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GM Hooking 30,000 Robots To Internet To Keep Factories Humming (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: General Motors has connected about a quarter of its 30,000 factory robots to the internet, and the largest U.S. automaker already is reaping the benefits of less down time. In the last two years, GM has avoided 100 potential failures of vehicle-assembling robots by analyzing data they sent to external servers in the cloud, Mark Franks, director of global automation, said at a conference in Chicago on Monday. Connectivity is preventing assembly line interruptions and robot replacements that can take as long as eight hours. Internet monitoring allows GM to order parts when it detects they're wearing out instead of having to store them at the factory. That reduces inventory and saves money, Franks said. Hooking robots to the internet for preventive maintenance is just the start of a spurt of new robotics technology, Franks said. GM is using robots that can work safely alongside humans in the factory that produces the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, he said.
"Some evil hacker must have done it to make us look bad!"
Suki did it.
This isn't internet connectivity being added to each robot, it's more like an intranet that connect to a single server per factory that has one job: sending data over the net to a specified destination. The destination holds all the info for all the factories and allows factories to have their part inventory managed from a central location. To actually change what the robot does, you would need to hack the factory server and the robot's computer. The good thing about this setup is that it's unlikely to need maintenance or even patching because it's so incredibly basic. This means it's easy to lockdown the server that actually faces the Internet to do it's one thing: send data. Considering the factories are their bread and butter, I have a hard time seeing them skimping on security for the factories. However, I could see the factory management server getting hacked if it uses some bonehead design like it runs on IIS or something. The only thing you can really do though is wreak havoc with their part inventory.
TL;DR: hacking is unlikely though hacking the robot computers and reprogramming the robots would require a state-sponsored level of hacking.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That has been said for the last 20 years, and has proven wrong. The specific exceptions are when the shipping time exceeds some threshold, there is a very high probability that when you need the spare parts so will many other people, and on a similar note when price (or shipping) elasticity can be impacted by external events. Just-in-time consumables (or components) is a different story. As we get better predictive data, preventative replacement parts pretty much goes out the window.
Now, if one part can shut you down 100% for n hours, maybe you consider on-site spares... but if it is a loss of 25% capacity for those n hours you likely take your chances, knowing you can make up the lost production over x days.
I see you don't understand how the U.S. tax system works. The people in Congress determine the tax laws and what can and cannot be taxed. The IRS is merely the middleman with little discretion and even that is subject to judicial review.