by Gary Mintchell | Dec 15, 2016 | News, Operations Management, Software
Data Science has gotten us to the point of collecting servers full of manufacturing data. We can do some analytics. But there are miles to go before we sleep.
This press release crossed my email stream last week. I haven’t time to interview the founder–that will come later. But here is a teaser.
Data Science Pioneer Drew Conway Closes $2.5M in Seed Funding to Bring Machine Learning to Industrial Operations
New venture Alluvium delivers “Mesh Intelligence” to close the machine-to-human gap
Alluvium, developers of Mesh Intelligence solutions that harness machine learning insights for real-time applications in industrial use cases, today announced $2.5 million in seed funding led by investors IA Ventures, Lux Capital, and Bloomberg Beta. The machine learning venture is running pilot projects of its Mesh Intelligence technology in fleet management, and oil and gas, among other vertical industrial applications.
Alluvium aims to conquer one of big data’s greatest unsolved challenges for complex industrial operations with expert human operators. Alluvium’s breakthrough Mesh Intelligence solution frees the data from these proprietary systems, transforms it into rich information streams, and provides real-time insights to human operators for immediate action.
“The commoditized big data stack is fundamentally broken for complex industrial operations,” said Drew Conway, Founder and CEO at Alluvium. “Modern industrial assets and hardware are continuing to be instrumented by OEMs who have not considered how these heterogeneous streams of machine data should be leveraged in the overall workflow and data strategy of the organization. And the modern analytics ‘stack’ — where data is moved and crunched in back end systems — does not meet the real-time requirements of human operators at the edge.”
Conway, who earned his PhD at NYU, is a leading expert in the application of computational methods to social and behavioral problems at large-scale. He started his career in counter-terrorism as a computational social scientist in the U.S. intelligence community and is known for his venn diagram definition of data science as well as applying data science to study human decision making.
At the core of Alluvium’s Mesh Intelligence platform is unique technology for extracting data from all elements of complex industrial operations — tablets, sensors, as well as industry-specific assets — with no expectations of compute resources or network bandwidth. This breakthrough allows machine learning processing to occur at the edge of systems where human operators need data most — in-real time.
“The early days of big data were about capturing and storing the vast amounts of new information streaming from devices in manufacturing, transport, medicine and more,” said Mike Olson, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudera, and a seed investor in Alluvium. “As that technology has matured, the more important and more interesting problem has become: What can we learn from all that data? Alluvium is focused on extracting meaning from streaming data coming from hardware that instruments all sorts of industries. The company augments human expertise with its powerful machine learning technology to make customers smarter and help them operate better.”
Independent research and surveys show the massive economic opportunity for IoT and machine learning across industrial use cases. A report by Jabil found that “$1.9 trillion dollars of economic value could be created by the use of IoT devices and asset tracking solutions.” For U.S. oil and gas suppliers — an industry where Alluvium has had significant early traction — the daily cost of unplanned downtime at a refinery can reach $1.7 million per day, and the daily cost of unplanned downtime for liquid natural gas drillers can top $11 million per day. A recent McKinsey report found that “car data monetization could be as high as $750 billion by 2030” — which has far-reaching implications for fleet management. Analyst firm Gartner forecasted more than 6 billion connected devices will be in use worldwide in 2016 supporting more than $265 billion in services. And in a 2015 “Moving Toward the Future of the Industrial Internet” report by GE and Accenture, 84% of executives expected Big Data to shift the competitive landscape within the next year.
“Bringing machine intelligence into the physical world is an incredibly difficult task,” said Shivon Zilis, partner at Bloomberg Beta. “We were excited to back Alluvium because of their unique insights into how complex industrial systems could be transformed by predictive engines.”
Learn More
Read Alluvium Founder’s Perspective on Starting the Company
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 14, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Organizations, Technology
A useful Internet of Things (IoT) requires interoperability; and, interoperability requires testing to assure that thing work together. Here is news of a test lab for IPv6.
