by Gary Mintchell | May 23, 2022 | Business, Enterprise IT, News, Organizations
We thought of Artificial Intelligence as something magical. Then we figured out that much of the output of AI depends upon how the application is trained. Then, duh, we discovered bias underneath the AI training. Perhaps concepts we have learned since ancient times such as ethics, morals, and responsibility are important. My adolescent self hates hearing me say things like that. But, it’s true.
Sometimes I despair at the general lack of taking responsibility for our words and actions I too often observe.
In a bit of mining that same vein, the Object Management Group announced last Friday, May 20, a new consortium called Responsible Computing (a trademark of IBM, by the way). The founding members of this group are IBM and Dell. Its purpose is to focus on sustainable development goals.
From the news release, “Responsible computing is a systemic approach aimed at addressing current and future challenges in computing, including sustainability, ethics, and professionalism, stemming from the belief that we need to start thinking about technology in terms of its impact on people and the planet.”
“Responsible Computing aims to shift thinking and, ultimately, behavior within the IT industry and affect real change,” said Bill Hoffman, Chairman, and CEO of RC and OMG. “We’ve made our manifesto and framework freely available, and we’ve asked every RC member to implement RC principles. Our goal is that someday every IT professional will adhere to RC principles.”
The new consortium’s manifesto defines RC values to restore trust in IT by responsibly applying technology and by sharing experiences with other organizations. These values include sustainability, inclusiveness, circularity, openness, authenticity, and accountability.
The consortium’s RC framework focuses on six domains of responsible computing, including:
- Data centers – are designed and operated with a focus on efficiency and sustainability, including emphasizing green energy and improving the handling and disposal of chemicals, toxic materials, and rare metals.
- More sustainable infrastructure – monitoring the energy usage of products and technologies. Efficient and more sustainable operations, including proper disposal of products.
- Code – choosing code that optimizes environmental, social, and economic impact over time. Optimal code includes efficient algorithms, frameworks, and tools and KPIs to accelerate decision-making and pinpoint areas requiring more scrutiny during software development.
- Data usage – the safe use of data will drive transparency, fairness, privacy, and respect for users.
- Systems – that address bias and discrimination by driving equality for all, for example, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for transparency.
- Impact – the technologies and innovations that drive a positive impact on society at large such as building to improve human conditions and mitigate social risk.
Through interviews with over 100 CTOs concerns were raised around developing practical actions to progress Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) programs. They wanted to contribute to becoming more sustainable businesses and demonstrate progress through consistent metrics. In November 2020, IBM’s Academy of Technology (AoT)’s responded to these challenges and created the Responsible Computing Council, an international team of technology and computing leaders who collaborate in validation and the implementation of the RC framework and lead by example in becoming a responsible computing provider. Object Management Group (OMG) was an early member of the council, and shortly after that, the OMG board approved the formation of the RC consortium.
“Now is the time for companies to adopt a holistic approach that places sustainability strategy at the center of their business,” said Sheri Hinish, Global Lead, IBM Consulting Sustainability Services. “IBM is proud to be a founding member of the RC consortium. Through this collaboration, we hope to help companies establish new and innovative ways to transform their business operations through ethical, impactful ways that can help contribute to a more sustainable future.”
“Dell is proud to be a founding member of the RC consortium. We are aligned with and driven by a similar passion to help leading technology organizations realize their sustainable development goals, in line with the planet’s,” said Marc O’Regan, CTO EMEA, Dell Technologies. “In addition to being socially and environmentally responsible, we also expect that RC members will see improved go-to-market solutions, strategies and bottom-line results by following RC principles.”
An organization can become more operationally efficient and demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) when meeting sustainability goals. The ROI can potentially include:
- Reduced power consumption
- Waste reduction for packaging
- Cost-effective heating and cooling solutions
- Supply chain efficiency, and more
by Gary Mintchell | May 20, 2022 | Business, News
I consider the Emerson Chief Marketing Officer the best branding expert in our market. She must have lost a battle this time. Emerson and AspenTech announced the successful closing of the combination of Emerson’s industrial software businesses – OSI Inc. and its Geological Simulation Software business – with AspenTech “to create a global industrial software leader.” The new entity is called—new AspenTech. Evidently they are using the lower case “new” on the name.
With the close of the transaction, Emerson owns 55% of new AspenTech on a fully diluted basis and AspenTech shareholders own the remaining 45%. Shares of new AspenTech will begin trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “AZPN” (previously AspenTech’s ticker symbol) starting May 17, 2022.
This reflects the new wave of bringing software businesses into mainline hardware businesses. Don’t do a complete acquisition. Restructure the investment so that the company owns a majority of shares and the “acquired” company becomes the minority holder. I’m not a financial genius, but from an organizational point-of-view it makes sense. The finances of a hardware business are much different from those of a software business. This keeps the messy part separated.
This deal also makes sense in that AspenTech has been one of those tech companies with good technology but has struggled financially. I’m sure Emerson brings strong financial controls along with its investment that should help stabilize the company. This should be good for customers.
