk at you for half an hour about our new product launch or whatever. Like these sponsors haven’t, they haven’t got back [00:13:00] in the traditional way that you, you would with a kind of, um, event. So I’m really grateful for the very high quality sponsors that we’ve got. And, um, yeah, I just, I, I dunno if I’m allowed to share a little bit about the, the economics of this event. Um, if we didn’t have the sponsors tickets would cost twice as much. So, um, that’s one thing. But then the other key thing that we. Really couldn’t do it without sponsors is that we didn’t, our event didn’t break even until about a week ago because everyone buys their tickets late. Um, so yeah, the, the, we would’ve been having heart attacks, um, months ago about our potential, you know, bankruptcy from running the event if it wasn’t for, um, yeah, the, the great sponsors. So thanks to everybody that did that. Um, and everybody that attended consider buying a ticket earlier next time. Um, I, I’m the worst. I often buy my ticket the day of, of, of an event. So it’s, you know, like it’s a pot calling the kettle black. But, um, yeah, that’s just a bit of the, [00:14:00] the reality. And we have a number of poll questions. Uh, let’s get producer Claire back there to throw ’em up on the screen. So while we’re doing that, we should really thank Claire. Claire has been amazing. Yeah. Thank you, Claire. So the emojis are from Claire. Claire, clearly here. Uh, how do you feel about the, the current state of the wind industry? Hopefully there’s more smiley faces after this week. Well, alright, we’re a hundred percent rosemary. We had to put the one with the, yeah. And for me personally, um, I used to feel a lot more optimistic when I worked in design and manufacturing. And then when I come into operations, that like automatically makes you feel a bit more pessimistic. And then me specifically, like I only get involved when really bad things are happening. And so sometimes for me, like it’s easy to think. [00:15:00] When technology is just not good enough and, you know, I need to find a new industry to move into. So, uh, it is good to talk, talk to other people and, you know, like bring my reality back to a kind of a midpoint. And I, I just like to say, I, I think, I mean maybe there’s been a bit of OE em bashing here maybe. Um. Um, however, we need really strong OEMs, so I just wanna put a shout out to the OEMs and say, yeah, we absolutely need you. So just keep doing it. You will keep doing better, so thank you. Yeah, it’s a difficult industry to be in and we put a lot of demands on them and they, they’re pushing limits, so yeah, they’re gonna run into problems. That’s fine. Let’s just find solutions for them. Alright, uh, next question, producer Claire. What is the best thing you learned at Woma? This is not multiple choice. You can write whatever you want. Stealing passwords. [00:16:00] Did any of us learn anything? Unexpected contracting? Oh yeah. Get the contract right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Dan was really good. Yeah, Dan was great about contracting, looking on the other side of that fence. Cybersecurity is not that big of an issue in Australia. That’s some big thing in Europe, so yeah, it is. I was surprised by the environmental factor in Australia. I was surprised about the birds. Yeah. Everyone who wasn’t in the birds workshop yesterday, Alan was freaking out about, about how Australian wind farms have to manage birds and um, you have to freeze a bird for 12 months. I don’t, where do you have to freeze it for a bird? I don’t know. But that, it just is a little odd, I would say. Yeah. All right, Rosemary, you gotta take away Rosemary’s phone. Alan’s personality test. Yeah, there we go. That was not me. Wind farm toilets was a good one. Thank you, Liz, for, for raising that. [00:17:00] Yeah, I know when I worked in, um, Europe and Canadian wind farms, I would have to strategize my liquid intake for the day. Balancing out tea will help keep me warm, but on the other hand. Did everybody meet up with someone who had a solution? That was part of the goal here is to put people with solutions in the room with people with problems and let you all sort it out. So hopefully that was one of the things that happened this week. Or if you haven’t connected here, be able to connect with over LinkedIn or over coffee later. And the networking on the app and networking page on the website. Right. So you can actually use that now that’s all live. Yeah. So you can, you can connect through there if you’ve selected to. To keep your contact information open. Yep. You can connect through there so it’s easy to, if you need somebody to find my or Matthew’s email, you can just find it right there and we’ll upload the presentations, as you said. Right. The presentations we uploaded. But