by Gary Mintchell | Jan 19, 2018 | News
Industrial conferences and forums winter/spring season pops up with baseball’s spring training. I’ve written a couple of times about places I’ll be in February and March. Then a friend sent a note on LinkedIn—Gary, here’s a new conference you should attend.
Another friend started to tell me about it last week, but the conversation was diverted. So, I looked it up, contacted the organizer, and now I’ll be in Chicago January 31 and February 1.
The organizers are apparently European. The subject is Industry 4.0. That is the German initiative that is called in other places Industrial Internet of Things. Unveiling the Industry 4.0 Think Tank.
Some of the sponsors include Optel, Beckhoff, SMC, SME, and OPC Foundation. The speakers include a mix of suppliers and end users. And the list so far is impressive.
Quoting the event organizers, “The Industry 4.0 ThinkTank event brings together provocative thinkers, industry leaders and experts in various fields to get organizations ready for the next industrial revolution.”
Not only are there good speakers, but also the planners expect much networking to happen as well as informal discussions as they say, “Get ready to face global markets, become a leader in digital evolution, find strategic partners, mentors or competitors and learn from their real-life experiences. Discuss with industry specialists better ways to optimize the transition towards the next generation of manufacturing.”
A few bullet points of things you could expect:
- Uncover the Secrets to a Successful Industry 4.0. Transition
- Obtain a comprehensive understanding of your organization by analyzing your processes, human resources and information, as well as tools, control measures and culture.
- Discover ways to identify which systems/processes you may need to integrate into future solutions, and identify the analyses, assessments and listings needed to achieve that goal.
- Learn how to simplify and humanize the Industry 4.0 digitization of your business, along with industry peers facing the same challenges.
- Determine how to properly assess your employees’ strengths, weaknesses, potential and involvement to integrate Industry 4.0 requirements into your operations.
- Learn where we are headed industrialization-wise and analyze the maturity and ability of your company to withstand the revolution that is Industry 4.0.
- Explore automatization, employee mobility, business intelligence, efficiency, robotizing, process evolution and become more efficient in your day-to-day tasks.
- Grasp the complexities of Industry 4.0, learn tips on how to streamline your implementation and discover new technologies.
- Review principles that can be applied to your work and process in order to be more productive and up-to-date.
See you there!
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 12, 2018 | Internet of Things, News, Software
This year has opened more strangely than usual. Looks like I’ll be emphasizing a lot more IT/OT intersection plus digital transformation and Internet of Things. Part of the strangeness is that several of my good friends are on the lookout for new positions. The end of 2017 was harsh for many people. If you need a good sales and/or marketing professional, I can put you in touch with some top people. In fact, my business also sort of tapered off the last part of the year. I thought things were supposed to be good (well, my investment accounts are looking good).
There was no other way than to just string together a number of news items in the Internet of Things and Industrial software space.
• Conferences
• Honeywell Data
• Schneider Award
• Bluetooth at 20
• RFP for IoT Software Platform
Conferences
I am a media sponsor for a couple of upcoming conferences. The strange thing is that I haven’t heard from either one for a while and neither has sent an ad png for me to display.
News also seems to be a little slow. But here are a number of things I’ve compiled over several days along with some upcoming conferences. Hope to see you at some of those.
The 22nd annual ARC Industry Forum in Orlando from February 12-15 on Digitizing and Securing Industry, Infrastructure, and Cities is a great industry meeting place. https://www.arcweb.com/events/arc-industry-forum-orlando
I see ARC Advisory Group, like many of us, must branch out from control and automation in order to find a big enough market to survive. My own practice has shifted from market and industry research and analysis in that space to greater focus on IT/OT, IoT, and digital transformation.
Also on my calendar is the Industry of Things USA (I’m also a media sponsor of the September one in Berlin) from March 7-9 in San Diego. This will be its third year. The organizing group from Berlin (Germany) has been outstanding. This is becoming a place for IT to meet OT. http://industryofthingsworldusa.com
Hannover Fair this year is April 23-27. I’ll go there depending upon sponsorship. Always a great place to meet many influential people.
