by Gary Mintchell | Mar 26, 2012 | Data Management, Software
The business models for software in manufacturing and production have intriqued me for a long time. It seems that the companies are hot in pursuit of 7-figure deals and trying to figure out just who the people are within large companies with purchasing authority. Combine this with a desire to find out what’s happening at GE Intelligent Platforms these days made it the right time to catch up with Erik Udstuen, GE IP business leader for software and services last Friday.
GE IP has combined acquisitions of SmartSignal and CSense with organic development to create a business to bring together data, predicting, prognostics and diagnostics into “process tools for the enterprise.”
The company’s developers worked on the organic part for two years reworking recording, reporting, diagnostics toward an asset intelligence solution. This included working with other GE businesses, for example, working with GE Energy to monitor gas turbine fleets around the world. The idea is to not only alert operators about pending failures, but also work with customers for process optimization. Currently GE is monitoring 1,800 power plants around the world, consolidating all the data in a data center in Atlanta. The original work was to upgrade the environment, handle the massive database and improve analytics. That work formed the foundation of today’s offering.
Udstuen noted the SmartSignal patent portfolio on prognostics, among others, emphasizes monitoring major pieces of equipment and alerting on an anomoly. CSense, a S. African company focusing on deeper analytics, had developed a suite of tools including neural net, fuzzy logic and other core machine learning technologies into a machine learning environment with deep analytics. “SmartSignal focused on failures; CSense on optimization/process performance,” Udstuen summarized.
The combination of the three streams into one offering solved the problems of building a massive historical database and finding the needle in the haystack–important information needed by operators in real time. Udstuen notes that in the current example of 1,800 turbines, each may collect 10,000 measurements. The number of technicians in Atlanta is quite small. So the software analytics must sift the data for the important information.
Udstuen offered another example. “We had an earthquake on the east coast six months ago that tripped out quite a bit of power generating capacity. Atlanta called operators within a couple of minutes to let them know that it was safe to restart. Just imagine if they had had to search through 10,000 data points before making a decision,” he noted.
“Our vision is to be the world-class remote monitoring platform across many industries. Power generation and oil & gas are big industries for GE now. We have 60 percent of the North American power generation market today. Oil & gas is mainly upstream right now. We’re expanding power generation capability globally and pushing into the oil & gas midstream,” said Udstuen. “The new focus is mining–massive very remote assets spread across the world. For example Angkor America mining monitors the haul truck fleet, providing remote advice on the fleet.”
In summary, “We’re looking to double sales every year for the next few years. The equation for GE IP is that it has a value portfolio in the millions that GE corporatly can leverage into the billions.”
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 20, 2012 | Software
More companies are releasing cloud-based manufacturing software–otherwise known as Software as a Service or even Platform as a Service. I believe that this is going to be disruptive to the MES/MOM application area.
Here is a post I found on TechCrunch about enterprise software in the age of consumerization of software interfaces that I think shows some of the future. Following is an excerpt. Check out the entire article.
This guest post is written by Uzi Shmilovici, the founder and CEO and founder of Future Simple, the company behind Base CRM.
Here are three predictions on how consumerization will change the face of business computing forever:
- A new class of enterprise software — With the cost of building and serving great software going down and the new user experience paradigms becoming more pervasive, a new generation of business software emerges. With a strong focus on user experience and on making the software useful for the users themselves and not only to their managers, this type of software accelerates adoption and provide 10X the value for a fraction of the cost.
- Dramatic shift in discovery channels — CIO magazines are great but today people find new apps via social media, peer recommendations, search or, increasingly, through the various app stores. There’s no need for a special committee to choose the right software when you can rely on credible ratings and recommendations. The employees bring their apps and collaboration tools from home and effectively make the decision for the enterprise.
- Failure of traditional vendors to adopt — Don’t want to name names but it is absolutely insane that most of the traditional vendors failed to put together good mobile apps. Truth is that it is not easy to do when you are sitting on top of a complex legacy code that barely runs in a modern browser, let alone on a new device.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 19, 2012 | Education, Software
MES Education
Charlie Gifford is embarking on another round of his successful MES/MOM Methodology Certificate of Competency (CoC) Program as part of the MESA Global Education Program (GEP). This class will be 15-18 May 2012 at P&G Gillette Company, One Gillette Park, Boston, MA United States 02127-1096.
You can register here.
The course was 6 years in the making. Over 300 certificated students reported highly satisfied in 2011. Charlie has taught this 4 day Methodology Overview 8 times with course evaluations scoring 3.6 out of 4 in all 9 courses now.
