by Gary Mintchell | Oct 27, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, News, Safety, Technology
Emerson Automation’s PlantWeb architecture has grown and morphed into a full blown Industrial Internet of Things platform. The redesigned and reinvigorated integrated architecture forms the foundation of Emerson’s new Operational Certainty initiative. This is the first of a few reports on the latest Emerson Automation news.
Steve Sonnenberg, recently elevated into the role of Chairman of Emerson Automation—the company formerly known as Emerson Process Management, introduced new Executive President Mike Train to the assembled customers and press at the 2016 edition of Emerson Global Users Exchange in Austin, Texas on Oct. 24. Train then introduced Operational Certainty.
The previous initiative was Project Certainty where the company strategists arrayed its existing and new products into a package that was designed to remove automation from the critical path of capital projects. These days capital projects are few and far between. Companies are scrambling to wring more profitability from existing assets. Therefore a new approach from Emerson that is obviously driven by its customers’ needs. Train says that this initiative will help wrest more than $1 trillion from operational losses globally.
Initiatives need benchmarks. Emerson introduced peer benchmarking on best practices to achieve Top Quartile performance in safety, reliability, production, and energy management. Top Quartile is defined as achieving operations and capital performance in the top 25 percent of peer companies.
The company is also launching a new Operational Certainty consulting practice plus expanded project execution methodologies and resources. Additionally, on October 24, the company will announce a new Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) digital ecosystem to provide the technology foundation for companies to securely implement Industrial IoT to achieve measurable business performance improvement.
A few examples of Emerson’s findings:
- In terms of safety, Top Quartile performers had one-third the number of safety incidents as compared to their average industry peers.
- In terms of asset reliability, Emerson found that Top Quartile performers spend half as much on maintenance compared with average performers and operate with an incremental 15 days of available production each year.
- In the domain of production, Top Quartile manufacturers spent 20 percent less on production-related expenses as compared to average producers.
- In the area of energy and emissions, the top 25 percent of producers spent one-third as much as the industry average on energy costs and had 30 percent less CO2 emissions.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 17, 2016 | Automation, Motion Control, News, Technology
The Festo International Press Conference has taken me on manufacturing and technology tours to Germany and Hungary in the past. This year’s event was a short drive down Interstate 75 to Cincinnati, Ohio. Here a large international press contingent toured its new $70 M state-of-the-art distribution and manufacturing center.
The facility features a highly automated order picking system unique to the manufacturing industry in North America and only comparable to the highly sophisticated warehouse systems of the strongest retail brands. With these new premises Festo is now able to triple its capacities: This allows for more flexibility, improved services and offers plenty of space for future growth.
Excellent growth prospects
The center is designed to allow for the speed and flexibility needed to accommodate Festo’s future growth in the NAFTA market (US, Canada and Mexico). The RSC will also support the expected growth in Mexico, which is becoming a recognized hub for the automotive industry. The new center has Foreign Trade Zone status, which makes it faster and more efficient to support customers in the US, Canada and Mexico from a central US location.
With a storage capacity of 65,000 bins, the highly automated warehouse system – implemented by Witron, the leading designer and supplier of fully automated warehouse and logistics systems – features seven high-performance picking stations and the capability to pick and pack 1,000 items per hour. “As regional and US sales continue to grow, this Regional Service Center will provide a strong product supply backbone for the North American market with best in class supply chain performance“, said Yannick Schilly, Head of Product Supply NAFTA
and RSC Mason.
Festo Value Production (Lean)
The facility features an implementation of the Festo Value Production system (FVP). This system is based on closely involving employees in defining standards and continuously improving processes and technical solutions. Great emphasis is placed on consistent communication as well as the visualization of objectives and results. It is thus possible to produce globally over 30,000 products with countless variants and deliver tailor-made solutions to customers all over the world within a matter of days.
