by Gary Mintchell | Jun 5, 2020 | Asset Performance Management, Internet of Things, Technology
Interact Analysis’s new report on the market for predictive maintenance highlights the potential for a new relationship between component manufacturers, OEM machine builders, and end users.
- By 2024, the market for predictive maintenance in motor driven systems is forecast to reach a valuation of $906.1 million
- Enhanced demand for remote monitoring as a result of COVID-19 means there will be no slowdown in market growth
- SaaS is likely to be the main business model for provision of predictive maintenance, and also eases concerns over data ownership
Interact Analysis, my new favorite market research firm, has announced an in-depth examination of the predictive maintenance market. It forecasts a boom in the sector, propelled by the emergence of smart sensors able to monitor crucial parts of a motor-driven system that are not covered by legacy maintenance devices and methods. Advanced smart sensors will allow delivery of viable cloud-based predictive maintenance service packages using a SaaS business model.
One reason I like Interact Analysis right now is methodology. In addition to 40+ hours of primary research interviews, Interact Analysis has utilized data from national manufacturing surveys, as well as data developed for other research areas. This data, combined with the information gathered from interviews, is the base at which estimates are developed.
The report shows that the market for predictive maintenance in 2019 was $117.5 million, largely made up from legacy predictive maintenance products such as portable monitoring devices. Many of these devices will maintain strong growth in the coming decade but will be used in tandem with new technologies such as smart sensors, the latter fueling an expected boom in market value of predictive maintenance technology, up to almost $1 billion in 2024. The significant fall in price of the capacitive based microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) found in Smart Sensors will be one of the drivers of this market.
I like their methodology and analysis—except for forecasting. Predicting future sales is so fraught with uncertainty that I take it as an interesting guide. Evidently sensor manufacturers reported doubling of sales over the two previous years. Look at the numbers and you can see that Interact assumed that doubling to continue through 2024.
When I read through the report synopsis, I was struck by the reliance on smart sensing as a foundation to the market growth for predictive maintenance. I missed a point. They have detected the beginnings of a trend that I have not yet seen. Software-as-a-Service applied to these intelligent devices. Selling the data, not the sensor, so to speak. I’m interested in your feedback on this development. And whether it can drive this market to a billion dollars.
Back to the report:
Smart sensors, which typically monitor sound, temperature, and vibration, may not provide the depth of data offered by some legacy devices, but they have significant advantages. Whereas most legacy devices are attached to motors, IA predicts that only 53% of smart sensors will be attached to motors by 2024. The rest will be attached to other machine components which are also subject to the wear and tear of daily use. This means that the application of predictive maintenance will be far more widespread in the factories of the future.
Blake Griffin, lead analyst on predictive maintenance at Interact Analysis, says: “Smart sensor technology coupled with IIoT capabilities give component manufacturers and OEM machine builders the scope to offer end users an anticipatory service package. For most providers of predictive maintenance, the logical business model will be software as a service. A side benefit of SaaS is that it ties all technologies together under a single solution – thereby eliminating concerns regarding data ownership. Additionally, advancements in embedded machine learning will improve the ability for predictive maintenance to be installed in new or non-standard applications that are less well understood, further fueling growth.”
Adrian Lloyd, CEO of Interact Analysis, adds: “Modern predictive maintenance technology is currently at the beginning of an exponential growth trajectory. Now is a more important time than ever for suppliers to understand key trends at play so they may work at carving out their share of this market – forecast to be worth nearly $1 billion by 2024.”
Griffin further explained the background in a Blog Post. Following are some excerpts.
What are Smart Sensors?
Smart sensors are a fairly new technology that are placed on equipment to gather various data points, most commonly vibration and temperature measurements. Smart sensors then transmit this information wirelessly to a data collector or gateway. When analyzed, this data is particularly useful for assessing the health of equipment as usually the level of vibration and temperature increases as equipment becomes faulty.
How is this Different from Condition Monitoring?
In a traditional condition monitoring system, very little effort is made to determine when equipment will fail, instead relying on set parameters to determine when an asset is at risk of failing. The problem with this approach is that it limits the number of applications which can be monitored. If parameters must be set for an alarm to be triggered, those parameters must be well understood. This decreases the reliability of these systems in applications that are not well understood.
