December 3, 2025 • 39 mins
Shawn Tierney recaps his trip to Schneider Electric’s Innovation Summit Las Vegas in this episode of The Automation Podcast.
For any links related to this episode, check out the “Show Notes” located below the video.
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The Automation Podcast, Episode 254 Show Notes:
Special thanks to Schneider Electric and their Marketing Partners for sponsoring my trip to this year’s Innovation Summit! Below are all the links I mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in
to the automation podcast. Sean Tierney here with
Insights. And in today's episode, I wanna recap
my trip to Schneider Electric's
Innovation Summit in Las Vegas, and it was
November.
So I am recording this during the week
of Thanksgiving, and it will come out the
following week. And so you guys are seeing
(00:21):
this,
early December, late November.
And, I wanted to film this though this
week of Thanksgiving because I wanted to kinda
share all my thoughts and what I've seen
and everything while it was still fresh in
my mind. And, if you're watching this, you
can see that I'm in my office this
time recording here. And, I get a little
presentation I'm gonna walk through that's gonna help
(00:43):
me as I discuss this. You're not gonna
miss anything if you're listening, but, it'll help
me kinda with, you know, different topics I
wanna talk about and cover. So in any
case, before we get to any of that,
as you probably know, we've covered
Schneider Electric quite a bit since 2022 when
Louis Arone came on to talk about automation
expert and universal IO.
And
(01:03):
I thought that was interesting, but that wasn't
really, I think, a good introduction to the
whole of Schneider Electric, and it wasn't meant
to be. You know, then way later, we
had, Jay Cortell arranged several interviews.
I think the first was with Joel and
Mahoa
on their machine level PLCs. That's the Modicon
PLCs and the,
(01:24):
machine expert development software. Of course, everything's named
EcoStruxure
from, Schneider Electric.
And then,
you know, we had drives on. We had,
actually, we had we talked about drives a
couple different times. We talked about HMIs. We
talked about IPCs.
We talked about all kinds of stuff. We
even had the TSYS Island folks on.
So all of those episodes, you know, I'll
(01:45):
put something up on the screen, and I'll
put links in the description. So if you
wanna go check those the previous episodes out,
you can. And, just a lot of great
information that I've learned over since 2022 about
Schneider, because previous to that, I really only
had spent a lot of time with Rockwell
and Siemens.
So, just, very interesting stuff. I know there's
a lot of Schneider users out there too.
(02:06):
So,
in any case,
then, of course, this year, we got a
we got our first Monacan PLC, so we
did a first time programming that. And, we
also,
was
sponsored to take a look at their new
Edge IO NTS platform,
which I thought was really cool, and I
did, like, almost an hour episode on that.
(02:27):
You guys,
saw that a week or two ago.
And, just it was just a blast unboxing
a box of IO and using it for
the first time. And so, Schneider had approached
me earlier in the year about, actually, two
different sponsorships. They wanted me to come out
to their show,
and, and I talked to other people about
their shows, and I was getting crickets. So
when Schneider said, hey. Do you wanna come
(02:48):
out and do, like, six,
interviews at the show? I said, yes. And
then they later contacted me and said, hey.
Can we get you to do three sponsored
videos as well? I'm like, yes.
This is great. Right? So, these type of
sponsorships make it affordable to go to these
shows because if the show's not local, I
mean, there's a couple thousand dollars with just
in expenses alone. I know. I just did
(03:08):
my expenses.
And,
so they help cover that, and then we
get content out of it. Right? Because just
walking around a show,
that doesn't provide any content, really. I mean,
you can generate content out of it. But
if it's not sponsored,
you know, this is it's not like we're
in the health or, you know, beauty or
fitness
segments where we're gonna get millions of views
and actually make a decent money on ads.
(03:29):
This is a small,
tight knit group of engineers,
electricians, and technicians who use PLCs, HMI, SCADA,
VFD sensors. And, you know, there's only about
80,000 of us, maybe a little bit more,
maybe a little bit less. So there's not
enough ad revenue out there to to,
to to kinda random,
episodes. So in any case, that said, I
(03:49):
did want to,
take this opportunity to go to the summit.
First time I've been to a Schneider event.
And, let me go ahead and pull up
the,
screen here. And this event really had,
three different audiences it was targeting.
And the first audience was the industry people
like me, people who are interested in PLCs,
(04:10):
HMI,
that kind of stuff. Right?
VFDs, soft starters, you know, the whole, ball
of wax. And then
the second group they are, targeting was power.
People who have to do things with power
generation or power utilization.
Right? And that's really not my ball of
wax. And then the third, group was data
center people. Right? And the power and the
(04:32):
data center are really kinda
coming together because of all the data centers
being built in America. Right? And so it
was really these three tiers they were, focused
on. I think they were aiming for around
2,000,
customers to show up or maybe that's 2,000
total. I don't know. But, it's not, in
in line with the biggest events you would
(04:54):
had anywhere. And I also think because they
had three different segments, which makes sense because
the company does it all,
you know, I don't know if they targeted
a lot of,
you know, the industry people, especially when energy
is so hot, right, and data centers are
so hot. But there were some there, and
there were a lot of industry products there.
I would say they probably had a third
(05:15):
of the floor. I didn't measure, but that's
just my opinion. And,
in any case, so,
I went out there, and I kinda learned
a lot of this while I was there.
But, in any case, if you look at
the if you're watching the screen, you can
see the the website. And I'll try to
include links,
to anything I talk about,
in the description,
but, you know, on both audio and video.
(05:37):
But, you know, if you wanna go and
check out what was there. But here is
the subtitle is energy tech, automation, AI, and
grid.
So AI was kind of with woven between
everything. As you imagine, it's a topic these
days. Right? So let me get my mouse
onto the right screen here, and
let's go to the next slide. So we
stayed at the Fontainebleau
(05:59):
Fontainebleau,
Fontainebleau,
hotel,
and this hotel was a fairly new hotel.
I think it was built in 2023
or opened in 2023,
And I I really like the conference section,
although it was quite a walk from the
hotel,
and they obviously make you walk through their
casino to do that. So or the edge
(06:21):
of their casino
And, which, you know, it's Las Vegas, so
that's expected. They even the airport made you
walk through the airport casino. It's like
they're just trying to get you to gamble,
I guess. I don't know. I always lose,
so I don't I don't gamble because every
time I've gambled, I've lost. I don't think
I've ever won much at all. So it's
really just throwing money away from me. But
(06:43):
in any case,
yeah. So this facility was really cool. It
was good for,
conventions and whatnot.
I think if I did this again, I'd
probably just stay at a Holiday Inn Express
and rent the car, and I'm gonna tell
you why. This it's so nice to be
at the hotel, but being an East Coaster.
Right? So I'm usually drinking coffee
(07:03):
probably before 05:00 every morning.
Well, 05:00, you know, 05:00 eastern time, there
was nothing open. There was nothing open until,
like, eight or nine eastern
in Las Vegas.
So how do you get coffee? Well, you
think you're gonna, you know, you're gonna get
it in your room? No. That's one of
the things that this hotel did not do.
They did not have coffee in the room.
(07:23):
So, you know, I thought, should I travel
with a coffee pot or just stay somewhere
else next time? But, if you don't drink
coffee, probably not a big deal for you.
Although, I will say, you know, being used
to getting up and eating breakfast at 5AM,
the room service is, like all these hotels
that run $3,400
a night, extremely expensive. So,
(07:43):
me, just give me a Dunkin' Donuts coffee
and a sandwich, and I'm gonna be happy
every morning. Not that's that's what I eat
every morning, but,
when I'm traveling, that that'll put a smile
on my face every morning. So in any
case, that was, that was tough. Now I'm
having the coffee in the morning, and I
ended up paying for some of that very
expensive coffee at some point because
I just needed my coffee.
But,
(08:04):
once you get over out of your hotel
in the morning and you went over to
the actually, where the show was in the
you know, down that long corridor and then
up the the other flight of elevators to
get to the convention area.
They had this beautiful registration booth. You walk
up to a tablet. You put your name
in. Hit print,
badge. Somebody behind the counter gives you a
(08:24):
badge. It was very nicely done. And the
other thing I liked was that they had
these huge displays.
I wouldn't call them TVs. They're just huge,
huge displays behind them that had the whole
agenda for the day.
So I thought that was great because if
you're, like, you didn't have to pull out
you know, if you're talking to somebody, hey.
You wanna go see this? You wanna go
see that? You didn't have to pull out
your phone. But I will say their app
(08:46):
was excellent. I really and I've used a
lot of these apps. They're usually excellent.
Their app was excellent. I give their app
five out of five stars because it was
just really easy to use, and my my,
emailed agenda that was through the marketing firm
didn't have all the correct room numbers, but
the app had everything correct. So, in any
case, great app, great registration desk, very friendly,
(09:09):
Schneider people. And so the first thing I
did was, beginning of the show, a lot
of times you'll have this media breakfast you
go to. Right? And so a media breakfast
is where you hear what the company wants
the media to publish.
