by Gary Mintchell | Dec 7, 2013 | Automation, Data Management, Operations Management, Technology
The 26th Industry Advisory Board meeting of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems convened in Ann Arbor, MI the past two days. Needless to say, I was there. I have only been able to make it to about half of its meetings, but I always walk away with a better understanding of the needs of industry and the wish that I could remember all that math (one Ph.D. student presented some research using partial differential equations).
Professor Jay Lee, Center Director and engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati, was his usual energetic and evangelistic self leading the discussions. Kudos to the University of Michigan and the students who ran the research and poster board presentations on day 2 who kept the more than 20 speakers on time and moving quickly. Yes, they throw a lot of information at you, but there is ample time to talk with the researchers.
One topic Prof. Lee discussed specifically was cyber-physical systems, and one researcher discussed some upcoming research on constructing cyber-physical systems incorporating the Center’s Watchdog Agent.
The Center is NSF funded and does research for manufacturing (and production if you are a terminology purist) companies and also works with supplier companies. Several large manufacturing companies were represented, as well as several smaller companies. National Instruments and Emerson were a couple of supplier members. The universities in the Center are the University of Cincinnati, University of Michigan, Missouri University of Science and Technoology (previously Missouri-Rolla), and a recent addition, the University of Texas at Austin.
A representative of one company present stated that over the years the company has saved tens of millions of dollars due to projects begun with the Center. It’s well worth the investment.
Needs and Vision
Presentations on the first day centered on what companies saw as their immediate needs and what they saw coming in the near future. Many of these fit right into trends I’ve seen developing from supplier companies over the past couple of years. One speaker noted that the Center needed to further productize its Watchdog Agent technology. It fit within his vision of needing tools rather than turnkey solutions.
Aware of all the information available from sensing and instrumenting machines and processes, most speakers discussed Big Data and the need for analytics to handle that.
Another topic broached was “situational awareness” where the data is presented according to the situation of the person.
More work on multivariate control as well as degradation of components is needed.
Sensor diagnostics requirements were noted.
One company summarized with a continuum of local monitoring and remote monitoring with diagnostics and prognostics; managing data and predictive algorithms as big challenges. For the future: predictively warn of failure; provide meaningful service recommendations; remote access to experts; monitoring, maintenance and repair services with minimal end user interaction.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 2, 2013 | M2M, News, Operations Management, Organizations, Software
Marketplace for IoT
I think I first met Russ and Rick, the founders of ThingWorx, about 15 years ago at a National Manufacturing Week trade show (remember those?) as they were launching Lighthammer—a data connectivity product that has worked out well for eventual owner, SAP.
They came back with a new start up a few years ago named ThingWorx. This company provides a platform designed to efficiently build and run the applications of today’s connected world. Its model-based design and search-based intelligence reduces application development efforts by 10X, minimizing cost, risk and time to market. The ThingWorx platform combines the key functionality of Web 2.0, search, and social collaboration, and applies it to the world of “things,” including connected products, machines, sensors, and industrial equipment.
This idea of connecting the world of things intrigues me. We’ve discussed it for years, but I think that we as an industry are nearing critical mass where things begin talking with things and humans interact simply to direct processes and make critical decisions.
ThingWorx announced Nov. 18 the immediate availability of the ThingWorx Marketplace. The ThingWorx Marketplace is a global platform that enables developers, hardware and software providers, and systems integrators to build value-added IoT/M2M components and make them available to a broad range of companies.
“The ThingWorx Marketplace is a first mover in an exciting new niche with vast potential,” stated Emil Berthelsen, Principal Consultant at Machina Research. “Through application extensibility, ThingWorx Marketplace aims to deliver a comprehensive and complete apps store that allows developers to integrate with other systems, devices, industries and partners in a quick, seamless, and highly intuitive way.”
The ThingWorx Marketplace offers a wide range of components and services that are required for innovative M2M and IoT applications, including: widgets, analytics, application templates, device connectors, protocol adapters, and integrations to device clouds, provisioning platforms, enterprise systems, and big data stores. These components are built by ThingWorx, ThingWorx partners, independent hardware and software vendors, and third party developers.
