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Why the unseen risks in operational technology are no longer theoretical

Operational technology (OT) environments are under growing pressure. As critical infrastructure modernises, organisations are connecting legacy systems, adopting cloud services, and integrating new platforms to improve efficiency and resilience. While this shift is necessary, it also exposes a new class of risks that many organisations are not fully prepared to manage. Michael Murphy, Director of Operational Technology, APAC, Fortinet, said, “Critical infrastructure organisations often focus on software vulnerabilities and network threats; however, some of the most critical risks now sit much earlier in the lifecycle before a device is even powered on. Supply chain compromise, hardware tampering, and counterfeit components are becoming more relevant as environments become more connected.” These risks are not limited to a single deployment model. Whether infrastructure is on-premises, converged across IT and OT, or delivered through cloud services, the same questions apply: where technology comes from, how it is built, and whether it can be trusted. Supply chain compromise: risk at the source Modern OT environments rely on highly interconnected supply chains. Hardware, software, and services are sourced globally, often through multiple vendors and intermediaries. This creates risk. If any part of that chain becomes compromised, the impact can cascade across operations. Michael Murphy said, “As organisations adopt cloud and platform-based services, they gain efficiency yet lose visibility. They no longer inspect what arrives on-site. They trust that the provider has done the right checks across their supply chain.” The risk is now real and no longer theoretical. Increasingly, organisations see instances where components are substituted, modified, or sourced from unverified suppliers. In critical infrastructure, even a minor compromise can have operational and safety implications. This aligns with broader industry concerns about interconnected supply chains amplifying disruption, where a single compromised node can affect entire production and distribution networks. Hardware tampering: trust cannot stop at the perimeter Traditional security models assume hardware remains trustworthy once deployed. That assumption no longer holds. Tampering can occur during manufacturing, transit, or installation. In some cases, actors may modify devices to introduce hidden functionality or vulnerabilities before they ever reach the customer. Michael Murphy said, “There are controls like tamper-evident seals for physical […]

Quanta Computer selects Siemens Xcelerator to advance manufacturing innovation

Image courtesy of Quanta Computer Quanta Computer Inc., a global leader in consumer electronics OEM/ODM manufacturing, is using the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software to advance its global digital transformation to shorten development cycles and enhance responsiveness to market demand. The initiative establishes an integrated, collaborative environment that connects product design with manufacturing execution, enabling greater speed, consistency and scalability across operations. Amid intensifying global competition and increasing product complexity, Quanta Computer is accelerating its transformation. As a strategic technology provider, Siemens supports Quanta in building a unified digital thread across its research & development centers and distributed manufacturing network. This end-to-end connectivity is expected to significantly improve operational efficiency, with projected reductions of 20 to 25 percent in NPI timelines, helping teams collaborate on one digital twin so decisions move earlier, and scaling across factory operations become more predictable. “In a fast-evolving market, optimising our global operational footprint is critical. Siemens has the toolset that will allow us to achieve our ambitious goals,” said Terrisa Chung, Vice President, Quanta Computer. “Siemens brings deep expertise in high-tech electronics and a comprehensive software portfolio that supports our key objectives – from reducing commissioning time to improving data accuracy and cross-site collaboration. “Quanta Computer’s adoption of Siemens Xcelerator underscores the value of a connected digital thread in bringing together complex engineering and manufacturing data,” said Bas Kuper, senior vice president and managing director for Asia Pacific, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “By enabling greater transparency, traceability and collaboration, we are helping Quanta scale global operations with increased agility and precision.” Image courtesy of Quanta Computer To achieve these results, Quanta Computer is adopting an integrated suite of Siemens’ software, including: Application and product lifecycle management: With the adoption of Siemens’ Polarion™ for software application lifecycle management (ALM) […]

