How often haven’t you asked that question, “what happened back then?”, after discovering a problem that was caused by something that happened way back in the past.

It’s 9PM on a Friday evening. I walk over to the kitchen counter, press a few buttons. A plate of biscuits and a glass of orange juice appear, which I take to the living room. 

Circa un anno fa, tre olandesi e un’italiana si sono incontrati… non è una barzelletta ma la nascita del progetto Shinchoku. 

Now we can start improving our production facility, be more effective, reduce waste and energy consumption and be best in class.

Imagine we are in a paint factory. In the factory there is an automated production line, and next to that we have two warehouses. 

In making production facilities better, and more intelligent, we face a similar challenge. Production lines, and the software and processes controlling them, are a potential ocean of data.

Taking a look at what we aim for with Shinchoku, we try to take a different view, but as you can see by my earlier writings, we also get carried away by the solution we think we have.

An important first step to sway potential customers is triggering their inner dashboard and getting them to rethink their way of working.

Of course, smart industry is about automation, and automation can have two effects on human labor. It can destroy or change jobs, or it can free people from working like slaves. 

Sustainability” has recently become the buzz word which pops up in many companies’ websites or candidates’ curricula.

Recently, as part of a project, I visited a metal parts supplier for larger integrators. 

In 1998, a not so obscure metal band from ’s-Hertogenbosch released an album called “How to measure a planet.” 

In the past ‘few’ years, everybody has been building so-called dashboards. 

I wrote about my plans to set up a business around using data from factories to improve production and logistics processes. 

In each 21st-century manufacturing plant, production is controlled to a more or lesser extent by software.