by Gary Mintchell | Sep 12, 2024 | Cloud, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
I seldom do case studies here. I don’t have time to do a proper set of interviews that would emphasize team rather than product. This one came from Rockwell Automation’s company Plex. Gathering appropriate data and displaying it in ways that boost decision making constitutes a recurring problem for operations management. This story details establishing real-time reporting, insight into inventory tracking, and visibility across production.
The client company, Advanced Vehicle Assemblies, LLC (AVA) is known for its unique, complementary manufacturing processes that enable the production of complex metal assemblies. Founded in 2021, AVA has expanded significantly and now ships approximately 52.2 million parts annually.
The problem statement from AVA CIO Rob Arrowsmith: data was not easily accessible, and functions difficult to learn.
The result: real-time data is accessible, and online learning resources are abundant and easy to follow.
[Note: what follows was written by Plex marketing. I did not edit out all the adjectives and adverbs. It is a good story of actually implementing a complex software application in a short amount of time.]
AVA split from its former sister company in June 2020 and this transition kicked off an urgent search for a new ERP system. They were temporarily covered under a shared service agreement from their previous affiliation, but the end date was nearing. As a result, the company looked for an ERP solution that minimized hardware maintenance — a stark contrast to their previous experience — and could be implemented within their tight timeline.
Alongside the frequent maintenance required by the old ERP system, AVA also faced the fact that the old system did not include Manufacturing Execution System (MES) integration. The absence of real-time production reporting and inventory tracking led to reliance on manual processes, causing significant delays and a lack of trust in the collected data. As AVA aimed for rapid independence and organizational rebuilding following the split, the selection of a new ERP system became a critical aspect of their strategic focus.
As it navigated the landscape of ERP options during the summer of 2020, AVA conducted surveys, evaluations, and demonstrations to help identify their top priorities with the help of user feedback. Despite the tight timeframe, the culmination of this rigorous process led them to select Plex as their new ERP system in late 2020. This choice marked a pivotal step for Advanced Vehicle Assemblies, LLC as they embraced a new ERP system that promised to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and support their journey towards becoming a thriving, independent enterprise.
Embarking on their ERP system revamp journey, AVA utilized the Milan, Michigan facility as their first Plex implementation site in December 2020. This location shared the outdated ERP system with AVA’s sister company, adding an extra layer of complexity to the transition. Knowing time was of the essence, Milan aimed to go live on Plex within 60 days.
To ensure a successful transition, AVA enlisted the support of Plex implementation services, who assigned a project manager to the Milan site. This project manager brought a deep understanding of the project’s parameters and the urgency of a rapid go-live timeframe. To bolster their efforts, the Plex team tapped on outside consultants to assist with the critical data cleansing phase as it was loaded into Plex. Employee training sessions and workshops were also prioritized, acknowledging the importance of preparing users for the impending changes.
As the go-live date loomed, an impressive collaboration unfolded, with up to seven Plex team members present at the Milan location during each shift. This emphasis on teamwork from all sides underscored the collective commitment to a successful implementation. Despite the challenge of a 60-day timeline, the Milan site successfully implemented Plex within the desired timeframe. Employees showcased resilience and adaptability as they mastered the main Plex functions, navigating the natural learning curve that comes with migrating to a new manufacturing solution.
The Plex implementation brought about a transformative wave of improvements for AVA, revolutionizing their operational landscape. One of the most notable enhancements was the establishment of real-time production reporting and inventory tracking. The newfound ability to access data in real time instilled a heightened sense of awareness of inventory for AVA, enabling employees to address issues promptly, fostering agility in their responses and elevating overall operational efficiency.
Furthermore, the implementation of Plex significantly augmented visibility across production. With operators more engaged and proactive on the shop floor, AVA witnessed quicker problem resolution. The benefits of Plex extended beyond the shop floor as it empowered AVA to successfully grow its business while maintaining a lean operational structure, minimizing the need for additional personnel to manage the Plex ERP system. Additionally, key Performance Indicators (KPIs) became more visible and dynamic, seamlessly integrating into Plex as native components rather than being extracted from external Excel sheets.
