by Gary Mintchell | Apr 28, 2016 | Automation, News, Operations Management
Echos of Industrie 4.0 were present around the Hannover Messe 2016, but times have moved on since 2013. The word of the week was digital–in many forms, such as digitalization, digital enterprise, digital factory.
Chancellor Merkel and President Obama (two friends says the headline) were not digital, however, as they made a grand tour through parts of the trade fair highlighting the latest manufacturing technologies. And when the US President appears, the rest of the world stops. There were a reported 10,000 police in Hannover. The building I was in during the tour was surrounded by police, we could see snipers on the buildings around us, and we were locked in from 9 am until 1 pm. Fortunately, we had food.
Fortunately also for Siemens, they had a “captive” audience for their press conference for an extra couple of hours.
Siemens captured a large chunk of my time in Hannover. (Disclaimer, two divisions of the company paid some of my expenses.) Because I had some good contacts, I was able to get many interviews and looks behind the scenes. But the main reason I spent much time there was that Siemens had much to show.
Digital Manufacturing Vision
The digital manufacturing vision that Anton Huber laid out for me at the ARC Forum in Orlando in 2006 has progressed considerably. With a backbone of Internet of Things technologies and adding in digital everywhere, Siemens revealed the benefits of bringing everything together.
Take a tour through automobile production, for example. Sebastian Israel took me through the process from designing in Siemens CAD solution (NX), to production planning and engineering (TeamCenter, both from Siemens (PLM). The process continues through designing and engineering the line–digitally of course. Because it is digital first, engineers can simulate the line removing constraints and interferences before any steel is cut.
Integrating the automation and controls to the process is the hardest part of the system. Siemens has begun this process. It does acknowledge much work remains in this area. Mechatronics integration is well along. Things do not stop here, though. TeamCenter helps with change management. TiA Portal enables control engineering collaboration. The process feed the execution level (MES) for production scheduling and other functions including feeding the resource manager of CNC tools to help select the proper next tool to use. This integrates into services–data is usable for such analyses as predictive maintenance.
So far as I can tell, no other company comes close to the ability to do all this within its own umbrella. Although remarkable for what I’d call the “old” Siemens, the “new” Siemens actually uses partnerships to fill the gaps in the system. This is not the same company I met 15 years ago.
I congratulate Mr. Huber for the vision and seeing it through to its current state.
Other Siemens News
Rihab Ehms led a personal tour on TIA Portal Engineering Software. This product continues to develop and flesh out gaps. The first glimpse from a few years ago was pretty much that of an Integrated Development Environment for programming control. Slowly, the Siemens team added drives, HMI, and now motion control and motor management. Also included is energy management. It is a multiuser environment enabling broad collaboration among engineers using a “smart library” concept and common data management.
Ulli Klenk, next on my list, discussed Industrial Additive Manufacturing. I mentioned some interviews I’ve had on additive manufacturing research at North Carolina State. A Duke grad, he was a bit disappointed. His passion showed on the ways Siemens is helping customers with additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing). Leveraging expertise from Siemens PLM and working with partner machine builders, the company has systems working in a number of application.
Not part of this exhibit but thoroughly fascinating as well, Local Motors sent an engineer to participate in the Siemens booth showing how the company is building a complete car (and now a minibus) using additive manufacturing methods.
The paper industry faces challenges as we all reduce the amount of paper we use. It is searching for alternatives to its product lines. Therefore the broadening of the industry term to “fiber.” Siemens is there, of course, to blend its process control, drive systems, simulation, and predictive maintenance capabilities. Dr. Hermann Schwarz explained the technologies and then said these technologies will help the paper industry broaden into the fiber industry.
One last technology that I didn’t tour but heard much about is MindSphere. Partnering with SAP HANA, this is an industrial cloud providing data driven services and eventually an App Store so that customers can wring the most value possible from their own data.
Not a Chance
When this vision was explained in 2006 and 2007, I didn’t think there was any chance Siemens could pull it off. The pieces are coming together well. They still have much work to do, but customers can certainly benefit right now with increased manufacturing flexibility, product quality, and efficiency.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 30, 2015 | Automation, News, Operations Management, Organizations, Standards
New power generation technologies will only optimize when high capacity storage becomes reality. You never know when or where you might learn about advances.
Consider this example of always remaining open toward gaining new knowledge and contacts. My wife and I were at breakfast in a Napa Valley Bed and Breakfast on vacation last September. We began a conversation with another couple about our age regarding which winery tours might be best.
The man asked me what I did. “Write about industrial technology and applications.” You might be interested in this, he replied. Turns out he was an electrical power utility general manager and had become involved with a standards initiative–MESA. No, not the MESA (MES Association) that I’m involved with. This one develops standards for connecting to energy storage. This area holds immense importance for the future of the power grid.
Storage Standards Association
So he shared some contact information and connected me with the association. I’ve talked with people there and am sharing some information from the Website to introduce this important initiative. Expect more in the future.
(All of this information comes from the Website.)
Why MESA?
Grid-connected energy storage promises large potential benefits. And yet, before safe, affordable energy storage can deliver on its promise, electric utility customers and their suppliers must solve significant problems. Many of these problems boil down to lack of standardization.