“I am excited to announce the close of our transaction with AspenTech, which accelerates Emerson’s software strategy and creates an enhanced, high-performance, leading industrial software company with immediate scale and relevancy in a fast-paced, evolving market. Today marks a significant milestone for Emerson and is a testament to our commitment to continue building a higher growth, more diversified portfolio. Together with new AspenTech, we expect to realize significant revenue and cost synergies, while having the platform and flexibility to strategically deploy capital for growth through continued investment and M&A,” says Lal Karsanbhai, President and Chief Executive Officer of Emerson.
“We have now begun a new era at AspenTech, expanding our global leadership in industrial software by providing capabilities that support the entire lifecycle of complex operations across a wide range of industry verticals,” said Antonio Pietri, President and Chief Executive Officer of new AspenTech. “With a comprehensive software portfolio, an expanded global sales channel and an even stronger balance sheet reinforced by Emerson, new AspenTech will be uniquely positioned to help our customers address the dual challenge of meeting the increasing global demand for resources in a sustainable manner. As we move forward, I am confident that new AspenTech is poised for significant growth and continued success as we deliver value for our customers, employees and shareholders.”
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Centerview Partners LLC served as financial advisors to Emerson, and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP served as legal counsel. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as financial advisor to AspenTech, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP served as legal counsel.
by Gary Mintchell | May 20, 2022 | Automation, Business, Capital Projects
Seth Godin initiated a project that has enlisted many volunteers from many countries called The Carbon Almanac. You can get yours soon. I thought I could contribute from the point of view of manufacturing and industrial production. I couldn’t get any information in time to contribute. However, I have had a couple of sustainability reports in the past month. Here is one from Phoenix Contact which has installed a nearly 1-megawatt array that will produce 30% of facility’s energy needs.
“We estimate this solar power installation will reduce our electricity costs by approximately $150,000 per year. While a smart business choice for us, reducing our company’s carbon footprint is more important in the long term,” said Jack Nehlig, president of Phoenix Contact USA. “Sustainability and renewable power generation are at the heart of Phoenix Contact’s vision for an All Electric Society. This is one critical step on our journey to becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2030.”
Phoenix Contact partnered with Gatter & Diehl Consulting Engineers and Terrasol Energies, Inc. to design the rooftop solar array. Phoenix Contact designed and installed the monitoring portion of the system, which features numerous Phoenix Contact products.
Terrasol Energies, Inc. also installed the solar array on the roof of Phoenix Contact’s Logistics Center for the Americas last year. The solar array consists of 2,185 SunPower photovoltaic panels, which can generate up to 961 kilowatts. A $250,000 PEDA restart grant and a $270,000 grant from the PPL ACT 129 fund helped offset the $1.8 million investment into the solar array.
In 2014, Phoenix Contact installed a 1-megawatt Combined Cooling Heating and Power (CCHP) facility. The system provides 65 percent of the facility’s energy needs and saves the company more than $300,000 annually. With the CCHP and the solar array, Phoenix Contact will generate enough energy to go off the grid on sunny days during the shoulder seasons (spring and fall).
by Gary Mintchell | May 19, 2022 | Operations Management, Software
Inductive Automation has released update 8.1.17. Key to this release are security updates and extensive upgrades for the Tag Editor. Arnell Ignacio provides an overview on the Ignition blog.
Ignacio gives the rationale for the security updates. “On May 12, 2022 many products at the Pwn2Own competition were successfully hacked, with the goal of using this information to make improvements and ensure customers are well taken care of. Security awareness is a must, especially in today’s interconnected world, and being proactive can help prevent potentially catastrophic results in many critical systems. Although it’s never fun to hear about security vulnerabilities, the reality is that the world is constantly evolving and security threats will always be at our doorstep. The most important thing is how we address these threats and the steps that we take to protect our systems.”
Inductive Automation has a process to assure users get the latest security updates through various means, such as nightlies, critical updates, and the release train. That’s why the company recommends all Ignition users update to the latest version of Ignition, which is currently 8.1.17.
For our 7.9 users, we have back-ported security fixes from 8.1.17 into 7.9.20, which is now available for download. To protect our users, Inductive Automation will publish a technical advisory 60 days after the release of 8.1.17 and 7.9.20 that will disclose details for most of these vulnerabilities.
In addition to the important security update, Ignition 8.1.17 brings a major update to the Tag Editor in the Ignition designer, and improvements to Perspective, Vision, Docker, EAM, OPC UA, drivers and the platform.
Prior to this update, when you wanted to modify expressions, bindings, alarms, and event scripts, the relevant tag information was moved into a new window, making it unavailable. In 8.1.17, we brought all of that relevant information back into the dialogue window.
The next several improvements to the Tag Editor help to maintain context when modifications are made. In Ignition 8.1.17, updates were made to the Tag Browser Trees, Category Panes, and persistence of categories.
We also brought back category panes within the Tag Editor. Prior to the current update, all properties were visible, thus making the view overwhelming and harder to focus on. With Ignition 8.1.17, the category panes group related properties together, making it easier to focus when editing specific items.
In Ignition 8.1.17, the Expression Binding editor will appear as a pop up. This will afford users a larger editing workspace while keeping the Tag Editor in view, thus maintaining context.