The Regional Service Center features both an assembly area and the warehousing/picking area. When assembly is completed, the finished product is transported to the Regional Service Center (RSC) for shipment. All components in a system are grouped by barcode, packaged for shipping, and then shipped out to schedule.
“Our customers in North America expect top quality ‘made by Festo’, with guaranteed supplies and next-day delivery at prices in keeping with local market conditions. At the same time, energy efficiency, environmental protection and occupational safety are becoming increasingly important. The Regional Service Center in Mason/Ohio will secure our regional supplies to the North American market for the years ahead,” concludes Dr. Dirk Erik Loebermann, Chief Operation Officer and Member of the Festo Management Board.
Training and Apprenticeship Program
Festo has established a separate group, Festo Didactic, which provides training and apprenticeship programs both for Festo products and systems as well as for automation in general. In Mason, Didactic has partnered with Sinclair Community College and five companies in the Cincinnati tri-state area (Art Metal Group, Clippard Instruments, Festo Inc., MQ Automation, Nestlé) to create a two-year Mechatronics Apprenticeship Program to help employers develop the skills that are missing in the workforce today by combining theoretical education, hands-on training, and on the job training. The apprenticeship is designed to help individuals learn advanced manufacturing skills as well as earn an associate’s degree in mechatronics.
The first cohort of the program includes 11 apprentices who are training for careers as maintenance technicians, automation specialists, service technicians, and manufacturing technicians. The program uses the German apprenticeship model of dual education, where apprentices learn in a classroom and maintain a steady job.
Every week each apprentice spends one day at Sinclair Community College for classes, one day using state-of-the-art equipment at the new Festo Learning Center in Mason, and three days working at their respective employers. The apprentices are able to take what they learn in class, practice it at the Festo Learning Center, and then use that new knowledge and skill in a real-life work environment. “In terms of educational modality, the apprenticeship model couldn’t be a better fit for manufacturing,” says Vice President for Regional Centers at Sinclair Community College Scott Markland.
The Festo Learning Center is a unique part of the program. The Center is designed to meet international standards for production facilities and labs. It provides the apprentices a training facility where they can work with instructors on high-end Festo workstations that simulate a work environment and corresponds to their classroom curriculum.
Industry 4.0
For manufacturing companies in high-wage countries, Industry 4.0 provides an opportunity for remaining competitive on a global scale. “We are talking here about the transformation of industrial manufacture into a fully networked, flexible production system. To remain competitive, we must take the initiative with our characteristic spirit of inventiveness and give shape to this new development”, says Prof. Peter Post, Head of Corporate Research and Technology of Festo AG & Co. KG.
This transformation in the world of production is founded on digitalization, a crucial element in the merging of the virtual and real worlds. Prof. Post sees great potential here: “Digital refinement will give rise to increasingly intelligent products. In future, the individual elements of an overall system will be able to communicate with each other and autonomously control and regulate themselves. They are the core of industrial digitalization and support the production process through enhanced functionality – from classic aspects such as productivity and quality on to increasing individualization.”
To optimally leverage these new capabilities of intelligent products, cooperation needs to be established with many systems and business processes. “Together with our partners in Industry 4.0, we’re currently defining the new language of Industry 4.0. The German ‘Plattform Industrie 4.0’ with its widespread members from office and shop floor, as well as from standardizations and associations, works on joint reference models and international standards. This will allow for engineering the digital work stream in a kind of plug&play manner! The intelligent devices will describe themselves and will autonomously find the right collaboration partners”, details Dr. Michael Hoffmeister, representing the portfolio management software of Festo AG & Co. KG. “In the future, digitizing these virtual added values of a component will be as important as manufacturing the physical part”, he says.
Being one of the main drivers of standardization within Industry 4.0, Dr. Hoffmeister points out, how important worldwide collaboration is: “We’re working technically closely together with our colleagues from the Industrial Internet Consortium. Our business scopes are complementing each other and our architectures are mapping together”.
