Thursday I was at the semi-annual meeting of the Industry Advisory Board of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems. Jay Lee, PhD and Director of the Center as well as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering, has done a fantastic job of orchestrating many academic research projects, development of algorithms and tools and building membership of manufacturing companies and technology suppliers. Attendance at this meeting must have been twice what it was in May in Ann Arbor.
Joe Kann of Rockwell Automation has consistently been a major proponent. Prominent additions to the research this year included Advantech Automation and TechSolve, both Cincinnati companies.
Most of the research effort has been in coordination with Toyota and General Motors that I was surprised to find myself walking into the Toyota Conference Center building in Georgetown, KY with Con Lau of Yokogawa. But Jay had made a special trip to Tokyo to talk with the company and explained the benefits for flow instrumentation companies to get involved. I think there is a big opportunity for them in this organization.
The research and academic rigor exhibited by the many PhDs presenting research papers is something that has been sadly lacking in discrete manufacturing. After several years of research and development coordinated by universities, users and suppliers, much useful technology has been developed. More to come as I digest all those papers (and try to remember the math I learned at UC, myself).
7:08:20 AM 
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