by Gary Mintchell | Sep 26, 2016 | Data Management, Interoperability, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
The industrial software market has changed dramatically over the past 13 years. One market disruptor hails from just outside Sacramento, California. I still remember meeting Steve Hechtman at an ISA show probably in 2003. He talked about developing HMI/SCADA industrial software in an entirely new way.
He told me that Inductive Automation was developing software written in Java and using IT-friendly technologies. Not only that, he would have a business model that totally disrupted the prevalent licensing by seats.
Hechtman greeted a capacity audience at the 2016 Ignition Customer Conference Sept. 19. The 430+ attendees exhausted the capacity of the Harris Center in Folsom, CA. The company has experienced double-digit growth every year since it started. It has been profitable every quarter since the launch of its flagship product, Ignition, in 2010. Privately held, it has no debt and no investors.
The company’s mission has been to reduce friction. Reduce friction to use the product, to buy the product, to develop using the product. Or, to quote from the presentation, “Our mission is to create industrial software that empowers our customers to swiftly turn great ideas into reality by removing all technological and economic obstacles.”
The technology allows for a 3-minute installation. It is scalable from a Raspberry Pi to enterprise servers.
Rather than calling Ignition HMI/SCADA software, Hechtman refers to it as a platform. Not only does Inductive Automation build modules to sit on it, the company makes it easy for customers to build, and even sell, modules, too. Part of that removing friction thing.
Hechtman brought up the IIoT and the hype surrounding it. The Gartner Hype Cycle plots a curve from early thoughts to euphoria plummeting to the trough of disillusionment to a partial recovery where 20%-30% of companies use and gain benefit from the technology. He suggested that Ignition builds a bridge over the trough of disillusionment to beneficial application of the IIoT.
Chief Strategy Officer Don Pearson followed with the other theme of the week—IT/OT convergence. ”We’ve been doing that from the beginning,” he stated.
Most people have talked about driving convergence from the IT side. That’s all backwards according to Pearson. The OT side should drive the convergence partly through adopting IT-friendly technology and learning from IT folks about their strengths such as security.
One last sign of growth—the number of partners exhibiting in the foyer. More than I can list, but start with Opto 22, Bedrock Automation, Cirrus-Link, Seeq. The company has vision and drive. And financial stability.
Summary
Here is a link to an interview I recorded with two of the original developers–Colby Clegg and Carl Gould. Owner/President Steve Hechtman was in the room, but I don’t recall that he said anything. I threw a digital audio recorder on the conference room table in early 2011. The company has grown into new offices and is now looking for more office space since then.
There was a lot of buzz at the conference. There were people from many countries, but many also were from large manufacturing companies. Several large systems integrators brought several engineers. The organizers asked if I would lead a “meet up” or round-table discussion on Monday before the actual kickoff. Wow–there were several really smart people in attendance. It was a great geek discussion.
If you are involved with developing applications with industrial software, you should check out next year’s conference. Even if you are not a customer, it’s worth it just to learn from others who come.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 21, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, News
Hannover Messe brought a slice of its automation trade show to this year’s International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS)—a venue known for huge machine tools. This was the second time, and it seems to be gaining some traction. Most exhibitors seemed to be central European, but there was a presence from a number of other North American automation companies not to mention many from Asia.
I stopped by a large number of stands. Below are five that had press releases new for the show. Opto 22 was at the show with an opportunity to see its recently released product with a RESTful API in the real plastic, so to speak. That plus a promised MQTT support maintains Opto’s usual spot as an early adopter, if not first adopter in many cases, of IT technologies in its OT products. I also stopped by to talk with Tom Burke and Stefan Hoppe at the OPC Foundation stand. Its news was reported here last week.
(My two-day silence was caused by travel to California and participating in the Inductive Automation Ignition Customer Conference. More on that later.)