Okay? And so you go to a standard
breakfast and just chat with other attendees, but,
you know, I I'm there as media. Right?
I'm here to do interviews. I'm here to
create videos, sponsored videos. So I'm like, I'm
(09:30):
gonna go to the media breakfast. And I
was a little disappointed because usually when I
hear media breakfast, I'm thinking breakfast. This is
like a light
continental. Right? And and, again,
as somebody who eats at 05:00 in the
morning when your when your media breakfast says
07:30 and there's really no edible food unless
you like continental
kind of stuff. And it wasn't like the
bagels and donuts either. So,
(09:52):
but in any case, that that's on the
hotel. That's what they do. And,
you know, no no ding against Schneider.
But in any case, I thought this was
very interesting. Not having known much about what
they do with the energy companies, they were
sharing a whole portfolio of grid management software.
So they got a bunch of five different
packages
of EcoStruxure just for grid, like managing assets
(10:15):
and transmission operation. They call it the digital
digital grid platform and, just some very interesting
stuff.
I actually took some pictures of the slides
because I was like, this is really cool.
You know, they they say they can boost
up to 60% reduction in deployment time and
all these other things. So very interesting.
(10:35):
Lots of details,
in in this presentation,
and I thought it was, was very good.
Even though,
you know, it's not my bowl of wax.
And and this is they were talking about
this thing called the EcoStruxure Foresight, which is
a new product that has AI built in,
and, I'll talk about that a little bit
more in a moment here. So, then we
had the keynote. So this was actually quite
(10:56):
a bit of ways from where we were.
It's in the theater, so it was a
good, I don't know, five minute walk
to get from the, you know, I think
we were in Floor 4 or Floor 6,
down the elevator and then across to the
theater. And, still in the same building, but
in a different part of the complex.
And, the theater that was really nice, I
had took a lot of pictures of it.
(11:16):
And,
you know, I had two options for the
let me just go ahead to the theater.
I had two options where to sit. So
one media group hired me to do videos
that had front row seats. The other group
that hired me to do podcasts or sponsored
podcasts,
they had a bit a back row. And
I decided to do the back row just
because
the people sitting in the front, they look
like they were shoulder to shoulder, like, they
(11:37):
were in those regular just folding chairs,
and they were packed pretty tight, I thought.
And then in the back, I just had
this beautiful view because I sat right along
the aisle, and it was a comfy chair,
not a, like, a a a dining chair.
And, I just got this beautiful view of
everything. Right? And, I I was just using
my phone. I didn't I didn't bring any,
(11:57):
any fancy camera equipment with me. I was
actually told told that it would be better
to get, for the videos to do it
on my phone because it's,
more authentic.
But in any case, that's what they said.
And, but it was a beautiful theater. Now
they say online it holds up to 3,800
people.
I don't think if you look at the
seating area in the front, beef before you
(12:18):
get to these rows, I think I counted
the chairs. Try to count the chairs. There's
about a thousand people down there. So I
would say they probably had between their 1,402,000
people they were expecting
come to the show.
And,
but the way they integrated these screens, one
big screen, two vertical screens, and then outside
of the stage area, two more vertical screens.
Really, for the for the sites, it sounds
(12:39):
good. Great. And,
here's another picture of it with everybody sitting
down. We're getting ready to start here. And
I did put up a video with some
of this footage. So if you guys wanna
check that out, that'll be in the description
as well.
And, actually, I'll link to the article at
the blog because I have all the videos
in one in one post.
In any case, this started out with a
drum, like, kind of a dramatic
(13:00):
drum, almost like a blue man group type
of without all the messy stuff. But, so
the street drummers and they did this, two
and a half minute drumming,
I don't know what you call it. They
played the song. And the graphics behind them
were just going great. I mean, it was
just it was just amazing. It was going
through all the high points for Schneider as
(13:21):
they were doing this really awesome drumming, solo.
And, I actually put a copy of this.
Because right now, it's for members only
on YouTube. I don't know if I can
switch it to everybody because I think that's,
I think it's copyrighted. But maybe I'll do
that and just see. I'm not monetizing it.
It's it's their song, not mine, but it
was just so impressive. What a great opening
act. Only two and a half minutes, but
(13:41):
the drums and the beats, yeah, really good.
I and the choreographed
video that was playing behind them was just
awesome.
Just really awesome. I mean, these drummers made
sure they hit the right high points when
the the screen changed, and I just thought
they did a great job with that. And
then from there, we had,
just a lotta lotta data. So I'll just
(14:02):
go over this one slide. They say by
2026,
they expect industrial electrical demand to surge by
15% in The USA.
And then by 2028,
peak demand will be greater than
peak supply.
That's what they're saying. These are estimates. And
then by 2050,
the electricity demand
(14:22):
should be more than double
what it is today. Now
I don't think I don't think this trend
will go exactly like that. Right? I mean,
necessity is the mother of all invention. Right?
So if, if, we're running out of electricity
production, people will make more power plants or
people will become more efficient while there'll be
new sources of energy and new ways to
(14:43):
store energy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But this is the trend they're seeing today.
Right? And so they had just a ton
of slides like this, full of this information.
They had so many that I actually released
a video, which I put some music to
it, bought a little music track to put
with it, and I released it on all
the platforms. So you could just see all
the slides I took pictures of. I think
there's, like, 20 or so slides
(15:05):
and, just a lot of information. And even
though I'm not in the power industry, I
thought I found that so interesting.
Then they had this video,
which is is in the LinkedIn video that
they they did. They live streamed this keynote.
So I'll link to the live stream in
the description.
Also, this video I'm gonna talk about right
now is at about twenty eight minutes and
(15:26):
thirty seconds. They had this history of Schneider
Electric. You know, Schneider's bought so many companies.
But this was as somebody who host the
steer of automation podcast, I was like, this
is so cool.
So in any case, they started out with,
like, square d.
Right? The first Oculus enclosed fuse
back in nineteen o five. And then they
(15:47):
had some other favorites they had, and I
just interviewed the, the engineer who did the,
the firmware for the, Modicon o 84.
So they had the first PLC. Now they
said 1968.
I would probably say more 1969
because, you know, inception
and deployment. You know, there's a difference there.
(16:07):
Yes. Marley came up with the idea in
'68,
but they didn't install it into GM until
'69. So,
what are you gonna say?
Then they had Wanderway, and I was wondering
why they had Wanderway listed as '20 2003.
Because as we've seen on the History Automation
podcast,
Gary wrote the wrote a book about the
history of one to wear and, my cohost.
(16:30):
And, yeah, that was that was, like, mid
or early nineties, late eighties. So I don't
know what the I don't know what that
date is signifying, but it's probably a wonder
way product they released. Maybe it's a driver
driver suite or something.
And then OSI pie.
So of that from my understanding in talking
to them, Schneider now fully owns Aviva.
(16:50):
So, originally, they couldn't buy the thing a
100 because FTC was like, you're monopolizing, but,
eventually,
I guess they own it completely. That's what
somebody told me on the show floor, so
I'm a Schneider person. So, anyways,
having used OSI pie
a lot as historian, in fact, to talk
historian with Rockwell, I've really became to like
it a lot and understand it a lot.
(17:11):
And so I have a soft spot that's
showing a big three and a half inch
floppy disk, and they're showing the date as
1980, I believe.
So,
that video is well worth watching. If you
don't wanna watch the whole watch the whole,
I think it's two hours, the whole keynote,
which I enjoyed, but, again, I was captive
audience. I would definitely recommend
I think it's twenty eight minutes and thirty
(17:32):
seconds. Again, I'll put that in the description.
Definitely wanna check out that, that video.
You know, a lot of these companies are
American companies we're talking about, even though Schneider's
a global company. And Snyder still makes thousands
and thousands of products
in America too.
So,
yeah. So even though they're a global company,
it's it's still
nice to see that there. And they even
(17:53):
had stuff in there about Telemech and other
other companies that weren't American, but, it was
just very interesting
stuff. And then they had the big foresight.
And the thing that I remember about foresight
is, yeah, they had some slides and everything,
but, they did this AI demo.
And,
it looked like it was actually running live
because it had that delay you would expect
(18:13):
from an AI like a chat g p
t or a grok or one of those.
And, but he was talking with an Alexa
like voice.
I almost wonder if they hired the same
actress who did Alexa
because it sounded very similar.
Well, to me, it sounded the same. But
in any case, it was pretty cool. I
don't think we'll be using that feature
(18:34):
in the near future, but,
I'm sure it's it's coming. Right?
And then, they talked about,
all the products they made in The USA
because it cost US US audience, and they
talked about the Altivar
six thirty drive. I thought that was interesting,
and I didn't know anything about that drive
prior.