you have to select into that, Matthew, is that right? Also, the speakers [00:18:00] have to approve them as well. Right. And the, and all the speakers, you know who you are. Can let us know if we can use your slide decks to public size them. I didn’t see anything there that looked highly classified, so I think that would be fine. Alright. This is really interesting. Convince OEMs to install better pitch bearings. That’s very true. Okay, thanks you for that. Claire, what’s the next one? What do you wish you learned more about? So Matthew did a tour before the conference several months ago. And, and went to a lot of the operators and said, what would you like to hear about? So the things that were, uh, the seminar or the different workshops and all that were the result of talking to each of the operators about what you would like to see. So hopefully we covered most of them. Uh, obvious There. There’s some new things. Gear boxes. Yeah. I figured that one was coming. Tower retrofits. Okay. Good, good, [00:19:00] good. ISPs? Yeah. Life extension. Yeah. A lot of life extension. I agree. Well, we’re gonna run into that to the United States also. Asbestos. I’ve read some things about that in Australia. Okay. Which leading protection work by name. I do, I do have, well, lemme see. I do know that answer, but you’re gonna have to talk to Rosemary to get the, the key to the vault there. I I also think that you can’t assume that it’s gonna work in Australia. I think that, that like really seriously, I, I wouldn’t, um. I wouldn’t replace my entire wind farms leading edge protection based on what worked well in Europe and America. So, um, I would highly suggest, um, getting in touch with me and or bigger to get involved in a trial if you, that’s a problem for you. Yeah, definitely get involved in the trial. Uh, more data is better and if you do join that trial, you will have the keys to the castle. They will tell you how all the other pro uh, blades went. Uh, trainings and [00:20:00] skills, obviously that’s a, that’s a international one. When does ROI really happen? Yeah. Yep. We hear that quite a bit. Needs have proven good products for leading edge erosion. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So the que I guess one of the questions is, is that we did not on purpose, did not have any vendor things. I haven’t mentioned my product once this week. I, because I don’t want to, you know, that’s not the point of this conference, but should we. I don’t know. I mean, that’s a, should we have people standing up and I don’t know if it’s standing out there, but able to, to trial things. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree with what. I, I don’t, I don’t want that. Oh, yeah. No, I don’t want that. But it’s not my conference. Right. It’s, it’s everybody who c comes and wants to participate. What do you wanna see? Do you wanna see 10 leading edge products out in the hallway or, I didn’t mind that people were putting like stickers and like little knickknacks out on [00:21:00] tables. That was fun. Rosemary’s got a, a satchel full of them. Alright, Claire, is that the last one? There’s one more. All right. Hang on for one more. What’s your biggest takeaway from Woma? That you’re gonna buy your tickets early for WMA 2027, hopefully, and you’re gonna sponsor. I had a lot of people come up to me and say they would like to sponsor next year. And that’s wonderful. That will really keep the, the cost down because we’re not making anything off of this. I’m losing money to be here, which is totally fine ’cause I think this is a noble effort. Uh, but we will keep the cost as low as we can. We have an upgraded venue from last year. If you attend last year we were at the library, which was also a very nice facility, but this is just another level. Mm. Um, and the website has the ability to register interest in sponsorship. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve already got, uh, Jeremy’s already shook my hand. He’s already committed. Yeah. [00:22:00] Uh, I think we’ll have a lot of three pizzas on, on sponsorship for next year, and that’s good. Uh, that tells you there’s some value to be here and, and, uh, connect stickers, Rosemary stickers. There you go. I like whoever put calories up there. That’s funny. Yeah. You know the thing about, uh, this city is you can eat and it’s so dang good. You can’t do that in the states. You can’t just walk around in a random. Downtown like Detroit, Chicago. There are places you can eat there, but every place you walk into in this city is really good food. It’s crazy. Yeah. It’s, it’s uh, sort of addictive. I’m gonna have to go home on Saturday or not gonna fit in my seat. Um, alright. This is great. Yeah. We really love, um, constructive feedback. I think we’re all, or at least. Vast majority of us are engineers. We like