Companies addressed below:
- Dell Technologies
- Beckhoff Automation
- Bedrock Automation
- Universal Robots
- Carbon (3D printing)
Dell Technologies
Appearing at IMTS in the automation hall for the first time, Dell Technologies showed its IoT Gateway and Embedded capabilities along with several partners that help it provide a complete Internet of Things solution from data collection through storage, analysis, and uploading to the cloud.
The major solution thrust for Dell thus far in its first year of existence has been predictive analytics especially for predictive maintenance applications. One of the featured partners was IBM Watson, using the famed supercomputer power for predictive analytics and EAP—its predictive maintenance solution.
Eigen showed a real-time quality application with in-process inspection. Some real-time analytics are performed in the gateway before sending data asynchronously to the cloud for further analysis.
Software AG, a partner from the beginning, provides a predictive maintenance software module that provided high speed streaming analytics in an ice cream factory. The module can also create service requests, see anomalies, order spare parts.
Beckhoff Automation
Check me out in these cool Microsoft Hololense Augmented Reality (AR) glasses. In this demo, I could see live data streaming from a robotic application. Beckhoff also showed support for MQTT and AMQP transport technologies (it also has OPC UA embedded), an Internet of Things coupler to Microsoft Azure cloud, and power over Ethernet on EtherCat P.
Bedrock Automation
Bedrock Automation has built an entirely new automation and control platform from the ground up. Security is designed in, even to the point of designing and manufacturing its own chips. It offers single, double, and triple redundancy, IEC 61131 programming along with a powerful function block editor that brings it into the DCS world. And it features software configurable I/O, software configurable serial module (5 to a card can be RS-232, RS-422, RS-485), and software configurable Ethernet card (think Profinet, EtherNet/IP, etc.).
At IMTS it announced its new intelligent, standalone power supply. The SPS.500 Secure Power Supply provides deep trust cyber security authentication and onboard intelligence for diagnostics and secure Ethernet communications. Encased in a NEMA 4X sealed aluminum enclosure, users of any PLC, SCADA RTU, PAC or DCS can retrofit to the new SPS.500 inside or outside enclosures, anywhere in a plant and in harsh environments.
Additional features include:
- Ethernet and OPC/UA communications, enabling local or remote monitoring of power supply health for greater system reliability and plant safety
- A powerful cyber secure microprocessor and onboard memory for diagnostics and software-defined functionality
- A built-in redundancy module, which simplifies installation and increases reliability by eliminating the need for an external redundancy module
- Two built-in, software-configurable Form C contact relays, which provide operating and diagnostic status
Universal Robots
One of the big things in automation this year is collaborative robots, or cobos. A leader in this area is a new entrant—Universal Robots. This Danish company showed its products at IMTS. It also announced two unique new initiatives.
- Universal Robots+: an ecosystem of products and applications, users choosing accessories, end-effectors, and software solutions from Universal Robots+, both distributors and end-users, get high security and predictability that applications will run well from the start.
- +YOU: a unique, free-of-charge developer program, offering a powerful marketing and support platform for the flourishing eco-system of UR-robot application developers.
Alongside the launch of Universal Robots+, a new update for the robot arm’s operating software has been published. The new release (Software Version 3.3) includes updates such as the Profinet IO device functionality. The new compatibility with Profinet protocols opens up numerous additional areas of deployment and activities for robots. “A key feature of the update supporting the Universal Robots+ platform is the ability for providers to now offer solutions that interface seamlessly with the UR software,” says Østergaard.
Carbon 3D
Carbon 3D announced new funding from strategic investors toward the goal of bringing additive technology to more customers transitioning from prototyping-only use cases, to applications requiring final production quality parts with great surface finish, broad and expanding material options and the plans to transition to mainstream manufacturing. A Silicon Valley 3D printing company working at the intersection of hardware, software and molecular science, Carbon also plans to offer its proprietary CLIP technology internationally and is accelerating production to meet worldwide demand for its M1 printer.