And then,
(18:55):
from there, after the keynote was done, we
were scheduled to do a park, a a
show floor tour. They called it the Innovation
Park. And this was for media, and,
let's see here. Let me just go one
more. And so before we took that tour,
I tried to get a a a pan,
because you only see in a very short
piece if you're watching of this pan. So
(19:15):
you can tell just by looking at it,
the floor's pretty empty because the door is
just open.
And,
people are just coming in,
and you can see the size of it.
It's not the size of an auto meet,
okay, or other big shows like that, but
it still was big. There was there was
lots of stuff there. I would say if
you've been to an RAOTM
bigger than that,
(19:36):
but,
in any case, it was it was good
size, but, again, it's not the size of
an automate show or a massive show like
that. You know, again, target audience, 2,000 people.
Right? So in any case,
I was waiting there for the media tour.
They gave me a pair a pair of,
earbuds and a little receiver, and the guy
giving the tour had a microphone, which worked
really well because as the as the, show
(19:57):
floor filled up, it it could be hard
to hear people. So in any case, here
is our tour guide. This is,
Jesse,
who's super nice guy, super great guy, and,
he's hold I asked him if he'd hold
up the picture because at one point, he
was talking about the history of,
the their industrial products, and he had a
picture of the Monacan o 84. And so
(20:18):
I asked if he could hold it up
so I could take a picture because I
wanted to send it to Chuck who was
on that team who developed that product because
we just interviewed him. So just kinda say,
hey. They're still talking about you guys.
But in any case,
Jesse was pretty awesome to work with and
a good spot for holding up that picture.
And then, of course,
as they're going through the
energy side after a while, I'm like, okay.
(20:40):
I need I need to go see some
industry stuff. So I went over and I
saw the Edge IO, which you guys all
know I and I should say Edge IO
NTS because they have other Edge IO products,
like the the well, we'll see in a
minute. But in any case, they had all
of the, Edge IO products out.
And, they had a nice, display for the
Modicon,
m
(21:00):
five
eighty.
I think it's an e pack. I'll have
to put my glasses on for this one.
And And it was interesting because they had
redundant power supplies, redundant
controllers. They had,
some Hirschman redundancy,
redundant switches.
It was just a very interesting,
layout and,
you know, just showing off this line. I
(21:21):
don't I don't I haven't had anybody come
on to talk about this in-depth, so I
don't know much about it, but, it looked
impressive.
And, then they also had you know, they
own Foxborough, the Foxborough DCS system. So you
could see some Foxborough there. They had Tricon.
I believe that's part of Triconix.
So they had some Triconix stuff there.
I wanted to say hi to the Triconix
(21:42):
guys for Gary, but I I got distracted.
I had so much going on. And then
they, of course, had the Monicon x 80
IO, which is the what we saw on
the five eighty, and then, the Edge IO.
So as I'm walking around here, I'm seeing
a lot of stuff I've never seen before,
you know, especially when it comes to the
Foxboro DCS system or Triconix.
But, in this, your Foxborough Edge IO, so
(22:05):
that's a different type of Edge IO, n
t h instead of n t s.
So
in any case and then this guy, the
Monacan m six sixty. So I was, talking
to Kareem, who I interviewed,
and some other folks there, and they were,
like, really hyped about this. So
it looks like an IPC. Okay? So think
of an IPC.
(22:26):
I don't know. Eight inches by three inches
by
six
inches. Kinda like, you know, that, you know,
a box. Right? It's a box. A shoe
box.
In any case,
they were hyped about this because this unit
comes with Linux and comes with machine expert
run time, a code sys run time on
it. And they said it can do up
to 300 axis of motion.
(22:47):
It has Intel chips in it, so it's
very fast. But it also can,
also run simultaneously
Windows.
So you can run your skater or HMI
on there as well.
And they tell me that you could also
put in automation expert run time.
So you can make it a a a
DPAC
or a,
or just a regular, machine expert PLC,
(23:10):
all simultaneously.
And so they're very excited about that, especially
they kept saying 300 axes of motion. I'm
like, wow. That's a lot of axes.
So that's the Monacan m six sixty. And
then, of course,
I I was interviewing different people, and when
we're talking about drives, we started talking about
soft starters. So I went over to see
(23:30):
a look at their current gen soft starter,
which has too many features for me to
even,
mention, but it has a lot of features
you would think of in a drive and
not in a soft starter. So very interesting
there. And then, because we took the look
at the brand new,
HVAC,
drive from Schneider. Now they have an existing
one. This is the one that's in beta
(23:51):
right now. So coming out in 2025.
So they have a brand this brand new
HVAC drive. They're gonna have multiple versions. This
is just one of the different versions, but,
the stuff it does,
you know and it's designed for for the
HVAC industry, so it has all those protocols.
Right?
And then, they had this, simple on machine
drive,
which was or machine Mount Drive, which, had
(24:14):
IO link in it. So I grabbed some,
grab a picture of that.
And then, of course, they process VFDs as
well or VSDs.
K.
And then this one, and that's, Kareem in
the picture. I did get a chance to
interview him. He was great. We talked so
much.
Mahua came over. We talked to her, and
I hope to do an interview. I I
actually owe her an email. Hope to get
(24:35):
her on the podcast to talk all about
this assistant AI.
So, you know, we we see all the
big companies
working with Microsoft, working with Copilot
to to produce products. And and one of
the things I thought was interesting about this
and now this comes with
automation expert platform,
and I believe
you,
actually can,
(24:56):
license this, like, as a subscription
for an on premise solution, but that's not
out today. But in any case,
they're training it on what they have, so
it'll actually bring up samples out of their
own sample code libraries.
But you and when it's released, you will
be able to train it on your processes.
It'll be your own
on premise
(25:17):
AI that you can train, that the information
will never be sent to Schneider or anybody
else. And I think that's cool because a
lot of companies have you know, you have
people getting ready to retire, and they wanna
start training the AI
with you know? Here's the questions, and here's
the answers.
And, you know, so the next generation will
be able to come in and say, hey.
What did Joe used to do when this
(25:37):
happened? Right? So I thought that was very
cool, and I'm I'm I I like the
way people are deploying these. When I I'm
finding myself more and more going to a
GRONC or a GRONC or a CHAT GPTP
when Internet searches fail me because
Internet searches, they seem to have gotten dumber
over the years. And, the AI, though, is
trying to put it in the context, you
know, put the information in the context. So,
(26:00):
it's just a much better way to search.
Right?
So in any case, in a quest, they
always had the machines in motion just like
every show. They had, you know, robots, and
they had the track systems and whatnot. So
that's kind of a view of the industry
side. I do wanna show off this. This
was a full size,
I don't know how many inches, a 100
or over a 100 inches, probably well, I
don't wanna guess. But this is a curved
(26:22):
screen that was running a video
talking about,
liquid cooling data centers, which I thought was
so interesting.
But, just this beautiful, gorgeous, large screen, and
I got to meet the guy who did
all the three d work for it.
Very cool company,
and very cool job they did on that
three d.
Alright.
So that that was a lot of the
(26:42):
day, and then I had a session to
go to. It's how real companies are using
today's technology
to scale innovation and set records doing that.
And I was supposed to do a sponsored
video on this, except when we got in
there, these four are very nice,
very smart,
very what's the word I'm looking for?
Earnest people.
We're not talking about how real companies are
using today's technology
(27:04):
to scale innovation and set records doing it.
They were talking about I I would have
called this four different
companies
journey through
four different companies take a journey into
carbon
sequestration.
So or carbon neutral power because that's what
they all did. They were all about taking
carbon out of the atmosphere. That's what I
(27:25):
got out of it. At some point, I
kinda even threw my hands up. I'm like
I'm like, are we gonna talk about
using today's technology to scale innovation and set
records, or are we gonna talk about how
can we take carbon out of the atmosphere?
And I get it. I get it. One
guy's like, yeah.
I we have the biggest,
carbon with, you know, open air carbon withdrawal
(27:47):
system, c o two sucker out of the
ear system in the world.
They weren't they were doing it because they
wanted to sell the c o two.
And they were doing it they were owned
by, like, a oil company or petrochemical
company. So I'm like, alright. Whatever.
In any case, they were all very earnest.
They all had their heart in their missions
that this was what they wanted to do
(28:08):
with their lives,
but I was waiting for how they were
using Schneider technology
to, to scale innovation and set records doing
it. And that title was probably some marketing
person, And that happens at every show. Every
show I've been to, there's been one like
this where the the title doesn't really meet
the meet my expectations anyways.
But, then we had a session, how connected
(28:30):
networks are fueling industrial
growth.
And so this was
really how
connect networks
in our systems, whether they be automation,
industrial automation,
power, energy buildings,
fueling,
I would say
how how AI is using that information to
(28:52):
help people be more effective and more efficient.
