Hey, I’m Ram. AI and chips, explained from the factory floor.
This weekMES & Shop-Floor Systems3:29
Your Dashboard Is a Copy. The New AI Only Reads Copies.
OpenAI's Data Agent Reads 7 Databases. Not One Is on a Factory Floor. The mechanism underneath it, the number that makes it real, and where I could be wrong.
This week’s story
Everything, 44 pieces
OpenAI's Data Agent Reads 7 Databases. Not One Is on a Factory Floor
Every number on a company dashboard is a copy. The original was born inside a machine, and it lost something on the way.
Which number on your dashboard would you least like to trace back to the machine?
Answer on LinkedIn →Pick a door
The guided tour
11 piecesAI on the factory floor
What AI actually changes in a plant, and what it never will.
- Anthropic Just Made AI Talk to Machines. Talking Was the Easy Part.
- Your Factory Already Solved AI's Biggest Problem
10 pieces · 30 explainersMES & shop-floor systems
The software that actually runs a factory.
- OpenAI's Data Agent Reads 7 Databases. Not One Is on a Factory Floor
- 3 AI Agent Breakouts, 1 Week, and a Red Button From 1991
23 piecesSemiconductors: chips, fabs & yield
Why a chip you can design today still cannot be built for three years.
- Everyone Is Announcing Capacity. Nobody Is Announcing The Number That Decides It.
- AMD Just Bought an AI Chip That Can Never Be Updated
One thing to try on Monday
All 38 tipsCount the copies, in ten minutes. Open Power BI, Microsoft's dashboard tool, and go to your team's dashboard workspace. At the top click View and then Lineage, and you get a map: the boxes on the left are where the data comes from, every arrow is a copy, and the boxes on the right are the reports. Find the number people argue about and walk it left until you reach a box that touches a real system. The box in the middle shows its last refresh time. Write down two things: how many arrows, and how old. If you can only view the report, ask its owner to open the map with you. A factory keeps a family tree for every batch: the machine, the settings and the time. Your number deserves the same.
Twenty years in the software that runs factories. One story a week on what it taught me.
Read about FabSpeak →One email. One story. Once a week.
The week’s breakdown, the one number behind it, the caveat nobody puts in the press release, and one AI trick you can actually use at work on Monday. No roundups. No sponsored sections.
- A correction. The most useful message you can send.
- You work in this layer and something here was wrong, or right for the wrong reason.
- Speaking, podcast or panel.
- Something you want explained. Recurring questions become episodes.