The Control Systems Integrators Association is meeting from April 24-27 in San Francisco. I have never been to a CSIA meeting. Maybe this year I can slip one in if I don’t go to Germany.
The MESA International USA conference held in conjunction with the Industry Week Manufacturing and Technology conference in Raleigh, NC will be from May 8-10.
Maybe I can make it to the Rockwell Automation annual software bash in San Diego from June 10-15.
Siemens Industry in the USA is holding its automation summit in Marco Island, FL from June 25-28.
If I can afford all the travel, this will be a busy 6 months.
Honeywell
In the realm of industrial software, Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) today launched its Honeywell Connected Plant Uniformance Cloud Historian. This software-as-a-service cloud hosting solution for enterprise-wide visualization and analysis, helps customers improve asset availability and increase plant uptime.
It claims an industry first by fusing real-time process data analysis of a traditional enterprise historian with a data lake, enabling the integration of production, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and other business data coupled with analytics tools to provide business intelligence. “This allows enterprise data to be analyzed instantly on a scale not previously possible using tools and functions already in use at sites and plants,” says the media release.
“Uniformance Cloud Historian brings the full power of cloud and big data to Honeywell’s traditional process historian for the first time, connecting even the most complex multi-site organizations effortlessly,” said Vimal Kapur, president of Honeywell Process Solutions. “The solution makes it possible to leverage insights found at one plant across all plants, allowing smarter, more strategic decisions to be made and action to be taken.”
Honeywell’s new offering collects, stores and enables replay of historical and continuous plant and production site process data and makes it visible in the cloud in near real time. The historian combines a time series data store, which empowers plant and enterprise staff to execute and make decisions, with a big data lake, which enables data scientists to uncover previously unknown correlations between process data and other business data in the enterprise.
Schneider Award
Last week I wrote about an interview I had with Cognizant, the Indian company that acquired Wonderware’s (Schneider Electric) R&D center. This week, an announcement about an award to Schneider Electric (not sure that these are the same it just reminded me of the Indian connection).
Schneider Electric announced its India-based Software Delivery Center (SDC) was appraised at Level 5 of the CMMI Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). With this designation, Schneider Electric’s SDC becomes part of a small group of companies with a CMMI Level 5 assessment in the industrial software industry.
An appraisal at maturity level 5 indicates that the organization is performing at an “optimizing” level. At this level, an organization continually improves its processes based on a quantitative understanding of its business objectives and performance needs. The organization uses a quantitative approach to understand the variation inherent in the process and the causes of process outcomes.
Select achievements include:
• Attaining a schedule variance of less than 1%
• Maintaining effort variances of less than 3%
• Delivering an industry-leading client satisfaction score
Bluetooth is 20
Are you listening to music on your wireless headset while working at the coffee house? Thanks to Bluetooth. Did you know that the technology just turned 20?
Today, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) kicks off its 20th anniversary year from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Formed in 1998, the Bluetooth SIG started with a handful of companies focused on wire replacement for mobile voice and data. Today over 33,000 member companies are part of an organization dedicated to perfecting and advancing a flexible, reliable, and secure wireless connection solution.
IoT RFP Platform
Here is one that I think merits a deeper dive:
Three of the biggest software vendors in IoT – HPE, PTC, and Wind River (Intel) – have agreed to join the IoT M2M Council’s (IMC) fledgling template RFP Program for IoT Software Platforms, which will be presented at the IMC’s conference at CES.
Using input from many vendors and more than 100 software buyers in an open-source process, the IMC developed a template reference document that will ease buying of IoT software, and later, hardware and connectivity solutions. HPE, PTC, and Wind River have agreed to have their platforms assessed by the IoT M2M Council which represents 25,000 enterprise users and OEMs that buy IoT solutions.
The RFP program will simplify sourcing of IoT platforms for buyers by providing reference documentation and demonstrating capabilities of established software platforms, and for participating vendors, it will ultimately shorten the sales cycle.