And so they had ServiceNow in there, and
they were really talking a lot about
AI
and how you can now use that data
you have on the plant floor
to help you
either prompt you that something's wrong or help
you walk through a scenario,
you know, through using some an automated,
(29:15):
instead of using a standard operating procedure, use
something that's a little bit more automated and
a little bit more intelligent. So it was
an interesting session as well, and,
they're really talking about the the collaboration of
Veeva and ServiceNow. They're going out of different
ways. You know, ServiceNow is more about the
standard operating procedures, automating that, where Aviva is
more about automating alarms and events and data
(29:37):
collection and, you know, analytics and all that.
But, I thought it was a very interesting
session as well
and,
really didn't, you know, didn't come away with
anything I could actually use, but still wasn't
as interesting to talk about and think about.
And then after that, I had I had
to do an interview, and then I had
to sit down, I shouldn't say I have
to. I had the pleasure of doing an
interview with a Schneider product manager, and then
(29:59):
I sit I sat down with,
a product team from France. So three different
people and,
Bobby,
Robin, and Olivia. And it was just such
a great conversation.
I learned so much. I didn't even know
what control expert was. They explained it to
me, and it was we we I wanted
to do an interview. That didn't work out,
so I got the I actually saw Louis
(30:20):
Arone there too for a moment, when I
went to sit down with these folks and
got to say hi to him. And, we're
gonna try to get together up in, Andover
someday. I'd like to see the, the Modicon,
o 84 they have up there. But in
any case, that was a great sit down.
I really appreciate them taking time out of
their afternoon. And then there was this fireside
chat with NVIDIA's Rev
(30:43):
Labarian.
Probably didn't pronounce that right. But in any
case, I thought this was very interesting.
And, you know, NVIDIA was talking about so
this is a VP who handles Omniverse,
and, well, you think digital twin.
And he went through this the conversation of,
number one, I never thought of this, but
(31:03):
NVIDIA has always kinda done digital twins because
they had to simulate
how the chips they designed worked because they're
very expensive to make.
So you don't wanna make a whole bunch
of platters of chips that don't work. Right?
And so early on, they learned to create
simulations,
or digital twins of their microprocessors,
their GPUs,
(31:23):
and other chips so that they could ensure
that they worked
as desired, as designed, as, you know, they
wanted them to work. And it was it
was really awesome to hear that kind of
part of the conversation. I mean, he went
as far as saying, if an engineer tried
to sabotage us by to make the trip
chip not work, we would never produce it
because we would find that in the simulation.
(31:44):
I wouldn't have thrown the gauntlet down to
that one, but in any case, he made
a good point about that. And so it
was a very interesting conversation.
Then he talked about,
he had a conversation here about
how they were looking to model the real
world. They wanted to make their digital twins
better and how they couldn't find they weren't
looking to look and couldn't find a system.
They stumbled upon what,
(32:04):
the folks,
Pixar, who makes Toy Story, they stumbled upon
what they used.
Right? And they built on it over time,
and they ended up it's this,
something,
virtual scene,
descriptor,
language, or something. Anyways, long story short,
they ended up developing that more,
and,
(32:25):
they have other partners on it, including Pixar,
but other people from industry as part of
this group that's managing this new spec so
that when you have a digital twin, you
have descriptions for
everything that's part of that digital twin,
including, you know, size, dimension, color, texture, all
that good stuff. And, Schneider announced that the
event in in the session that they had
(32:46):
joined that consortium
around that, that standard. And I cannot remember
right now, but, I just thought that was
very interesting as well.
And, so that was it for day one.
Date so I was beat because, you know,
I matter of fact, they were supposed to
go to dinner with them at 06:30
to a very fancy restaurant, but that was
seven, eight, 09:30 my time. I'm usually in
(33:08):
bed by that time, and I was just
wiped out because of, you know, having gotten
up so early. So I spent the day
two, the morning, and, yeah, I got got
up at, like, 02:30 in the morning. And
I worked, for eight hours on the first
video I was sponsored to do. And then
I, did some sessions, hit the show floor,
and then I had four more interviews to
do, and then I had another video to
do. So that was my day, the second
(33:28):
day. And so spent that eight hours in
the morning creating that sponsored video because it
was due that day.
And then, I jumped into a session called
Igniting Industrial Competitiveness
with Open Software Defined Automation.
Like, that is a mouthful, but I think
this has more to do with Automation Expert.
And, what they talked about really was,
(33:48):
again, very interesting.
You know, why did Schneider Electric even move
forward with Automation Expert? Right? So they started
just shortly
before, if I understand the timeline,
I sat down with Louis Arone in 2022.
I think they probably started around 2020.
And the whole idea was,
(34:11):
and I I even asked them at some
point, and they didn't say anything, not in
this session, but other people. It almost seems
like they're competing with code system a little
bit.
So this
their open software defined platform or automation platform,
you know, basically, it's you program it with
Automation Expert,
and you can download it to any any
(34:32):
device you want, and that supports Automation Expert.
So there it seems to me like they're
almost taking the place in this area of
Codesys.
But the the reason for this is
and this, gentleman, Whit from ExxonMobil,
explained how expensive it is for them to
upgrade from legacy systems to new systems. Right?
(34:53):
And so we don't see this a lot
if your system's only twenty years old because
most of the 20 old systems can be
easily migrated into today's system. Right? But if
you go farther back, right, if we go
thirty, forty years ago, you know, we all
know,
like, on the on probably side, migrating a
PLC five to ControlLogix,
there's some work they have to do. You
(35:14):
know, the import utility will import a lot,
but there's still a lot of work to
do, a lot of engineering work. I mean,
days. Right?
And so,
you know, for them, they they don't have
no downtime.
So they have to do this, like, systems
in parallel, and it's crazy. So it it
can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars
to make do these migrations, especially large DCS
(35:36):
systems. And so they they'll they were really
looking for, you know, open software automation
or, you know, OPath, or they were looking
for something that would reduce this. They want
a common software layer like c plus plus.
Right?
And not that they they said that, but
think about, like, every computer can run programs
made with c plus plus. Right? So that's
(35:56):
what they wanted. They wanted the hardware to
be separate from the software.
And so Schneider jumped in on this and,
you know, with automation expert.
And,
to me, again, very similar to Codesys from
my viewpoint in many ways
because, you know, if you have a Codesys
prep program, you can should be able to
use it in any Codesys PLC. Right?
(36:17):
Especially if you're making it into a library.
I'm assuming that. I'm not a CodeSys expert.
But in any case,
you know, that's what their thought was with
open automation. But, also,
the thing here is that your programs can
actually when you have a program, it can
actually be for multiple devices.
So you may have one control scheme that
(36:37):
actually downloads to a controller and to a
VFD. Right? And some of their VFDs,
do have a d packs on them. Right?
Or the capabilities have d packs.
So very interesting.
I don't think I did it justice.
I did create a sponsored video on this
kinda going through what what said because he
went into detail about how, you know, migrating,
is so expensive, and that's why they want
(36:59):
they they love having industrial hardware.
But just like computers in their in their
data center, they wanna be able to upgrade
them
to the best in breed when they want
and still take forward that software. So
is this the future?
I don't know. I don't know. You know,
Apple is still doing great out there with
its iPhone. It's not part of the Android
ecosystem.
(37:20):
Right? So, we see people trying to come
in and challenge that. Windows phone didn't challenge
it well, but we're seeing, we're seeing people
continue to try to challenge that two dominant,
you know and I actually see them more
and more Linux on the personal PC side
because even in gaming, they're getting they're getting
so good at,
taking Windows games and running them on Linux
(37:41):
that, you know, if that trend continues, that's
gonna put a hurt on Windows as the
dominant platform in
in PCs. Right? So
interesting stuff.
And with that,
that was kind of it for the show.
What do I have content? So
already, I have the slideshow from the keynote.
(38:02):
I have two sponsored videos that I've already
done. I recorded five podcasts. There's another one
I'm supposed to record at some point, but
I recorded five already.
Mahua, I can't wait to get together with
her and schedule a time to do a,
an episode on
the,
on the AI.
And then, we got this podcast. I I
(38:24):
did some other posting, but just a lot
of content from
the summit. It was very interesting. I'm glad
I went. The flight out there and have
not having coffee, I'll tell you.
I don't mean to be a crybaby, but
give me my coffee.
In any case, I did wanna share that
with you. Just just my what I did.
And, look, I traveled most of the day
Monday and all and all day Thursday. So
(38:45):
it was two days of a show, but
four days. So I thank Schneider
through their different media partners for the sponsorship
because
none of that would have been possible.
And we just spent 2 just just just
the travel expenses alone was was $2. So,
you know, when you're self employed,
you have to find a a way to
cover every expense.
But,
(39:06):
I'm hoping you guys enjoyed that. Please check
out the content. And, again, in the links,
I'm gonna include links to the show, to
the keynote.
To go to the twenty eight thirty to
see that awesome video on the history.
I'll include links to the automation blog where
I have all the videos I've done,
some of my members only, which depending if
you're on YouTube, you'd go to YouTube and
see the members only. And then,
(39:28):
really, I just hope you guys, found this,
interesting.