Standards are required for any technology to be deployed at scale. The personal computer industry grew from few to millions of units per year, while dramatically improving price-performance, based on standards for its software and hardware components. Like other industries, the energy storage industry needs to organize for scale, based on a cohesive industry vision and technology standards.
MESA Standards clear barriers to growth in energy storage. By making standard connections between components possible, MESA frees utilities and vendors to focus on delivering more cost-effective electricity to more people.
Today’s Problem
Current utility-grade energy storage systems (ESS) are project-specific, one-off solutions, built using proprietary components that are not modular or interoperable. Connecting these proprietary systems with key utility control software such as SCADA platforms is cumbersome and time-consuming.
Before an ESS can function, the batteries, power converters, and software that make up the ESS must be intelligently “plugged into” each other and the electrical system. Then the ESS as a whole must be intelligently plugged into the utility’s existing information and operations technology. Without established standards, components and systems offer their own proprietary connectors, and the process of plugging them together must be repeated for each new project.
Time, Money, Safety
Connecting the proprietary pieces can result in a motley collection of custom interfaces, or “kludges,” designed to address vendor-specific hardware. Creating such systems is a complex process that comes with its own heavy baggage:
- High project costs, and decreased reliability and safety.
- Component vendors tempted to stretch their expertise and offer a complete ESS solution, losing focus on their own core competency. Instead of developing innovative, best-of-breed components—such as a better, cheaper battery—these vendors simply re-invent yet another proprietary wheel.
- One-off, proprietary solutions that are inflexible, not easily scaled, and have limited operational control. The utility customer becomes dependent on a single ESS supplier, with few options to upgrade, expand or re-purpose their energy storage investment.
Despite willing buyers (electric utilities) and willing sellers (battery, power converter, and software suppliers), market growth is limited. Significant opportunities – for example, the potential for broad deployment of standardized ESS configurations at many utility substations – are beyond the industry’s reach in its current form.
To fully enable broad deployment of grid-connected storage, and grow the market for all, standards are required to address these limitations.
The MESA Solution
Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA) is an open, non-proprietary set of specifications and standards developed by an industry consortium of electric utilities and technology suppliers. Through standardization, MESA accelerates interoperability, scalability, safety, quality, availability, and affordability in energy storage components and systems.
Key MESA Goals:
- Standardize communications and connections, which will accelerate interoperability and scalability.
- Give electric utilities more choice by enabling multi-vendor, component-based ESS.
- Reduce project-specific engineering costs, enabling a more robust energy storage market.
- Enable technology suppliers to focus on their core competency, facilitating quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness.
- Reduce training costs and improve safety for field staff through standardized procedures for safety and efficiency.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 12, 2015 | Automation, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Technology
Technology strategy in Europe is becoming sharply divided between the Siemens-led German Industrie 4.0 cyber-physical systems approach and the Industrial Internet of Things.
Schneider Electric has announced its support of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) by joining the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and earning an appointment to the organization’s steering committee. Other members of the organization include AT&T, Cisco, General Electric, IBM and Intel.
Schneider has also wrapped up this focus with a branded strategy dubbed “Life Is On.” That strategy “will transform how people and organizations consume energy, better automate industrial processes, and increase the quality of business decisions, while improving their lives.”
Here is the statement of philosophy from the Schneider press release, “The Life Is On brand strategy will help clearly show how the company is helping its customers around the world take advantage of this fundamental shift, leveraging Schneider Electric’s expertise in the operational technology (OT) that controls our society’s most important processes and connecting it to the information technology (IT) that we rely on to simplify our lives and make better decisions. This approach, which Schneider Electric refers to as building Operational Intelligence, relies on optimized automation and control, advanced remote management, predictive maintenance, enabling managed services, advanced analytics and generation of actionable information to drive informed decision-making in our homes, manufacturing facilities, data centers, buildings and cities.”
In addition, Schneider Electric has also announced it has entered into a collaboration with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (HKUST-MIT) Research Alliance Consortium to advance IoT solutions and adoption.
One of the most interesting aspects of the announcement is the treatment of automation. After Schneider Electric acquired APC its message changed to promoting itself as a power company. Almost all mention of its factory automation products ceased. For years. (Remember Modicon?)
Following the acquisition of Invensys, especially the Foxboro and Triconex part, the company has routinely defined itself as a power and automation company.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 19, 2015 | Internet of Things, Operations Management, Technology
The various parts of the Industrial Internet of Things ecosystem—smart devices, networks, databases, cloud, mobile HMI—really so help manufacturing and production operations, maintenance, and engineering perform better.
Fluke has made strategic acquisitions over the past several years that enhances its technology portfolio. It has brought together many of these technologies to make the IIoT useful. In the case of this new product, enhancing preventive maintenance.
Unplanned downtime due to equipment failure can cost manufacturers up to three percent of their revenue, according the U.S. Federal Energy Management Program. Manual methods of tracking equipment health to predict failures are time consuming and prone to errors and incomplete data, while existing computerized maintenance management systems can be costly and complex and often require significant IT resources to implement.
