by Gary Mintchell | May 12, 2023 | Data Management, Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
Pundits and writers of the manufacturing market harp on data. Nassim Nicholas Taleb tells us in his writings that we can keep accumulating data until we drown. Snowflake has data management tools used by many to handle all the data. This is a new release called Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud that looks full of possibility.
- Empowers manufacturers to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers to improve supply chain performance, product quality and factory efficiency
- Snowflake’s ecosystem of manufacturing partners delivers pre-built solutions and industry datasets to support a diverse set of manufacturing and industrial use cases
- Global manufacturers across industries, including ExxonMobil and Scania use Snowflake to drive digital transformation
Snowflake Launches Manufacturing Data Cloud to Improve Supply Chain Performance and Power Smart Manufacturing
● The Manufacturing Data Cloud empowers manufacturers to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers to improve supply chain performance, product quality and factory efficiency
● Snowflake’s ecosystem of manufacturing partners delivers pre-built solutions and industry datasets to support a diverse set of manufacturing and industrial use cases
● Global manufacturers across industries, including ExxonMobil and Scania use Snowflake to drive digital transformation
Manufacturing Data Cloud enables companies in automotive, technology, energy, and industrial sectors to unlock the value of their critical siloed industrial data by leveraging Snowflake’s data platform, Snowflake- and partner-delivered solutions, and industry-specific datasets.
Following are a number of lists with details and use cases.
- Building a data foundation: A single, fully-managed, secure platform for multi-cloud data consolidation with unified governance and elastic performance that supports virtually any scale of storage, compute, and users. It allows manufacturers to break down data silos by ingesting both IT and OT data and analyzing it alongside third-party partner data.
- Improving supply chain performance: Enable seamless data sharing and collaboration with partners for downstream and upstream visibility across an organization’s entire supply chain coupling its own data with data from third-party partners and data from Snowflake Marketplace. By leveraging this data with SQL and Snowpark, Snowflake’s developer framework for Python, Java, and Scala, different teams can collaborate on the same data and build AI and ML models.
- Powering smart manufacturing: Native support for semi-structured, structured, and unstructured high volume Internet of Things (IoT) data.
- Leveraging industry leading network of manufacturing partners: Take advantage of a rich partner ecosystem and industry-specific, prebuilt templates.
Partner Solutions
- Applications Powered by Snowflake include ones developed by Blue Yonder, Elementum, and Avetta.
- Snowflake Marketplace partners, include FourKites and Yes Energy enabling live access to a variety of data sources.
- Consulting and service organizations including Deloitte, LTIMindtree, and phData, offer pre-built solutions.
- Technology leaders, including Fivetran and Tableau, provide integrations and out-of-the-box solutions.
Customer use cases
- ABB – The technology leader in electrification and automation is using Snowflake to unify all of its data, including incoming raw materials from suppliers, plant production capacity, and sales orders, to streamline manufacturing operations and meet customer demand.
- EDF – The energy supplier for homes and businesses across the UK used Snowflake and its Snowpark Python development framework to build a complete machine learning operation solution in a few months, and deliver data products that lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention.
- Molex – A leading manufacturer of connectors, is using the Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud to fuel their digital transformation journey, including sharing data securely across the organization and with external partners and generating manufacturing shop-floor and business KPIs.
- Scania – The truck, bus, and industrial engine manufacturer uses Snowflake to continuously stream data from 600,000 connected vehicles and Snowpark for Python to prepare data for machine learning, which gives the company a comprehensive view for monitoring vehicle performance and supporting Scania’s product-related services.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 20, 2023 | Commentary, Enterprise IT, News
[Updated 5/23/23]
An invitation came my way to talk with Alwyn Joseph, Chief Revenue Officer for FPT-USA. OK, I said, just what is that company? In brief, FPT is an information technology and services company based in Vietnam. This from a recent press release:
FPT Software is a global technology and IT services provider headquartered in Vietnam, with more than $632.5 million in revenue and 25,500 employees in 28 countries. As a pioneer in digital transformation, the company delivers world-class services in Smart factories, Digital platforms, RPA, AI, IoT, Cloud, AR/VR, BPO, and more. It has served 1000+ customers worldwide, a hundred of which are Fortune Global 500 companies in Automotive, Banking and Finance, Logistics & Transportation, Utilities, and more.
Joseph emphasized the company is more than just services, it is a technology company. It’s the second-largest ISP in Vietnam. The largest profit comes from work in the Americas. The leadership is intensely interested in helping people and even has developed a university with 100K students. They get intern work at FPT while in school. In fact, he added, the purpose of the company—it was founded to help community and nation building, invest in young people. It has brought many families out of poverty, creating healthy community.