I did wanna share what I, my experience
of being out of that show with you.
And, with that, I wanna just wish you
all good health and happiness.
And until next time, my friends.
Peace.
Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in
to the automation podcast. Sean Tierney here with
Insights. And in today's episode, I wanna recap
my trip to Schneider Electric's
Innovation Summit in Las Vegas, and it was
November.
So I am recording this during the week
of Thanksgiving, and it will come out the
following week. And so you guys are seeing
(00:21):
this,
early December, late November.
And, I wanted to film this though this
week of Thanksgiving because I wanted to kinda
share all my thoughts and what I've seen
and everything while it was still fresh in
my mind. And, if you're watching this, you
can see that I'm in my office this
time recording here. And, I get a little
presentation I'm gonna walk through that's gonna help
(00:43):
me as I discuss this. You're not gonna
miss anything if you're listening, but, it'll help
me kinda with, you know, different topics I
wanna talk about and cover. So in any
case, before we get to any of that,
as you probably know, we've covered
Schneider Electric quite a bit since 2022 when
Louis Arone came on to talk about automation
expert and universal IO.
And
(01:03):
I thought that was interesting, but that wasn't
really, I think, a good introduction to the
whole of Schneider Electric, and it wasn't meant
to be. You know, then way later, we
had, Jay Cortell arranged several interviews.
I think the first was with Joel and
Mahoa
on their machine level PLCs. That's the Modicon
PLCs and the,
(01:24):
machine expert development software. Of course, everything's named
EcoStruxure
from, Schneider Electric.
And then,
you know, we had drives on. We had,
actually, we had we talked about drives a
couple different times. We talked about HMIs. We
talked about IPCs.
We talked about all kinds of stuff. We
even had the TSYS Island folks on.
So all of those episodes, you know, I'll
(01:45):
put something up on the screen, and I'll
put links in the description. So if you
wanna go check those the previous episodes out,
you can. And, just a lot of great
information that I've learned over since 2022 about
Schneider, because previous to that, I really only
had spent a lot of time with Rockwell
and Siemens.
So, just, very interesting stuff. I know there's
a lot of Schneider users out there too.
(02:06):
So,
in any case,
then, of course, this year, we got a
we got our first Monacan PLC, so we
did a first time programming that. And, we
also,
was
sponsored to take a look at their new
Edge IO NTS platform,
which I thought was really cool, and I
did, like, almost an hour episode on that.
(02:27):
You guys,
saw that a week or two ago.
And, just it was just a blast unboxing
a box of IO and using it for
the first time. And so, Schneider had approached
me earlier in the year about, actually, two
different sponsorships. They wanted me to come out
to their show,
and, and I talked to other people about
their shows, and I was getting crickets. So
when Schneider said, hey. Do you wanna come
(02:48):
out and do, like, six,
interviews at the show? I said, yes. And
then they later contacted me and said, hey.
Can we get you to do three sponsored
videos as well? I'm like, yes.
This is great. Right? So, these type of
sponsorships make it affordable to go to these
shows because if the show's not local, I
mean, there's a couple thousand dollars with just
in expenses alone. I know. I just did
(03:08):
my expenses.
And,
so they help cover that, and then we
get content out of it. Right? Because just
walking around a show,
that doesn't provide any content, really. I mean,
you can generate content out of it. But
if it's not sponsored,
you know, this is it's not like we're
in the health or, you know, beauty or
fitness
segments where we're gonna get millions of views
and actually make a decent money on ads.
(03:29):
This is a small,
tight knit group of engineers,
electricians, and technicians who use PLCs, HMI, SCADA,
VFD sensors. And, you know, there's only about
80,000 of us, maybe a little bit more,
maybe a little bit less. So there's not
enough ad revenue out there to to,
to to kinda random,
episodes. So in any case, that said, I
(03:49):
did want to,
take this opportunity to go to the summit.
First time I've been to a Schneider event.
And, let me go ahead and pull up
the,
screen here. And this event really had,
three different audiences it was targeting.
And the first audience was the industry people
like me, people who are interested in PLCs,
(04:10):
HMI,
that kind of stuff. Right?
VFDs, soft starters, you know, the whole, ball
of wax. And then
the second group they are, targeting was power.
People who have to do things with power
generation or power utilization.
Right? And that's really not my ball of
wax. And then the third, group was data
center people. Right? And the power and the
(04:32):
data center are really kinda
coming together because of all the data centers
being built in America. Right? And so it
was really these three tiers they were, focused
on. I think they were aiming for around
2,000,
customers to show up or maybe that's 2,000
total. I don't know. But, it's not, in
in line with the biggest events you would
(04:54):
had anywhere. And I also think because they
had three different segments, which makes sense because
the company does it all,
you know, I don't know if they targeted
a lot of,
you know, the industry people, especially when energy
is so hot, right, and data centers are
so hot. But there were some there, and
there were a lot of industry products there.
I would say they probably had a third
(05:15):
of the floor. I didn't measure, but that's
just my opinion. And,
in any case, so,
I went out there, and I kinda learned
a lot of this while I was there.
But, in any case, if you look at
the if you're watching the screen, you can
see the the website. And I'll try to
include links,
to anything I talk about,
in the description,
but, you know, on both audio and video.
(05:37):
But, you know, if you wanna go and
check out what was there. But here is
the subtitle is energy tech, automation, AI, and
grid.
So AI was kind of with woven between
everything. As you imagine, it's a topic these
days. Right? So let me get my mouse
onto the right screen here, and
let's go to the next slide. So we
stayed at the Fontainebleau
(05:59):
Fontainebleau,
Fontainebleau,
hotel,
and this hotel was a fairly new hotel.
I think it was built in 2023
or opened in 2023,
And I I really like the conference section,
although it was quite a walk from the
hotel,
and they obviously make you walk through their
casino to do that. So or the edge
(06:21):
of their casino
And, which, you know, it's Las Vegas, so
that's expected. They even the airport made you
walk through the airport casino. It's like
they're just trying to get you to gamble,
I guess. I don't know. I always lose,
so I don't I don't gamble because every
time I've gambled, I've lost. I don't think
I've ever won much at all. So it's
really just throwing money away from me. But
(06:43):
in any case,
yeah. So this facility was really cool. It
was good for,
conventions and whatnot.
I think if I did this again, I'd
probably just stay at a Holiday Inn Express
and rent the car, and I'm gonna tell
you why. This it's so nice to be
at the hotel, but being an East Coaster.
Right? So I'm usually drinking coffee
(07:03):
probably before 05:00 every morning.
Well, 05:00, you know, 05:00 eastern time, there
was nothing open. There was nothing open until,
like, eight or nine eastern
in Las Vegas.
So how do you get coffee? Well, you
think you're gonna, you know, you're gonna get
it in your room? No. That's one of
the things that this hotel did not do.
They did not have coffee in the room.
(07:23):
So, you know, I thought, should I travel
with a coffee pot or just stay somewhere
else next time? But, if you don't drink
coffee, probably not a big deal for you.
Although, I will say, you know, being used
to getting up and eating breakfast at 5AM,
the room service is, like all these hotels
that run $3,400
a night, extremely expensive. So,
(07:43):
me, just give me a Dunkin' Donuts coffee
and a sandwich, and I'm gonna be happy
every morning. Not that's that's what I eat
every morning, but,
when I'm traveling, that that'll put a smile
on my face every morning. So in any
case, that was, that was tough. Now I'm
having the coffee in the morning, and I
ended up paying for some of that very
expensive coffee at some point because
I just needed my coffee.
But,
(08:04):
once you get over out of your hotel
in the morning and you went over to
the actually, where the show was in the
you know, down that long corridor and then
up the the other flight of elevators to
get to the convention area.
They had this beautiful registration booth. You walk
up to a tablet. You put your name
in. Hit print,
badge. Somebody behind the counter gives you a
(08:24):
badge. It was very nicely done. And the
other thing I liked was that they had
these huge displays.
I wouldn't call them TVs. They're just huge,
huge displays behind them that had the whole
agenda for the day.
So I thought that was great because if
you're, like, you didn't have to pull out
you know, if you're talking to somebody, hey.
You wanna go see this? You wanna go
see that? You didn't have to pull out
your phone. But I will say their app
(08:46):
was excellent. I really and I've used a
lot of these apps. They're usually excellent.
Their app was excellent. I give their app
five out of five stars because it was
just really easy to use, and my my,
emailed agenda that was through the marketing firm
didn't have all the correct room numbers, but
the app had everything correct. So, in any
case, great app, great registration desk, very friendly,
(09:09):
Schneider people. And so the first thing I
did was, beginning of the show, a lot
of times you'll have this media breakfast you
go to. Right? And so a media breakfast
is where you hear what the company wants
the media to publish.
Okay? And so you go to a standard
breakfast and just chat with other attendees, but,
you know, I I'm there as media. Right?