The IMC developed a template RFP document earlier this year in a wiki-based, open-source process with input from more than 100 IoT buyers, and has now retained a third-party consultancy to validate vendors against the RFP. The validation process, conducted by UK-based Beecham Research, includes surveying vendors for responses to the RFP, contacting their customers anonymously for references, and a hands-on analysis of the platforms for ease-of-use.
“No other industry group or major consultancy is talking to buyers at scale and looking at the actual IoT sales process. My staff spends a lot of time responding to RFPs. The IMC’s RFP program gives us a report from a credible third-party that allows us to respond to RFPs more quickly, as well as a place to send potential buyers where they can access a template RFP document and learn more. If this program reduces my sales cycle, even just incrementally, it will be well worth it,” says Volkhard Bregulla, VP of Global Industries, Manufacturing, & Distribution at HPE, with a seat on the IMC board.
IMC rank-and-file membership comes from 24 different vertical markets on every continent, and a plurality self-identify as “operations”, meaning that they are unlikely versed in communications technology. “The template RFP provides a non-technical reference, and can go a long way in establishing a common language for IoT technology among people actually doing the buying,” says Bregulla.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 1, 2017 | Data Management, Internet of Things, Operations Management
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) held its European customer conference, Discover, in Madrid this week. Points of emphasis that impacted me included Internet of Things business, high power computing, a view of the changes going on at HPE, and a look at the future of IT and the plant.
Bloggers and influencers
I was here as part of a blogger program separate from press and analysts. Bloggers are a livelier group than press. I think that I am the only independent blogger in manufacturing in the US (everyone else works for a magazine or analyst firm). There were 25 bloggers at Discover from countries as diverse as Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, Canada, and the USA. Rather than attending press conferences our program included “coffee talks” that were live-streamed on the Web. These were informal presentations plus question-and-answer sessions.
There was one press conference I attended—the announcement of the partnership with ABB on the mini-data center product. Instead of conversation and give-and-take, one or two journalists asked questions in a challenging manner that were seldom designed to elicit more information. Note: I wrote about the partnership earlier this week.
Retiring CEO Meg Whitman used a quote from Gartner in her remarks. “The Edge will eat the cloud.” HPE has developed edge computing devices called Edgeline that I discussed in August after my first meeting with the company. These are powerful computing devices based on PXI platform technology from National Instruments. The blogger group devoted some time discussing how valid that comment was.
We concluded that you will need both. I have an example from a conversation I had with Rod Anilker, a technologist in the OEM group. Imagine taking the computing power and openness of the HPE platform to replace proprietary controllers such as CNC, PLC, DCS. These devices at the edge would solve many control and other edge applications with the additional capability of sending data to the cloud.
Now, imagine the storage and computing power HPE has accumulating vast amounts of data—maybe from a power generation fleet or a company’s many refineries—achieving scale sufficient to do some pretty cool pattern recognition. The predictive, prescriptive, and planning possibilities would be awesome.
Pieces of HPE Corporate Puzzle
Antonio Neri, President and COO and next year’s CEO, let general session with these main points.
• Intelligent Edge (where the action is->acquisition of Aruba so important)
• Secure platforms from edge to core to cloud
• Memory-driven computing (acquisition of Silicon Graphics another important piece)
• Artificial Intelligence (inside everything)
• Software-defined and multi-cloud platforms
• Partner ecosystem
• Flexible consumption (scale up, scale back)
• Advise and transform HPE PointNext
• Outcome-as-a-Service, future of enterprise computing
Edge-As-A-Service
PointNext is the services arm introducing the concept of Edge-as-a-Service. In face, HPE features “as-a-service” in many guises.
This concept seems to be modeled on ideas emanating from GE’s consumption of services mode. Capturing and processing data at source where action needs to happen as the foundation of the model. Then you provide IT in a way that scales, pay-as-you-go concept, subscription-based. Therefore, the customer has flexibility and reduced risk.
Take the expertise from a data center that runs 24/7 and put it at edge. Then it’s all about extracting data. Take this into machine learning. This starts to morph into the concept from the OEM group.
