Author: Peggy Smedley
Gen AI (artificial intelligence) brings significant opportunities for businesses in nearly every vertical market, but achieving the promised outcomes requires quite a bit of planning and strategy. As with any new technology implementation, it must start with a core business objective, followed by a strategy for how to leverage technology to meet that objective. Businesses must follow an AI roadmap to be hugely successful. For this blog, consider for a moment how this roadmap might look like for your organization. Here’s a few steps to consider along the journey when implementing gen AI into your organization today, including: Step 1:…
Is the 2024 labor market in construction strong? Has work slowed to a grinding halt? What is the outlook for 2025 and beyond? Is there a shortage of labor? Are young workers curious about construction or shying away from it? All these questions are weighing heavily on top of the minds of many construction company executives today. Despite all the hype, ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) is sounding the alarm bells because construction is plummeting and sadly this shouldn’t be happening when it’s an industry that should be ripe with opportunity. Let’s look at some of the recent numbers from…
Over at The Peggy Smedley Show last week, I took a deep dive into the history of manufacturing, walking through the four industrial revolutions, looking at the evolution of manufacturing and technology. The hope was to identify how to move forward, amid the latest advances in AI (artificial intelligence), machine learning, deep learning, and more. To help examine this further, Simon Floyd, general manager, manufacturing and mobility, Microsoft, joined me to discuss the history of manufacturing and technology. He shared with me about when we saw the first big analog dials turning up in manufacturing, plastic injection molding, PLCs, (programmable…
Technology brings big opportunities, if done right. Consider the example of the digital twin. Roughly 75% of companies who say they are familiar with the digital twins also think the technology can deliver immense value for their organization. Think cost savings, better insights, and improved risk management, just to name a few. Hexagon recently released new insights in its The Digital Twin Industry Report. The report used data from the company’s Digital Twin Value-Maturity survey, which questioned 660 C-level executives and their direct reports about the adoption of digital twin technology within their organization. The survey reached around the world…
What lies ahead as we move forward toward a quantum era? This is the question one new report looks to answer. Riverlane announced its 2024 Quantum Error Correction Report, which aims to provide an understanding of the current state of QEC (quantum error correction) development and the opportunities and challenges ahead. This guide draws on public data from 29 hardware companies, including interviews with 12 global industry experts. Let’s take a look at the state of quantum today, starting with this report and looking at other recent news. Here’s what we know. In 2024, QEC gained significant momentum as big…
We are at an interesting convergence in the construction industry today. Projects are becoming more complex, as the need for sustainability and resiliency puts new requirements on projects. All this comes amid overarching labor shortages and ongoing supply-chain disruptions that are causing the construction industry to reconsider how to be more productive. Enter digital transformation, which is no longer a nice-to-have, it is a must-have on today’s construction projects. I unpack some of the biggest trends facing the construction industry today in a discussion I had with Paul Connell, senior strategy and enablement consulting lead, Hexagon and Mark Mehta, senior…
If there is anything I have learned in my almost three decades of covering data/digital transformation, M2M, the IoT (Internet of Things), and the AI (artificial intelligence) space, it is that we must embrace technology or be left behind. Industries today must recognize gen AI and LLMs (large language models) bring huge opportunities, but they must also proceed in a way that is ethical and secure. It is a very fine line that enterprises and companies of all sizes must walk today, but the good news is the technologies are emerging, transforming our ability to communicate and collaborate. Last week,…
The opportunities gen AI (artificial intelligence) brings to most industries are significant—dare we say remarkable? But let’s be clear, there are still some challenges. For example, most LLMs (large language models) are trained on publicly available data and the vast majority of enterprise data remains untapped, and much work needs to be done to address this. And again, dare we say address this sooner, rather than later? Enter Granite 3.0, IBM’s third-generation Granite flagship language models, which was announced earlier this week at IBM’s second annual TechXchange event. By combining a small Granite model with enterprise data, especially using the…
National Nanotechnology Day was October 9, and the 2024 NIOSH Nanotechnology Health and Safety Summit was last week. Nanotechnology offers a lot of opportunities for several industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, energy, automotive, and a few others. But let’s not put the cart before the horse. And as much as we all want to start celebrating, we still need to climb some tall mountains that are more than creating a few hurdles now. Following the development of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2000, the United States has been investing in nanotechnology, with the total proposed investment reaching $2.2 billion in…
We have come a long way with safety. If you journey back to the year 1960 and walked a construction jobsite, you would see very different work conditions than you see today. Hard hats were not mandatory yet and PPE (personal protective equipment) wasn’t the common three-letter jobsite acronym that it is today. Workers would be hanging from the top of buildings, with little gear to protect them. We have certainly come a long way, right? Yes and no. The reality is every year, one in 100 construction workers still get hurt bad enough to need time off work. We…