I'm here to do interviews. I'm here to
create videos, sponsored videos. So I'm like, I'm
(09:30):
gonna go to the media breakfast. And I
was a little disappointed because usually when I
hear media breakfast, I'm thinking breakfast. This is
like a light
continental. Right? And and, again,
as somebody who eats at 05:00 in the
morning when your when your media breakfast says
07:30 and there's really no edible food unless
you like continental
kind of stuff. And it wasn't like the
bagels and donuts either. So,
(09:52):
but in any case, that that's on the
hotel. That's what they do. And,
you know, no no ding against Schneider.
But in any case, I thought this was
very interesting. Not having known much about what
they do with the energy companies, they were
sharing a whole portfolio of grid management software.
So they got a bunch of five different
packages
of EcoStruxure just for grid, like managing assets
(10:15):
and transmission operation. They call it the digital
digital grid platform and, just some very interesting
stuff.
I actually took some pictures of the slides
because I was like, this is really cool.
You know, they they say they can boost
up to 60% reduction in deployment time and
all these other things. So very interesting.
(10:35):
Lots of details,
in in this presentation,
and I thought it was, was very good.
Even though,
you know, it's not my bowl of wax.
And and this is they were talking about
this thing called the EcoStruxure Foresight, which is
a new product that has AI built in,
and, I'll talk about that a little bit
more in a moment here. So, then we
had the keynote. So this was actually quite
(10:56):
a bit of ways from where we were.
It's in the theater, so it was a
good, I don't know, five minute walk
to get from the, you know, I think
we were in Floor 4 or Floor 6,
down the elevator and then across to the
theater. And, still in the same building, but
in a different part of the complex.
And, the theater that was really nice, I
had took a lot of pictures of it.
(11:16):
And,
you know, I had two options for the
let me just go ahead to the theater.
I had two options where to sit. So
one media group hired me to do videos
that had front row seats. The other group
that hired me to do podcasts or sponsored
podcasts,
they had a bit a back row. And
I decided to do the back row just
because
the people sitting in the front, they look
like they were shoulder to shoulder, like, they
(11:37):
were in those regular just folding chairs,
and they were packed pretty tight, I thought.
And then in the back, I just had
this beautiful view because I sat right along
the aisle, and it was a comfy chair,
not a, like, a a a dining chair.
And, I just got this beautiful view of
everything. Right? And, I I was just using
my phone. I didn't I didn't bring any,
(11:57):
any fancy camera equipment with me. I was
actually told told that it would be better
to get, for the videos to do it
on my phone because it's,
more authentic.
But in any case, that's what they said.
And, but it was a beautiful theater. Now
they say online it holds up to 3,800
people.
I don't think if you look at the
seating area in the front, beef before you
(12:18):
get to these rows, I think I counted
the chairs. Try to count the chairs. There's
about a thousand people down there. So I
would say they probably had between their 1,402,000
people they were expecting
come to the show.
And,
but the way they integrated these screens, one
big screen, two vertical screens, and then outside
of the stage area, two more vertical screens.
Really, for the for the sites, it sounds
(12:39):
good. Great. And,
here's another picture of it with everybody sitting
down. We're getting ready to start here. And
I did put up a video with some
of this footage. So if you guys wanna
check that out, that'll be in the description
as well.
And, actually, I'll link to the article at
the blog because I have all the videos
in one in one post.
In any case, this started out with a
drum, like, kind of a dramatic
(13:00):
drum, almost like a blue man group type
of without all the messy stuff. But, so
the street drummers and they did this, two
and a half minute drumming,
I don't know what you call it. They
played the song. And the graphics behind them
were just going great. I mean, it was
just it was just amazing. It was going
through all the high points for Schneider as
(13:21):
they were doing this really awesome drumming, solo.
And, I actually put a copy of this.
Because right now, it's for members only
on YouTube. I don't know if I can
switch it to everybody because I think that's,
I think it's copyrighted. But maybe I'll do
that and just see. I'm not monetizing it.
It's it's their song, not mine, but it
was just so impressive. What a great opening
act. Only two and a half minutes, but
(13:41):
the drums and the beats, yeah, really good.
I and the choreographed
video that was playing behind them was just
awesome.
Just really awesome. I mean, these drummers made
sure they hit the right high points when
the the screen changed, and I just thought
they did a great job with that. And
then from there, we had,
just a lotta lotta data. So I'll just
(14:02):
go over this one slide. They say by
2026,
they expect industrial electrical demand to surge by
15% in The USA.
And then by 2028,
peak demand will be greater than
peak supply.
That's what they're saying. These are estimates. And
then by 2050,
the electricity demand
(14:22):
should be more than double
what it is today. Now
I don't think I don't think this trend
will go exactly like that. Right? I mean,
necessity is the mother of all invention. Right?
So if, if, we're running out of electricity
production, people will make more power plants or
people will become more efficient while there'll be
new sources of energy and new ways to
(14:43):
store energy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But this is the trend they're seeing today.
Right? And so they had just a ton
of slides like this, full of this information.
They had so many that I actually released
a video, which I put some music to
it, bought a little music track to put
with it, and I released it on all
the platforms. So you could just see all
the slides I took pictures of. I think
there's, like, 20 or so slides
(15:05):
and, just a lot of information. And even
though I'm not in the power industry, I
thought I found that so interesting.
Then they had this video,
which is is in the LinkedIn video that
they they did. They live streamed this keynote.
So I'll link to the live stream in
the description.
Also, this video I'm gonna talk about right
now is at about twenty eight minutes and
(15:26):
thirty seconds. They had this history of Schneider
Electric. You know, Schneider's bought so many companies.
But this was as somebody who host the
steer of automation podcast, I was like, this
is so cool.
So in any case, they started out with,
like, square d.
Right? The first Oculus enclosed fuse
back in nineteen o five. And then they
(15:47):
had some other favorites they had, and I
just interviewed the, the engineer who did the,
the firmware for the, Modicon o 84.
So they had the first PLC. Now they
said 1968.
I would probably say more 1969
because, you know, inception
and deployment. You know, there's a difference there.
(16:07):
Yes. Marley came up with the idea in
'68,
but they didn't install it into GM until
'69. So,
what are you gonna say?
Then they had Wanderway, and I was wondering
why they had Wanderway listed as '20 2003.
Because as we've seen on the History Automation
podcast,
Gary wrote the wrote a book about the
history of one to wear and, my cohost.
(16:30):
And, yeah, that was that was, like, mid
or early nineties, late eighties. So I don't
know what the I don't know what that
date is signifying, but it's probably a wonder
way product they released. Maybe it's a driver
driver suite or something.
And then OSI pie.
So of that from my understanding in talking
to them, Schneider now fully owns Aviva.
(16:50):
So, originally, they couldn't buy the thing a
100 because FTC was like, you're monopolizing, but,
eventually,
I guess they own it completely. That's what
somebody told me on the show floor, so
I'm a Schneider person. So, anyways,
having used OSI pie
a lot as historian, in fact, to talk
historian with Rockwell, I've really became to like
it a lot and understand it a lot.
(17:11):
And so I have a soft spot that's
showing a big three and a half inch
floppy disk, and they're showing the date as
1980, I believe.
So,
that video is well worth watching. If you
don't wanna watch the whole watch the whole,
I think it's two hours, the whole keynote,
which I enjoyed, but, again, I was captive
audience. I would definitely recommend
I think it's twenty eight minutes and thirty
(17:32):
seconds. Again, I'll put that in the description.
Definitely wanna check out that, that video.
You know, a lot of these companies are
American companies we're talking about, even though Schneider's
a global company. And Snyder still makes thousands
and thousands of products
in America too.
So,
yeah. So even though they're a global company,
it's it's still
nice to see that there. And they even
(17:53):
had stuff in there about Telemech and other
other companies that weren't American, but, it was
just very interesting
stuff. And then they had the big foresight.
And the thing that I remember about foresight
is, yeah, they had some slides and everything,
but, they did this AI demo.
And,
it looked like it was actually running live
because it had that delay you would expect
(18:13):
from an AI like a chat g p
t or a grok or one of those.
And, but he was talking with an Alexa
like voice.
I almost wonder if they hired the same
actress who did Alexa
because it sounded very similar.
Well, to me, it sounded the same. But
in any case, it was pretty cool. I
don't think we'll be using that feature
(18:34):
in the near future, but,
I'm sure it's it's coming. Right?
And then, they talked about,
all the products they made in The USA
because it cost US US audience, and they
talked about the Altivar
six thirty drive. I thought that was interesting,
and I didn't know anything about that drive
prior.
And then,
(18:55):
from there, after the keynote was done, we
were scheduled to do a park, a a
show floor tour. They called it the Innovation
Park. And this was for media, and,
let's see here. Let me just go one
more. And so before we took that tour,
I tried to get a a a pan,
because you only see in a very short
piece if you're watching of this pan. So
(19:15):
you can tell just by looking at it,
the floor's pretty empty because the door is
just open.
