‘Pittsburgh knows how to make things’
Global manufacturing summit takes stage in Downtown
All the buzzwords and acronyms were there.
Blockchain. 4IR. AI. IIoT. Glocalization. (Yes, that’s a portmanteau of “global” and “localization.”)
It was the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit, the latest major international conference to take over (part of) the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
When Pittsburgh was first announced as the location of GMIS’s inaugural America edition, everyone from Gov. Tom Wolf to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development issued statements about the honor. Previous GMIS events have been in Dubai and Yekaterinburg, Russia. The summit is co-chaired by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Arab Emirates.
The panels were star-studded — at least when it comes to Pittsburgh tech.
Brian Salesky, CEO of Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle company Argo AI, spoke with Carnegie Mellon University professor Martial Hebert about another buzzword that had been on previous panelists’ lips: automation.
“The field has evolved tremendously over the past decade or so,” Mr. Hebert said. And that has meant tighter collaboration between academic institutions and industry, which he described as a “complete transformation.”
“What we’ve seen over the past 10, 15 years is a remarkable fusion between academic research and [industry],” Mr. Hebert said.
And though both men were speaking globally, that statement applies heavily to Pittsburgh. CMU is home to one of the most renowned AI institutes in the world, and the university’s research is directly fueling advances in area autonomous companies like Argo AI.
At GMIS, the terms “manufacturing” and “industrialization” were interpreted broadly enough that event panels covered everything from sustainability to biotech.
Other Pittsburgh tech leaders at the summit included Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, who moderated a panel on 4IR. The term stands for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or the ongoing industrial sea change led by data. (Previous “industrial revolutions,” per the thinking coined by World Economic Forum President Klaus Schwab, were the IT industrial revolution, the electricity industrial revolution, and the good, old steam-and-water one you learned about in school.)
The pandemic and its ripple effects loomed over the event. “So, obviously, we’re coming out of COVID, duh,” Ms. Russo began her talk.
Otherwise, the throughline was the potential of Pittsburgh as a hub for emerging technologies — automation, robotics, biotech, sustainable manufacturing and industrial internet of things.
Put more simply, all those buzzwords fall under one umbrella. “Pittsburgh knows how to make things,” Ms. Russo said.