With a security update and a major facelift to the Tag Editor, what more can software development throw into Ignition 8.1.17? Well, plenty more! Let’s check out what additional goodies are found in Ignition 8.1.17.
Other updates include:
Perspective—Added expandSubviews and collapseSubviews component methods to the Table component.
Vision—Added “Login Prompt” and “Login Message” to the Vision Login project properties, which change some of the default text when attempting to log into an IdP from a Vision Client.
Docker Image—Added a GATEWAY_MODULES_ENABLED environment variable that can whitelist a set of built-in modules that will remain installed prior to gateway startup, which helps with container re-creation events.
EAM—The Collect Backup task now times out after 60 minutes of waiting for the agent to generate the backup, plus an additional 60 minutes to transfer the backup. In addition, we added a new system property (ignition.eam.task.collectBackup.transferTimeout) that can modify the transfer timeout.
OPC UA—The Ignition OPC UA server’s max session count is now configurable via a new Max Session Count property.
Redundancy—Failover to a redundant node is now allowed if the nodes have different platform versions, which allows attached clients to remain connected to at least one node during a redundant pair upgrade.
Platform—The audit log now records when a user logs in or out of the gateway’s web interface.
And many more.
by Gary Mintchell | May 18, 2022 | Automation, News, Process Control, Technology
Updated and corrected. I’m just off the “phone” with Louis Arone of Schneider Electric. Here are a few amplifications to what I wrote earlier this week.
- This release deals with factory automation, not process automation. Specifically technologies in use with the Modicon product line.
- Universal Automation is an organization. Check out the website. It lists 31 current members. The organization promotes standardization under IEC 61499.
- The foundation is software defined control. For Schneider Electric the instantiation is EcoStruxure Automation Expert software.
- Schneider Electric is developing on two PLC platforms, a drive platform, and a softPLC platform.
- While my comments about how important open automation is to the process side still stand, this conversation revealed the same importance to Schneider’s strategy for factory automation, as well.
- Ethernet remains the core network, just as my conversations with executives going back several generations emphasized.
Schneider Electric took a bold step last year announcing an open control platform evidently not proprietary to itself at all. Based on IEC 61499 open distributed control standards, it put this control out into the wild and asked competitors to forsake their own proprietary boxes and join it in the brave new Open Process Automation world.
Pause while we listen for the rush to join.
Here are two articles I wrote last year about the announcement—Hannover announcement and Automation Expert.
Somewhere about the time of the sale of Foxboro and other assets to Schneider Electric, Foxboro executives told me firmly that they were betting heavily on the Open Process Automation initiative as their competitive advantage. And to this day years later Schneider Electric has been a stalwart supporter of the work.
Today’s news involves release of Discovery Packs designed to jump start the program by offering free 12-month engineering software licenses. This obviously targets people who might possibly become internal advocates in end user companies spanning the globe. I did not count the number of references to innovators. You can catch that drift.
The news in brief:
- New program designed to help industry professionals break the confines of traditional systems and enable next-generation automation
- Innovative offer addressing the barrier of single vendor lock-in by testing the ability to decouple hardware from software using tools to reduce commissioning time and associated costs
- Free 12-month engineering software license available for innovators to explore the benefits of universal automation and IEC61499-based solutions
Schneider Electric launched its Universal Automation Discovery Packs program in the U.S. May 18, 2022, giving innovators the opportunity to explore the benefits of universal automation. Through this program, experts from all aspects of the industry, including OEMs, system integrators, end users, distributors, academics, and others can receive a free license to explore this next-generation automation system for themselves.
Universal automation is a disruptive technology based on the IEC61499 standard for interoperability and portability that decouples hardware and software by addressing one of the industry’s largest challenges to innovation — single-vendor lock-in. By having the opportunity to explore this new technology before leveraging it for commercial projects, innovators can better understand how the platform can support their organizational goals and improve operational efficiency.
“Today’s industry is changing faster than ever before, requiring both new solutions that offer greater flexibility and higher productivity, and a skilled workforce familiar with those solutions able to implement them,” said Kaishi Zhang, Global Director, Product Management at Schneider Electric. “Through this program, we are fostering digital innovation and creativity in the next wave of the industrial automation workforce by providing access to the latest universal automation platform and tools to get them started, encouraging them to take the next step in driving the industry of the future forward.”
Universal Automation Discovery Packs are for non-commercial use, enabling innovators to experience the benefits of universal automation while testing the interoperability and portability of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Automation Expert system with compatible 3rd party hardware. Available on both Microsoft- and Linux-based machines, the plug-and-produce automation software components are based on IEC61499, a key industry standard that defines high-level system design language for distributed Industrial Control Systems (ICS). Adoption of an IEC61499-based automation layer common across vendors has unlimited potential for modernization across industries.
The vendor-agnostic EcoStruxure Automation Expert — the world’s first universal automation solution — is an ideal platform for Industry 4.0 solutions, providing excellent reusability, scalability, and architectural flexibility. Through the implementation of a common distributed control runtime across hardware and software platforms, it represents a new approach to designing, building, operating, and maintaining industrial automation systems, offering a unique technology mix that defines a new category of integrated automation systems.
