Industry Week published an article titled Reaching For A Smarter Factory, authored by John Teresko, on Sept. 1, 2007. The article gives an overview about the Smart Machine Platform Initiative (SMPI) based on the interview with John Kohls, executive vice president of Cincinnati's TechSolve Inc. The article also includes a long section about the Predict-And-Prevent philosophy behind SMPI, based on the interview with Dr. Jay Lee, director of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems.

Here is an excerpt.

"The maintenance world of tomorrow is an information world for feature-based monitoring," says Lee. Intelligent sensor networks could let production equipment notice maintenance problems before they happen. "Information should represent a trend, not just a status. It should offer priorities, not just show ‘how much.' If we do that, then our productivity can be focused on asset-level utilization, not just production rates."

Read the full article.