to know about problems and fix them. So, um, most of us can’t have our feelings hurt easily. So, you [00:23:00] know, be very, very direct with your feedback. And, um, yeah, I mean the event should be different every year, right? Like, we don’t wanna do the exact same thing every year, so, um, it will change. Yeah. Yeah. And there is a survey going out as well, so Georgina will send out a survey. All right. So those surveys go to who? Matthew, are they going to you or are they going to all attendees and go? I think it goes back to Georgina, but we’ll, okay. Yeah. Great. So if you do get a, a form to fill out, please fill it out. That helps us for next year. Are we gonna be back in the same city? I say Yes. Yes. Yeah, this place is great. Sydney is also lovely. I spent an hour there at the airport. It was quite nice, but it was long enough. As I learned from people from Melbourne that Sydney is not their favorite place to go. So I guess we’re, we’re here next year. Is there anything else we need to talk about? Um, no. I mean, I’ve just been, uh, my favorite thing about this event is like the, the size of it and that people, uh, like very closely related in what we’re interested in that. It’s not like a, [00:24:00] you can put any two random people together and then we’ll have an interesting conversation. So I’ve really enjoyed all of the, you know, dozens of conversations that I’ve had this week. And, um, yeah. So thank you everybody for showing up with a open and collaborative, um, yeah. Frame of mind. It’s, yeah, couldn’t be done without everybody here. We do have a little bit of an award ceremony here for Rosemary, so we actually put together. A collage of videos over the last, um, five years. Uh, this is news to me. What? Yeah. Surprise. All right. Let it roll. Claire. Champion Rosie Barnes is here. Everybody. Climate change is a problem that our politicians don’t seem to be trying. Particularly hard to solve. This used to frustrate me until I realized that as an engineer, I have the power to [00:25:00] change the world, and unlike some politicians, I choose to use my powers for good. So I made a gingerbread wind turbine, I mean, a functional gingerbread, wind turbine, functional and edible. Everything except for the generator is edible. Alan, what were some of your takeaways from our talk with, uh, with Rosie? Well, I just like the way she thinks she thinks in terms of systems, not in terms of components. And I, I think that’s a, for an engineer is a good way to think about bigger problems. On today’s episode, we’ve got, well, some exciting news. Number one. Rosemary, uh, Barnes will be joining us here today as our co our new co-host. Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for having me. So, you know, one wind turbine with, um, wooden 80 meter long wooden blades. Yeah. Like, that’s so cool. What a great engineering challenge or, you know, craftsmanship challenge, um, there, but, you know, I’d like to see one [00:26:00]wooden wind turbine blade, but not, not more than that. It’s a, it’s a cool, it’s a cool novelty. And then burn it, right? If you burn it, then you’ll catch the carbon. We need someone within the Australian wind industry to start up a, a better conference. Um, you know, it should be allowing you to kind of put your finger on the pulse and figure out, you know, what, what’s the vibe of wind energy in Australia at the moment? Um, what are the big problems people are having and then, you know, some potential solutions, some people talking about things that are coming up that you might not have heard about yet. I just think that it’s much easier to get a good value conference from a, like a, a small organization that is really dedicated to the, um, topic of the, of the conference. So as part of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, Rosemary, the YouTube ci, these little gold plaques. So this is actually, this is your first gold plaque, but you have two [00:27:00] silver plaques also. ’cause engineering with Rosie reached a 100,000 subscribers. Uh, the uptime also reached a hundred thousand subscribers a while ago, but we reached 1 million. This is the first time I, we’ve been in person, but I could actually hand you this award. So congratulations Zi. Very, very well done. Thank you. This is treasured and, um. Yeah, added in. