Austin, Texas resident Richard Busch is a technology and business executive and founder of The Busch Group focusing on the application of computing and semiconductor technologies. Prior to starting his consulting group, Richard Busch was vice president of intellectual property strategy and product line management at Globalfoundries and vice president of Power System technology at IBM in Austin, charged with developing the Power8 microprocessor used in IBM’s cognitive computing platform known as ‘Watson’. 

One of IBM Watson’s application targets is the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT,) and how to combine big data analytics and cognitive computing capabilities to advance next generation manufacturing. An important concept in this area is called ‘Industries 4.0’ which focuses on digitizing advanced manufacturing plants by connecting all of the tools, equipment and associated sensors and then adding the capability to analyze all of the resulting data using analytics and cognitive computing techniques to improve productivity and efficiency. 

Currently, manufacturing floors are collecting data from multiple sources, and by bringing all this data together using Watson, companies can optimize the performance of intelligent equipment, analyze a variety of information from workflows using cognitive processes, and use this modeling and predictive insight to optimize manufacturing resources and improve overall efficiency and profit.