Fluke Connect Assets changes the way equipment maintenance is documented, reported, and managed.
Fluke Connect Assets is a cloud-based wireless system of software and test tools that gives maintenance managers a comprehensive view of all critical equipment — including baseline, historical, and current test tool measurement data, current status, and past inspection data — enabling them to set up and sustain a preventive maintenance (PM) or condition-based maintenance (CBM) system easily with minimal investment.
It features wireless one-step measurement transfer from more than 30 Fluke Connect wireless test tools, eliminating manual recording of measurements so maintenance managers can be more confident that the equipment history is accurate.
The system’s features allow maintenance managers to analyze multiple types of predictive data (for example, electrical, vibration, infrared images) all in one program, side by side, in a visual format that enables easy scanning. In fact, it’s the first software that allows you to compare multiple measurement types in one system, making it easy to see correlations and spot problems. This intuitive display of multiple measurements enhances the productive use of data and the ability to identify a problem, since each measurement type tests a different aspect of equipment health and together they present a more complete picture.
Key features of Fluke Connect Assets include:
- Asset Health dashboard — is a hierarchy based overview of the status of all assets over time, with drill-downs to the individual asset record for more details. This permits managers to identify anomalies or correlations across equipment.
- Asset Analysis – is a record for each piece of equipment that is the single source for all of its maintenance information. Managers and technicians can trend and compare thermal, electrical and vibration data over time for each piece of equipment in order to make optimal repair and replacement decisions.
- Asset Status dashboard — allows managers to quickly scan the most recent status updates for key assets so they can better monitor team and equipment activity.
Entire maintenance teams can capture and share data via their smartphones regardless of their location using AutoRecord measurements to automatically record measurements from Fluke Connect wireless test tools, upload the data to Fluke Cloud storage and then assign it to a specific asset for sharing and analysis. Technicians can collaborate with their colleagues to discuss problems while sharing data and images in real time with ShareLive video calls, speeding up problem solving, decision-making and approvals.
With the Fluke Connect Assets system, maintenance managers and technicians generate more reliable data to make informed decisions about equipment health, reducing unexpected equipment downtime, improving costs, and enhancing the efficiency of their teams.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 24, 2015 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Data Management, Industrial Computers, Internet of Things, Operations Management, Technology
Representatives of National Instruments (NI) and IBM recently discussed their collaboration on a test bed demonstrating the possibilities for using Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for taking companies from Condition Monitoring to Predictive Maintenance.
Chris O’Connor, IBM General Manager of IoT who works with divisions such as Maximo told me this is a new business unit that is built around IoT. There are about 6,000 clients. The explosion of data coming from devices means that industry must change from data centers to IoT. “For us, this entails the analysis of sensors information, aggregating the information, then constructing lifecycles. This will help world adopt IoT.”
The collaboration from condition monitoring and analytics changes questions manufacturers can answer such as, can I gain competitive advantage, can I offer better warranty, change frequency of maintenance.
Jamie Smith, NI’s Director of Embedded Systems, said the test bed project will roll out in multiple phases. It demonstrates the interoperability between two industry leaders including edge computing capability from NI to IBM’s cloud technology and analytics. Therefore, users can progress from condition monitoring to predictive maintenance.
The test bed consists of a motor and a couple of fans. Various failure modes are introduced. The first go consists of NI CompactRIO communicating via MQTT to IBM. Now that the proof has been completed, other companies in the Industrial Internet Consortium have been invited to join the collaboration. “All they need to do is contribute time and resources to it,” added Smith.
The next step according to Smith is insuring that it’s end to end secure. They are working with IIC to do security assessment. They will then look at more robust assets—most likely power generation assets—hoping to work with someone with large turbines or pumps to continue to demonstrate the technology and benefits.
Following is a description from the statement on the Web.
The Condition Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance Testbed (CM/PM) will demonstrate the value and benefits of continuously monitoring industrial equipment to detect early signs of performance degradation or failure. CM/PM will also use modern analytical technologies to allow organizations to not only detect problems but proactively recommend actions for operations and maintenance personnel to correct the problem.
Condition Monitoring (CM) is the use of sensors in equipment to gather data and enable users to centrally monitor the data in real-time. Predictive Maintenance (PM) applies analytical models and rules against the data to proactively predict an impending issue; then deliver recommendations to operations, maintenance and IT departments to address the issue.
These capabilities enable new ways to monitor the operation of the equipment – such as turbines and generators – and processes and to adopt proactive maintenance and repair procedures rather than fixed schedule-based procedures, potentially saving money on maintenance and repair, and saving cost and lost productivity of downtime caused by equipment failures.
Furthermore, combining sensor data from multiple pieces of equipment and/or multiple processes can provide deeper insight into the overall impact of faulty or sub-optimal equipment, allowing organizations to identify and resolve problems before they impact operations and improve the quality and efficiency of industrial processes.
Through this testbed, the testbed leaders IBM and National Instruments will explore the application of a variety of analytics technologies for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. The testbed application will initially be deployed to a power plant facility where performance and progress will be reported on, additional energy equipment will be added and new models will be developed. It will then be expanded to adjacent, as yet to be determined, industries.