For predictive maintenance to be performed, a level of intelligence must exist somewhere in the plant infrastructure, whether in the form of software, hardware or even application expertise by an experienced operator. A historical log of how the equipment being measured has performed must be utilized to assess if it is trending towards a failure. Increasingly, machine learning algorithms are being utilized to enhance the understanding of the application being measured. This technology utilizes the historical data produced by the smart sensor to better understand and recognize patterns. Having an automated solution for pattern recognition allows for quicker and more reliable detection of anomalies within the data. This not only expands the number of applications able to be monitored beyond just well understood ones, it also increases the amount of time operation managers have to resolve a piece of equipment that is trending towards failure.
Key Driver: A Push for the Realization of Digitalization and IIOT
The most important trend impacting industrial automation is the digitalization of these systems and the equipment within. Over the last 6-7 years, remarkable breakthroughs in technologies that help improve plant efficiency, productivity and reliability have been developed, although uptake so far has been challenging due to the cautious nature of end users when it comes to adopting new technologies.
While these vendors have released software and services aimed at harnessing the benefits of IIoT, it is clear that in order to make use of these solutions, a substantial increase in the number of connected devices is needed. Smart sensors represent an important piece of this puzzle. Since the advent of smart sensors, major automation vendors like ABB, Siemens, WEG, and Nidec have all released their own versions, presumably recognizing the enabling behavior of this technology. We expect this trend to continue as the product is desperately needed in order for manufacturers to begin generating tangible benefits from IIoT technology.
by Gary Mintchell | May 28, 2020 | Business, Manufacturing IT, Technology
Many companies emphasize their response to the current Covid-19 pandemic and some leave behind the core announcements or benefits. This announcement (and a interview and webinar) from Hitachi Vantara, the digital infrastructure and solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., is an example. The company has brought in another company group, Hitachi Consulting, and has organized expanded offerings specifically relating to manufacturing.
The new consulting and software group within Hitachi Vantara help manufacturers accelerate Manufacturing 4.0 (or Industrie 4.0, or Smart Manufacturing, or name your brand) initiatives. One other strategy I’ve briefly touched on is the difficulty of safely restarting production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will not be easy and will require thought, planning, and changes to policies, procedures, layouts, and workflow.
Hitachi Vantara’s new manufacturing practice and its expanded portfolio of digital manufacturing solutions, services and consulting services aims to help manufacturers adapt to these immediate challenges. It also promises to help manufacturers lay the foundations for the digitalization of health, safety and environment (HS&E), asset insights, predictive quality, and operations optimization.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing a litany of challenges for manufacturers that highlight how important unlocking data and digital industrial innovation is to the industry’s future,” said James Destro, general manager, Manufacturing Practice, Hitachi Vantara. “With our powerful IT and OT experience, Hitachi Vantara can uniquely inspire, envision, architect and accelerate digital transformation that solves today’s challenges and prepares manufacturers for the challenges of tomorrow.”
Lumada Video Analytics for Smart Spaces Address a Safe Return to Production
Worker health and safety are primary concerns for manufacturers restarting their operations. The expanded portfolio of digital solutions for manufacturing from Hitachi Vantara includes health, safety and environment solutions leveraging Lumada Video Insights technologies which can be configured for safety applications such as elevated body temperature identification and hand washing detection.
Thermal cameras and Lidar technology can detect the temperature of a person from a distance, so that workers can non-intrusively be screened for symptoms of COVID-19 and workspaces can be monitored for compliance with distancing recommendations.
Practice Helps Manufacturers Lay Foundations for Digital Transformation
COVID-19 has revealed many manufacturers’ overreliance on manual processes and operations, and the lack of visibility that many manufacturing line managers and executives have into their supply chains. Modernizing and digitalizing such capabilities will be essential for manufacturers to recover from the pandemic quickly, and to creating the more agile and resilient manufacturing operations needed in the future. This is another focus of Hitachi Vantara’s new manufacturing practice.
Hitachi’s manufacturing innovations, enterprise-class information technology, and intellectual property – coupled with deep, industry-specific consulting expertise and proven methods to accelerate time to value– enable customers to operationalize digital innovation in a secure, deployment-agnostic, and end-to-end approach. Hitachi Vantara’s outcome-focused consulting process breaks down barriers between OT and IT teams to craft comprehensive solutions that deliver transformative outcomes.
Hitachi Vantara Expands Lumada Manufacturing Insights Portfolio
Hitachi Vantara further announced the expansion of Lumada Manufacturing Insights solutions with new domains that help manufacturers address health, safety and environment, supply chain optimization, asset insights, predictive quality, and operations optimization.
Lumada Manufacturing Insights is a portfolio of industrial internet-of-things (IoT) solutions that empowers manufacturers to achieve operational improvements through data-driven insights. The portfolio delivers benefits such as improved overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), superior operations efficiency, and product quality optimization through predictive and prescriptive insights.