The model architecture takes HPE’s new GreenLake plus EaaS. GreenLake edge compute includes design services, information services, operational & support services, and pay-as-you-go. Upfront consulting to help evaluate the client’s requirements and business process and recommends solution packages.
Technology overview
David Chalmers, research and development executive, briefed us with a business and technology overview.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is one of the two business left standing after Meg Whitman (and the board) split the company following some bad years of plans and leadership. Following the split, several businesses were divested.
Chalmers related HPE has been changing fast into an infrastructure/solutions company (he said, the world’s largest). “The strength of our portfolio is the best in 10 years, much from organic development. The SGI acquisition yielded more compute options (SGI acquisition), including low power, high performance computing. By 2022 60% of data will never get to data center, it’ll reside at the edge. Therefore intelligent edge is important. SGI brought high performance analytics.”
Another couple of tidbits. At the new HPE people bring business cases first, then talk about the technology solution. The OT world order of magnitude larger than IT world. (Hmmm)
Oh, and there were many new products. They don’t all apply to my areas of coverage. But the engineers have been busy.
IoT
I just realized I made it through the entire discussion without mentioning the technology that brought me to HPE Discover—Internet of Things. Much of that relates to the Edge and devices such as Edgeline. Obviously important IoT garnered significant floor space in the exhibition area.
There will be more in another post.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 22, 2017 | Automation, Technology
When I travel to various conferences, there are certain technology themes that are strengthening connections the Internet of Things for manufacturing. We witnessed several of these this week. Here is a quick outline of some important announcements.
Why should we invest in IoT products and technologies? I hear this often. Like as not the answer will be predictive maintenance.
Augury has developed a unique technology for sensing situations that can predict upcoming failures. It must be solid technology with a solid management team. Why do I say that? Take a look at the funds investing in the company this week.
Augury Secures $17 Million Series B Funding Round
Augury, an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology company, announced that it has closed a $17 million Series B funding round co-led by Eclipse Ventures and Munich Re / HSB Ventures, the venture arm of Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) and Munich Re. Augury will use the funding to strengthen Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) relationships, develop strategic partnerships and further establish itself as the leader in mechanical diagnostics.
This round of venture capital funding for Augury comes after a successful Series A raise completed in August of 2015. Additional investors in the current round include Sound Ventures, First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
“Augury is by far the leading provider of mechanical diagnostics in the commercial and industrial sectors,” said Lior Susan, Managing Partner, Eclipse Ventures. “This investment perpetuates the commercial application of IIoT technology into what will become an inevitable part of predictive maintenance technology. We are confident that Augury will continue to redefine and lead the future of diagnostics in the Industrial Internet of Things.”
Augury’s existing OEM relationships include Grundfos, Armstrong and PSG Dover. Additional industry-leading customers include Johnson Controls, Trane, Carrier, Mueller, Aramark and AECOM. As they expand their market reach, Augury will continue to exponentially grow their mechanical malfunction dictionary, thus improving their diagnostics capabilities. This injection of capital will help to solidify Augury’s market leading position as a real-time, intelligent Predictive Maintenance (PdM) solution.
“We are building a long-lasting company with the goal of diagnosing everything that has moving parts, effectively creating the mechanical nervous system of the IoT,” said Saar Yoskovitz, CEO of Augury. “Equipment manufacturers and other market leaders in the industrial sector are increasingly turning to PdM as a critical component for their IIoT strategy. This funding will enable Augury to become a driving force towards the connected era of tomorrow.”
“Insurance companies are playing a significant role in the deployment of IIoT solutions,” said Jacqueline LeSage Krause, Managing Director, Munich Re / HSB Ventures. “This investment in Augury further strengthens HSB’s leadership position in IoT and insurance.”
Cloud and the Edge
The cloud is a consistent topic of conversation. Sophisticated technologists are now discussing connectivity and bandwidth and edge computing/cloud relationships. Here is an interesting take.
