by Gary Mintchell | Aug 10, 2015 | Automation, Internet of Things, Interoperability, News, Technology
During NI Week last week in Austin, Texas, IBM representatives discussed some news with me about a new engineering software tool the company has released – called Product Line Engineering (PLE) — designed to help manufacturers deal with the complexity of building smart, connected devices. Users of Internet of Things (IoT) products worldwide have geographic-specific needs, leading to slight variations in design across different markets. The IBM software is designed to help engineers manage the cost and effort of customizing product designs.
You may think, as I did, about IBM as an enterprise software company specializing in large, complex databases along with the Watson analytic engine. IBM is also home to Rational Software—an engineering tool used by many developers in the embedded software space. I had forgotten about the many engineering tools existing under the IBM umbrella.
They described the reason for the new release. Manufacturers traditionally manage customization needs by grouping similar designs into product lines. Products within a specific line may have up to 85% of their design in common, with the rest being variable, depending on market requirements and consumer demand and expectation. For example, a car might have a common body and suspension system, while consumers have the option of choosing interior, engine and transmission.
Product Line Engineering from IBM helps engineers specify what’s common and what’s variable within a product line, reducing data duplication and the potential for design errors. The technology supports critical engineering tasks including software development, model-based design, systems engineering, and test and quality management—helping them design complex IoT products faster, and with fewer defects. Additional highlights include:
- Helps manufacturers manage market-specific requirements: Delivered as a web-based product or managed service, the IBM software can help manufacturers become more competitive across worldwide markets by helping them manage versions of requirements across multiple domains including mechanical, electronics and software;
- Leverages the Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) specification: this helps define configuration management capabilities that span tools and disciplines, including requirements management, systems engineering, modeling, and test and quality.
Organizations including Bosch, Datamato Technologies and Project CRYSTAL are leveraging new IBM PLE capabilities to transform business processes. Project CRYSTAL aims to specify product configurations that include data from multiple engineering disciplines, eliminating the need to search multiple places for the right data, and reducing the risk associated with developing complex products.
Dr. Christian El Salloum, AVL List GmbH Graz Austria, the global project coordinator for the ARTEMIS CRYSTAL project, said, “Project CRYSTAL aims to drive tool interoperability widely across four industry segments for advanced systems engineering. Version handling, configuration management and product line engineering are all extremely important capabilities for development of smart, connected products. Working with IBM and others, we are investigating the OSLC Configuration Management draft specification for addressing interoperability needs associated with mission-critical design across multi-disciplinary teams and partners.”
Rob Ekkel, manager at Philips Healthcare R&D and project leader in the EU Crystal project, noted, “Together with IBM and other partners, we are looking in the Crystal project for innovation of our high tech, safety critical medical systems. Given the pace of the market and the technology, we have to manage multiple concurrent versions and configurations of our engineering work products, not just software, but also specifications, and e.g. simulation, test and field data. Interoperability of software and systems engineering tools is essential for us, and we consider IBM as a valuable partner when it comes to OSLC based integrations of engineering tools. We are interested to explore in Crystal the Product Engineering capabilities that IBM is working on, and to extend our current Crystal experiments with e.g. Safety Risk Management with OSLC based product engineering.”
Nico Maldener, Senior Project Manager, Bosch, added, “Tool-based product line engineering helps Bosch to faster tailor its products to meet the needs of world-wide markets.”
Sachin Londhe, Managing Director, Datamato Technologies, said, “To meet its objective of delivering high-quality products and services, Datamato depends on leading tools. We expect that product line engineering and software development capabilities from IBM will help us provide our clients with a competitive advantage.”
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 22, 2015 | Internet of Things, Interoperability, Networking, News, Operations Management, Process Control
I have business related to an angel investment and too much other travel to attend this week’s Honeywell User Group in San Antonio and Siemens Summit in Las Vegas. Trying to get to both events was both expensive and too exhausting to attempt. I had one friend, at least, who was going to both. More power to Greg.
