by Gary Mintchell | Dec 30, 2020 | Capital Projects, Networking, News
Nokia delivers private 5G network to MYNXG for secure IoT solutions development
- 5G connectivity enables MYNXG testing and development of secure end-to-end IoT solutions for high-performance industrial applications
- Network deployed at MYNXG headquarters in Nuremburg, Germany
The Apple-oriented tech podcasters that I listen to—Daring Fireball-The Talk Show with John Gruber and Accidental Tech Podcast—kept complaining about not seeing a noticeable improvement in cellular reception with their new iPhone 12s. Thing is, the true benefits of 5G have little to do with the ordinary consumer. Here is an early peek at a use case. There will be more and better to come.
Nokia has deployed an industrial-grade private wireless 5G campus network at the Nuremburg development center of secure industrial IoT specialist MYNXG.
MYNXG will use the Nokia 5G network at its new industrial IoT interoperability test center to develop new secure solutions for the industrial Internet of Things, as well as perform real-life testing of equipment and sensors for a range of OEM and customer projects.
MYNXG’s operational technology functions using 5G’s full capability from both a performance and quality of service perspective. MYNXG has integrated the Nokia 5G solution into its end-to-end secure MYNXG IoT Platform. As the deployment progresses, the companies will identify potential opportunities for joint solution development.
Bernd Möller, CEO of MYNXG, said: “Our goal is to be able to offer our customers robust, and certified end-to-end secure industrial IoT solutions, so that they can drive the automation and digitalization of their processes. By integrating Nokia’s 5G technology into our overall industrial IoT technology platform, we have not only found an ideal solution for testing IoT systems, but also the basis for further marketplace development.”
Nokia’s private 5G campus wireless solution is based on Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC). Scalable according to needs, Nokia DAC is an industrial-grade digital automation platform that provides a reliable, secure, high-performance private wireless network. Combining edge computing capability and low latency to support data-intensive applications, DAC users can securely collect, process and host all generated proprietary data on site.
Thomas Hainzel, Head of EMEA Manufacturing & Logistics, Nokia Enterprise, said: “For industrial companies to realize their Industry 4.0 ambitions, it is crucial that they can test IoT solutions and applications in real-life conditions. This requires not only a proven, resilient IoT platform, but also a powerful and secure high bandwidth network. In this case, Nokia provides MYNXG and its ecosystem with the ideal platform for its testing and development work.”
MYNXG operates a globally unique, real-time and secure IoT platform for industrial solutions. The MYNXG platform is designed to protect devices, physical infrastructures and related data to the highest cybersecurity standards. This is achieved by its consistent hardware-based, end-to-end security architecture. It supports all industrial interfaces at the device level, industry protocols and automation standards.
In addition to scalable cloud services, the MYNXG platform provides straightforward, direct integration into existing business systems and processes. Industrial solutions include condition monitoring for shop floor equipment, product life cycle and process automation, supply chain asset management and access control to sites, processes and data.
Nokia has the most comprehensive portfolio of campus networks on the market, ranging from 4.9G/LTE to 5G non-standalone and 5G standalone. Nokia has more than 220 enterprise customers with private wireless networks worldwide. 5G customers include Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa Technik and Toyota Production Engineering. Customers can choose between the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud with a range of click and deploy applications or they can customize their network to their needs with Nokia Modular Private Wireless.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 30, 2020 | Business, Leadership
“I think I stopped listening at ‘Sweetie’.”
She had had an accomplished career in sales and executive positions with fast-moving companies. Then she started a company bottling flavored, unsweetened water. Curious about some aspects of the business, she took up a friend’s contact suggestion and talked with an executive at Coca-Cola. During the conversation, he said, “Listen sweetie…”
Kara Golden used that slight as the impetus to succeed with her new company, Hint. And succeed it did. After many struggles and setbacks.
Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts + Doubters reveals her story about building a company in a competitive market. They chose a perfect picture for the cover. I look at the set of her jaw and the look in her eyes and have no doubt but what she’d be a success.
Many of the dozen readers of this blog are in the food & beverage market, perhaps building bottling machines or doing custom, contract filling and capping. Integral to the story is the pursuit of contract companies that would help her get her product to market. We learn most of the factors it takes from conception to testing to production to marketing to merchandising for success in the market.
It’s a great read for all of us. I’d especially recommend getting a copy for your daughters. We still live in a society that glorifies rich, white, men (or if you’re in another country, drop the “white” part). If the other half of the population is encouraged to succeed, it lifts all of us.
Oh, yes, I recommend the water, too.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 29, 2020 | Enterprise IT, News, Open Source, Organizations
I first heard about the Open Manufacturing Platform during my last trip to Germany, well, my last business trip anywhere, last February. I wrote about it here–Open Manufacturing Platform Expands.This effort, led by Microsoft and BMW joined by ZF, Bosch, and ABInBev, “helps manufacturers leverage advanced technologies to gain greater operational efficiencies, factory output, customer loyalty, and net profits.” That’s a tall order. These are companies that I’ve seen leverage technology for improvements over the years. This should be an advancement.
This month’s news items (2) relating to OMP include NI through its recent acquisition Optimal Plus joining the organization and a new deliverable from the OMP’s working group.