And,
people are just coming in,
and you can see the size of it.
It's not the size of an auto meet,
okay, or other big shows like that, but
it still was big. There was there was
lots of stuff there. I would say if
you've been to an RAOTM
bigger than that,
(19:36):
but,
in any case, it was it was good
size, but, again, it's not the size of
an automate show or a massive show like
that. You know, again, target audience, 2,000 people.
Right? So in any case,
I was waiting there for the media tour.
They gave me a pair a pair of,
earbuds and a little receiver, and the guy
giving the tour had a microphone, which worked
really well because as the as the, show
(19:57):
floor filled up, it it could be hard
to hear people. So in any case, here
is our tour guide. This is,
Jesse,
who's super nice guy, super great guy, and,
he's hold I asked him if he'd hold
up the picture because at one point, he
was talking about the history of,
the their industrial products, and he had a
picture of the Monacan o 84. And so
(20:18):
I asked if he could hold it up
so I could take a picture because I
wanted to send it to Chuck who was
on that team who developed that product because
we just interviewed him. So just kinda say,
hey. They're still talking about you guys.
But in any case,
Jesse was pretty awesome to work with and
a good spot for holding up that picture.
And then, of course,
as they're going through the
energy side after a while, I'm like, okay.
(20:40):
I need I need to go see some
industry stuff. So I went over and I
saw the Edge IO, which you guys all
know I and I should say Edge IO
NTS because they have other Edge IO products,
like the the well, we'll see in a
minute. But in any case, they had all
of the, Edge IO products out.
And, they had a nice, display for the
Modicon,
m
(21:00):
five
eighty.
I think it's an e pack. I'll have
to put my glasses on for this one.
And And it was interesting because they had
redundant power supplies, redundant
controllers. They had,
some Hirschman redundancy,
redundant switches.
It was just a very interesting,
layout and,
you know, just showing off this line. I
(21:21):
don't I don't I haven't had anybody come
on to talk about this in-depth, so I
don't know much about it, but, it looked
impressive.
And, then they also had you know, they
own Foxborough, the Foxborough DCS system. So you
could see some Foxborough there. They had Tricon.
I believe that's part of Triconix.
So they had some Triconix stuff there.
I wanted to say hi to the Triconix
(21:42):
guys for Gary, but I I got distracted.
I had so much going on. And then
they, of course, had the Monicon x 80
IO, which is the what we saw on
the five eighty, and then, the Edge IO.
So as I'm walking around here, I'm seeing
a lot of stuff I've never seen before,
you know, especially when it comes to the
Foxboro DCS system or Triconix.
But, in this, your Foxborough Edge IO, so
(22:05):
that's a different type of Edge IO, n
t h instead of n t s.
So
in any case and then this guy, the
Monacan m six sixty. So I was, talking
to Kareem, who I interviewed,
and some other folks there, and they were,
like, really hyped about this. So
it looks like an IPC. Okay? So think
of an IPC.
(22:26):
I don't know. Eight inches by three inches
by
six
inches. Kinda like, you know, that, you know,
a box. Right? It's a box. A shoe
box.
In any case,
they were hyped about this because this unit
comes with Linux and comes with machine expert
run time, a code sys run time on
it. And they said it can do up
to 300 axis of motion.
(22:47):
It has Intel chips in it, so it's
very fast. But it also can,
also run simultaneously
Windows.
So you can run your skater or HMI
on there as well.
And they tell me that you could also
put in automation expert run time.
So you can make it a a a
DPAC
or a,
or just a regular, machine expert PLC,
(23:10):
all simultaneously.
And so they're very excited about that, especially
they kept saying 300 axes of motion. I'm
like, wow. That's a lot of axes.
So that's the Monacan m six sixty. And
then, of course,
I I was interviewing different people, and when
we're talking about drives, we started talking about
soft starters. So I went over to see
(23:30):
a look at their current gen soft starter,
which has too many features for me to
even,
mention, but it has a lot of features
you would think of in a drive and
not in a soft starter. So very interesting
there. And then, because we took the look
at the brand new,
HVAC,
drive from Schneider. Now they have an existing
one. This is the one that's in beta
(23:51):
right now. So coming out in 2025.
So they have a brand this brand new
HVAC drive. They're gonna have multiple versions. This
is just one of the different versions, but,
the stuff it does,
you know and it's designed for for the
HVAC industry, so it has all those protocols.
Right?
And then, they had this, simple on machine
drive,
which was or machine Mount Drive, which, had
(24:14):
IO link in it. So I grabbed some,
grab a picture of that.
And then, of course, they process VFDs as
well or VSDs.
K.
And then this one, and that's, Kareem in
the picture. I did get a chance to
interview him. He was great. We talked so
much.
Mahua came over. We talked to her, and
I hope to do an interview. I I
actually owe her an email. Hope to get
(24:35):
her on the podcast to talk all about
this assistant AI.
So, you know, we we see all the
big companies
working with Microsoft, working with Copilot
to to produce products. And and one of
the things I thought was interesting about this
and now this comes with
automation expert platform,
and I believe
you,
actually can,
(24:56):
license this, like, as a subscription
for an on premise solution, but that's not
out today. But in any case,
they're training it on what they have, so
it'll actually bring up samples out of their
own sample code libraries.
But you and when it's released, you will
be able to train it on your processes.
It'll be your own
on premise
(25:17):
AI that you can train, that the information
will never be sent to Schneider or anybody
else. And I think that's cool because a
lot of companies have you know, you have
people getting ready to retire, and they wanna
start training the AI
with you know? Here's the questions, and here's
the answers.
And, you know, so the next generation will
be able to come in and say, hey.
What did Joe used to do when this
(25:37):
happened? Right? So I thought that was very
cool, and I'm I'm I I like the
way people are deploying these. When I I'm
finding myself more and more going to a
GRONC or a GRONC or a CHAT GPTP
when Internet searches fail me because
Internet searches, they seem to have gotten dumber
over the years. And, the AI, though, is
trying to put it in the context, you
know, put the information in the context. So,
(26:00):
it's just a much better way to search.
Right?
So in any case, in a quest, they
always had the machines in motion just like
every show. They had, you know, robots, and
they had the track systems and whatnot. So
that's kind of a view of the industry
side. I do wanna show off this. This
was a full size,
I don't know how many inches, a 100
or over a 100 inches, probably well, I
don't wanna guess. But this is a curved
(26:22):
screen that was running a video
talking about,
liquid cooling data centers, which I thought was
so interesting.
But, just this beautiful, gorgeous, large screen, and
I got to meet the guy who did
all the three d work for it.
Very cool company,
and very cool job they did on that
three d.
Alright.
So that that was a lot of the
(26:42):
day, and then I had a session to
go to. It's how real companies are using
today's technology
to scale innovation and set records doing that.
And I was supposed to do a sponsored
video on this, except when we got in
there, these four are very nice,
very smart,
very what's the word I'm looking for?
Earnest people.
We're not talking about how real companies are
using today's technology
(27:04):
to scale innovation and set records doing it.
They were talking about I I would have
called this four different
companies
journey through
four different companies take a journey into
carbon
sequestration.
So or carbon neutral power because that's what
they all did. They were all about taking
carbon out of the atmosphere. That's what I
(27:25):
got out of it. At some point, I
kinda even threw my hands up. I'm like
I'm like, are we gonna talk about
using today's technology to scale innovation and set
records, or are we gonna talk about how
can we take carbon out of the atmosphere?
And I get it. I get it. One
guy's like, yeah.
I we have the biggest,
carbon with, you know, open air carbon withdrawal
(27:47):
system, c o two sucker out of the
ear system in the world.
They weren't they were doing it because they
wanted to sell the c o two.
And they were doing it they were owned
by, like, a oil company or petrochemical
company. So I'm like, alright. Whatever.
In any case, they were all very earnest.
They all had their heart in their missions
that this was what they wanted to do
(28:08):
with their lives,
but I was waiting for how they were
using Schneider technology
to, to scale innovation and set records doing
it. And that title was probably some marketing
person, And that happens at every show. Every
show I've been to, there's been one like
this where the the title doesn't really meet
the meet my expectations anyways.
But, then we had a session, how connected
(28:30):
networks are fueling industrial
growth.
And so this was
really how
connect networks
in our systems, whether they be automation,
industrial automation,
power, energy buildings,
fueling,
I would say
how how AI is using that information to
(28:52):
help people be more effective and more efficient.
And so they had ServiceNow in there, and
they were really talking a lot about
AI
and how you can now use that data
you have on the plant floor
to help you
either prompt you that something's wrong or help
you walk through a scenario,
you know, through using some an automated,
(29:15):
instead of using a standard operating procedure, use
something that's a little bit more automated and
a little bit more intelligent. So it was
an interesting session as well, and,
they're really talking about the the collaboration of
Veeva and ServiceNow. They're going out of different
ways. You know, ServiceNow is more about the
standard operating procedures, automating that, where Aviva is
more about automating alarms and events and data
(29:37):
collection and, you know, analytics and all that.