I’ll analyze from reports I see from those there and from press releases. I know that Honeywell Process Solutions anticipated one major security announcement at HUG, but I would have been gone had I decided to attend anyway.
Meanwhile, I’ve been writing about the Internet of Things, fieldbuses, and networks for some time. The ODVA reached out asking if I’d like an update on its process industry work with EtherNet/IP. Of course, was the reply. It has a stand at ACHEMA in Frankfurt (another place I could have gone…) and sent me this update that would be the centerpiece of its press conference there.
Along with Rockwell Automation’s entry into the process industry automation market, EtherNet/IP usage now must incorporate process industry standards to go along with factory automation (discrete industry) usage. Partner Endress + Hauser has been building out devices that are EtherNet/IP enabled. This is an interesting addition to process industry “fieldbus” market (I know, perhaps EtherNet/IP is not a “real” fieldbus, but it will be used like one).
This was ODVA’s first appearance at ACHEMA, where ODVA members and EtherNet/IP suppliers Endress+Hauser, Hirschmann, Krone, Rockwell Automation, Rosemount, Schneider Electric and Yokogawa have assembled a demonstration of EtherNet/IP to explain to visitors ODVA’s approach to the optimization of process integration. Illustrating typical process applications, such as clean-in-place, highlights of the demonstration include:
- Use of EtherNet/IP to connect best-in-class solutions and devices for process applications;
- Integration of traditional process networks, such as HART, Profibus PA and Fieldbus Foundation, into an EtherNet/IP network; and
- Movement of data between field devices, such as pressure sensors and flow meter, and plant asset management systems.
ODVA’s process initiative, launched in 2013, is intended to proliferate the adoption of EtherNet/IP in the process industries. Initial focus has been on the integration of field devices with industrial control systems and related diagnostic services, leading to a road map for adapting the technology to the full spectrum of process automation needs, including safety, explosion protection, long distances and comprehensive device management.
“EtherNet/IP is at the forefront of trends in convergence of information and communication technologies used in industrial automation. Although industrial Ethernet was first adopted in the discrete industries, today EtherNet/IP is widely adopted in hybrid industries and is spreading into process industries, said Katherine Voss, president and executive director of ODVA. “Because ACHEMA is an international forum for users in chemical engineering and the process industries as a whole, ODVA felt it would be helpful to the ACHEMA’s audience to broadly showcase to process users the opportunities for integration improvements, optimized network architecture and increased ROI that EtherNet/IP can afford.”
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 7, 2015 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Events, Interoperability, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management, Process Control, Software, Technology
Ulrich Spiesshofer, ABB CEO
I was not able to attend ABB’s Automation and Power World this year. Too many places to go at the same time.
However, someone I trust, Mehul Shah of LNS Research, was there and wrote his observations on the LNS blog.
Mehul focuses on software and linked it to the Internet of Things. “The conference also featured a prime focus on the Internet of Things (IoT), as a panel was presented on stage, containing key event sponsor Microsoft, ABB, and an ABB customer. The trio provided insight and examples into how the IoT trend is impacting the industry.”
Highlighting ABB’s solution in the IoT space, Spiesshofer discussed the following key areas of focus
• Robotics
• Intelligent devices
• Control systems
• Advanced communication infrastructure
• Enterprise software
• Analytics solutions
“A notable fact that was highlighted at conference was that—to my surprise—more than 50% of what ABB’s currently offers is software related. ABB had made a few major acquisition over the last decade to build its software offering. The most impactful was the acquisition of Ventyx for $1 billion in 2010. This gave ABB a major boost in asset, operations, energy, and workforce management solutions in some of the asset intensive industries. ABB has also made some other acquisitions such as Insert Key Solutions and Mincom to build its Enterprise Asset Management software offerings. It seems clear the company understands the importance of its software business to remain competitive, and has also developed a separate Enterprise Software group that houses some of these acquisitions.”