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, so I’m bit overwhelmed. I, I’m interested to know, we got that Wheel of Fortune footage from, ’cause I thought that was lost. Lost forever. It’s over. It’s on YouTube. Sadly. It is. It’s 24. All the episodes Rosemary competed in the Wheel of Fortune. She was on four times. Six times. Six times. Sorry. There’s only four available on the internet. You may have white scrub tube. I wanna massaging Lazy Boy. Is that your husband? He made me get rid of it. He is like, that thing is hideous. And [00:28:00] it was, yeah. Thank, thank you so much. And I mean, yeah, this is the, the uptime wind energy. Um. Yeah, podcast achievement. It’s, um, it’s crazy how, how popular that, um, it’s in insanely popular since we crossed the 1 million mark that was a while ago. We’re up to 1.6 million right now. We’ll cross 2 million this year. I know it’s, it’s clear Claire’s reason. It mostly clear and it honestly is. Uh, but wind energy is a big part of the energy future, and as I’m realizing now, uh, when you start to reach out to people, you realize how important it is for the planet and for individual countries that wind energy is part of their electricity grid. So the, the information we exchange here this week is very valuable and reach out to others. I think that’s part of this wind industry and Matthew’s pointed out many times, is that we share. So unlike other places, uh. Wind energy likes to work together. And that’s great to hear and it’s great to participate in. So I wanna thank everybody here for attending, uh, this conference. Thank you to all the sponsors. Uh, you [00:29:00] made this thing possible. Uh, as Matthew has pointed out, we’ll be at WMA 2027. The website is live. So, uh, listen to Rosie. Please register now. Uh, and uh, yeah. Thank you so much for, for being with us. And we’ll see you in February right here. Thank you.

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Soroush Karimzadeh of Novarc to discuss their AI-Powered Autonomous Welding Robotics in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 262 Show Notes: Special thanks goes out to Soroush Karimzadeh for coming on the show, and to Novarc for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about their AI-Powered Autonomous Robotic Welding solution, see the below links: Soroush Karimzadeh, LinkedIn, CEO & CoFounder, Novarc Technologies Inc.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soroushkarimzadeh Novarc Technologies, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/novarc-technologies-inc- Novarc Technologies Website: https://www.novarctech.com/ NovAI™ – Adaptive Welding: The full power of AI and machine vision in welding automation: https://www.novarctech.com/products/novai/ Spool Welding Robot (SWR™): https://www.novarctech.com/products/spool-welding-robot/ Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

This episode wraps up our Technology Modernization theme with a Siemens perspective that feels very grounded in what factories are actually dealing with right now. Brian Albrecht and Louis Hughes from the Siemens XD team walk through what they are seeing in the field across brownfield and greenfield conversations, why executives keep asking for industrial AI before the foundations are ready, and what it really takes to turn messy plant data into something you can trust for analytics, operations, and eventually AI enabled workflows.A big thread in this conversation is that modern manufacturing is not blocked by ambition, it is blocked by readiness. Everyone wants faster decisions, fewer surprises, and higher uptime, but the path there usually starts with boring work that is not optional. Data transparency across machine, plant, MES, and cloud layers. A clear definition of what real time actually needs to mean for a given use case. And a plan to contextualize and orchestrate data so that AI does not get fed junk inputs. Brian and Louis explain how they approach those early customer conversations, how workshops turn vision into prioritized use cases, and why trust, pilots, and repeatability matter more than flashy demos when you are working in regulated or high consequence environments.If you have been hearing nonstop AI buzz but you are still wrestling with legacy controls, inconsistent tags, documentation that no one can find, and seven layers of security constraints, this episode is for you. We get into practical use cases like AI vision and anomaly detection, LLMs for tribal knowledge and troubleshooting workflows, and the idea of fast versus slow AI, meaning AI that must act during production versus AI that can analyze after the fact.Timestamps00:00 Welcome and why this episode closes the modernization theme02:10 Meet Brian Albrecht and Louis Hughes from the Siemens XD team05:25 Vertical differences across oil and gas, discrete, and process manufacturing07:50 What executives ask for right now beyond AI, factory of the future and data transparency10:50 Brownfield reality and why most modernization work starts with legacy systems12:30 The AI conversation when foundations are missing, meeting customers where they are15:10 Current AI use cases in manufacturing, downtime, throughput, LLMs, and vision18:10 What it means to be AI ready, data silos, contextualization, and orchestration23:50 Fast versus slow AI and why