The OPC Foundation, in partnership with VDMA, CESMII, and NEMA, hosted three days of excellent Smart Manufacturing presentations in the heartland of the American Midwest during the third week of August, 2025. Cities included Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago with attendees exceeding 150 participants.
Keynotes were from manufacturing giants, including Jeff Abell, former Director, Global R&D at GM and now Clinical Professor of Practice, University of Michigan, who gave the opening address at the Detroit event. Next, Brian Perlstein, Digital Manufacturing Innovation Leader, Owens Corning discussed the importance and value of interoperability at the Cleveland sessions. And wrapping up the keynotes in Chicago, was a presentation on how “The Future of Manufacturing Isn’t Mechanical – It’s Cognitive,” given by Josh Dotson, Industry 4.0 Leader, Koch.
Our Chicago event was hosted at MxD facilities, “the Nations Digital Manufacturing and Cybersecurity Institute”. At the conclusion of the day’s sessions, MxD offered attendees a tour of the Innovation Center’s “Future Factory Floor,” where OPC technologies are well-represented in multiple testbed implementations.
Interoperability is the overwhelming desire for today’s manufacturing industries and OPC UA is fulfilling that need through secure information modeling from the factory floor to the cloud and back.