Plex also eliminated the necessity for financial consolidation software, streamlining processes and making contextual data easily available. The intuitiveness of the Plex system unlocked this accessibility, making it easy for users to navigate and find the information they need. The cloud-based nature of Plex, coupled with its highly configurable background settings, provided a foundation of flexibility that empowered AVA to continue to test and implement improvements. This adaptability positioned Plex as a transformative tool that not only met AVA’s original expectations for their ERP system but exceeds them into the present and future.
After the Plex implementation, Advanced Vehicle Assemblies, LLC has gone on a revolutionary journey marked by significant improvements across various facets of their operations. The shift from an outdated ERP system to Plex resulted not only in material improvements but also newfound capabilities and efficiencies. Perspectives have also evolved across departments, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and data utilization.
For AVA, the most significant achievement with Plex has been the ability to attain complete independence. Upon completion of the implementation, internal surveys affirmed the success of Plex as it earned high marks for reliability, speed, and ease of use. The adoption and integration of the software extends beyond that of the Milan, Michigan location, with AVA employees able to take on the remaining Plex implementations internally with little to no Plex support required on site.
As AVA looks towards the future, the success of the Plex implementation stands as a testament to the company’s resilience and adaptability, setting the stage for continued growth and operational excellence for years to come.
by Gary Mintchell | May 17, 2024 | Automation, Cloud, Data Management, Embedded Control, Manufacturing IT, Networking
While at Automate 2024 I saw Travis Cox of Inductive Automation and Benson Hougland of Opto 22. It was tough seeing them since their booth was always packed. I wound up walking through the show and out into the corridor with them.
These two companies plus Cirrus Link (MQTT and Sparkplug) are perhaps the best partnership combination I’ve seen in my years reporting in this market. Ignition running on Opto’s Groov Epic platform with MQTT and Sparkplug as the communications architecture solve many customer problems.
Hougland told me that they are continuing to build out the Groov platform. And to watch for cool things coming.
Cox told me that the big thing to pay attention to right now from Inductive Automation is the integration with Snowflake (more below). He says the integration keeps improving.
Here is Cox describing the integration at the last Ignition Community Conference:
And well, we got all the community to participate, where they’re basically leveraging Ignition or Ignition Edge or potentially have a smart device that speaks MQTT Sparkplug and they’re gonna build a data model, publish that up to a Chariot broker that’s in the cloud. Real simple. Then we can use the IoT bridge for Snowflake by Cirrus Link and all that data from Sparkplug goes directly into the Snowflake database. We’re showing it on a dashboard within Ignition, but it’s going to Snowflake database as well. And we can easily go and query that data. And we went one step further and we’re actually showing the anomaly detection within the Data Dash. So we’ll do a demonstration of this in just a moment, but wanna show you just how easy it is for this solution. And it’s all something we could do right now. It’s very, very simple to get started with this whole thing.
What is Snowflake, you may ask. Here is Pugal Janakiraman from Snowflake speaking at ICC 2024:
Snowflake is a globally connected cloud vendor agnostic data platform. It’s one single managed service from Snowflake. We take care of security, we take care of governance, we take care of scalability. And after that, much more cool, your API of choice is still SQL. You don’t have to learn hundreds of new services. You continue to use SQL as a mechanism to leverage data which is present in Snowflake, whether it is around building dashboards or you want to build an AI and ML model or build inference around those models, you still use SQL as an API for doing that.
Snowflake is a cloud-native database. Data can still reside on-premise or it can reside in whatever is your cloud vendor of choice. You can run analytics without the data movement out there. So we provide that kind of collaboration mechanisms. We provide AI and ML-based analytics. This is how the journey started for us. Ignition on Edge with zero coding using Snowpipe Streaming API, send the data to Snowflake.
by Gary Mintchell | May 14, 2024 | Cloud, Edge, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
I heard from Hannover Messe that AVEVA was launching a hybrid/cloud MES solution. Being curious, I was able to talk with Rob McGreevy, Chief Product Officer, AVEVA about this.
Why hybrid cloud MES? Today’s manufacturing is high speed/high volume, need to get closer to the edge, closer to the critical control, the machines, yet we need to move data from edge to cloud.