The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry, has announced the launch of the Internet of Things (IoT) IP Testing Services. Created to offer custom Internet Protocol (IP) test services for IoT products specific to home environments, industrial networks, smart cities, and connected cars, the group will help improve IoT interoperability, reducing time-to-market and enhancing the customer experience. The IoT IP Testing Services will also offer testing for the IPv6 Ready IoT Logo launching in Spring 2017.
“As the world becomes increasingly connected and demand for IoT devices grows, companies are facing the challenge of how best to ensure interoperability, functionality, and security, while maximizing quality of experience for customers,” said Timothy Winters, Senior Executive, Software and IP networking, UNH-IOL. “The UNH-IOL IoT IP Testing Services provide a competitive advantage by enabling emerging IoT companies to validate their devices through trusted, third-party interoperability testing.”
One of the first labs approved to issue the IPv6 Forum’s IPv6 Ready logo, UNH-IOL’s IoT IP Testing Services deliver access to a multimillion-dollar test bed, custom IP testing services, and an array of networking experts with more than 60 years of combined experience in IPv6 protocols and testing. Emerging loT companies will gain competitive benefits from the group’s services, such as increased confidence in interoperability between security functionality, and accelerated market deployment cycles.
“Operators’ networks will need to evolve in order to address the coming IoT opportunity, and consider how security will play a role in IoT configuration agility and smart service flexibility for vertical industries,” said Lancen LaChance, Vice President Product Management, GlobalSign. “Ensuring IoT device security and identity is essential, as illustrated by recent DDoS attacks. By having their devices validated through the IoT IP Testing Services, IoT device manufacturers can be certain their products are optimized for and compliant with operator security requirements and changing network conditions.”
The IPv6 Forum is developing an IPv6 Ready Logo specifically for the IoT market. The logo validates basic IPv6 functionality, addressing privacy, and domain name system (DNS) services. This extensible service will have the ability to address future security request for comments (RFCs) such as data transport layer security (DTLS), Lightweight IKEv2, and simple certificate enrollment protocol (SCEP). Beginning in spring 2017, the IoT IP Testing Services will begin offering testing for the IPv6 Ready Logo to companies demonstrating verified protocol implementation and validated interoperability between IPv6 products. The IPv6 Ready Logo serves as a marketing Logo l, giving consumers the confidence of interoperability when purchasing new devices.
“Ensuring IoT devices operate correctly in different settings is essential for IoT manufacturers to meet new customer demand,” said David Blaine, Lead Software Engineer, Hayward Industries, Inc. “From TVs to game consoles to thermostats, there is an influx of consumer-based IoT products already reaching the marketplace. With access to extensive test beds at the UNH-IOL, manufacturers can ensure their products function as designed in the environments in which they will be deployed.”
For more information on the IPv6 Ready logo or the IoT IP Testing Services, please visit http://bit.ly/IoTIPTestingServices.
For additional information, please view the UNH-IOL IoT IP Testing Services Press Conference.
About the UNH-IOL
Founded in 1988, the UNH-IOL provides independent, broad-based interoperability and standards conformance testing for data, telecommunications and storage networking products and technologies. Combining extensive staff experience, standards-bodies participation and a 28,000+ square foot facility, the UNH-IOL helps companies efficiently and cost effectively deliver products to the market.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 13, 2016 | Commentary, News
Well, we have a new US President coming into power in January. What impact will President Trump along with a Republican House and a Republican Senate have on manufacturing? Even at this point with a month until inauguration, we are getting a glimpse, but it’s still a guessing game. Trump and Congressional leaders are not on the same page on all matters of policy, so this will be interesting to see play out.
Robert McCutcheon, Partner, US Industrial Products Leader, with PwC called yesterday to discuss a paper he has written—Five post-election topics on the mind of domestic manufacturers . This paper, part of a broader series of research and reports from the firm, looks specifically at five areas of policy that will impact manufacturers. These are Tax, Infrastructure, Military, Regulation, and Trade.
Of these, McCutcheon told me that manufacturers are most interested not surprisingly in Tax and Regulation policies. These can have quick and direct impact on manufacturers’ bottom lines. A close third is Trade policy. I’m watching the dance that Trump has started around China—both the Taiwan issue and the Trade Pact (where the US stands to lose influence in all of Asia). So I was curious especially for McCutcheon’s analysis on these.