Vapor IO, the next generation platform for edge clouds, announced Project Volutus, which enables cloud providers, wireless carriers and web-scale companies to deliver cloud-based edge computing applications via a network of micro data centers deployed at the base of cell tower sites. The company also announced today that Crown Castle, the nation’s largest provider of shared wireless infrastructure, has made a minority investment in Vapor IO to accelerate the project’s development and deployment.
Project Volutus is a “data center as a platform” service, powered by Vapor Edge Computing. Project Volutus offers fully-managed micro data centers at the base of cell towers, literally at the true edge of the wireless network. It combines Vapor IO’s patent pending hardware and software technology with the nation’s extensive network of cell towers and dense metro fiber to build and operate self-driving, distributed edge data centers in major metropolitan locations.
“Zettabytes of machine to machine communication and new application types will require a shift in how the industry thinks about data centricity and the delivery of edge services,” said Cole Crawford, CEO and founder of Vapor IO. “Project Volutus is the most cost-effective way to deliver cloud applications that benefit from last mile wireless proximity and sub 10-millisecond round trip latency. By locating Vapor IO’s technology at tower locations and connecting to dense metro fiber, we will provide the fastest, most economical way for cloud providers, telecom carriers and web-scale companies to deliver next generation edge services in every major US city.”
In addition to supporting traditional cloud applications, Project Volutus allows carriers to incorporate virtual Radio Access Networks, including those based on Intel Corporation’s FlexRAN reference design, for speed and scale when upgrading their networks. By cross-connecting the radio network directly to edge services and the internet, Project Volutus eliminates multiple network hops and facilitates a new breed of low-latency edge applications.
Eye Tracking Research
OK, eye tracking technology can be creepy if the company sneaks it in on you during your browsing sessions. But research into how people look at and interact with their various screens is valuable in the development of improved HMI and other visualization screens. Here is a company taking it into virtual reality for research.
Tobii Pro, the global leader in eye tracking research solutions, announces a new solution for conducting high-end, eye tracking research within immersive virtual environments (VR) – Tobii Pro VR Integration.
The research tool, based on the HTC Vive headset integrated with Tobii eye tracking technology, comes with the Tobii Pro software development kit (SDK) for research applications. Researchers can collect and record eye tracking data from a VR environment with pinpoint accuracy and gain deeper insights on human behavior.
Eye tracking research in immersive VR is transforming how studies can be conducted and opens up entirely new possibilities in psychology, consumer behavior, and human performance.
Through VR, researchers have complete control over a study environment which allows them to run scenarios that previously would have been too costly, risky or difficult to conduct in real life.
“Combining eye tracking with VR is growing as a research methodology and our customers have started to demand this technology to be part of their toolkit for behavioral studies. The Tobii Pro VR Integration is our first step in making eye tracking in immersive VR a reliable and effective research tool for a range of fields. It marks our first major expansion of VR-based research tools,” said Tom Englund, president, Tobii Pro.
Tobii Pro VR Integration is a retrofit of the HTC Vive business edition headset with a seamless integration of Tobii eye tracking technology. It is capable of eye tracking all types of eyes, collecting binocular eye tracking data at 120 Hz (images per second). The solution allows study participants to move naturally while wearing the headset without compromising the user experience or the output of the eye tracking data.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 28, 2017 | Podcast
A podcast about connections. When I left magazine media, I thought about where the industry was heading. It’s all about connections, I thought. So, I found a domain name The Manufacturing Connection. Last week I was at the Industry of Things conference in San Diego. Organized from Berlin, Germany, they still attracted an outstanding speaker lineup and attendance at 2-3 times that of typical media conferences in the space.
They work hard at it, and they have cultivated lots of connections.
This podcast discusses the idea of connections from that conference. It also explores the idea of “sources go direct” where anyone can take a message to the public these days. You don’t need a gatekeeper. Maybe you connect with people like me to reach a broader audience. Individuals and marketers with energy and ability can build their own audiences and avoid getting misquoted by reporters or having a 60-minute interview boiled down to a sentence in an article.