I get why edge, but why cloud? The reason for cloud is analytics, being able to use AI for process centerlining comparatives. We can get to predictive prescriptive quality based on hundreds of variables. Predictive usage of sustainable resources. All this becomes more feasible by connecting realtime data from the edge to the cloud.
This further information about the product comes from the press release. Software solution providers keep pushing the ball a bit further at a time.
AVEVA launches hybrid cloud
To mitigate barriers to industrial innovation, AVEVA is launching at Hannover Messe in April its new hybrid cloud Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution that addresses the supply chain challenges by enabling manufacturing companies to fully visualize and optimize multi-site operations in the cloud.
AVEVA has expanded CONNECT, its industrial intelligence platform with data and visualization services for hybrid Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solutions.
AVEVA’s new hybrid MES solution enables manufacturing companies to manage production data in the cloud, to improve supply chain agility with enterprise-wide visibility into distributed plant operations. This enables companies to optimize their operational performance and sustainability with new insights and guidance provided by advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and data visualization.
AVEVA’s hybrid MES solution combines advanced model-driven MES capabilities at the edge with cloud-based data, analytics and visualization services available on the CONNECT industrial intelligence platform. The ability to collect and securely store data from AVEVA Manufacturing Execution System and process data sources, such as AVEVA PI System and AVEVA’s Operations Control, in a single, secure location in the cloud, makes it easier to aggregate, contextualize and securely share operational data, eliminate organizational data silos, and foster greater collaboration. This unlocks new value from the combined data sets for optimal centerlining of production equipment, soft sensors and predictions that improve quality, throughput and energy use, as well as anomaly detection that gives early insight into production losses before they occur.
by Gary Mintchell | May 13, 2024 | Business, Cloud, Data Management, Generative AI, Manufacturing IT, News
Partnering with Microsoft continues to be an important part of manufacturing software development. This news is from Hexagon partnering with Microsoft to integrate engineering with Microsoft 365 to foster data collaboration among engineers. There’s a lot of marketing overkill in the release, but the essence is they hope to improve innovation through engineers and designers using improved collaboration tools.
- Hexagon has contributed significantly to the open-source Fluid Framework data architecture that connects any manufacturing system and will integrate with Microsoft 365 creating agile, simplified workflows and productive collaboration using engineering and productivity software
- Hexagon will roll-out applications that integrate the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to empower experienced employees to be more productive and assist less skilled users
- These innovations form a significant foundation for new real-time co-engineering applications that combine Hexagon’s digital twin technologies with Microsoft Azure
Hexagon and Microsoft have partnered closely on the development and scaling of the open-source Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay service to support the real-time sharing of data across a wide range of manufacturing industry processes and systems, allowing data created in one system to be immediately available to any other person or machine operating in another. Under the new partnership, the Microsoft 365 ecosystem will plug into this data layer, enabling customers to connect their day-to-day office documents and processes with manufacturing tools. This gives teams the freedom to innovate with the tools they already use; for example, tooling cost data from a Microsoft Excel worksheet could be easily shared with a CAM programmer, so simplifying work practices and decision-making between roles.
Microsoft Teams calls can become interactive working sessions, with CAD, simulations or metrology point clouds seamlessly visualised from the source data to allow on-the-spot collaboration and fast, iterative teamwork across disparate engineering and manufacturing functions. Hexagon has already demonstrated this capability in its 3D Whiteboard Nexus tool, which is also now available as an native app in Teams.
Hexagon is working with Microsoft to integrate generative AI models into its manufacturing software, helping users to make better use of their capabilities and analysing existing datasets to learn and suggest the best practices for achieving desired outputs. These AI experiences include contextual advisors, offering expert users productivity-boosting automation while also helping new users to upskill faster and achieve good results with less supervision – a valuable tool as the industry faces a growing skills shortage in many essential roles.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 28, 2023 | Cloud, Edge, Operations Management, Software
Containers, specifically Kubernetes, constitute a powerful tool in the modern edge-to-cloud architecture, ZEDEDA has developed a service model for the technology.
In brief:
- ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service is a fully managed service including a Kubernetes runtime curated, managed and supported by ZEDEDA.
- Organizations can instantly deploy Kubernetes infrastructure at the distributed edge, securely and cost-efficiently.