The new solutions introduced today, coupled to Hitachi Vantara’s advisory and consulting services, enable manufacturers to connect production floor Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to create a ‘digital thread’ that provides complete visibility into the data of the organization.
by Gary Mintchell | May 21, 2020 | Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, Security
Not too long ago, I received an email from noted cybersecurity guru Eric Byres who told me he was back in the industry after a brief hiatus as an advisor to Verve Industrial. The company didn’t register with me, and I went on to other things.
This week I received a message from an old PR contact who just picked up a new client–you guessed it, Verve Industrial. I agreed to an introductory call to find out more. I didn’t expect to be talking to anyone I knew, so the name didn’t register with me. Should have. I found myself talking with Rick Kaun this week. Now VP Solutions with Verve Industrial, turns out I knew him from previous stints with Matrikon and Honeywell.
The company began life as a SCADA and PLC integrator. The owner progressively noticed security situations and evolved a cybersecurity practice. Considering a way to grow, he took in funding and a new CEO (former McKinsey, but evidently not a bad guy–have to note that, I once worked for a couple of ex-McKinsey guys) and a new CTO. And a new VP Solutions.
The company takes a different strategy for its offering from others. Kaun notes the original solution was to white list devices on the network. To improve on that, many companies went to passive detection solutions.
Verve has an agent-based platform that allows for remote changes to the PLC or SCADA only with a trusted person at the console in the plant. It is compliant with OT topologies yet can talk the security talk with CISO types.
Not only for intrusion prevention, clients who use the system are currently getting 10x production.
I’m not a security expert. It’s just that cybersecurity is a crucial element of good IIoT design. So, here are some bullets to whet your appetite if you are looking for an interesting alternative to your current solution.
Verve Security Center
Benefits:
- Faster & Lower Cost Deployment
- Faster Time to Remediation
- More Efficient Analysis, Reporting, and Audit with Integrated UI
- Improved Approach to OT Business Risk Management
- Lower Cost Security Management
- NO Risk to OT Operations
- Ability to Leverage Prior Tool Investment
Features:
- Deeper & more comprehensive asset inventory
- Faster time to remediation with closed loop vulnerability management
- Better risk rating with view of vulnerabilities, process criticality plus all user accounts, risky software, network connections in a single risk score
- Lower security management costs with scaled analysis and playbook development with local OT control over remediation – in same platform
- Better detection with open-platform data ingestion from multiple OT and IT tool sets
Current solutions do not enable limited OT resources the rapid visibility and response to vulnerabilities and threats they need:
- Traditional IT tools cannot protect IOT/OT embedded devices with proprietary firmware
- IT vulnerability scanning tools can damage sensitive IOT/OT systems
- Tools are siloed by function increasing necessary labor and specialized skills
- Most OT-specific tools are passive detection only and offer limited remediation capabilities
- Available solutions are expensive to deploy and manage
A fundamentally different approach to IT/OT security management:
- Deploy across all IT/OT/IOT systems in minutes with no expensive hardware requirements
- “Closed-loop” solution from assessment to remediation
- Faster time to discovery and remediation
- OT-safe agent/agentless solution for real time vulnerability assessment and end point management
- Lower total cost of ownership
- No silos: integrate NIST CSF and other compliance requirements in single platform
by Gary Mintchell | May 15, 2020 | Automation, Manufacturing IT, Podcast
My new podcast is live.
When I would go to NI Week, National Instruments would always talk about solving big problems. I began to approach the history of digital transformation that same way. GM had a problem involving the changeover of machines from one model year to the next. It took too long to change the machines due to the relay logic. They went to Odo Struger of Allen-Bradley and Dick Morely who then founded Modicon for a solution. Each built a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) to solve the problem and the race was on. We can then look at all the digital advances from then to now as the solving of successively more difficult problems. Today we have IoT, data science, edge computing, analytics, visualization, AR, VR. And we go on. It is a journey not a destination.
This podcast it sponsored by Ignition by Inductive Automation
Or it is on YouTube
by Gary Mintchell | May 15, 2020 | Automation, Business, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Productivity
I laid out editorial direction for a magazine I helped to start with two basic ideas: contribute to thought leadership in industrial automation; and, tell stories of intelligent application of automation where the “heroes” of the story were the people doing the work not the products they used.
Seventeen years ago if you asked a company for a success story (you never get the “tried it and failed stories”) the formula was “Joe had a problem; Joe bought this list of products from his supplier; problem was solved and Joe was happy.”
