Google Cloud hopes to woo factories with its usual fare: Analytics and AI

Google has deployed a pair of AI-related services to woo factories and assembly lines onto its cloud. These offerings are: Manufacturing Connect (MC), an automation tool and data processor that supports more than 250 machine-communication protocols, and can thus receive data from a wide variety of sources; and a Manufacturing …

[aki009]

All your eggs, meet a single basket

I'm sure this cloud based automation is an awesome thing until it isn't.

This is just about as smart as putting all your production eggs in a single Chinese basket.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

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Does this come with a suggestion engine based on similar uses in other factories?

[MachDiamond]

A significant downside

A large factory, such as an automobile assembly plant, can lose an extreme amount of money every minute a production line is down. Rather than connecting those systems to the internet, the better option is just the opposite by air-gapping those systems. Execs love to she real-time graphs and numbers, but it's really those metrics over time that matter so a delay though making the system more secure isn't a big problem. The additional problem is partnering with somebody such as Google. In the case of a smaller company, they have no leverage and therefore, no priority with Google to solve problems quickly. For all companies, sharing intimate operating information with an outside firm is silly.

I'm not a fan of Google and when I see a car company advertising their cars come with embedded Google "functionality", that's a brand/model I plan on never owning.