The expansion is supported by $81 million from new investors GE Ventures, BMW, Nikon and JSR, as well as existing investors, bringing Carbon’s funding total to $222 million. More details of additional strategic investors involved in this round of financing will be announced in 2017 along with details of their manufacturing projects that utilize Carbon’s technology.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 16, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, Interoperability, Operations Management, Technology
September 14-15 found me back in Chicago for the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) and an IIoT conference sponsored by OMG and IIC. I’ll have several reports even though I fly to Sacramento Sunday for the Inductive Automation Ignition Customer Conference. (I’m writing this on Friday, but it may not get posted.)
Tom Burke, OPC Foundation President and Executive Director, stopped me as I walked the aisle. He talked about the cool things happening with OMAC. I do not know the technical details, but OMAC wishes to specify (not sure of exact technical term) OPC UA into its PackML as its communications protocol.
Turns out this is much more significant than I gleaned from the press release. By the time I waded through the marketing general statements, I gave up on reading the rest. For some reason, marketing and/or PR people seem to want to hit every buzz word in the beginning of a release in order to show relevance or something and then bury the good stuff almost off-hand in the bottom of the text.
This is a significant advance for interoperability. There remains a stance in the industry for point solutions that may be based on open standards, but are explicitly not interoperable—everything is held within the kimono, so to speak. Interoperability benefits an entire industry. The more that end users buy according to interop, the faster the pace of adoption will be.
IIoT and Pack Expo
Look for OPC Foundation (booth N-4702), PLC Open (booth N-4703), and OMAC (booth N-4800) at Pack Expo the first week of November. Be sure to vote first! Personally, I am torn between going to a single-supplier event or this one. Both are too expensive for the lone entrepreneur. I’ll wind up with one, though.
The OPC Foundation provided a couple of bullet points about its news:
- the results of joined collaboration between OPCF with OMAC about PackML mapping into OPC UA namespace
- the results of joined collaboration between OPCF and PLCopen about IEC61131-3 PLCopen Client FB to allow initiating an OPC UA connection from inside the controller
OMAC and IIoT
Here is the news from OMAC. “The Organization for Machine Automation and Control (OMAC), OPC Foundation, and PLCopen are working together to help advance communications protocols necessary for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to succeed.
Interoperability among devices and machines that use different protocols is a significant challenge in realizing the full potential offered by the Industrial Internet of Things. By collaborating on companion specifications to the standards and protocols they’ve already developed OMAC, OPC Foundation, and PLCopen can advance the quality and efficiency of data sharing and communication at the machine and production line and up through the enterprise. Collaborative efforts by standards organizations, such as OMAC, OPC Foundation, and PLCopen, align with the Industrial Internet Consortium’s goal to ultimately identify and define building blocks for interoperability that make smart factories and IIoT possible.
“Standards are needed to support communications from machine-to-machine and from the plant floor to interfaces that will allow large scale data analytics and information transfer,” says John Kowal, a member of OMAC’s Board of Directors, co-chair of the Industrial Internet Consortium’s Smart Factory Task Group, and business development director for B&R Industrial Automation Corp. “It just makes sense for these organizations which have individually done so much to advance automated manufacturing to collaborate and avoid redundant developments.”
Here’s how the three automation standards leaders are bringing their efforts together. One of OMAC’s major initiatives has been promotion of the ISA-TR88.00.02 automation standard commonly known as PackML. The second generation was released last year. Manufacturers and machine builders worldwide have implemented ISA-TR88 on various control platforms to increase speed to production, ease packaging line integration and improve reliability. While PackML defines machine modes, states and tag naming conventions, it does not specify a communications protocol.
The OPC Foundation’s Unified Architecture (OPC UA) is an industrial interoperability framework. It delivers information modeling with integrated security, access rights, and all communication layers to provide plug and play machine-to-machine (M2M) communication inside factories. It is scalable across the plant floor and from sensor to IT enterprise and cloud scenarios. OPC and PLCopen recently worked together to define a set of function blocks to map the IEC 61131-3 global standard for industrial controls programming to the OPC UA information communication model. The latest version was released earlier this year. IEC 61131-3 is the only global standard for industrial control programming and is recommended by OMAC in its Packaging Guidelines document.