Rockwell Automation has a Digital Transformation group headed by Vice President Keith Higgins. The PR folks sent me a “teaser” for an article about real-world application and benefits of digital transformation attributed to Higgins. I haven’t done many application stories at The Manufacturing Connection, so I jumped at the chance to get a real example for what companies are describing as digital transformation. I sent a bunch of questions. I received the formula company (all companies, not only Rockwell) app story.
However, reading into the story which I’m about to share were some lessons about successes from applying digital technologies and also to temper your enthusiasm lest you picture digital transformation like Clark Kent entering a telephone booth (remember those?) and emerging as Superman. While not so dramatic, nonetheless applying digital technologies can enhance productivity and therefore profitability.
This is a story about Agropur, a North American dairy processing company. Not a small one. It consists of over 3,367 dairy farmers who rely on 37 facilities across North America, processing over 1.5 billion gallons of milk into numerous dairy products, resulting in $5.9 billion in sales each year.
The company’s largest facility in Ontario had legacy industrial technologies which faced operational issues and downtime inhibiting its ability to produce the necessary data to continuously improve operations.
So, problem = downtime + inadequate data collection. Proposed solution = implement a standardized, plant-wide IT platform to collect, analyze, and understandably present data.
Agropur had already invested heavily in industrial technology at its Don Mills, Ontario facility, but none of those solutions have been able to provide it with the seamless data insights it needed to continually improve its operations. Data was not efficiently collected costing more than 2,500 hours per year and what data was collected could not be presented to management in such a way to enable continuous improvement teams.
On top of the data collection issue, the Don Mills facility’s equipment and systems were prone to failure. When the facility went down, it was forced to restore from the latest backup. That was no small feat considering there was no way to determine which of their seven maintenance laptops had the latest backup.
These inefficiencies and challenges drove Agropur to begin a search for a standardized, plant-wide
Rockwell Automation together with Grantek Systems Integration, a Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork Solution Partner, deployed the new system with Agropur.
The result was an entirely new automation system built from the ground up. The system wasn’t only focused on creating a new way to collect data, it was also focused on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), performance, capacity and more. From my point of view, the emphasis on OEE was unfortunate, but I guess it worked for the customer.
The technology involved included the Allen-Bradley family of ControlLogix controllers, PowerFlex drives, and PanelVew human machine interface (HMI) hardware from Rockwell Automation. Running FactoryTalk View Site Edition software on a virtualized server, each HMI could establish the standard for all additional software. This system collected data from production and provided information to operators to help them improve operations.
Supervisors decided to use OEE for benchmarking using FactoryTalk Metrics software, which collected performance data to power informed decisions.
With the information solution in place, employees from across the facility could see what was occurring on the plant floor and use that data to make continuous improvements.
Benefits: The Agropur team could eliminate 2,500 hours of manual data collection each year. Additionally, significant hours were saved annually thanks to the ease of managing assets through FactoryTalk software.
As soon as information was available, teams at Agropur deployed a data-driven approach to benchmark whether new hardware would curb the usage of lubricants for the lines. Creating benchmark reports and data-driven estimates of new hardware effectiveness, they were able to reduce lubricant consumption by 30%.
Here’s a benefit that I’m shocked to learn it took all this data collection and visualization investment to figure out. Supervisors seeking to identify opportunities for increasing capacity.discovered that lunches, breaks, and meetings caused more than 33 hours of downtime. Changing schedules turned lost processing time into productivity.
by Gary Mintchell | May 12, 2020 | Automation, Internet of Things, Networking, Technology
Once again, in lieu of attending Hannover Messe in person, we attended a Web briefing. Harting held this one last week. I picked deeper information about a couple of technologies—especially “single-pair Ethernet (SPE).” It’s hard to do a complete Industrial Internet of Things (IioT) installation without connectors, cables, and the like. Harting has been a leader in this field.
“The industrial arena is undergoing far-reaching change: For Harting, this transformation means leveraging our key technologies and entering into targeted partnerships in order to pool skills and competencies capable of creating new solutions within the framework of our entire technology network,” explained Philip Harting, CEO Harting Technology Group. “Our ultimate goal here is to develop these solutions in larger contexts and create ecosystems that generate significant added value for our customers.”
Small Ethernet Infrastructures
Evolution of the Ethernet connector. Harting turned the RJ45 into the “RJ Industrial”, created modular M12 interfaces with X-coding and PushPull locking, and set the next major milestone in Industrial Ethernet with the miniaturized “ix Industrial interface” – which is 70% smaller than an RJ45, yet significantly more robust. ix Industrial is one of the most important components in the Harting solution portfolio for its All for Ethernet segment.