What follows are taken directly from the paper. If anyone wants to share their wishes or concerns specifically about manufacturing policies (not about politics in general), the comments are open.
Five Post-Election Manufacturing Topics
Undoubtedly, there will continue to be significant questions about the future of domestic manufacturing post-election. With Republican control of both the White House and Congress, one thing seems clear: Change is coming. Here are the five key policy discussions that could have significant implications for domestic manufacturing over the next four years:
Tax
The results of the 2016 election will have significant impact on the direction of tax reform over the next four years. President-elect Trump has stated that one of his top priorities is comprehensive tax reform to significantly lower individual and business tax rates. Under his proposed plan, the top individual tax rate would be lowered from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, and the US corporate tax rate would be lowered from 35 percent to 15 percent. Owners of partnerships, S corporations, and other “pass-through” business entities could elect to be taxed on their pass-through business income at a flat rate of 15 percent, rather than under the regular individual tax rates. US-based manufacturers also would be allowed to elect full expensing of plant and equipment (with no deduction for interest expense). President-elect Trump also has proposed a 10 percent “deemed” repatriation tax on the foreign earnings of US-based companies.
President-elect Trump’s call for action on comprehensive tax reform is expected to receive strong support from Republicans in Congress, but the divisive nature of the 2016 elections could mean there will be no “honeymoon” period for the new president. House Republicans have been drafting statutory language to advance the tax reform “blueprint” that they released earlier this year, which differs in some important respects from Trump’s tax proposals. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has said a Republican-controlled Congress could advance tax reform in 2017 by using “budget reconciliation” procedures that allow legislation to be approved in the Senate with a simple 51-vote majority, instead of the 60 votes generally needed to advance legislation.
Infrastructure
President-elect Trump has made it clear that there will be significant infrastructure investments that will undoubtedly bring benefits to the manufacturing industry in the engineering and construction sector, especially now that Trump has announced his plan to spend $1 trillion over the next decade to upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges and waterways. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are now hopeful they could reach agreement on at least one bipartisan matter. His plan vows to reduce bureaucracy and government red tape and to rely principally on public-private partnerships and private financing supported by the use of federal tax credits for private financiers. We should also see upstream benefits in the supply chain as infrastructure spending generally results in a significant increase in economic activity from the materials, goods and services consumed in these projects.
Trade
Trade was one of the cornerstones of Trump’s campaign, promising a radical trade agenda, and vowing to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and renegotiate with the North American Free Trade Association. This has led many of America’s top manufacturers to urge President-elect Trump to scale back on his trade initiative and pursue a more nuanced approach to trade with China and Mexico. In an open letter to Mr. Trump, chief executives from more than 1,100 US companies warned of “an urgent need to restore faith in our vital economic and government institutions.” Many of these business leaders have expressed concerns about economic uncertainty and trade threats.
Some industries, however, may feel that a change in the US position around trade will benefit them. The steel industry, for instance, has been hit hard with anti-dumping and “unfair trade” cases for many years. A new stance on trade tariffs could significantly benefit domestic steel producers. The question regarding the ramifications of these changes, and how they will not only impact imports and exports, but also overall trade relations, remains.
Military spending
We anticipate an impact for the aerospace and defense sector as a result of the proposed increase in military spending. Plans include an increase in the Army’s active force to 540,000 troops, the Navy building a 350-ship fleet and the Air Force increasing the fighter fleet to 1,200 combat-coded aircraft. Estimates vary, but these proposals could increase the defense budget by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next four years, impacting defense contractors as well as their supply chains.
Regulation
President-elect Trump’s plans include asking all department heads to submit a list of every wasteful and unnecessary regulation, reforming the entire regulatory code in an effort to keep jobs and wealth in America, declaring a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations that are not compelled by Congress or public safety, and canceling hundreds of existing executive orders.