Interesting that the investments were in software applications. Several years ago a CEO told me that software was important to his company—and that there was software in most of the company’s hardware products. That was correct—but my point was software business, not technology. ABB seems to have kept emphasis on software business even while Spiesshofer has been divesting some of the acquisitions made under previous CEO Joe Hogan.
Shah’s Takeaways
• It was impressive to see the effort that ABB has invested to bring its acquisitions under one brand.
• ABB has taken a first step in building a technology roadmap by bringing some of the software offerings together as part of the Enterprise Software group. LNS sees this as a big step in the right direction strategically, and should prove of great benefit to current ABB customers as well as prospects.
• However, ABB currently has important software products that remain outside of its Enterprise Software group and it remains to be seen if these solutions will receive the required attention, especially when considering the breadth of ABB’s portfolio. Two examples of this are the company’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES) offering, and the aforementioned Decathlon for Data Centers.
• ABB has a full-fledged MES offering with some good customers currently leveraging this MES across discrete, process, and batch industries.
• ABB might have some ground to cover in MES compared to some of its closest competitors in this space. Companies like GE, Siemens, Schneider Electric and Rockwell Automation have been heavily focused on the software business with many announcing reorganizations to increase resources allocated to software over the past several years and.
• Another area we would like to hear from ABB is around their offerings in IoT. While there were number of products that were categorized as IoT solution, ABB will need a holistic offering and vision around how their industrial clients can leverage these solutions to drive value.
• To answer the question, yes—ABB can compete effectively in the software business. But there is still some grounds to cover. ABB has had a lot of critical parts of the software business for quite a while and has been slower than many of its competitors in pulling it all together.
Gary’s Take
I agree with Mehul for the most part. I knew ABB had an MES offering, and I’ve interviewed Marc Leroux many times over the years. But it always seemed a little under the covers. The same with the Ventyx acquisition. It was easy to forget about it as it didn’t seem to get the promotion it deserved.
ABB is such a diverse conglomerate that sometimes it’s hard to know what it focuses on. I always followed the automation—primarily process automation. Several years ago, I think at Hannover but maybe SPS in Nuremberg, ABB executives explained the factory automation offering and the added emphasis the company was placing on it. But there are so many things and so few promotional dollars.
Also a few years ago, ABB decided to add its Power users to its Automation user group conference—hence Automation and Power World. However, the first two of those featured much more power and much less automation. It looks as if the company is striking a balance at the conference. But the Power division is still a laggard in performance.
ABB is a strong company, but it has much work to do in order to reach peak performance.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 6, 2015 | Automation, Interoperability, Manufacturing IT, Networking, Operations Management, Technology
There are many new and cool open source projects going on right now. These are good opportunities for those of you who program to get involved. Or…you could take a hint and turn your passion into an open source project.
I’ve written three articles since November on the subject:
• Open Source Tools Development
• Open Source SCADA
• Open Source OPC UA for manufacturing
Sten Gruener wrote about yet another OPC UA open source project. This one seems to be centered in Europe (but everything on the Web is global, right?). This is an open source and free C (C99) implementation of OPC UA communication stack licensed under LGPL + static linking exception. A brief description:
Open
• stack design based solely on IEC 62541
• licensed under open source (LGPL & static linking exception)
• royalty free, available on GitHub
Scalable
• single or multi-threaded architecture
• one thread per connection/session
Maintainable
• 85% of code generated from XML specification files
Portable
• written in C99 with POSIX support
• compiled server is smaller than 100kb
• runs on Windows (x86, x64), Linux (x86, x64, ARM e.g. Raspberry Pi, SPARCstation), QNX and Android
Extensible
dynamically loadable and reconfigurable user models
Background Information
OPC UA (short for OPC Universal Architecture) is a communication protocol originally developed in the context of industrial automation.
