Moreover, even when that dataset does exist, there often won’t be even the most basic built-in tools to analyze it. In an unusually modern manufacturing startup, the M.O. might be “export the dataset as .csv and use Excel to run basic statistics on it.”
I wonder how feasible it would be to build a manufacturing/parts/etc company whose value proposition is solving this problem from the jump. That is to say, redesigning parts with the sensors built in, with accompanying analysis tools, preferably as drop-in replacements where possible. In this way companies could undergo a “digital transformation” gradually, at pretty much their regular operations speed.
It occurs to me we can approach the problem from a completely data-centric perspective: if we want tool AIs to be able to control manufacturing more closely, we can steal a page from the data-center-as-computer people and think of the job of the machines themselves as being production sensors in a production center.
Wrangling the trade-offs would be tricky though. How much better will things be with all this additional data as compared to, say, a fixed throughput or efficiency increase? If we shift further and think in terms of how the additional data can add additional value, are we talking about redesigning machines such that they have more degrees of freedom, ie every measurement corresponds to an adjustable variable on the machine?
Following on this:
I wonder how feasible it would be to build a manufacturing/parts/etc company whose value proposition is solving this problem from the jump. That is to say, redesigning parts with the sensors built in, with accompanying analysis tools, preferably as drop-in replacements where possible. In this way companies could undergo a “digital transformation” gradually, at pretty much their regular operations speed.
It occurs to me we can approach the problem from a completely data-centric perspective: if we want tool AIs to be able to control manufacturing more closely, we can steal a page from the data-center-as-computer people and think of the job of the machines themselves as being production sensors in a production center.
Wrangling the trade-offs would be tricky though. How much better will things be with all this additional data as compared to, say, a fixed throughput or efficiency increase? If we shift further and think in terms of how the additional data can add additional value, are we talking about redesigning machines such that they have more degrees of freedom, ie every measurement corresponds to an adjustable variable on the machine?