Making digital leaps with ISO STEP standards

Industry collaboration between Sandvik Coromant and partners helps accelerate digital manufacturing Sandvik Coromant has participated in a successful research project for the Standard for the Exchange of Product (STEP) data. Together with GKN Aerospace Engine Systems, Chalmers University of Technology and Fraunhofer Chalmers Research Centre for Industrial Mathematics, the working group has developed a collaboration environment and applied it for the maintenance and repair operations (MRO) process for complex metal parts. The results demonstrate how ISO standards for digital manufacturing offer a foundation for interoperable, model-based data exchange and execution across the entire repair value chain. Repairing a damaged turbine blade is almost always a unique situation. No two damages are alike, tolerances are extremely tight and the work requires specialist knowledge across multiple domains. Traditionally, images, PDFs, screenshots and native CAD/CAM files need to be shared back and forth between companies and software systems to enable repairs – a time-consuming process that increases the risk of errors. Through the Dig4ReMan project, funded by Vinnova and the Advanced Digitalization program, the team applied STEP Application Protocols AP242 and AP238 standards to create a neutral, model-based language for 3D geometry, PMI, machining instructions and tool data. Much like a shared cloud document, everyone involved can view and update the same model without losing information. The result is a fully connected digital thread running through the repair process – from inspection of a damaged part, to material removal and additive manufacturing planning, simulation, CAM programming, and final machining and verification. GKN Aerospace estimates that a refurbished component can save up to 95% in material, energy and CO₂ emissions compared to a new spare part, and cost is radically lower. Researchers from Chalmers and Fraunhofer Chalmers Centre contributed advanced models that predict deformation, tolerances and thermal behaviour. Sandvik Coromant contributed cutting tool expertise […]

3d rendering humanoid robot with ai text in ciucuit pattern

The next decade belongs to builders

A small set of repeatable, AI- enabled business-building plays is emerging as the fastest path to growth for industrial and energy leaders. Companies that treat venture building as a repeatable capability consistently outperform, achieving faster time to market, lower capital intensity, and higher success rates. AI is the catalyst. AI is accelerating everything from product design to model testing to customer engagement, reducing the barriers that have long made industrial innovation slow, expensive, and talent intensive. The macro environment is becoming more favourable to business creation. Higher capital costs are pushing companies toward faster payback models and recurring revenue. At the same time, valuation corrections have opened a window for strategic M&A—particularly acqui-hires, data assets, and early-stage ventures that can accelerate internal builds. Recurring-revenue models Transforming one-time sales into service offerings is shifting industrial economics as companies turn one-off equipment sales into new, service-led businesses. By bundling maintenance, analytics, and guaranteed outcomes into long-term contracts, companies can smooth cash flows while helping customers reduce downtime and risk. Demand for these models is growing. Supply chain shocks and geopolitical uncertainty have made reliability a board-level issue, and service contracts provide the resilience buyers are seeking. Investors also are rewarding recurring revenue: Companies with embedded service streams and stickier customer relationships are commanding higher valuations and attracting private equity interest. On top of that, sustainability pressures are adding momentum. Extending product life cycles and reducing waste align directly with net-zero goals, allowing manufacturers to differentiate while embedding environmental responsibility into profitable business models. For industrial incumbents, recurring-revenue models are often the fastest path for translating existing assets into new ventures. Actions to take Monetise existing strengths.Identify capabilities, such as maintenance, logistics, and analytics, that can be packaged into customer-facing service offerings. Shift to outcome-based models.Build contracts tied to uptime, efficiency, or performance […]

2026: Shaping industry with people, technology and sustainability

In 2026, transformation across industry is accelerating. Sustainability, digitalisation and talent development sit firmly at the top of the manufacturing agenda, reshaping how companies operate and compete. Against this backdrop, Helen Blomqvist, President of Sandvik Coromant, reflects on more than 80 years of market leadership in cutting tools, and on the forces shaping the years ahead. We build the future on the foundation of our heritage Sandvik Coromant’s position as a global leader in cutting tools and manufacturing solutions is rooted in its history, but is also firmly focused on the future. At a time when transformation ranks high across the global stage, we actively support customers worldwide, helping them navigate change and unlock new opportunities. Leadership in a shifting world requires clarity of direction without losing sight of one’s roots. Even with a strong brand and a proud history, we cannot rest on that; we need to perform for growth and efficiency today while transforming our capabilities to remain the undisputed market leader tomorrow. A key part of this approach is building a culture of learning. Psychological safety and curiosity are essential, and creating an environment where people feel safe to test new ideas is crucial. High-performing, empowered teams with a strong customer-first mindset are at the heart of how we turn strategy into action. Removing the fear of failure, combined with curiosity and a strong customer focus, is essential to moving things forward. An industry in the midst of a major shift Manufacturing is undergoing a rapid technological leap. But it’s important to recognize this as representing opportunity, rather than threat. The industry is facing a major shift, with customers at different stages of the journey. Sustainability, digitalization, sharply increasing cost pressure across the value chain and the skills gap are defining trends. This is particularly evident in […]