“As a ThingWorx Partner, we are excited about the release of the ThingWorx Marketplace,” stated Alicia Asín, Co-Founder and CEO of Libelium. “The Marketplace provides us with a venue for making our sensor products and Meshlium Cloud platform front and center to a global ecosystem of M2M and Internet of Things developers and solution providers.”
The ThingWorx marketplace provides value to all members of the M2M/IoT value chain including:
- Enterprise Customers – deploy a private instance of the Marketplace, to simplify sharing of internally developed applications, application templates, analytics, visualizations and services.
- ThingWorx Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Partners – deploy a private labeled instance of the Marketplace, to simplify sharing of partner specific applications, analytics, visualizations and services.
- Marketplace Partners – an opportunity to make a company’s intellectual property available to customers on a global basis, offering new ways to promote and monetize their offerings.
“We are excited about the launch of the ThingWorx Marketplace,” stated Russ Fadel, CEO of ThingWorx. “With the predicted 50 billion connected ‘things’ by 2020, we believe there will need to be at least 5 million applications created to drive value. Our Marketplace will provide the next significant improvement in application development efficiency by providing a global market with the building blocks necessary to rapidly assemble these applications.”
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 28, 2013 | Automation, Technology
OPC UA is finally gaining the traction I thought I’d have seen some time ago in the search for better industrial data communication. There was just so much classing OPC in use, that getting companies to change was more difficult than I expected. Then there was the usual clash of thoughts about direction. But that is all behind, and the technology is getting out there.
I talked with executives of Online Development at Automation Fair a couple of weeks ago. They were showing a module where they had embedded OPC UA—one of the cool things about UA. I know there are clients and servers that are programmed in C# or another language using Microsoft .Net technology. Executives in those companies didn’t care about embedded. There are many uses where embedded makes a ton of sense.
The real key element of this OLDI module, though, is that it handles complex data from the control and serves it to a client. Upon boot up, the client achieves a handshake with the server so that it understands the structure of the complex data, then afterwards it can accept and process the data.
The OPC UA spec allows for both structured and complex data types. Most developers have stuck with the data types consistent with classic OPC. This development opens up vast new frontiers for the use of OPC.
Possibly this answers the problem addressed to me by an MES supplier a few months ago. Using only the structured data types, it was too much work for him to write clients for all possible servers. Or so he thought. But this development holds the promise of his ability to write clients for complex data.
I believe that you’ll see rapid acceptance of this technology such that it’ll spread to other suppliers.
This could be the breakthrough that OPC UA needs to reach that critical mass I’ve been expecting. We’ll see shortly if my enthusiasm for new technologies, as usual, exceeds the ability of developers to actually do the programming.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 28, 2013 | Operations Management, Software
The latest thing in MES from operations mangement solutions providers is targeted solutions “packs.” A couple of weeks ago I talked with some software business development people discussing that area. Now, I’ve received a press release from Dassault Systèmes (new owner of Apriso, so new the marketing teams are still sorting out branding issues) that includes a “Pack.”
The company announced general availability of the Apriso FlexNet Manufacturing Process Intelligence (MPI) 3.0 and Quality Intelligence Pack. This next generation operational intelligence product from Apriso, now a part of Dassault Systèmes’ DELMIA brand, lets manufacturers better manage and execute quality programs, in real-time, to address today’s key production and quality management challenges.
“Nearly half of all manufacturers surveyed experience difficulty effectively measuring quality key performance indicators. It is likely that too many disparate systems and data sources, as well as the organizational view of quality, are major contributors to this challenge. An effective metrics program requires buy-in from leadership and other personnel, but it also requires a strong IT architecture that captures and provides visibility into performance data,” explained Mathew Littlefield, President and Principle Analyst at LNS Research.