I applaud the approach to projects—they start with the business outcome in mind. Too many engineers start with the engineering problem in mind and miss the big picture—why. He says they approach digital transformation initiatives to “think big, start smart, and scale very fast – with initial focus on 6-month projects, not 3-5 years.”
The latest news concerned the company positioned as a “Contender” in The Forrester Wave: Cloud Migration And Managed Service Partners In Asia Pacific, Q4 2022.
The report researched, analyzed, and scored the 14 most significant services providers across 27 criteria covering the current offering, strategy, and market presence. It shows that FPT Software received the highest score possible in the execution roadmap criterion. According to Forrester, “FPT Software has an impressive future roadmap and evidence that it has successfully delivered on its previous intentions.”
Additionally, the report stated that the company “supports delivery with its Japanese-inspired Digital Kaizen method and a cohesive, well-structured set of in-house developed tools… including the [platform CloudSuite] for multi-cloud management, monitoring, and cost optimization across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)”.
It is always interesting to become acquainted with a new (to me) company.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 3, 2023 | Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
While I was researching the QAD acquisition of RedZone, I noticed the prominence of something called “Adaptive Solutions.” When I mentioned I was curious about what that meant in beyond marketing terms, the PR team went to work and set up a conference call with QAD CEO Anton Chilton.
He told me, “The pace of change facing manufacturers has required a real-time response to situations. Industry models are changing. For instance, look at the automotive industry transitioning to electric vehicles. So they need solutions to adapt to rapid change.”
This explanation comes from the company’s website under the manufacturing tab—Digital manufacturing fully integrates planning, scheduling, quality, cost management, material movement and shop floor control. The solution allows manufacturers to leverage advanced digital manufacturing technologies to better communicate, analyze and use information to meet cost and quality objectives. Build a strong foundation for lean manufacturing concepts that eliminates waste throughout your operations. QAD’s manufacturing ERP capabilities also adapt to any style of manufacturing and to the unique needs of a geographic location and industry.
I mentioned that my experience and coverage usually ended with the MES layer. I have only a little ERP experience. Chilton said, “Some people see ERP as something like concrete poured in the form and left to harden. Enter a platform emphasizing no-code or low-code where users can build new capabilities on it without intrusive customization.” That sounds like a step in the right direction.
We spoke of the meaning of the RedZone acquisition. “We speak of the foundation of people, process, systems,” he said. “We due process and systems well with our current portfolio. With the RedZone acquisition, we can better address the people part of the equation. RedZone is a pure SaaS play providing real-time information to front line workers. It’s in the hands of workers on a tablet configured to each person’s role. The secret sauce includes locking in best practices such as kaizen right in the system on the tablet. The system encourages the team to work collaboratively.”
I’m always curious about integrating the new acquisition into the existing structure. “RedZone can take in information from directly from QAD. It offers deeper interpretation with deeper modules, such as enterprise quality management and others.”
How good is this application? Chilton—“on overage RedZone users have seen 42% increased productivity for medium sized companies and 20% for large enterprises. It scales because it’s implemented at the plant level. The improvements are typically seen within the first 90 days on average. It’s in 1,000 locations with 300,000 users.”
Only a few months earlier, QAD had acquired LiveJourney. Its product is a data mining and predictive modeling application. It offers analysis of real-time data on the fly. It compares patterns from the actual to the as-designed. Managers and workers can use the results to find constraints or other problems and attack them as part of their Lean continuous improvement.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 24, 2022 | Cloud, Enterprise IT, Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
Two announcements from HiveMQ.
HiveMQ Accelerates IoT Data Ingestion into Google Cloud
Aligning your IT infrastructure with a major supplier can be not only expensive, but also it can leave you vulnerable to corporate decisions made far away. For example, Google recently announced plans to retire Google IoT Core, leaving customers with less than a year to migrate their IoT applications to a new service.
The latest Rework podcast from 37 Signals features co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson (@DHH) and Operations Director Eron Nicholson discussing leaving the cloud. They address this issue and others.
If you are caught by this shift in Google strategy, there is one possible solution just announced. HiveMQ has developed an MQTT broker that bypasses Google IoT Core to send up to billions of messages per day directly to Google Cloud for advanced analytics.
HiveMQ Enterprise Extension for Google Cloud Pub/Sub, is a new feature that seamlessly integrates MQTT data into Google Cloud. Organizations can now benefit from HiveMQ’s flexible, standards-based platform to send IoT data reliably and securely to Google Cloud enterprise services such as monitoring, advanced analytics and machine learning.