OPC UA has been released as an “open” standard (meaning everybody can buy the document) in the IEC 62541 series. As of late, it is marketed as the one standard for non-realtime industrial communication.
Remote clients can interact with a Server by calling remote Services. (The services are different from a remote procedure call that is provided via the “Call” service.) The server contains a rich information model that defines an object system on top of an ontology-like set of nodes and references between nodes. The data and its “meta model” can be inspected to discover variables, objects, object types, methods, data types, and so on. Roughly, the Services provide access to:
- Session management
- CRUD operations on the node level
- Remote procedure calls to methods defined in the address space
- Subscriptions to events and variable changes where clients are notified via push messages.
The data structures the services process as in- and output can be encoded either as a binary stream or in XML. They are transported via a TCP-based custom protocol or via Webservices. Currently, open62541 supports only the binary encoding and TCP-based transport.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 26, 2015 | Automation, Commentary, Data Management, Interoperability, Leadership, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management, Organizations, Technology, Workforce
[Updated: 1/28/15]
Last week I attended the board meeting of the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition. Sometimes I’m an idealist working with organizations that I think have the potential to make things better for engineers, managers, and manufacturers in general. I derive no income from them, but sometimes you need to give back to the cause. SMLC is one of those organizations. MESA, OMAC, ISA, CSIA, and MIMOSA are other organizations that I’ve either given a platform to or to whom I have dedicated many hours to help get their message out.
In the area of weird coincidence, just as I was preparing to leave the SMLC meeting there came across my computer a press release from an analyst firm called IDC IDC Manufacturing Insights also about smart manufacturing. This British firm that is establishing an American foothold first came to my attention several years ago with a research report on adoption of fieldbuses.
The model is the “Why, What, Who, and How of Smart Manufacturing.” See the image for more information. I find this model interesting. As a student of philosophy, I’m intrigued by the four-part Yin-Yang motif. But as a manufacturing model, I find it somewhat lacking.
IDC insight
According to Robert Parker, group vice president at IDC Manufacturing Insights, “Smart manufacturing programs can deliver financial benefits that are tangible and auditable. More importantly, smart manufacturing transitions the production function from one that is capacity centric to one that is capability centric — able to serve global markets and discerning customers.” A new IDC Manufacturing Insights report, IDC PlanScape: Smart Manufacturing – The Path to the Future Factory (Doc #MI253612), uses the IDC PlanScape methodology to provide the framework for a business strategy related to investment in smart manufacturing.
Parker continues, “Smart manufacturing programs can deliver financial benefits that are tangible and auditable. More importantly, smart manufacturing transitions the production function from one that is capacity centric to one that is capability centric — able to serve global markets and discerning customers.”
The press release adds, “At its core, smart manufacturing is the convergence of data acquisition, analytics, and automated control to improve the overall effectiveness of a company’s factory network.”
Smart manufacturing
This “smart” term is getting thrown around quite a bit. A group of people from academia, manufacturing, and suppliers began discussing “smart manufacturing” in 2010 and incorporated the “Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition” in 2012. I attended a meeting for the first time in early 2013.
Early on, SMLC agreed that “the next step change in U.S. manufacturing productivity would come from a broader use of modeling and simulation technology throughout the manufacturing process”.
Another group, this one from Germany with the sponsorship of the German Federal government, is known as Industry 4.0, or the 4th generation of industry. At times its spokespeople discuss the “smart factory.” This group is also investigating the use of modeling and simulation. However, the two groups take somewhat different paths to, hopefully, a similar destination—more effective and profitable manufacturing systems.
Key findings from IDC:
- Use the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) equation to understand the potential benefits, and tie those benefits to financial metrics such as revenue, costs, and asset levels to justify investment.
- Broaden the OEE beyond individual pieces of equipment to look at the overall impact on product lines, factories, and the whole network of production facilities.
- Technology investment can be separated into capabilities related to connectivity, data acquisition, analytics, and actuation.