The US has already undergone a shale revolution which positively impacted the manufacturing sector including, but not limited to, the chemicals industry. By lifting some of these regulations, we may see more economic activity in the manufacturing sector overall. The President-elect’s pledge to reduce regulation could lead to exploration and new development as well as new pipeline projects that could not only benefit the oil and gas industry but also the downstream industries that consume much of this output as feedstock into their manufacturing processes. This could contribute to a more cost competitive domestic manufacturing environment.
Final Word
There is a lot of uncertainty around how the election results will ultimately affect domestic manufacturing. No doubt the new Trump administration, with Republican control of Congress, will result in change. We will continue to monitor policies as they develop across all five of these categories over the coming months. Stay tuned as we assess the potential impact on jobs and growth for industrial products companies in the US.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 12, 2016 | Automation, Education, Manufacturing IT, Networking, Technology
Industrial IP Advantage has launched an eLearning course focused on IT/OT integration for Industrial Ethernet. This is the fourth in a series of training courses designed to meet the emerging needs of control engineers and IT professionals tasked with deploying a secure network architecture. These courses are jointly developed by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation and available on the Industrial IP Advantage website.
Controls engineers have the plant-level domain knowledge needed to identify and analyze new industrial technologies that will help improve production efficiency and flexibility. Meanwhile, IT engineers have the domain knowledge needed to present actionable information where it is needed within an enterprise and throughout the value chain. This new course provides both with a sufficient level of knowledge to collaboratively architect a smart, integrated control system.
“Convergence between the IT and OT worlds is demanding new skills and knowledge,” said Ricardo Borlone, product manager at Precision Inc. “These self-paced courses are filling the skills gaps, and allow each participant to advance in their own time, rhythm and learning capacity. I especially enjoy this training format as it provides me the opportunity to focus on areas that match my interest and needs.”
The online training brings together the combined knowledge, best practices and application-specific expertise of three industry leaders to help engineers build a holistic IP-based network architecture. The courses are designed to help engineers drive design decisions from the device-level to the enterprise-wide network, leveraging interactive, scenario-based training on topics, such as logical topologies, protocols, switching and routing, security, physical cabling and wireless considerations.
The four available courses include:
- Courses 1 and 2: Designing for the Cell/Area Zone
- Course 3: Designing for Industrial Zone
- Course 4: IT/OT Integration
The full training program is offered for $350 on the Industrial IP Advantage website.
“A critical mass of industrialized networking technology is now available. And for many manufacturers, the real challenge is finding qualified staff to design, deploy and maintain these networks,” said Paul Brooks, networks business development manager, Rockwell Automation. “The eLearning courses offered by Industrial IP Advantage are designed to help fill this skills gap.”
“Building a skilled and competent workforce ready to deploy a converged architecture presents businesses with more than just greater connectivity. It offers tremendous productivity gains, process efficiencies, and business value,” said Paul Taylor, senior manager, Cisco.
“A structured, engineered approach to assessing, designing, deploying and monitoring the physical infrastructure is necessary to ensure that investments in critical manufacturing networks deliver optimum performance,” said Ryan Lepp, director of business development, Panduit. “These new training courses help both IT and OT professionals work together to deliver optimal network performance with adherence to industry standards.”
Industrial IP Advantage is a community established by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation – three like-minded organizations joining together to educate the market on the benefits of Ethernet, Internet Protocol and EtherNet/IP. Industrial IP Advantage was formed in cooperation with ODVA, the organization that manages and commercializes the EtherNet/IP specification and standard.
The vision of Industrial IP Advantage is enabling smart manufacturing with a workforce that is fully prepared to accelerate the transformation to secure information architectures with best practices, education and training that drive IT/OT convergence.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 9, 2016 | Automation, News, Technology, Wireless
Imagine what you could know about your plant or factory if you could get many more sensors around the area. This was the dream behind the development of robust wireless sensor networks for industrial and manufacturing applications.
