Dr. Salvo is the Founder of the Industrial Internet Consortium now with over 3500 members representing 250 organizations from over 25 countries. The goal is to connect brilliant minds and machines in powerful value creation networks. For the past 20 years he and his laboratory have developed a series of large-scale internet-based sensing platforms to manage and oversee business systems and deliver a portfolio of information-based services.

Some of their commercial business releases include complex decision platforms (e.g. GE Veriwise™ GE RailwiseTM, Global Vendor Managed Inventory, Ener.GE™, and E-Materials Management) that deliver near real-time customer value through system transparency and knowledge-based computational algorithms.

Pervasive networked sensors and cognitive systems combined with near-real time collaboration can deliver time-critical information and decision analysis across traditional business boundaries. Total supply chain, digital manufacturing, energy management and financial services can be integrated to create a virtual enterprise environment that encourages discovery and process improvement on a global basis. High speed optical and wireless communication fabrics can enable distributed knowledge networks that extend the reach of these systems with anywhere/anytime access to mission critical information and control points.

Dr. Salvo’s group recently provided the core open-source cloud platform, Digital Manufacturing Commons (DMC), to UI Labs for the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (over 300 member organizations). Small, medium-sized and large- scale enterprises can now gain access to tools, information and collaborations that will enable the emerging “Digital Cloud Manufacturing” economy. The accelerating rate of development in crowdsourcing, blockchain, and secure, authenticated cloud computing platforms promises to further democratize the flow of information, computation and ideas on a truly global basis.