This week, Erik and Darwin interviewed Paul McCarthy, Founder and CEO of Snapfix. Snapfix is the simplest maintenance platform on the planet, making maintenance easy with a streamlined system of photos and traffic lights that everyone can use. 

In this special episode of IoT One Podcast, Darwin Wang joined Erik Walenza as his co-host! Darwin is a multifaceted professional with a diverse education and career background, and previously as Head of Innovation at JLL.

In this talk, they discussed why the building management industry has been a laggard in technology adoption despite being among the largest sectors in the economy. They also explored the application of consumer app best practices for building enterprise solutions that can be used by frontline staff with little or no training. Listen and enjoy the show!

Key Questions: 

●      What are the challenges of the management industry that prevents digitalization?

●      What does the integration of systems for consumer apps look like today for providing solutions?

●      What does localization look like for building enterprise solutions?

Know more about our co-host for today’s episode, Darwin Wang by visiting his profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/d1wang/

In this episode, Erik talked with Jaume Sanpera, CEO and co-founder of Sateliot. Sateliot is the first satellite communication service provider that will offer satellite IoT connectivity.  

In this talk, Erik discussed why 85% of the earth remains unserved by terrestrial networks and how modern satellites can bring affordable connectivity to remote NB-IoT devices. He also explored the factors influencing satellite connectivity cost structure, including satellite manufacturing, launch, radio technology, and service contract structure. 

Key Questions: 

• What is the cost trend for connecting an IoT device via satellite? 
• How does performance differ with satellite versus terrestrial communication? 
• What are the big use cases in satellite IoT connectivity? 

This week, we interviewed Jack Kang, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Customer Experience at SiFive. SiFive brings RISC V software and Silicon experts together to innovate with the modern software-driven approach to semiconductors. 

In this episode, we talked about the importance of the RISC V open standard for semiconductors to provide design freedom, vendor choice, and long-term tech stack flexibility. We also explored how companies, from automotive OEMs to wearable device manufacturers, are different in their products with custom designs on open standards. 

Key Questions: 

• What is the international standard behind RISC-V technology? 
• Who are the big contributors to RISC-V instruction set standards? 
• How do you see the future of RISC-V in the coming years? 

In this episode, we talked with Renan Devillieres, founder and CEO of OSS Ventures. OSS Ventures is a start-up studio that invests in the future of factory operations. They ideate, test, build and invest in great ideas to change the future of manufacturing.

In this talk, we discussed the role of start-ups in shaping the future of manufacturing and specific areas of breakthrough in this industry. We also covered the best practices for building a new venture like opportunity identification, product-market fit validation, and recruiting a leadership team. 

Key Questions:

• What is the current status of digital technology adoption in manufacturing?
• What are the challenges in finding the right technology providers, companies, and founders in manufacturing?
• What are the challenges for corporate ventures trying to explore areas outside their domain expertise?

In this episode, we talked with Leonard Marano, President of the Americas at Lectra. Lectra provides Industry 4.0 solutions to bridge the gap between the consumer and the factory bringing precision and flexibility to the design to production process.

In this talk, we discussed market trends driving Industry 4.0 adoption including mass customization, sustainability, nearshoring, and workforce shortages. We also explored how manufacturing in the fashion industry is evolving its supply chains to differentiate quality, cost, and speed to market.

Key Questions: 

●      How does mass customization affect the current market trends?

●      What factors affect people to invest more in technologies that promote sustainability?

●      How do nearshoring and workforce shortages drive automation?

This week, we interviewed Bryan DeBois, director of Industrial AI at RoviSys. RoviSys is a global system integrator that applies the most effective methods for building, analyzing, improving, and maintaining complex autonomous systems.

In this episode, we talk about the concept of autonomous AI that integrates deep reinforcement learning based on machine data with machine teaching based on the main expertise and improvement through simulation. We also explored the industrial landscape broadly, including the cost structure, ROI targets, use cases, cloud strategy, and emerging technologies like GPT4.

Key Questions:

●      What is autonomous AI?

●      What is the status of industrial AI in the S-curve of artificial intelligence?

●      What are the use cases that are fit for autonomous AI?

●      What is the cost structure for autonomous AI?

In this episode, we talked with Matt Oberdorfer, founder and CEO of Embassy of Things. Embassy of Things enables industrial enterprises to modernize and build their own operational cloud historians, industrial digital twins, and data lakes.

In this talk, we discussed how to modernize industrial data architecture to resolve development bottlenecks and simplify the path from a pilot scale. We also explored the application of generative AI to the industrial environment. 

Key Questions:

• What is your perspective on the human or organizational element as a bottleneck to moving from POC to scale?
• What is the architectural element for industrial data and industrial AI?
• What is the difference between generic AI and generative AI?

In this episode, we talked with Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and founder of RackN. RackN connects the tools people use to manage infrastructure to workflow pipelines through seamless automation across IT systems, platforms, and applications.

In this episode, we discussed the challenges of operating on-premise data centers and the need to automate processes as companies adopt edge computing. We also explored the development during the past 25 years of data center evolution, what has improved, and where we still need progress. 

Key Questions:

• What are the challenges nowadays for cloud infrastructure? 
• How have IoT and data centers evolved over the past 25 years? 
• How do companies adapt to edge computing?

In this week's episode, we interviewed Scott Hondros, Vice President of Professional Services at CenTrak. CenTrak helps healthcare facilities create a safe, and efficient healthcare environment through the deployment of industry-leading real-time location systems.

In this episode, we discussed how healthcare providers use IoT systems data to increase productivity, reduce operating costs and transform patient care. We also talked about machine-learning adoption to generate insights into asset utilization and the potential for the adoption of generative AI to create speech-based user interfaces.

Key Questions:

• Do you see people experimenting with a new business model around RTLS?
• What is the stakeholder relationship for large healthcare facilities?
• What is the future of voice-based interfaces for the healthcare industry?

For today's episode, we talked with Artem Kroupenev, Head of Strategy for Augury. Augury uses AI to detect machine failures before they occur by empowering the largest process manufacturers to integrate AI into their daily operations.

In this talk, we discussed how AI co-pilots transform the factory floor by guiding maintenance, quality, and production decisions with highly accurate diagnostics. We also explored the impact of GPT-4 and other large language models on how manufacturers use unstructured information and build more convenient user interfaces.

Key Questions:

• How would you apply AI and machine learning to the manufacturing environment?
• What does the journey look like for AI integration in industrial and manufacturing in the coming years?
• How do you work with unstructured information to build more convenient user interfaces?