production time decisions are different from analytics25:30 Edge versus cloud architecture, latency, and where the data should live33:40 Cybersecurity, trust, and why perception can lag behind the technology36:50 Hallucinations, guardrails, and why recommendations usually come before automation51:10 Book recommendations, career advice, and future predictions for industrial AIAbout the hostsVlad Romanov is an electrical engineer with an MBA from McGill University and over a decade of experience in manufacturing and industrial automation. He has worked across large scale environments including Procter and Gamble, Kraft Heinz, and Post Holdings, and he now leads Joltek, helping manufacturers modernize systems, improve reliability, strengthen IT and OT architecture, and upskill technical teams through practical training and on site enablement.Dave Griffith is the cohost of Manufacturing Hub and an industrial automation practitioner who focuses on how modern technologies translate into real factory outcomes, from controls and data foundations to scalable implementation strategies.About the guestsBrian Albrecht started in electrical engineering and spent about a decade in systems integration in Oklahoma City focused on oil and gas, building SCADA, networking, and automation solutions and leading teams delivering real world projects. He now works with Siemens customers on building relationships and delivering solutions that create measurable value.Louis Hughes has roughly 20 years of manufacturing experience, starting in software development for manufacturing and engineering applications, then moving into solution architecture, services delivery, and experience center leadership. He now leads a smart manufacturing team, bringing a software and systems view into automation conversations focused on solving customer problems, not just deploying tools.Joltek Services - https://www.joltek.com/servicesContact Joltek - https://www.joltek.com/contactReferenced in the episodeProveIt Conference - https://www.proveitconference.com/Siemens - https://www.siemens.com/Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moorehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_ChasmExtreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babinhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Ownership

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Karim Kozman of Schneider Electric to discuss What’s Next for Industrial Automation in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 261 Show Notes: Special thanks goes out to Karim Kozman of Schneider Electric for coming on the show, and to Schneider Electric for sponsoring this episode. Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

In this episode of Manufacturing Hub, Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith sit down with David for a practical, operator grounded conversation about industrial data, modernization, and what it actually takes to turn plant floor signals into business decisions. David has spent more than two decades in manufacturing across automotive, solar, and electric vehicles, and his story is a familiar one for a lot of us. He walked into a plant thinking he was there for a project, discovered PLCs in real time, and never left the factory world. From early days wiring up a SQL Server to pull line data instead of sending people out with stopwatches, to leading data and analytics and shaping MES and reporting strategy, this conversation stays focused on the messy middle where most factories live.A big theme here is that collecting data is not the same thing as creating information. As tooling has improved, connectivity, historians, SCADA, cloud storage, MQTT, and the modern ecosystem have made it easier to get signals out of machines. The hard part is deciding what matters, aligning stakeholders, and creating context that survives across teams and projects. David breaks down how real progress often starts with simple visibility, what is ruining your day, what is the biggest safety risk, what is the recurring quality miss, what is the downtime story you do not trust, then builds from there using workshops and iterative delivery instead of giant multi year “boil the ocean” programs.We also get into Unified Namespace, why it resonates with people who have been burned by tightly coupled ISA style integrations, and why change management is the hidden cost. If you are exploring UNS, this episode highlights the difference between drawing the box on a whiteboard and getting a whole organization to actually adopt consistent naming, context, and ownership. Then we finish with a grounded take on industrial AI. No hype, no doom. Just a realistic view of where AI helps today, where it breaks, and why context windows, documentation quality, and domain expertise still decide whether results are