NI says that it has joined OMP “with the goal of establishing an architecture and standards for auto manufacturers to better leverage and automate analytics to improve quality, reliability and safety.”
I had an opportunity to interview Michael Schuldenfrei, NI Fellow and OptimalPlus CTO about smart manufacturing, what OptimalPlus adds to NI, and OMP. The roots of OptimalPlus lie in enterprise software relative to manufacturing of semiconductors. An early customer was Qualcomm who used the software to collect and analyze data from its numerous manufacturing plants. It branched out into assemblies, such as with a new customer Nvidia. Later the company added mechatronics to its portfolio. That was a good tie in with NI.
Rather than become just another smart manufacturing application focusing on machines, OptimalPlus brings its focus to the product being manufactured. Given NI’s strength in test and measurement, this was a definite synergy. As I have written before here and here, this enterprise software addition to NI’s portfolio is just what the company needs to advance a level.
Michael told me he was an early advocate for OMP due to seeing how his technology worked with Tier 1 automotive suppliers to drive digital transformation process.
NI announced that its latest acquisition, OptimalPlus, has joined the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP), a consortium led by BMW, Microsoft, ZF, Bosch and ABInBev that helps manufacturers leverage advanced technologies to gain greater operational efficiencies, factory output, customer loyalty, and net profits.
The OMP’s goals include creating a “Manufacturing Reference Architecture” for platform-agnostic, cloud-based data collection, management, analytics and other applications. This framework will provide a standard way to connect to IoT devices on equipment and define a semantic layer that unifies data across disparate data sources. All in all, this has the potential to create a rich, open-source ecosystem that enables faster and easier adoption of smart manufacturing technologies.
In the same way that interpreters at the United Nations help delegates communicate and make new policies, standardized data formats accelerate the adoption of big data and machine learning, creating a universal translator between multiple machine and process types. OptimalPlus, now part of NI, will bring to OMP its vast domain expertise in automotive manufacturing processes and provide leading production companies with actionable insights and adaptive methods from its big data analytics platform.
“We’re honored to be invited to join the prestigious Open Manufacturing Platform, which plays a key role in helping manufacturers all over the world innovate,” said Uzi Baruch, VP of NI’s Transportation business unit. “With pressure mounting to ensure quality and prevent faulty parts from shipping, it’s important that manufacturers have access to the transformative powers of AI, machine learning and big data analytics. We’re excited to collaborate with industry leaders in the OMP consortium to help manufacturers evolve and optimize their processes.”
AI and advanced analytics help to streamline manufacturing, reduce costs and improve quality, reliability and safety. OMP makes it easier for manufacturers to deploy this technology across their operations and fulfill the promise of smart manufacturing.
White Paper: Insights Into Connecting Industrial IoT Assets
The second bit of news describes a first deliverable from the OMP as it progresses toward its objective.
OMP announced delivery of a critical milestone with the publication of our first white paper. The IoT Connectivity Working Group, chaired by Sebastian Buckel and co-chaired by Dr. Veit Hammerstingl of the BMW Group, authored Insights Into Connecting Industrial IoT Assets. Contributions from member companies Capgemini, Cognizant, Microsoft, Red Hat, and ZF present a consensus view of the connectivity challenges and best practices in IIoT as the 4th industrial revolution unfolds. This paper is the initial publication laying out an approach to solving connectivity challenges while providing a roadmap for future OMP work.
Manufacturing at an Inflection Point
The intersection of information technology (IT) and operational technologies (OT), as well as the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), presents opportunities and threats to the entire manufacturing sector. In manufacturing, multiple challenges complicate the connection of sensors, actuators, and machines to a central data center. Lack of common standards and proprietary interfaces leads each engineer to solve similar problems, introducing inefficiencies and forcing the same learning curve’s ascension over and over. The long renewal cycles of shop floor equipment, software, and processes present gaps in modern technologies and a general avoidance of making significant institutional changes. This initial publication begins to tackle these problems and lays the groundwork for future, more detailed work.
IT/OT Convergence
Each connectivity challenge will have a range of diverse constituents and the content of this paper addresses issues faced by individuals and teams across job functions. Operational technology (OT) professionals are responsible for the commissioning, operation, and maintenance of shop floor equipment. Information technology (IT) personnel look after overall data processing, the hardware and software infrastructure, and enterprise-wide IT strategy. General managers and logistics teams are typically aligned at a corporate level, coordinating processes across a network of plants. Each of these functions will have roles spanning from operational hands-on to strategic and managerial. The unique demands of each part will require connectivity solutions to be forward-thinking and value-accretive while offering practical solutions implemented with minimal incremental investment.
Industrial IoT Challenges
Also explored in the paper, are the IIoT devices’ critical real-time needs for repeatability and high availability. An example is an AI model that optimizes the parameters of a bending machine based on the current air temperature and humidity. Possible connection failures or high latencies can lead to stopped or interrupted processes or products with insufficient quality.