LiberaGPT supports the largest and most intelligent AI model to run offline on an unmodified iPhone

Independent British software house 5N6 has unveiled a major update to LiberaGPT, its recently launched iPhone app, adding support for a record-breaking 24 billion-parameter large language model that runs entirely offline on the latest generation of iPhone devices, with complete privacy and no requirement for cloud data centres or additional hardware. Until recently, the idea of running a model of this size privately on a smartphone would have been regarded as technically out of reach for current flagship handsets. LiberaGPT now brings that capability to iPhone, ensuring that prompts and responses remain entirely on the device. The comparison with earlier generations of AI highlights the scale of that advance. OpenAI’s GPT-2, introduced in 2019, was widely recognised as a landmark model, yet it operated at 1.5 billion parameters and depended heavily on centralised infrastructure. Since then, major gains in efficiency and model design have reshaped expectations, allowing more powerful systems to operate without the same computational burden. Alongside the new 24 billion-parameter model, the latest LiberaGPT release also includes a range of smaller models for users who prefer faster performance and lower resource use. Together, these options give users the flexibility to choose the balance of speed and capability that suits them best, while keeping the entire experience private and on-device. What matters here is not only the size of the model, but the fact that it runs at all on consumer mobile hardware. Models in this class have usually belonged to server infrastructure or desktop systems. This small independent software house has brought that level of capability to the iPhone through careful optimisation and precise memory management. Capable local GPU processing gives users more privacy, faster response times, and the ability to use advanced AI models without dependence on a network connection or contribution to AI data centre infrastructure […]

Apple, The First 50 Years

David Pogue tells the iconic company’s entire life story: how Apple was born, nearly died, was born again under Steve Jobs, and became, under CEO Tim Cook, the most valuable company in the world. The book features full-color photos, new facts that correct the record and illuminate its subversive culture, and fresh interviews with the legendary figures who shaped Apple into what it is today. On April 1, 1976, two scruffy twentysomethings, both named Steve, founded a startup. Their goal: To bring the revolutionary power of computers to everyone. Over the next five decades, Apple reshaped the technology and cultural landscapes, introducing the public to breakthroughs like the mouse, laser printing, CD-ROM, WiFi, digital video, home networking, touchscreen phones, and tablets. Jobs’s obsessive eye for detail set the stage for products—Mac, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch—that married advanced technology with beauty, simplicity, and fine design. Deeply researched and lavishly illustrated, Apple: The First 50 Years includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives. The book busts long-held myths; goes backstage for both the titanic successes (450 million iPods, 700 million iPads, 2.2 billion iPhones) and the instructive failures (Lisa, Apple III, MobileMe); and assesses the forces that challenge Apple’s dominance as it enters its second half century. Bursting with tales of frenetic all-nighters, engineering genius, and creative rebellion, this book is a true testament to Apple’s unique and innovative vision, and a must read for anyone whose life Apple has touched.