HiveMQ can replace IoT Core’s MQTT data ingestion service to connect MQTT clients using HiveMQ’s MQTT broker and then map the MQTT message into Google Pub/Sub.
HiveMQ Enables Real-Time IoT Observability from Device to Cloud
New feature traces MQTT data in real-time to give users better visibility into their IoT applications.
HiveMQ, a global leader in enterprise MQTT solutions, announced the availability of the HiveMQ Distributed Tracing Extension, a new feature that makes it possible to trace and debug MQTT data streams from device to cloud and back. Complete IoT observability requires insight into three pillars: metrics, traces and logs. HiveMQ has added distributed tracing to help organizations achieve end-to-end observability and make their IoT applications more performant and resilient.
Distributed Tracing is a way to trace events and achieve a high-level overview of a message’s journey through multiple, complex systems. With the Distributed Tracing Extension, HiveMQ is the first MQTT broker to add OpenTelemetry support to provide complete transparency for every publish message that uses the HiveMQ MQTT broker. OpenTelemetry is an open standard for instrumentation that allows for interoperability across all services so organizations can achieve visibility over their entire system.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 21, 2022 | Edge, Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
My knowledge of Lenovo stopped not long after its acquisition of the ThinkPad line of laptops and other personal computing devices many years ago. I accepted an invitation to a press event recently. Good thing. I’ve been attending IT company conferences for a few year. Turns out that Lenovo is a strong competitor in this market. They amazed me with the depth and breadth of their product line.
Celebrating the 30th anniversary, they announced many new products. You can find several summarized here and check the website for more complete information.
- Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions V3 delivers advanced ThinkSystem, ThinkAgile, and ThinkEdge servers and storage with next-generation AMD, Intel and Arm-based processors, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and enhanced Lenovo ThinkShield security
- New Lenovo XClarity One, a cloud-based, unified software management platform, provides an industry-first integration of TruScale Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Management-as-a-Service and Smarter Support analytics to simplify orchestration, automation and metering from edge to cloud
- Next-generation Lenovo Neptune warm water cooling and CO2 Offset Services help customers achieve their sustainability goals
- Supported by next-generation AMD EPYC, Intel Xeon Scalable and Arm-based processors, as well as AMD Instinct and NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software
- Lenovo’s next-generation of ThinkAgile V3 hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are pre-integrated with an open ecosystem of partners, including Microsoft, Nutanix and VMware software capabilities
- Three new Lenovo Microsoft Azure Solutions: SQL for AI and Machine Learning (ML) Insights, Backup and Recovery and Azure Virtual Desktop.
- The new Lenovo Open Cloud Automation (LOC-a) version 2.5 securely authenticates and activates leading ThinkEdge AI servers on site via a phone, accelerating business insights with a fully operational edge system within minutes or hours.
- Lenovo’s Modular Root of Trust helps protect, detect and recover from cyberattacks and digital compromises with bolstered tamper-detection and monitoring embedded into the chip design
- Lenovo System Guard ensures heightened security between manufacturing, delivery and deployment with advanced hardware monitoring
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 16, 2022 | Data Management, Edge, Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Networking, Operations Management, Wireless
IMTS / Hannover Messe invaded Chicago this week. I drove down a couple of days. It was huge. Booths populated all four halls. I did not see everything. Or even half.
Hannover Messe (in Chicago) has co-located for the past three or four events. As in the past, the automation / Hannover Messe part encompassed a few aisles in the East hall.
I’ll have more news items in the next post.
Best of what I saw:
Nokia. What?! I was approached for an appointment. I said yes figuring on a 5G private network discussion. I was partly right.
Let me back up for context.
- Enterprises crave data to feed their information systems.
- Data from industrial / manufacturing operations were bottled in isolated, siloed systems
- Networking became robust
- Interoperable protocols grew
- The Internet of Things (IoT) became a thing
- Suddenly data could go where and when needed
Solutions.
- Automation vendors claimed connectivity to enterprise but that fell short
- IT suppliers, supporters of the enterprise, tried to enter the market with gateways, networking, partnerships and ecosystems to get the data.
- They couldn’t find the formula to sell to manufacturing (known as OT)
- We have gateways, databases, networking, but still no enterprise solution
Nokia.
- Builds off networking technology which has progressed to 5G Private Networks
- Has added edge compute devices
- Partnership with PTC (Kepware / Thingworx) for software connectivity
- Attacking this open market from a new perspective–both the enterprise IT side and the operations OT side
I am not predicting success. I never do. What I love about trade shows is finding this nugget of original thinking cloaked in the mundane. They have the foundation. Can they sell?
Check out this page on the Nokia site.