Festo Customers in the Region
We toured two customer plants in the area. HAHN Automation and Storopack.
HAHN Automation is one of the leading manufacturers of special machinery for automated production. Its main customers are the automotive industry and its suppliers. “We have a firm focus on customer proximity, since that is the only way we can ensure our quality standards and guarantee intensive project support,” says John Baines.
This strategy has borne fruit, as shown by the successful cooperation with customers located within three hours’ drive of Cincinnati. The nationwide list of customers reads like a who’s who of the industry: from BMW to BorgWarner, Brose, Continental or Mitsubishi, HAHN Automation’s customers include most of the industry’s global players. Another practical point is the closeness of its own facilities to Cincinnati Airport, which is just ten minutes away. This also explains why the company is developing and supplying its site in Mexico from its US factory.
Modular cell concept
HAHN Automation’s main concept is the MasterCell. A MasterCell can either be used as an automatic single workstation with manual component placement or combined into technologically sophisticated automation systems. The modular system design is based on the principle of fast and cost-effective expansion in line with demand as production quantities increase. In the MasterCell modern robots as well as leading-edge assembly and testing technology are used, making it suitable for challenging assembly and testing processes.
The benefits for customers include the standardized cell structure, ease of handling and operation, ergonomic design, high quality, high availability, short delivery times, great economic efficiency, flexible degrees of automation and high levels of customizability.
Festo automation components play an important role in the MasterCell concept: from the modular automation platform CPX/MPA to pneumatic drives from the standard product range and pneumatic grippers, HAHN Automation uses key products from the automation specialist. These are used in almost all assembly cells.
Packaging Material
Packaging material is a typical throwaway product. Packages arrive, are opened, the goods are removed, and the filler material is thrown away. “Hardly anyone – apart from Storopack – thinks about how important it is to select the right protective packaging products in the right quantity and quality for a particular application,” explains Daniel Wachter, President of Storopack for North America in Cincinnati, Ohio. Incorrect or inadequate filler material can damage goods in transit, while excessive or incorrectly inserted protective packaging material can significantly reduce productivity at packing stations in distribution centers.
Storopack produces – among other things – its AIRplus film rolls to supply to distributors and customers throughout the world. During the primary process, plastic granulate is formed into basic plastic film at blown film lines. This is then wound onto rolls by winding machines. These machines are equipped with standard cylinders DSBC which allow the rollers of the winding machines to be correctly aligned, depending on the load.
On configuration lines in the secondary process, the film is configured to the required dimensions and perforations and packed as finished AIRplus rolls. Stamping tools are used to seal and perforate the infinite plastic film to form air cushions of specific widths and lengths. These lines are also equipped with pneumatic cylinders DSBC, as well as rotary cylinders DSNU-PPS, compact cylinders ADN and short-stroke cylinders ADVC, controlled in each case by individual valves CPE 14.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 13, 2016 | Automation, News, Operator Interface, Technology
Rockwell Automation has announced acquisition of Automation Control Products (ACP), a provider of centralized thin client, remote desktop and server management software. ACP’s two core products, ThinManager and Relevance, provide manufacturing and industry with visual display and software solutions to, as the Rockwell press release put it, “manage information and streamline workflows for a more connected manufacturing environment.”
I met Matt Crandell, ACP CEO, years ago at a trade show touting Linux, as I recall, to a Microsoft crowd. He and his team had developed a thin client technology (“dumb” terminals connected to a server) that brought 1970s and 80s era corporate computing into the modern age. He had good relations with Wonderware but I’ve noticed increasingly strong partnership with Rockwell Automation. This exit was probably the best he could hope for. Congratulations to Matt and the team for a good run and a good exit.
The press release gives us Rockwell’s justification, “This acquisition supports the Rockwell Automation growth strategy to help customers increase global competitiveness through The Connected Enterprise – a vision that connects information across the plant floor to the rest of the enterprise. It is accelerated by the Industrial Internet of Things and advances in technologies, such as data analytics, remote monitoring, and mobility.”