Using AI to enable scalable, autonomous operations

By Troy Mahr, director – Kalypso. Kalypso – acquired by Rockwell Automation in 2020 – is a diverse team of consultants, innovators, strategists, data scientists and technologists. What we consistently hear from industry leaders is the need for real-time visibility across their global operations, which is key to ensuring their operations stay agile and scalable. However, achieving this isn’t possible without removing laggy manual data collection through the deployment of connected assets and contextualised data. By eliminating data silos and unlocking industrial data and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, companies can enable autonomous decision-making that optimises costs, efficiency, and production resilience. This moves their organisation closer to achieving autonomous operations. Autonomous operations are the manifestation of “self-governing” systems at every step of the manufacturing process. These systems derive their autonomy from data-led decision-making models that enable them to reliably adapt their behaviour in response to dynamic environments during operation without any manual intervention. Achieving autonomy across an enterprise requires capabilities that span the full intelligence spectrum, from observation and inference to decision-making and action. These capabilities are relevant across all operational areas, including product design, manufacturing, supply chain, distribution, direct-to-customer channels, and demand forecasting. Manufacturing operations, in particular, have seen progress through Model Predictive Control (MPC), which continuously analyses real-time and forecasted data to optimise process control within defined constraints. While MPC is a strong example within manufacturing, broader autonomy demands extending similar intelligent systems across the enterprise. This journey is captured in the industrial AI maturity pyramid, which outlines a progression from basic data integration and visualisation to predictive analytics, prescriptive decision-making, and ultimately, autonomous operations. As organisations climb this pyramid, they adopt machine learning, real-time automation, and self-learning systems. Each stage requires not just technological upgrades but also cultural and structural transformation. Asset Monitoring: Find Downtime Root Causes Looking at […]

Piecing together the puzzle of future solar cell materials

Formamidinium lead iodide is considered one of the best-performing materials in the halide perovskite group, since it has promising properties for future solar cell technologies. New findings from Chalmers can now shed light on its structure; this is crucial if we are to engineer and control the material. Global electricity use is increasing rapidly and must be addressed sustainably. Developing new materials could give us much more efficient solar cell materials than at present; materials so thin and flexible that they could encase anything from mobile phones or entire buildings. Using computer simulation and machine learning, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now taken an important step towards understanding and handling halide perovskites, among the most promising but notoriously enigmatic materials. Electricity use is constantly increasing globally and, according to the International Energy Agency, its proportion of the world’s total energy consumption is expected to exceed 50 per cent in 25 years, compared to the current 20 per cent. “To meet the demand, there is a significant and growing need for new, environmentally friendly and efficient energy conversion methods, such as more efficient solar cells. Our findings are essential to engineer and control one of the most promising solar cell materials for optimal utilisation. It’s very exciting that we now have simulation methods that can answer questions that were unresolved just a few years ago,” says Julia Wiktor, the study’s principal investigator and an associate professor at Chalmers. Promising materials for efficient solar cells Materials lying within a group called halide perovskites are considered the most promising for producing cost-effective, flexible and lightweight solar cells and optoelectronic devices such as LED bulbs, as they absorb and emit light extremely efficiently. However, perovskite materials can degrade quickly and knowing how best to utilise them requires a deeper understanding of […]

AI meets rugged reliability

Getac Technology Corporation (Getac), a leading provider of rugged computing and mobile video solutions and a manufacturer with advanced in-house capabilities, has announced the launch of two highly versatile new field devices: the F120, the world’s first fully rugged Copilot+ PC in a tablet form factor; and the V120, an AI-ready fully rugged laptop designed to deliver a premium computing experience in challenging work environments. Both new devices are the result of extensive real-world research and customer dialogue, building on Getac’s best-selling F110 and V110 models to deliver two brand new devices that harness the power of AI to unlock new levels of productivity in the field. Shared upgrades include larger 12.2-inch displays with a new narrow-bezel design, slimmer and lighter builds, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, two Thunderbolt™ 4 ports, hot-swappable batteries, TPM 2.0, and robust MIL-STD-810H/IP66 certifications, a generational leap in performance and reliability for field professionals. F120 fully rugged tablet: the world’s first fully rugged tablet as a Copilot+ PC Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent Windows devices currently available, with powerful processors and access to highly advanced AI models that can fundamentally transform workflows and operations in the field. To qualify as a Copilot+ PC, a device must include a neural processor unit (NPU) capable of 40+ trillion operations per second (TOPS), have a minimum of 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage, and support at least one form of biometric security authentication. Getac’s new F120 meets all these criteria. By bringing powerful edge AI into a fully rugged form factor, it transforms how field professionals work in challenging environments. Powered by the latest Intel® Core™ Ultra 200V Series Processor and groundbreaking Intel® AI Boost NPU with up to 48 TOPS, it accelerates AI-driven tasks like diagnostics, image processing, and real-time analytics, enabling users to tackle challenges faster and more effectively. […]

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