Here is a new entrant bearing much promise. Swift Sensors Inc. debuted Dec. 8 as an Industrial IoT company providing a cloud-based wireless sensor system for industrial and commercial applications. The company fundamentally replaces a hodge-podge of manual processes and disparate sensors with a low-cost, unified sensor system delivering real-time actionable data — dramatically transforming business process efficiency and reliability. Swift Sensors technology monitors temperature, humidity, vibration, motion, activity, location, electric voltage and current.
“Businesses are frequently limited in their ability to efficiently monitor critical equipment and processes because of expensive, manual traditional systems. Swift Sensors extends the reach and efficiency of sensor monitoring, while offering new opportunities to enhance performance using analytics and optimization,” said Sam Cece, CEO of Swift Sensors. “Our low-cost, instant deployment allows businesses to rapidly adapt to regulatory compliance initiatives and commence predictive maintenance programs.”
Swift Sensors released its cloud wireless sensor system after 18 months of development and successful deployment with various customers, including Kraft Heinz, Sysco Foods, and McDonalds.
“We deployed hundreds of wireless sensors from Swift Sensors to upgrade our existing sensors and automate our manual monitoring processes. My team now focuses their time on important daily tasks rather than manually checking temperatures or equipment status. We’ve saved hundreds of hours in productivity during the past year and improved operations,” said William Thacker, Engineering Supervisor at the Kraft Heinz Company.
Swift Sensor’s next generation cloud wireless sensor system includes customizable real-time monitoring, alerts and analytics. The company’s mission is to improve business efficiency and reliability by making actionable data and analytics globally accessible; providing businesses a way to actively avoid disasters rather than passively waiting to remedy costly failures.
A variety of industrial, commercial and service businesses can now take advantage of Swift Sensors affordable, scalable sensor system, integrating their sensor data across multiple areas for maximum impact. Sample sectors include:
- Food chain (including FSMA compliance)
- Transportation
- Restaurants
- Industrial
- IT Data Centers
- Research & Development
- Power
Low Cost & Scalable, with Actionable Data
Swift Sensors gives companies a cost-effective way to accelerate a broad range of business goals:
- Companies place the Swift Sensors plug and play matchbook-size wireless sensors wherever they would like to capture data and insights from their physical environment.
- The sensors transmit the relevant data via either Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or RF to a Swift Sensors Bridge, a small appliance that connects the sensors to the secure Swift Sensors Cloud using Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and/or cellular communication.
- Administrators then utilize the Swift Sensors web-based dashboard to configure the sensor system for data monitoring and analysis from any location.
Authorized company employees use the cloud-based dashboard to access sensor data and, based on their role, sophisticated analytics using their desktop and mobile devices. Businesses can create reports and send notifications via email/SMS/phone call based on customizable thresholds.
Pricing and Availability
The Swift Sensors Cloud Wireless Sensor System is available immediately. Individual sensor and bridge appliance pricing start at $79 and $349, respectively, with a low monthly cloud subscription fee for access to the Swift Sensors Dashboard with an unlimited number of users.
Swift Sensors Founding Team
Swift Sensors was founded in May 2015 and began development immediately. The three founders are Dean Drako – Executive Chairman, Sam Cece – CEO, and Dr. Kelly Jones – CTO.
Dean Drako has founded and run several successful companies. He is best known as former president and CEO of Barracuda Networks, which he founded to solve the spam and email security problem, growing the company from a concept to become a cloud and IT security industry leader with more than $200 million in annual sales, 1000 employees, and 150,000 customers.
Sam Cece was previously CEO of Virtual Bridges and CloudTools, acquired by Nimboxx and SolarWinds respectively. As CEO of StrongMail Systems, he expanded the company’s initial customer base to hundreds of business customers; StrongMail was named to the 2012 Forrester Wave Report shortlist.
Kelly Jones was Engineering VP for Virtual Bridges/Cloudtools. Previously, he was a Director at Dell, managing technology teams supporting the majority of Dell’s operational public cloud environment and accounted for 80% of Dell’s SaaS revenue. Jones was also: VP of technology for Message One, acquired by Dell, meeting all delivery dates and achieving 99.999% service availability; founder of PANACYA, acquired by Research in Motion; and Chief Security Scientist for Computer Associates Int’l.