- ZEDEDA’s partnerships and integrations with industry-leading orchestrators, such as Avassa, Rafay, Red Hat OpenShift, SUSE Rancher and VMware Tanzu, provide a robust solution for the modern edge landscape.
ZEDEDA has announced ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service, a fully managed Kubernetes service for the distributed edge. The new service includes a Kubernetes runtime that is curated, managed and supported by ZEDEDA, as well as integrations with industry-leading orchestrators.
Deploying Kubernetes at the edge is challenging because it was built for centralized data centers and scale-out clouds and, therefore, not for inherently constrained and distributed edge environments. ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service is a fully managed service that simplifies Kubernetes deployments at the edge, allowing customers to focus on their applications instead of managing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure. The new service eliminates the struggles typically associated with Kubernetes deployments at the edge, such as highly remote or distributed locations, constrained devices, unreliable security, lack of skilled IT personnel in the field and undependable network connectivity. ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service enables organizations to deploy and run Kubernetes infrastructure at the distributed edge remotely, securely and cost-efficiently.
“Our customers are industry leaders who are pushing the boundaries of innovation at the distributed edge, and working with them, we realized the need for an edge service that would remove the obstacles of deploying Kubernetes in these environments,” said Said Ouissal, ZEDEDA’s CEO and founder. “ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service is a first-of-its-kind fully managed edge solution that enables our customers to use any Kubernetes tools that fit their needs and provides a clear path to modernize edge infrastructure while leveraging existing IT investments.”
ZEDEDA Edge Kubernetes Service Provides Full Lifecycle-Managed Kubernetes.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 28, 2023 | Automation, Cloud, Edge, Embedded Control
Edge compute continues to be the most talked about part of the network these days. This news concerns an application development platform for Edge and Cloud. I wish I could try out all this software like I used to many years ago. It’s all too complex and expensive today. Like everything, I don’t know if it works, but it sounds good.
Lightbend Inc., the company providing cloud native microservices frameworks for some of the world’s largest brands, has announced the release of its latest version of Akka, one of the industry’s most powerful platforms for distributed computing, which incorporates a new and unique programming model that enables developers to build an application once and have it work across both Cloud and Edge environments.
“Today, applications developed for cloud native environments are generally not well-suited to the Edge and vice versa,” said Jonas Bonér, Lightbend’s founder and CEO. “This has always struck me as counter-productive, as both architectures lean heavily on one another to be successful. As the line between Cloud and Edge environments continues to blur, Akka Edge brings industry-first capabilities to enable developers to build once for the Cloud and, when ready, deploy seamlessly to the Edge.”
“Akka has been a powerful enabling technology for us to build high-performance Cloud systems for our clients,” said Jean-Philippe Le Roux, CEO of Reflek.io, an innovative company delivering Digital Twin technologies to geo-distributed companies. “We have been able to dramatically speed our time-to-production by building a single solution for both Cloud and Edge with Akka.”
Akka provides a singular programming model that eliminates the high latency, large footprint, and complexity barriers the Edge has posed for development teams wanting to bridge the Edge and Cloud. Developers focus on business logic, not complicated, time-consuming tool integrations. As a result, businesses can harness, distribute, and fully utilize the vast amount of intelligent data to improve their operations, regardless of where that data is generated. Some specific capabilities of the latest version of Akka include:
- Adaptive Data Availability
- Projections over gRPC for the Edge – asynchronous, brokerless service-to-service communication
- Scalability and efficiency improvements to handle the large scale of many Edge services
- Programmatically defined low-footprint active entity migration
- Temporal, geographic, and use-based migration
- Run Efficiently In Resource Constrained Environments
- Support for more constrained environments such as running with GraalVM native image and lightweight Kubernetes distributions
- Support for multidimensional autoscaling and scale to near zero
- Lightweight storage, for running durable actors at the far edge
- A Single Programming Model for the Cloud-to-Edge Continuum
- Akka single programming model keeps the code, the tools, the patterns, and the communication the same, regardless if it is Cloud, Edge, or in between
- Seamless Integration – works at the Edge or in the Cluster automatically
- Empowering New Innovation
- Active/Active digital twins, and many other new use cases
- No dealing with complicated logic to handle network segregation
- Focus on business logic and flow (not on tool integrations)