useful or dangerous.Timestamps00:00:00 Welcome and the month theme on technology modernization00:02:10 David's background from automotive and the Tesla Fremont NUMMI era to data leadership00:05:10 The moment data became “real” and why proactive visibility drives safety and outcomes00:07:10 How Kaizen and Toyota Production System style problem solving creates demand for data00:11:50 Why modern tooling makes collection easier and why budget and commitment still decide success00:16:10 Starting points that work in the real world and the simplest visibility model that scales00:18:20 Unified Namespace explained through decoupling, context, and why the first attempt often fails00:23:50 Who really uses the data, operators, quality, engineering, and the “next factory” teams00:29:10 Defining KPIs when nobody has answers and using workshops to force prioritization00:34:20 What rollouts actually take, machine states, data structures, controls changes, and iteration00:40:10 Industrial AI reality check, where it helps today and why it is not running your factory00:51:10 Predicting the next few years, consolidation, pricing, and better integration with agentsAbout the hostsVlad Romanov is an industrial automation and manufacturing leader with over a decade of plant floor experience across major manufacturers. He is the founder of Joltek, where he helps teams modernize operations through IT and OT architecture, integration, reliability focused execution, and practical upskilling that actually sticks. Joltek works with manufacturers who need real outcomes, not buzzwords, and the work spans controls, data, networking, and operational performance.Dave Griffith is the co host of Manufacturing Hub and works at the intersection of manufacturing operations, technology modernization, and practical delivery. He focuses on helping teams bridge the gap between “we want data” and “we can run this plant better next quarter.”About the guestDavid has 25 plus years of manufacturing experience spanning automotive, solar manufacturing, and EVs. He started in plant floor automation and conveyance projects, then moved deeper into industrial data, MES, and analytics leadership. His recent work includes leading data and analytics, defining KPI strategy, and building the layers required to turn raw plant signals into usable business information.Links from Joltekhttps://www.joltek.com/blog/mastering-unified-namespace-uns-a-guide-to-data-driven-manufacturing-transformationhttps://www.joltek.com/blog/ultimate-guide-mqtt-manufacturingSubscribe for more conversations on manufacturing modernization, industrial data architecture, MES realities, and what works on the plant floor when the budget, people, and legacy systems are all real.

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with Manish Sharma of Emerson to learn about the Next Generation of PACSystems Industrial PCs in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. Unlock access to the ad free EXTENDED EDITION by joining our channel at https://youtube.com/@InsightsIA/join or https://TheAutomationBlog.com/join For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast: Note: Below is an ad-free extended edition of the show that’s a member perk. To unlock the extended episode, become a member here. Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

This week Shawn Tierney meets up with John DeTellem of Siemens to learn what’s new in TIA Portal v21 in this episode of #TheAutomationPodcast. For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video. Watch The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: Listen to The Automation Podcast from The Automation Blog: The Automation Podcast, Episode 259 Show Notes: Special thanks to John DeTellem of Siemens for coming on the show, and to Siemens for sponsoring this episode. For more information please see the below links: TIA Portal V21 Sales & Delivery Release TIA Portal V21 Technical Slides TIA Portal V21 Trial Download TIA Portal in the Cloud TIA Portal Documentations Until next time, Peace ✌️ If you enjoyed this content, please give it a Like, and consider Sharing a link to it as that is the best way for us to grow our audience, which in turn allows us to produce more content