MESA MES/MOM Methodologies Program: MESA Certificate of Competency (CoC, 4 Days)
This MESA CoC Program is a comprehensive program of MES/MOM Methodologies courses in a 4 Day Curriculum for MES/MOM Consultants, System Analysts, Architects, Programmers, and Project Managers.
1. Overview: Manufacturing Operations Models and Integration Standards (3 hours)
2. The Role of MES/MOM System in Continuous Improvement and the Collaborative Pull Supply Chain (2 hours)
3. Manufacturing Transformation Strategy: Maturity and Roadmap Modeling(3 hour)
4. Metric Framework for Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI): Aligning Financial and Operations Metrics (4 hours)
5. MES/MOM System Justification and ROI Assessment (4 hours)
6. MES/MOM SOW, RFP and Product Evaluation Method (4 hours)
7. Manufacturing 2.0 Architecture Overview (SOA for Manufacturing) (4 hours)
8. MES/MOM Implementation and Governance: MES/MOM System Requirement Specifications, GAMP and Industrial System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Methods (4 hours)
9. MES/MOM Project Management Techniques (4 hours)
Much of the training materials are derived from the MESA/ISA-95 Best Practices Working Group’s 20 Methodology Papers and the MESA Guidebooks.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 17, 2012 | Uncategorized
After a 6-month hiatus for various personal reasons, I’ve decided to go back to podcasts. Hopefully a little more regularly now. Even in the 6 months of no new material, my site still averaged over 300 downloads–and someone bought the app. Thank you.
This one recaps my experiences at the MARTS Conference this week.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 13, 2012 | Automation, Events, Podcast
I’m in Chicago giving one last review of my presentation at the MARTS Conference. I last spoke here in 2009. Should be interesting. Hope I get a few to show up, anyway.
Speaking of presentations, here are a couple of opportunities for you to present–and maybe me. I’ll have to see if I can dream up a good topic.
ISA Marketing and Sales Summit
ISA’s 7th Annual Marketing & Sales Summit–“The New Rules of Customer Engagement: Riding the Winds of Change” will be held August 15-17th, 2012 at The Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas.
The organizers are asking for abstracts. Here are some thoughts:
How do you reach your customers today? Regardless of how the world’s economies shift and sway, connecting with your customer is what it’s all about. But customer engagement has changed. How is your company adjusting to these changes? We want to hear from you. Abstracts should be submitted based on the summit theme and topics below. Abstracts should be 500 words or less and describe what the presentation will cover. If your abstract is accepted and you agree to submit a presentation for the conference proceedings, you are also agreeing to register and present at the 7th Annual ISA Marketing & Sales Summit.
Two Conference Tracks: Marketing & Sales
Strategy and Business Development
Integrated Strategies for Marketing and Sales
Digital Marketing and Social Media
Complex Sales Best Practices
Strategies in Vertical Markets
Sample topic areas include best practices in social media, guerrilla marketing, brand marketing, winning complex accounts, market-driven product development, business development and engineering, product marketing management vs. product management, sales vs. marketing, branding in the web 2.0 era, redefining advertising in the digital age, and more.
Submit your abstract no later than 16 April 2012 to Shari Worthington, program chair.
Emerson Exchange
And this in from the Emerson Global Users Exchange. “With less than two weeks until the March 19th deadline, we’ve already received a sizeable quantity of worthy abstracts for this year’s conference. Supporting this year’s theme, “Connect In” – the 2012 Emerson Exchange conference is expected to deliver even more value for all, as industry leaders, educators, and practical experts like yourself prepare to share experiences and connect with other automation professionals.”
Exchange this year is October 8 – 12, 2012 at the Hilton Anaheim in Anaheim, CA.
Podcasts
I sort of unintentionally suspended my podcast series when I had so many changes in my life last year. Watch for a new series beginning soon. But I still listen to a bunch mostly when I’m working out or traveling. Here is a roundup of some interesting ones.
IT conversations is a great location for a variety of podcasts.
Here is one on the Internet of Things. We talk a lot about wireless sensor networks in automation. Here is a discussion taking it to another level. Sensors – Vahe Kassardjian, making sense of sen.se.
And for a poignant moment–Jeff Atwood resigned from Stack Overflow and here is the last Jeff and Joel podcast.
David Weinberger, one of the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto on Big Data, Too Big to Know on the tremendous amount of content creation and how do we find it.
Cory Doctorow, humans as sensors, not human barcodes, “Right now we are in a shooting war between users and the analytics people, except the users aren’t armed.”