- A unifying architecture is required to bring the technology pieces together.
- Move toward an integrated governance model that incorporates both operation technology (OT) and information technology (IT) resources.
- Choose an investment cadence based on the level of executive support for smart manufacturing.
Gary’s view
I’ve told you my affiliations, although I am not a spokesman for any of them. Any views are my own.
So, here is my take on this report. This is not meant to blast IDC. They have developed a model that they can take to clients to discuss manufacturing strategies. I’m sure that some good would come out of that—at least if executives at the company take the direction seriously and actually back good manufacturing. However, the ideas started my thought process.
Following are some ideas that I’ve worked with and developed over the past few years.
- To begin (picky point), I wish they had picked another name in order to avoid confusion over what “smart manufacturing” is.
- While there are a lot of good points within their model, I’d suggest looking beyond just OEE. That is a nice metric, but it is often too open to vagaries in definition and data collection at the source.
- Many companies, indeed, are working toward that IT/OT convergence—and much has been done. Cisco, for example, partners with many automation suppliers.
- SMLC is working on a comprehensive framework and platform (also check out the Smart Manufacturing blog). Meanwhile, I’d also reference the work of MIMOSA (OpenO&M and the Oil & Gas Interoperability Pilot see here and here).
- I’d suggest that IDC take a look into modeling, simulation, and cyber-physical systems. There is also much work being done on “systems of systems” that bring in standards and systems that already exist to a higher order system.
I have not built a model, but I’d look carefully into dataflows and workflows. Can we use standards that already exist to move data from design to operations and maintenance? Can we define workflows—even going outside the plant into the supply chain? Several companies are doing some really good work on analytics and visualization that must be incorporated.
The future looks to be comprised of building models from the immense amounts of data we’re collecting and then simulating scenarios before applying new strategies. Then iterating. So, I’d propose companies thinking about their larger processes (ISA 95 can be a great start) and start building.
These thoughts are a main theme of this blog. Look for more developments in future posts.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 16, 2014 | Automation, Industrial Computers, Interoperability, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
OK, the title of this post is also the title of Schneider Electric Software Vice President Tim Sowell’s blog. I follow his blog closely. He offers deep thinking about operations management applications and the drivers, requirements and needs that affect their development.
In his latest post, he’s reflecting on both year-end planning and the evolution of what we have been calling MES.
He begins by noticing, “The labels we have used for years for products, spaces, and roles no longer mean the same thing. We rapidly find ourselves setting up a glossary of labels and what they will mean in 2020-25 in order to gain alignment.”
He starts with the label “MES”, but my involvement with the space goes back to 1977 and something called MRP II. So the evolution began before that, but it started to come together in 1990. “The label ‘MES’ was first introduced in 1990 to refer to a point application at a single site (typically Quality Management). Over the next 20 years, more functionality was added to MES to keep pace with Automation trends.”
MES Platforms, Schneider Electric Software
The next evolution Sowell dates from 2010-2015. There is the introduction of the term MOM which came from the work of ISA 95. Sowell also quotes the definition from Gartner Group in 2012, “For many, MES is no longer a point application, but a platform that serves a dual purpose: integrating multiple business processes within a site and across the manufacturing network, and creating an enterprise manufacturing execution capability.”
Looking at today and tomorrow, “As the industrial computing paradigm shifts to the Internet, the platform is now being leveraged for other assets distributed across the interconnected value chain while extending the rich optimization functionality via new applications to get more productivity in areas outside of manufacturing.”
The problems increasing gained complexity as the requirements moved from a single machine or line went to many lines in one plant to standards to compare across the lines of many plants. “It was then that I realized in the meetings internally I could not use the word MES generically and needed to become specific.”
Sowell rightly concludes, “It is much easier to avoid labels and define the situation scenario / role, and start the meeting or strategy session laying out the landscape for discussion, gain alignment on the ‘desired outcome’ and destination first, it makes it easier!!!!”