For more information, check out our Industrial Ethernet Trends 2020 webinar series.
Industrial standard interface for SPE
Users can now make investments with a reassuring measure of security: IEC 63171-6, published on 23 January 2020, sets the basis for future IIoT networks. The international standards bodies ISO/IEC and TIA have declared the IEC 63171-6 interface as the standard for SPE in industrial applications. On this foundation, a comprehensive portfolio for the Single Pair Ethernet market is now emerging.
SPE Industrial Partner Network grows to 20 members
Last year saw the foundation of the bhttps://www.single-pair-ethernet.com. As a registered association, the Network is more than just a loose association of companies with shared interests – it is a strong, legally binding community of partners. Consequently, it provides the security required to implement this new physical layer. All the companies in the network are technology leaders in their own right; between them, they specialise in the various fields needed to strengthen and complete the SPE ecosystem. The common, unifying basis of their work is the international standardisation for SPE infrastructure in accordance with IEC 11801-x, IEEE 802.3 and IEC 63171-6. In the space of just a few months, numerous strong partner companies from various fields of industrial production have expressed their support for IEC 63171-6 and joined the SPE Industrial Partner Network.
Han S: Safe contacting of modular energy storage systems
In Han S, Harting is – for the first time – introducing a special connector for battery storage modules. Global demand for electricity storage systems is booming. The new series meets the technical requirements of the latest standards for stationary energy storage systems (including UL 4128) and offers users optimum safety for the connected units. The single-pole connector solution with a 200A high-current contact is mechanically coded, is coloured red and black for easy identification, and locks intuitively. In this way, Han S enables fast, reliable contacting of storage modules and enables the processing of large volumes.
Han 1A: Miniaturised rectangular connector ideal for networking
The Ethernet networks sensors, machines, controllers, computers and data centres. Harting is now offering interfaces tailored to these applications as part of the miniaturized Han 1A industrial connector series.
The Han 1A features two new inserts for fast and secure data transmission. This can be used to supply end devices with up to 100 Mbit/s Cat. 5 Fast Ethernet for Profinet-based communication; a 10 Gbit/s, Cat. 6A version for High-Speed Ethernet is also available. The latter is used for live camera system applications.
High-performance switch with robust ix Industrial Interface
Imaging processes are becoming increasingly important for quality assurance and monitoring in all industry sectors. New camera technologies offer higher resolution despite their increasingly compact dimensions.
The new eCon 2000GX-I-A unmanaged Ethernet switches from Harting are high-performance Gigabit switches, enabling consistent networking of machine-monitoring and diagnostic systems via ix Industrial.
Focus on user-optimised DC power transmission
One current trend – particularly challenging from a technical perspective – lies in the field of DC power transmission, where demand is forecast to rise sharply. To equip the field of application with the appropriate installation technology, Harting is promoting technology concepts that offer increased personal and plant protection. A novel connector for industrial applications transmits voltages of up to 800V and currents of up to 40A and cannot be removed when under load. In addition to the DC Industries working groups, Harting is also engaged in the activities of the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (DKE) geared to drafting new standards. The project is based on cooperation with the SmartFactory KL.
Software solutions for cloud and edge: Partnership with PerFact
Harting are keenly focused on establishing optimal connections between the field level and software solutions in cloud and edge computing. Harting RFID solutions, digital twin, and the MICA edge computing gateway operate at this interface. What’s more, intelligent sensor technology solutions – which ensure seamless data exchange within networks – are also becoming increasingly important.
The partnership with PerFact, which Harting announced at the SPS trade fair in Nuremberg in November 2019, will be expanded in the field of software. PerFact develops customisable modules for servicing, maintenance, logistics and process management as IT solutions for industry.
“The market environment of the MICA edge computer, RFID, and IIoT is developing at an incredibly fast pace. Rapid, agile and entrepreneurial action is imperative,“ emphasized Philip Harting. In this context, the three companies peraMIC, PerFact, and Perinet will be advancing solutions in the field of digitalisation and will be cooperating closely with the Harting Technology Group.
PerFact develops individual, customization modules for service and maintenance, logistics, and process management as IT solutions for industrial clients. Perinet (Berlin) concentrates on the seamless connection of sensors and actuators with IT systems (ERP, for example), in order to improve the transparency and analytical performance throughout the value creation chain.