“Today’s plant engineers turn to our technology innovation and domain expertise to help improve their manufacturing quality and reliability while increasing productivity,” said Frank Kulaszewicz, senior vice president of Architecture and Software, Rockwell Automation. “With ACP’s industry-leading products now in our portfolio, we can provide new capabilities for workers as the manufacturing environment becomes more digital and connected.”
ThinManager centralizes the management and visualization of content to every facet of a modern manufacturing operation, from the control room to the end user. It streamlines workflows and allows users to reduce hardware operation and maintenance costs. Relevance extends the ThinManager functionality through proprietary location-based technology, enabling users’ secure mobile access to content and applications from anywhere.
“We are a perfect addition to Rockwell Automation’s industrial automation offerings that aim to increase reliability, productivity and security as well as lower energy and maintenance costs while implementing sustainable technology for leading global manufacturers,” said Matt Crandell, CEO of ACP. “We are confident that our customers will quickly see the value from our two organizations working to address their needs together.”
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 8, 2016 | Internet of Things, News, Operations Management
Powering the Next Industrial Revolution. I was attending a virtual press/analyst conference on Sept. 7. Michael Dell formally introduced Dell Technologies. Talk of the Next Industrial Revolution is the last thing I expected to hear, but it fits with the company’s moves into Industrial Internet of Things and the data storage and analytics that accompany the concept. That company, the result of the combination with EMC, includes the familiar Dell (PCs and so forth), Dell EMC, Dell Services, and several publicly traded companies including VMware.
Dell also talked about the Internet of Everything along with the next Industrial Revolution and about how this new company changes the competitive landscape of the industry.
Why do we need to know?
I have been following Dell’s entry into the Industrial Internet of Things for almost a year now. It began with an intelligent gateway device introduced at last October’s Dell World. This device includes ports to bring sensor data into a local database with some analytic and visualization capabilities at the edge. It then can send the information to the cloud, to mobile or other visualization devices, and to other databases.
Dell has held a series of Think Tanks with technology providers and end users to explore how companies are using or are planning/preparing to use IIoT technologies to enhance their manufacturing businesses. This statement from the top of the organization certainly validates the effort. And the addition of EMC for even greater enterprise penetration should make the rest of the industry re-evaluate their positions.
Michael Dell’s Letter
Dell couldn’t contain his enthusiasm and superlatives while introducing this new powerhouse in computing, services, and enterprise. Here is the official letter:
Welcome to Dell Technologies, a unique family of businesses that provides the essential infrastructure for your organization to build its digital future, transform IT and protect your most important asset – information.
The largest parts of Dell Technologies will be very familiar to you. Our Client Solutions business, and our most well-known business, will continue to be known simply as Dell. Our Enterprise Solutions business, a real powerhouse in data center infrastructure, brings together the very best of Dell and EMC and will be known as Dell EMC. We have the services to provide strategic guidance and expertise to ensure you get the very best outcome from your investments, and we’re committed to providing you with unparalleled service and support. With that in mind, for now, there will be no change to your support interactions, processes, resources or contacts.
The rest of our family – Pivotal, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware – will continue to keep their independent identities and retain their freedom to develop their own ecosystems. That’s part of our commitment to providing you with choice. Importantly, we’ll also align our capabilities where it makes strategic sense to deliver integrated solutions in the areas that matter most to your future.
We stand at the very beginning of the Internet of Everything, an intelligent world pulsing with processing power and connectivity. It’s been called the next Industrial Revolution and the next quantum leap in human progress. By 2031, the number of connected nodes and devices will grow from 8 billion to 200 billion or more, about 25 times the number of people on the planet. All of these will create massive new sources of information. Using that information, in real time, to provide better insights and to build a better world is the greatest opportunity of our generation.