But, I thought it was a very interesting
session as well
and,
really didn't, you know, didn't come away with
anything I could actually use, but still wasn't
as interesting to talk about and think about.
And then after that, I had I had
to do an interview, and then I had
to sit down, I shouldn't say I have
to. I had the pleasure of doing an
interview with a Schneider product manager, and then
(29:59):
I sit I sat down with,
a product team from France. So three different
people and,
Bobby,
Robin, and Olivia. And it was just such
a great conversation.
I learned so much. I didn't even know
what control expert was. They explained it to
me, and it was we we I wanted
to do an interview. That didn't work out,
so I got the I actually saw Louis
(30:20):
Arone there too for a moment, when I
went to sit down with these folks and
got to say hi to him. And, we're
gonna try to get together up in, Andover
someday. I'd like to see the, the Modicon,
o 84 they have up there. But in
any case, that was a great sit down.
I really appreciate them taking time out of
their afternoon. And then there was this fireside
chat with NVIDIA's Rev
(30:43):
Labarian.
Probably didn't pronounce that right. But in any
case, I thought this was very interesting.
And, you know, NVIDIA was talking about so
this is a VP who handles Omniverse,
and, well, you think digital twin.
And he went through this the conversation of,
number one, I never thought of this, but
(31:03):
NVIDIA has always kinda done digital twins because
they had to simulate
how the chips they designed worked because they're
very expensive to make.
So you don't wanna make a whole bunch
of platters of chips that don't work. Right?
And so early on, they learned to create
simulations,
or digital twins of their microprocessors,
their GPUs,
(31:23):
and other chips so that they could ensure
that they worked
as desired, as designed, as, you know, they
wanted them to work. And it was it
was really awesome to hear that kind of
part of the conversation. I mean, he went
as far as saying, if an engineer tried
to sabotage us by to make the trip
chip not work, we would never produce it
because we would find that in the simulation.
(31:44):
I wouldn't have thrown the gauntlet down to
that one, but in any case, he made
a good point about that. And so it
was a very interesting conversation.
Then he talked about,
he had a conversation here about
how they were looking to model the real
world. They wanted to make their digital twins
better and how they couldn't find they weren't
looking to look and couldn't find a system.
They stumbled upon what,
(32:04):
the folks,
Pixar, who makes Toy Story, they stumbled upon
what they used.
Right? And they built on it over time,
and they ended up it's this,
something,
virtual scene,
descriptor,
language, or something. Anyways, long story short,
they ended up developing that more,
and,
(32:25):
they have other partners on it, including Pixar,
but other people from industry as part of
this group that's managing this new spec so
that when you have a digital twin, you
have descriptions for
everything that's part of that digital twin,
including, you know, size, dimension, color, texture, all
that good stuff. And, Schneider announced that the
event in in the session that they had
(32:46):
joined that consortium
around that, that standard. And I cannot remember
right now, but, I just thought that was
very interesting as well.
And, so that was it for day one.
Date so I was beat because, you know,
I matter of fact, they were supposed to
go to dinner with them at 06:30
to a very fancy restaurant, but that was
seven, eight, 09:30 my time. I'm usually in
(33:08):
bed by that time, and I was just
wiped out because of, you know, having gotten
up so early. So I spent the day
two, the morning, and, yeah, I got got
up at, like, 02:30 in the morning. And
I worked, for eight hours on the first
video I was sponsored to do. And then
I, did some sessions, hit the show floor,
and then I had four more interviews to
do, and then I had another video to
do. So that was my day, the second
(33:28):
day. And so spent that eight hours in
the morning creating that sponsored video because it
was due that day.
And then, I jumped into a session called
Igniting Industrial Competitiveness
with Open Software Defined Automation.
Like, that is a mouthful, but I think
this has more to do with Automation Expert.
And, what they talked about really was,
(33:48):
again, very interesting.
You know, why did Schneider Electric even move
forward with Automation Expert? Right? So they started
just shortly
before, if I understand the timeline,
I sat down with Louis Arone in 2022.
I think they probably started around 2020.
And the whole idea was,
(34:11):
and I I even asked them at some
point, and they didn't say anything, not in
this session, but other people. It almost seems
like they're competing with code system a little
bit.
So this
their open software defined platform or automation platform,
you know, basically, it's you program it with
Automation Expert,
and you can download it to any any
(34:32):
device you want, and that supports Automation Expert.
So there it seems to me like they're
almost taking the place in this area of
Codesys.
But the the reason for this is
and this, gentleman, Whit from ExxonMobil,
explained how expensive it is for them to
upgrade from legacy systems to new systems. Right?
(34:53):
And so we don't see this a lot
if your system's only twenty years old because
most of the 20 old systems can be
easily migrated into today's system. Right? But if
you go farther back, right, if we go
thirty, forty years ago, you know, we all
know,
like, on the on probably side, migrating a
PLC five to ControlLogix,
there's some work they have to do. You
(35:14):
know, the import utility will import a lot,
but there's still a lot of work to
do, a lot of engineering work. I mean,
days. Right?
And so,
you know, for them, they they don't have
no downtime.
So they have to do this, like, systems
in parallel, and it's crazy. So it it
can cost them hundreds of millions of dollars
to make do these migrations, especially large DCS
(35:36):
systems. And so they they'll they were really
looking for, you know, open software automation
or, you know, OPath, or they were looking
for something that would reduce this. They want
a common software layer like c plus plus.
Right?
And not that they they said that, but
think about, like, every computer can run programs
made with c plus plus. Right? So that's
(35:56):
what they wanted. They wanted the hardware to
be separate from the software.
And so Schneider jumped in on this and,
you know, with automation expert.
And,
to me, again, very similar to Codesys from
my viewpoint in many ways
because, you know, if you have a Codesys
prep program, you can should be able to
use it in any Codesys PLC. Right?
(36:17):
Especially if you're making it into a library.
I'm assuming that. I'm not a CodeSys expert.
But in any case,
you know, that's what their thought was with
open automation. But, also,
the thing here is that your programs can
actually when you have a program, it can
actually be for multiple devices.
So you may have one control scheme that
(36:37):
actually downloads to a controller and to a
VFD. Right? And some of their VFDs,
do have a d packs on them. Right?
Or the capabilities have d packs.
So very interesting.
I don't think I did it justice.
I did create a sponsored video on this
kinda going through what what said because he
went into detail about how, you know, migrating,
is so expensive, and that's why they want
(36:59):
they they love having industrial hardware.
But just like computers in their in their
data center, they wanna be able to upgrade
them
to the best in breed when they want
and still take forward that software. So
is this the future?
I don't know. I don't know. You know,
Apple is still doing great out there with
its iPhone. It's not part of the Android
ecosystem.
(37:20):
Right? So, we see people trying to come
in and challenge that. Windows phone didn't challenge
it well, but we're seeing, we're seeing people
continue to try to challenge that two dominant,
you know and I actually see them more
and more Linux on the personal PC side
because even in gaming, they're getting they're getting
so good at,
taking Windows games and running them on Linux
(37:41):
that, you know, if that trend continues, that's
gonna put a hurt on Windows as the
dominant platform in
in PCs. Right? So
interesting stuff.
And with that,
that was kind of it for the show.
What do I have content? So
already, I have the slideshow from the keynote.
(38:02):
I have two sponsored videos that I've already
done. I recorded five podcasts. There's another one
I'm supposed to record at some point, but
I recorded five already.
Mahua, I can't wait to get together with
her and schedule a time to do a,
an episode on
the,
on the AI.
And then, we got this podcast. I I
(38:24):
did some other posting, but just a lot
of content from
the summit. It was very interesting. I'm glad
I went. The flight out there and have
not having coffee, I'll tell you.
I don't mean to be a crybaby, but
give me my coffee.
In any case, I did wanna share that
with you. Just just my what I did.
And, look, I traveled most of the day
Monday and all and all day Thursday. So
(38:45):
it was two days of a show, but
four days. So I thank Schneider
through their different media partners for the sponsorship
because
none of that would have been possible.
And we just spent 2 just just just
the travel expenses alone was was $2. So,
you know, when you're self employed,
you have to find a a way to
cover every expense.
But,
(39:06):
I'm hoping you guys enjoyed that. Please check
out the content. And, again, in the links,
I'm gonna include links to the show, to
the keynote.
To go to the twenty eight thirty to
see that awesome video on the history.
I'll include links to the automation blog where
I have all the videos I've done,
some of my members only, which depending if
you're on YouTube, you'd go to YouTube and
see the members only. And then,
(39:28):
really, I just hope you guys, found this,
interesting.
I did wanna share what I, my experience
of being out of that show with you.
And, with that, I wanna just wish you
all good health and happiness.
And until next time, my friends.
Peace.
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