Technology modernization in manufacturing is not a list of shiny tools. It is a sequencing problem. In this episode of Manufacturing Hub, Vlad Romanov and Dave Griffith break down why the executive vision for AI often collides with the reality of the plant floor, and what a practical path forward actually looks like when you account for data quality, legacy controls, networking, and the true cost of integration.A core theme in this conversation is imperfect information. Leaders often believe the data already exists because reports exist. But a stack of paper, a few spreadsheets, or a single counter value is not the same as contextualized, trustworthy history that can drive decisions or support advanced analytics. Vlad and Dave walk through why foundational work matters, what teams usually miss during modernization, and how quickly the bill grows when you discover your architecture is outdated, undocumented, or full of dependencies you cannot see until you open panels and start tracing signals.You will also hear a grounded debate on how to think about SCADA, MES, historians, dashboards, and what it would actually mean to “feed data into AI” in a manufacturing context. The takeaway is simple. If you want better outcomes, you need a better understanding of your current state, a clear business case, and a roadmap that prioritizes what matters operationally. Modernization is not one big upgrade. It is a series of decisions that either reduce friction or create it.About the hostsVlad Romanov is an industrial automation and manufacturing expert focused on plant assessments, controls and data architecture, IT and OT integration, and workforce upskilling. Vlad has over 10 years of experience across large manufacturers and complex multi site environments, working from PLC and HMI layers up through SCADA, MES, and ERP integration programs. He is the founder of Joltek, where the mission is to help manufacturers modernize safely, build internal capability, and deliver results that actually survive handoff to operations.Learn more about Joltekhttps://www.joltek.comhttps://www.joltek.com/servicesDave Griffith is an industrial automation practitioner and consultant who works closely with manufacturers to modernize legacy environments, improve reliability, and build practical systems that operators and maintenance teams can support. Dave brings a strong perspective on what is feasible in real plants, where uptime, risk, budget, and organizational readiness drive every decision.Timestamps00:00:00 Welcome and why this month is about technology modernization00:02:10 The real problem with “just add AI” in manufacturing00:04:15 Quick background on Vlad and Dave and the work they do00:05:25 The disconnect between the perfect factory vision and the plant floor00:06:25 Vlad on business cases, integration reality, and infrastructure gaps00:09:05 Dave on imperfect information and why reports are not data00:14:35 What executives actually want from AI and why it is often about people constraints00:20:25 How to get there, hardware first, data normalization, and context00:22:05 Vlad on assessments, legacy hardware, and why upgrades get complicated fast00:39:00 New facility planning mistakes and why early decisions lock you in00:45:10 You have the data, now what, OEE baselines, bottlenecks, and root causes00:58:10 Final takeaways, inventory your architecture and treat data like an assetReferences and links mentionedManufacturing Hub Podcasthttps://www.manufacturinghub.liveProveIt Conferencehttps://www.proveitconference.comAutomate Showhttps://www.automateshow.comIgnition Community Conferencehttps://icc.inductiveautomation.comIf you are watching on YouTube, subscribe so you do not miss the rest of this month's deep dives on hardware, data teams, and practical applications that actually work on real plant floors.

Upstream oil and gas companies continue to be very reliant on spreadsheets, legacy systems, and manual workflows to manage thousands of wells, compliance filings, and capital decisions. It's labor-intensive, error-prone, and slow. In light of global energy transition moves, operators are now facing ongoing margin pressure, a supply glut, tighter emissions regulations, and a shrinking pool of skilled labor. Digital solutions to soften the impacts of these pressures too often end up in "pilot hell", with limited results, stalled momentum, and no path to scale. Core systems like SCADA and ERP can't be easily adapted, and the early stage AI tools are often dismissed as too risky, inaccurate, or incompatible with real-world operations. Capital markets frown on any moves that sacrifice short term ROI for the possibility of better results later. New agentic AI tools look perfectly placed to address these constraints, but getting started is daunting. In this episode, I speak with AI strategy advisor Jeff McKee who outlines how a handful of upstream operators are now using agentic AI (modular software agents), that augment field teams and automate critical tasks across production, compliance, and finance. Already live across 1,500 wells, these tools have delivered a 3–10% uplift in production, 5–15% profit lift, and >90% reduction in compliance workload. Jeff explains how companies can start small, define just a few key KPIs, and stand up agents in under two months, all without touching core systems. From Sarbanes-Oxley readiness to workover economics, it's a roadmap for scaling AI one agent at a time.