By leveraging Apriso’s MPI 3.0, manufacturers can more readily manage the proliferation of event data to identify quality issues faster, resulting in accelerated resolution. Expanded visibility into products, suppliers, machines, shifts, dates, departments or facilities gives manufacturers unprecedented access to quickly identify potential quality issues, which can then be contained to better manage any broader impact these issues may cause. By compressing time-to-resolution, MPI 3.0 effectively reduces the cost of quality.
The new Intelligence Pack extends MPI’s capabilities beyond production and machine intelligence to deeply manage quality with features including:
* Streamlined, accelerated quality inspections and defect analysis* Extended supplier quality analysis with visual dashboards* Key quality metrics monitoring: Sigma Level, DPMO, Process Capability, and more
New MPI 3.0 features include:
* Expanded Excel support, to create powerful analysis definitions that can be easily shared* Improved Web-based viewer to support on-line analysis and visualization* Data can be retrieved efficiently and accurately from almost any third party solution* Supports Microsoft SQL 2012 or SQL 2008 R2 and seamless upgrade from 2008 to 2012
“Manufacturers are increasingly reliant upon real-time visibility into manufacturing operations performance across plants and around the globe to meet stringent quality standards,” said John Fishell, Vice President of Apriso Product Management, DELMIA, Dassault Systèmes. “This latest update to MPI 3.0 provides manufacturers with the capabilities necessary to quickly analyze quality inspection and performance data, which can then be acted upon to produce higher quality at a lower cost.”
Apriso’s Manufacturing Process Intelligence 3.0 with its Quality Intelligence Pack joins other Manufacturing Intelligence Packs available from Apriso, including Machine, Production and Time & Labor Intelligence Packs. While these Intelligence Packs can be licensed independently, one of their advantages is their reach across silos of operations. Each of these products provide out-of-the-box visibility and reporting to accelerate the implementation and analysis of critical, time-sensitive manufacturing operations through pre-configured analytics, key performance indicators, dashboards and reports.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 28, 2013 | Automation, Industrial Computers, News, Organizations
Advantech has signed an agreement to acquire British Intelligent Display Company GPEG. After the merger, GPEG’s original management team will remain unchanged and will join Advantech Embedded Core Computing Group under the name of Advantech-GPEG. Advantech’s management sees this move as strengthening its position in the European market.
Advantech Chairman KC Liu stated that, “In view of the global trend toward Smart Cities and IoT, the intelligent display will be the most important user interface in the near future. Therefore, Advantech is very optimistic about development potential in the intelligent display market, and with the GPEG merger, we hope that we can accelerate product development, enhance sales strength, and lead market growth in intelligent displays.”
KC Liu further noted that, “Although Advantech already has sales teams and product development capabilities in Europe, it is difficult to specifically target customer needs until we are very familiar with the gaming industry in Europe. After the merger, we expect to draw on GPEG market development experience in the European gaming market and professional industry know-how, and combine these with Advantech’s existing global marketing and sales teams to expand the European intelligent display market.” Meanwhile, Advantech will also integrate GPEG’s product sales and design professionals with the resources of Innocore-Gaming, which Advantech acquired in 2010, to provide the European gaming market with complete solutions, significantly promoting Advantech embedded boards and overall revenue.
After the merger, GPEG’s former CEO Nick How and Sales Director Dave Webbing will continue leading Advantech-GPEG, cultivating gaming and application-specific display markets for customers in each vertical industry, and providing customized complete solutions to become one of Europe’s most influential intelligent display brands. GPEG was established in London in 2005 to supply specialized application displays, especially designing and producing intelligent displays for the gaming industry. GPEG annual sales have exceeded $18 million and their growth rate has been over 20%. Nick How commented, “We are tremendously excited about the opportunities for our customers, suppliers and employees that this merger will bring, the access to complimentary products, worldwide sales channels as well as the resources of a company like Advantech, paves the way for a very bright future for the company.”
The 26th Industry Advisory Board meeting of the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems convened in Ann Arbor, MI the past two days. Needless to say, I was there. I have only been able to make it to about half of its meetings, but I always walk away with a better understanding of the needs of industry and the wish that I could remember all that math (one Ph.D. student presented some research using partial differential equations).