Dell Technologies exists to make that opportunity a reality for you. We are facing a future of infinite possibility. You’re going to cure cancer. You’re going to feed and water the world. You’re going to create jobs, and hope and opportunities on a global scale. Now is the time to dream big, think big and do big. Let the transformation begin!
What resides in the three core businesses?
Client Solutions
– Our Client Solutions business consists of Dell’s Client Solutions Group, which retains the Dell brand. Our Client Solutions offerings include hardware, such as desktop PCs, notebooks, 2-in-1s and thin clients, software, including end-point security, and peripherals, such as monitors, printers and projectors, as well as third-party software and peripherals.
Infrastructure Solutions
– Under the Dell EMC brand, we have combined EMC’s Information Infrastructure business and Dell’s Enterprise Solutions Group to create our Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes RSA and Virtustream. Dell EMC will enable our enterprise customers’ digital transformation through our trusted hybrid cloud and big-data solutions, built upon a modern data center infrastructure that incorporates industry- leading converged infrastructure, servers, storage, and cybersecurity technologies.
Dell EMC Services – Dell EMC Services is a trusted advisor to our customers and partners, providing strategic guidance, technology expertise, and outstanding execution to drive business outcomes quickly and effciently for enterprises of all sizes and for users at work or play. From consulting and technology deployment, to education, support and asset disposition, we offer the most complete portfolio of technology and fnancial services available, addressing the diverse needs of enterprise and consumer customers with choice, fexibility and scale. Our global team of more than 60,000 Dell EMC and partner service experts in more than 165 countries stand ready to help customers digitally transform and modernize their IT with world-class capabilities spanning hardware, software, solutions and IT operations.
Dream Big
Dell stated during his presentation, “Dreaming big is always what Dell is about.” Completion of this acquisition is certainly implementing a big dream.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 7, 2016 | Internet of Things, Leadership, News
Once again, an industrial corporation striving for digitalization solutions looks to Silicon Valley. Industrial and automation companies continue to search outside the industry for talent. Often, they just don’t work out. The pace of change in industrial is so much slower and bureaucracies are so entrenched that they get frustrated and leave. This one from ABB is interesting. Will he be able to build a software division to rival GE? We’ll keep watching.
ABB has appointed Guido Jouret as Chief Digital Officer, reporting to ABB’s CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer, effective October 1, 2016. Labeled a “pioneer of the Internet of Things” by ABB, Jouret will lead the next level of development and deployment of ABB’s digital solutions for customers globally and across all businesses.
Jouret is a citizen of both the United States and Belgium, with long experience in Silicon Valley. He served for 20 years at Cisco after obtaining a PhD in Computer Science. His most recent role at Cisco was as General Manager of the Internet of Things division, which aims to connect billions of devices to the internet across a wide range of industries.
Prior to that, he was Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group, a unit responsible for incubating new businesses. Under his leadership, the team created nine new start-ups, including those, which became Cisco’s TelePresence and Internet of Things groups. He has lived in 12 countries including France, Singapore and the United States. Additionally, he worked for Cisco as IT Director for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and in the Internet Business Solutions Group.
Jouret left Cisco in 2014 to join Envision Energy, where he led the software products business, including a platform for the emerging energy internet. Jouret has been Chief Technical Officer at Nokia Technologies since April 2015, and recently drove a major acquisition in the digital health sector.
“Guido Jouret is a proven leader in the digital revolution, with a solid track record in creating and growing new businesses as well as in the digital transformation of mature businesses. His global digitalization experience spans across companies in utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure,” said CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. “With his customer and innovation focus, and his extensive international technology business experience, he is the ideal person to take the software-led differentiation of our offerings to the next level and to cement ABB’s pioneering technology leadership, building on our more than 40 years’ history in embedded, control and applications software and our strong position in the Internet of Things, Services and People.”
Jouret will work from ABB’s Silicon Valley and Zurich offices.
He obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in the UK in 1991, and has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the US. He is married and has two children.
