Transcript 0:00 Talk to me. Information, news and entertainment on demand. Wusradio.com [on-hold music] 0:13 Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. As a monthly listener, you know my next guest. 0:28 His research and his teaching interests focus on creating new technologies for land, sea, and air robots and intelligent user interfaces. He joins us this month to talk about manufacturing and testing. 0:41 Please welcome Joshua Pestel, Assistant Professor of Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University. Josh, welcome to the show. Peggy, it's good to be back with you this month. 0:54 Hey, Josh, let's talk about manufacturing and testing, and you, uh, know a lot about this, and I thought we'd talk a little bit about just what's going on. 1:05 You know, when we talk about cybersecurity, manufacturing, testing, uh, you do a lot on the robotics side, so you know, uh, you, you can't do anything without making sure it's secure. 1:17 Manufacturers need to decide whether they wanna get into the IoT right now, and if they're gonna do it, they better think about what they're doing. So I guess my first question for you is, what are you seeing right now? 1:30 You know, with all the things you do, the research you're doing, are you seeing a lot of advances? You seeing people taking the pledge, doing the right thing? 1:40 I mean, there's a-- it's a lot of questions, I guess, there, but let's start with what you're seeing right now. Let's start with that question. Sure. 1:47 So I, uh, it's probably good to talk about scope first and then hit each of your questions as it relates to that. 1:53 I think that when we took-- look at manufacturing, we see large scale manufacturers, somebody like, uh, Apple Computer, who may, you know, rely on very large entities to manufacture their iPhones and other products and things like that. 2:07 But where I see some of the most interesting things going on are with, uh, small scale manufacturers. So you may have, um, a manufacturing place of, let's say, five or ten people. 2:21 Now, I think you already know that I'm gonna say that I think where the most interesting advances are in artificial intelligence and, and robotics. 2:28 Um, but I think that this is where we're really seeing some advancements with the ability to help small, local state economies by having those smaller scale manufacturers be able to have access to this technology. 2:45 And so it's gonna allow them to do better customization and automization-- or automation, and they're gonna be able to hit timelines in different ways. 2:53 And I think to your questions, you know, why is it important, why is this important to be tested, and, and how does it relate to security? 3:03 Having those manufacturers that aren't the, let's say, Apple Computers or even sort of the Amazons or whomever at that scale, it's gonna allow them to get into some new and different markets. 3:17 So making sure that those smaller scale manufacturers can meet the standards to be in those markets, I think that's an important thing. 3:24 I think, um, when we start talking about the technology ways in which the artificial intelligence and robotics can help manufacturers do their jobs different and better, if one of the goals is gonna be a safer workplace, it's understanding those variations that may occur in some of those smaller entities. 3:42 And then I think ultimately, 3:44 the final thing I'd say goes back to what we talked about last time, which is what related to supply chain and advancing supply chain throughout the entire process for the lifetime of some product or service that you may be doing. 3:58 And so being able to have transparency on that supply chain is gonna be important and understanding how that might affect that individual manufacturer or the supplier to that manufacturer, who owns the data, who has access to that data, who could, um, perhaps compromise one of those types of systems. 4:18 If it's a smaller scale manufacturing system, understanding that they have the right security and privacy in place. Those are all gonna be critical things. 4:25 So to me, again, most exciting is the smaller scale manufacturers, but they do have these issues that they're gonna have to deal with. 4:31 And I think the final thing that I would say is to technology companies, uh, a friendly warning is please do not price out the small manufacturers with the technologies that you're able to produce, because I think they're the ones that can benefit from it the most. 4:48 Well, and I think that's an issue right now because as we just heard Tricia just say in the last segment is that it's still too costly. You know, we don't have interoperability, it's too costly. 4:59 But you need the small guys, you need those medium guys because they're the guys, they're like the speedboats [chuckles] when you have these, you know, giant ships, you need those speedboat guys to be able to make things happen. 5:11 But it's a very interesting point that you made because, see, I, I have this perception of what's gonna happen here, and maybe I'm taking out my crystal ball. 5:18 I really think that supply chain that you describe, I think there's going to be a lot of co-opetition that's gonna have to happen because when you talk about the supply chain, a lot more transparency is going to happen when we talk about the Internet of Things and VR and deep learning and AI. 5:36 In order to make that all happen, we're gonna have to share things, think about blockchains, in ways we've never done before in order to make this all happen. 