Our Industrial Life

From 2007 to 2016, Steve Holliday was the CEO of the UK’s National Grid. In that time, the share of electricity generated by renewables in the UK grew from 3% to 16%. Today, that number is close to 40%. Rebecca and Joe talk to Steve about his time leading the National Grid through the beginning of the energy transition. They also get Steve’s perspective on some of the big questions around the futu...

Preston Miller, a veteran of the mining industry, explains why mining companies need to invest in a comprehensive digital twin. We also explore the operational challenges faced by miners and how technology is poised to transform the industry.  About our guest Preston Miller, a professional mining engineer with decades of experience, is a leader in mining technology innovation. In his previous role...

Attempts to meld virtual spaces and physical reality so far have struggled to take hold. For all the ingenuity behind projects like Google Glass, the metaverse, and the Apple Vision Pro, they’ve often felt like technologies in search of a purpose. Professor Nick Kelling, an engineer turned researcher, may have found one. Rebecca and Joe spoke to him about the limitations and possibilities of exten...

Critical minerals are key to green technologies, but their supply is dominated by a small number of countries. Recycling could, in theory, open up a new source of supply of these minerals—but that too is dominated by a small number of countries. Rebecca and Joe talk to Megan O’Connor, CEO and co-founder of Nth Cycle. The start-up's Oyster system has the potential to transform the recycling bu...

Rebecca and Joe talk to Dr Tim Minshall, the Dr John C Taylor Professor of Innovation and Head of the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge, about his new book, Your Life Is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better . They discuss why “supply chain” is a misnomer, how SMEs can begin their digitalization journey, a useful prism through which t...

The telegraph system went from speculative theory to a global telecommunications network connecting continents via undersea cables in just 35 years. Episode page: https://www.aveva.com/en/perspectives/podcasts/the-victorian-internet/ Article page: https://www.aveva.com/en/perspectives/blog/dot-dot-dash-35-years-that-shrunk-the-world/ [1] “ The Electric & International Telegraph Company's...

SNOLAB is the deepest clean lab in the world. It searches for the most elusive building blocks of our universe: neutrinos and dark matter. The Nobel Prize website describes its experiments as like searching for a particular grain of sand in the Sahara—and it relies on industrial data to do it. Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

AI has been helping industries decarbonize for years by making their equipment more energy efficient and helping power grid operators incorporate more renewable energy sources. But, manufacturing, training and running the computers that power AI also produces a lot of carbon emissions. So, which is it? Is AI increasing or decreasing our industrial carbon footprint? Episode page: https://www.aveva....

Half the world relies on synthetic ammonia fertilizer to grow its food. But traditional ways of making ammonia produce about 2% of global CO2 emissions. On this episode, we speak to Dr. Zhenyu Zhang about how he’s decarbonizing the processes and making green ammonia. Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/schwoaze-4023294/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_ca...

A whole generation of industrial workers is about to retire, taking extensive knowledge and skills with them. How can companies attract new high-quality workers and quickly give them the skills previous generations took years to develop? New information technologies, called connected-worker solutions, are helping new workers get up to speed faster than ever before—and making their jobs more safe a...

Industrial companies will need to change how they think about and interact with data if we’re going to meet the ambitious COP28 targets. We discuss cloud, AI, and the importance of data-sharing in facilitating collaboration.  Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

Learn what solutions HENN connector group is using to connect its workers to real-time industrial data, digital systems, and each other, helping them work faster, safer, and more proactively.  Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

In the final episode of our series, “The Future of the Power Grid,” we talk to three industry experts about how grid operators are incorporating distributed energy resources (DERs)—like rooftop solar—in ways that maintain the integrity of the grid and don’t undermine their potential for sustainable power generation. Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

How do you put more power on an already strained and aging power grid? Our guests today say industrial software—and the data analysis it makes possible—is helping the grid increase capacity and accommodate sustainable power sources as we decarbonize. The second episode of our three-part series, “The Future of the Power Grid.” Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on...

In this episode, three experts discuss how technologies like smart grids, DERs and advanced industrial software can help us get renewable power where and when it’s most needed. Listen to the first episode in our series, “The Future of the Power Grid.” Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens talks with Lisa Wee, the Vice President of Sustainability at AVEVA about how AVEVA is helping its customers meet their sustainability goals while reducing its own carbon footprint in the process. Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens talks with Lisa Wee, the Vice President of Sustainability at AVEVA and Ruchi Shah, a Sustainability Manager at AVEVA, about the significance of COP26, the importance of combining diplomacy with commitments from the business community, and strategies businesses can adopt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our w...

How would it feel if you could know exactly what was going on with your water and power in the middle of a storm?  What about during a catastrophe?  Can real-time industrial data really help make both companies and communities stronger? In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens speaks with AVEVA Pre-Sales Engineer Dan Lopez about his family’s harrowing experiences during the Polar Vortex that hit Texas...

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens talks with Gary Wong,  the Global Water Industry Lead and Expert for AVEVA , about some of the most pressing challenges facing the water industry. They discuss how data and technology can help utilities survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world.  Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter . Visit our website . Follow us on LinkedIn .

The City of Riverside Public Utilities Department has embraced digital transformation by making better use of sensor-based data. Because they work closely with their board of public utilities on expenditures they track the value they are getting from their efforts. In this episode, we talk to the people who have grown the return on investment (ROI) they get from their work on the PI System from $6...

Guests: Allen Turner, Advanced Analytics Team Lead, International Paper Co-host: Mariana Sandin, Industry Principal, AVEVA. We speak with Allen Turner of International Paper (IP) about the unique challenges of digital transformation in a legacy industry like pulp and paper. Mr. Turner, as part of International Paper’s global technology team, is working on an initiative called “mill of the future,”...

Guests: Pat Harrell, District Engineer,  Josh Gregory, Water Loss Analyst, and Kim Klotter, Wastewater Coordinator.  Co-host: Gary Wong, Industry Principal, AVEVA. The White House Utility District (WHUD) is the largest water utility in Tennessee by geography, serving consumers and businesses just north of Nashville. Since it started making better use of its sensor-based data using state-of-the-art...

Guests: David Mitchell, Automation Engineer, Weber Metals.  Sean Upson, Systems Engineer, AVEVA.  David Mitchell is an automation engineer at Weber Metals, a major supplier of aluminum and titanium forgings to the aerospace industry. Among the thousands of things Weber manages with sensor-based data is a 60,000 ton forging press that is the world’s largest private investment in aerospace metal for...

Guests: Emelio Anglés, Information Technology Engineer, Kellogg Company Ted Combs, Industry Principal for Food, Beverage, and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), AVEVA Information technology engineer Emelio Anglés of Kellogg Company is part of the Smart Factory project to digitalize all of Kellogg's manufacturing plants. He describes the different stages of this multi-year project to move from sil...

Guests: Berkan Fidan, Performance and Process Director, Oyak Cement Martin Provencher, Mining Metals and Materials Industry Principal, AVEVA Berkan Fidan describes a team approach to improving cement operations with sensor-based data. He started a 2016 digitalization project at Oyak Cement in Turkey, which leads Europe in cement production. As the performance and process director of his nation&apo...