Manufacturing throughput requirements vary from low bandwidth for simple sensors using small packets to much higher bandwidth required for streaming data for video analytics, vibration sensors, or AR/VR visualization. A holistic connectivity solution can address this complexity successfully, spanning from the individual devices on the shop floor up through edge gateways and servers to the central data center or cloud resources such as compute and storage.
Network Levels
Networks are usually customized to their precise environment and the desired function, and therefore can be very complex.
In the white paper, we discuss the functions of each of the network levels, their benefits and limitations, and security considerations. Additional sections of the document cover common challenges in IIoT, connectivity levels, basic principles for successful connectivity solutions, communication types, and best practices for program implementation.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 24, 2020 | Leadership, Personal Development, Productivity
Blog Stand Ups Inhibit Innovation
Andy Wu of Harvard Business School and his doctoral student Sourobh Ghosh embedded a field experiment in a Google hackathon to investigate the impact of stand-up meetings—a core component of agile management practices—on innovation. They found that the teams that engaged in them developed less-novel products. The conclusion: Stand-up meetings inhibit innovation.
This thought was quoted in a blog post by an acquaintance in Belgium, Yves Mulkers, whom I had met on a trip to Germany several years ago. His Website/business is 7wData.
Those of us with familiarity with Lean thinking know the standup as a daily first thing information and daily goal-setting time. You “stand up” to keep the meeting a short as possible, but no shorter. The standup is conducted where the action is. When people gather in conference rooms in the morning, they have their coffee or tea, a doughnut, and settle into their chairs. A 30-minute catch up time can become a 60-minute waste of time.
I am slightly familiar with the various software development organizing hacks. But this one seems to me to be applying the wrong tool for the purpose. There is a time to sit and have an intense discussion with coffee or Hint water or whatever. There is a time to do a standup in order to maintain focus and get done.
Innovation does not come from committees or meetings. People need time to think on their own to come up with ideas. I insist on the 20-Things method. Sit alone with your coffee and a blank pad of paper and a pen. Put your topic or question at the top. Then quickly start listing possible solutions. By item 20, you should have evolved the idea completely away from where you started and come to a satisfying conclusion.
And when you are doing research, don’t make an observation and then just jump to a broad conclusion. Step back and take a different view. Maybe additional insights will come to you.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 23, 2020 | Automation, Embedded Control, Technology
Bringing together control, IT, and the IoT to create an open, scalable system
The idea of “softPLCs”, software-defined control, decoupling software and hardware for control, and the like revisited my thinking thanks to commenting on a paper on that subject by IoT-Analytics. In the discrete, machine automation world, this is an old topic dating back more than 22 years.
It still hasn’t happened. Yes, the marketing arms of some companies trumpet the idea. The Open Process Automation Forum is pushing the idea in the continuous and batch process world. I have yet to see any disruption occurring because of it. Some of the companies that analysts think are disruptive have been around for upwards of 30 years and the three main incumbents are still leading—Siemens in German/Italy, Rockwell Automation in North America, Mitsubishi in Asia.
That doesn’t mean the idea has been shelved completely. There must be some sort of cycle where Bosch Rexroth recurs on my radar with a new platform. I don’t understand all the parts of this new “ctrlX Automation”, but it looks interesting.
Thoughts?
These are quotes from Bosch Rexroth.
ctrlX AUTOMATION is based on a completely new software and engineering approach and means a complete departure from proprietary structures and systems. The automation platform includes all necessary software and hardware components for complete system solutions: high-performance controllers, compact drives, industrial PCs, safety solutions, I/O modules and HMIs.
ctrlX AUTOMATION enhanced with an open I/O range
The ctrlX I/O range from Bosch Rexroth offers new possibilities for users in terms of connectivity and networking. The solution represents a functional extension of the ctrlX CORE control platform and also enables horizontal and vertical integration. In the future, ctrlX I/O will offer comprehensive communication and performance enhancements as well as I/O modules geared towards future technologies such as 5G, TSN and AI.
Embedded controller ctrlX CORE now available
In addition, the embedded controller ctrlX CORE is ready to ship with the start of the fair. The modular, compact control is suitable for any automation application and, with its openness, offers users completely new degrees of freedom in setting up the functions. ctrlX CORE’s full scope of functions has already been tested by selected customers.
ctrlX SAFETY: redefining safe automation
With the safety solution ctrlX SAFETY, Bosch Rexroth is setting new standards for safe automation. The product is regarded as the fastest and most compact safety solution on the automation market. Its reaction time allows a more compact design and maximum safety during production.
ctrlX SERVICES for the automation of the future
The automation platform ctrlX AUTOMATION has recently been expanded to include ctrlX SERVICES. The ctrlX App Store now enables downloading of individually required software, while the ctrlX Device Portal facilitates easy and centralized administration of controls. The ctrlX AUTOMATION Community offers numerous functions such as support, know-how transfer and further training. Bosch Rexroth also guarantees 25 years of service availability for classic services.
ctrlX World for third party providers
Users can use apps from Bosch Rexroth, applications from third parties or apps they have produced themselves. ctrlX AUTOMATION users can access a broad portfolio of applications and download them easily via the App Store. In addition, more and more third-party providers are currently joining the ctrlX World, as they can provide their own apps on the platform and thus tap into new business potential.