5:46 And I don't think we've actually opened this up to the way people have even imagined yet. 5:50 But in order for it to work, that's the only way it's going to be able to work going forward, and I just don't think people are really thinking about that yet. Uh, I would agree. 5:59 I think that there are issues that are sort of upstream and downstream of sort of where those questions are at. 6:05 We talked aboutThe, you know, operational efficiencies of the places that are manufacturing, we talked about the supply chain, where the products are coming from, but we also need to talk about sort of the downstream part of the manufacturing process. 6:19 So that's when you get into the sort of the logistics systems, and everybody is really interested in the transportation part, in particular shipping, and everybody's looking for sort of the next Uber of shipping. 6:31 And how do you have that on-demand shipping capability that you can provide to s- your product to somebody? 6:38 You know, if you make it in a small shop in Iowa, how do you have it in, you know, some other part of the world or California, Florida, wherever, in the fraction of a time, uh, th-th-that the bigger manufacturers could without having to perhaps pay a premium that might come through sort of that really incredibly expensive, you know, overnight shipping that a, that a mainstream shipper might provide? 7:04 So how can you leverage different, better ways for, uh, getting your product to people, um, if you're a small-scale supplier or small-scale manufacturer? 7:15 So when you look at all of this right now, you know, do you think some of this is going to happen quickly? Do you think we're talking couple of years? 7:23 Because we've seen a transformation in AI faster than we ever imag-imagined, and I ev- tell everybody now, we are at the speed of which time, and it's not ever gonna slow down, so I mean, it's only gonna get faster. 7:36 It's definitely not slowing down. Do you see transformation like this happening right away, I mean, within the next year, two years? 7:44 It's probably more on the scale of five years, and I think a lot of it's going to depend on how well the technology companies who provide these services that manufacturers could purchase engage them at a price point that they're gonna see the return on investment. 7:58 In some cases, the, the, the profits are just... Folks are lucky just to be able to make it to the next year. And if, if they have... 8:08 If they're reached out to by the, by the manufacturers of this technology for their sectors, it's gonna be good. 8:15 But I'll tell you, I'm, I'm a little tired of going to some of these trade shows where I see these technologies that are gonna revolutionize the, the industry for all of these different people, and you start talking price tags, and it's on the order of fifty to a hundred thousand dollars just to get in the game on some of these technologies, and that's n- 8:33 that's not something that the small-scale manufacturers are gonna be able to embrace at this point. 8:39 So the delays that might happen are primarily gonna be a result of the outreach of the technology companies and, and the price points. Well, I love talking to you, Josh. We're out of time. 8:50 Quickly, where can our listeners keep communicating with you? Where can they go? Sure. 8:55 You can check out, uh, the great things that we're doing here at Iowa State, including and especially manufacturing and digital manufacturing by going to the main website, abe.iastate.edu, or just looking at our personal website here, uh, peschelgroup.org. 9:09 All right. Thanks, Josh. You have a good one. We'll talk to you next month. Thank you. 9:13 All right, listeners, we are out of time, but you can check out our website at connectedworld.com or any past archives at thepeggySmedleyShow.com. Remember, we broadcast live every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. 9:25 And again, as I wanna remind you, you can always tweet, share your thoughts with us at Twitter. Follow us at ConnectedWMag. We'd love for you to engage with us. You know, put anything you want up in LinkedIn. 9:36 We'll, we'll follow it. We'll send you some comments there as well. We hope you enjoyed this session today. So as always, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and relevant technology. 9:47 Remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have an awesome week. [upbeat music] With great technology comes great responsibility. 10:04 Follow Internet of Things tech expert and futurist Peggy Smedley, repeatedly ranked as a top IoT and M2M influencer. 10:12 Go to Peggy_Smedley on Twitter for her take on the latest tech news and lively interviews with other industry insiders on her weekly radio show. Visit twitter.com and search for Peggy_Smedley to follow her today. 10:30 [upbeat music] Video consumption is on the rise, so to reach this audience, Constructek Magazine created Constructek TV. 10:39 Constructek TV helps construction professionals leverage emerging solutions to better their business. Tune in to constructek.tv to catch the latest show on the first and third Tuesday of each month. 10:49 Like, view, and subscribe to constructek.tv. 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