Microsoft's Long Standing Interest in Manufacturing

I came across today this entry that I had made to Tyler Bryson's Blog, who was at the time the point person for Microsoft's Manufacturing Strategy. Although it is old (Aug 30, 2010), it is interesting to see how long Microsoft has been involved in this space. My comments were designed to welcome him (and the Microsoft Blog) into this manufacturing space, and let him know that we have enjoyed Microsoft's long standing interest in our sector. 

If I could talk to him today, I would ask about Microsoft's "Green Project" as it applied to manufacturing. I was told this summer at the Microsoft World Partner Conference in Toronto that the initiative was stalled when Steve Ballmer took over Microsoft and I wonder why. The "Green" initiative was to help manufacturing and I think we should open this up again...

Check Out Microsoft's "Manufacturing Matters" Blog at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/manufacturing/

Also of interest was Tyler's first blog posting way back in 2008:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/manufacturing/archive/2008/07/28/manufacturing-matters-to-microsoft.aspx

By the way, the current US Manufacturing & Resources General Manager for Microsoft is now Craig Hodges and he is continuing to highlight "innovations and ideas from across Microsoft in Manufacturing" in the Blog.

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Tyler - I know that this is an old Blog - but I just wanted to welcome you to the manufacturing space.

Microsoft has actually been interested in and sponsoring events in our space for years. When I was with the Global HMI Sub-Committee in OMAC (Open Modular Architecture Controls group), Microsoft had a MUG (Microsoft User Group). We are talking over 10 years ago, before OMAC joined ISA and when it was under the ARC people's direction. Back then, I was running an upstart company after I had coined a new name that quickly became a category, namely "e-Manufacturing". After writing the first widely accepted XML Schema with Dr. Stephen Lane-Smith, I was happy that it has been used in the last few years and added to by MTConnect (see MTConnect.org) with sponsorship from the American Machine Tool Association. I now am involved with MTConnect on their Technical Advisory Board.

Our dream of barrier-free connectivity is now coming to pass and Microsoft will be a player in this. Our software systems over the years have relied heavily on Microsoft products - at times this was trying, but at least a standard could be leveraged for all. Today our goal is to connect the millions of isolated machine tools and provide a cloud of "machine2machine" inter-connectivity and synergy. We look at the plant as one machine now, and are in some ways living up to the 1998 press in Modern Machine Shop we got under the Memex name as the suppliers of the "shop floor nervous system".

I want to leave you with a thought - back in the DotCom days (yes, we were one of them - TSX:MFG) I explained to the VCs that wondered about this connectivity thing, that what we were talking about was the equivalent of clicking buy on the Net and the machine would almost instantly start making the product you needed. We are talking of a "Zero waste - made to order - ultra high velocity of data flow - integrated - quick response - perfect orders" - type of thing and all JIT! We want to leverage IT on the factory floor and with my new team of over a dozen companies, and with the technology we have today, I do not see why we cannot have this "click-buy-make-ship" dream.