To take their efforts to the next level, OMAC and the OPC Foundation have established a taskforce to develop a companion specification for ISA-TR88/PackML and OPC UA by the end of 2016. The task force led by Sari Germanos, open automation manager for B&R Industrial Automation, includes members of OMAC and OPC Foundation from around the world. Participation is open to interested members of either organization.
“A standard communication protocol, used consistently across the industry, is vital for realizing the full benefits of automation standards such as ISA-TR88, which then can be a valuable data source for smart factories and the IIoT,” says Dr. Bryan Griffen, OMAC Chairman and Nestlé Group Engineering Manager. “A companion specification between ISA TR88 and OPC UA fills this need and builds on the work completed with PLCopen earlier this year. The opportunities to transform manufacturing as hardware and software solutions are integrated through consistently applied, standardized protocols are extraordinary. We’re pleased to be a part of those efforts worldwide.”
“Today, there is more reason than ever to believe that communications standards will proliferate, as the IIoT drives the need to flatten network communication architectures,” says OPC Foundation Director Thomas Burke. “Along with organizations like OMAC and PLCopen, we’re actively engaged to do just that.”
“By collaborating and ensuring the standards we’ve developed work together we ensure transparent and fully secured communication right out of the box with standardized access between any OPC client and server via a secure channel, independent from network architecture and protocol or machine type and controls,” says PLCopen Managing Director Eelco van der Wal.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 15, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, News, Operations Management
While checking emails walking the IMTS show floor, I found one announcing GE Digital announced acquisition of Meridium, a supplier of Asset Performance Management (APM) software. Leveraging the Industrial Internet of Things for asset performance has been GE’s goal from the beginning, so this one makes sense.
The goal of the combination includes providing a solution to customers that unifies real-time analytics with reliability-centered maintenance best practices. Meridium customers will gain access to GE’s deep domain expertise in real-time data management and advanced industrial analytics.
In July 2014, GE made an initial investment in Meridium for a 26 percent stake in the company. The total acquisition, inclusive of the original investment, was executed for an enterprise value of $495 million.
Leveraging the Predix platform, GE’s APM offering helps deliver on the promise of the Industrial Internet by enabling industrial companies to maximize the reliability and availability of their industrial assets, while minimizing operational cost and risk. APM powered by Predix combines GE’s broad expertise in advanced asset-centric analytics, industrial software and value-added services to offer a unique and complete solution, helping customers deliver targeted asset uptime and performance.
The addition of Meridium’s enterprise software solutions brings additional capabilities and processes focused on asset-centric industries – such as oil & gas, power and chemicals – that complement GE’s existing offerings. The combination of the companies’ technologies helps strengthen the connection between real-time asset performance and reliability-centered maintenance strategies and work processes.
“As we forge ahead in the Industrial Internet journey, APM is clearly the first application that can leverage the Predix platform to help industrial customers benefit from increased productivity,” said Bill Ruh, CEO, GE Digital. “With Meridium joining the GE Digital family, we can immediately complement our existing portfolio with the Meridium expertise in cognitive analytics, reliability centered maintenance, operational risk management and asset health, as well as intelligent asset strategies. Meridium also has a mature software development culture, which will help us enhance our bench of deep technology talent.”
“This move gives Meridium access to GE’s substantial industrial portfolio – and provides a deeper connection to core industrial businesses and GE’s depth of domain expertise in the Industrial Internet,” said Bonz Hart, Founder and CEO, Meridium. “We are excited to join GE Digital and expand Meridium’s capabilities into more industries.”
After GE’s initial investment in Meridium, this acquisition is a natural step in the relationship. As a key area GE Digital plans to expand rapidly on Predix, Meridium’s APM products are already integrated into the Predix platform. The transaction is complete.
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.”
