by Gary Mintchell | Mar 7, 2024 | Data Management, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management
The first trip I made as a new editor many years ago was to Microsoft to talk with a manufacturing software/PLM developer. PLM being Product Lifecycle Management—that layer of software used to translate CAD into manufacturing. When I covered automation, we didn’t cover this area often. These software companies seldom advertise, so the pressure from sales to cover them was, shall we say, less intense.
Last year I attended three PLM developers either in person or virtually. This year I began receiving more press releases and news from Aras. I told the marketing person that I knew the company but not that well. That led to an invitation to its ACE2024 conference held this week. I learned a ton about Aras and its products and partners as well as seeing two old friends that I never expected to meet there.
Roque (pronounced Rocky) Martin has been CEO for just more than 2 years. Sounds like he’s done well. Aras has been growing lately—61% over 2 years. The company counts 1.7 million registered users. It recently (like many industrial software companies) introduced a Software As A Service (SaaS) product which this year had seen a 77% year-over-year growth.
Setting a context for the event, he discussed three challenges facing the industry:
- Digitalization (silos, distributed, digital thread, connect, collaboration)
- Differentiated Innovation (industry didn’t like customization but discovered that one size fits all is not optimum),
- Accelerated Change
Discussing the change challenge, he listed this industry timeline:
- 1.0 Mechanization (120 years)
- 2.0 Electrification (70 years)
- 3.0 Automation (30 years)
- 4.0 Digitalization (10 years)
- 5.0 Cognitive (coming soon to software near you)
Rob McAveney, CTO, discussed how the coming Cognitive wave including AI will automate away rote tasks humans have done. Or as he put it, AI + Cognitive systems—leverage to describe what is possible and zoom in on potential solutions. He sees the coming 5.0 software leveraging all the data we’ve accumulated from 4.0 for breakthroughs. Some things to watch for in the Cognitive + AI systems:
- AI as an assistant
- Syndicate digital twins
- Connect system of systems
- Able to become increasingly able to suggest more complex solutions
Two interesting pieces of news follows. The first are enhancements to its PLM Platform. You sort of have to see the demos to realize how cool these things are. (Oh, if only I would have had tools like this back in my product development days!) The second announcement relates to a partnership with SAIC. Once again viewing the demos shows the power of this integration. I sat in the breakout presentation to get a dive—but I could never do it justice. If you’re in this area of work, check it out.
Aras Announces Strategic Enhancements to PLM Platform
Expands Digital Thread, Low-Code, and Visualization Capabilities and Adds New Supplier Management Applications
New Digital Thread Capabilities
Aras Innovator forms an extensible digital thread, serving as a data backbone for digital engineering and the broader digital enterprise. New capabilities will support simplified user interactions for viewing, editing, and implementing changes on interrelated items. In addition, a new streamlined experience for configuring connections to a comprehensive range of authoring tools simplifies extending the digital thread to a broader set of enterprise applications.
Extended Low-Code Development Enhancements
Aras Innovator is the only PLM platform with a fully integrated low-code development environment. Leveraging a rich set of development and enterprise-class DevOps services, Aras subscribers can extend applications or develop their own to address the unique needs of their organization. These enhancements introduce new widgets and charts that simplify the user experience and navigation for analytics dashboards and reports embedded in Aras apps. In addition, advanced form design tools facilitate a more streamlined, modern user experience for applications built within Aras-powered applications and deployed within Aras’ DevOps framework.
Powerful Visualization of Complex Assemblies
Aras’ CAD-agnostic approach to 3D visualization has been built on the foundation of the digital thread, enabling users to leverage Dynamic Product Navigation to facilitate the exploration of product data in any representation. The introduction of Aras Advanced 3D enhances this capability, providing a scalable environment to visualize and interact with larger, more complex assemblies that often exceed the capacity of a single CAD session.
Optimized Connectivity and Collaboration with Suppliers
Aras is introducing a suite of supplier management solutions designed to enhance how organizations interact with their suppliers and business partners. These new applications facilitate secure, remote access to controlled subsets of digital thread and PLM information through configurable mobile-optimized web applications. These solutions streamline communication and data sharing to optimize supplier management business processes. Projected availability for Aras Supplier Management Solutions is in Q2 2024, with a preview webinar scheduled for March 26.
SAIC Powers Its ReadyOne Digital Engineering Ecosystem Solution with Aras
Aras, a leader in product lifecycle management and digital thread solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with leading technology integrator SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.) that includes integration of Aras Innovator as the digital thread backbone for its digital engineering solution, ReadyOne.
ReadyOne is SAIC’s rapidly deployable digital engineering ecosystem, which offers customers an end-to-end digital thread for consistent, traceable, and complete engineering solutions. By using Aras’ product lifecycle management (PLM) technology as its foundation, the solution creates a single-source-of-truth for users, letting them access any and all needed information, at any point in the engineering process, all from a common platform. With ReadyOne, collaboration and transparency are increased, while risks and costs are decreased.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 19, 2024 | Data Management, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management
A couple of IT companies introduced DataOps to me about ten years ago. I thought this looked like a ripe opportunity for the industrial market. Shortly thereafter I ran into a group of former Kepware people who had formed just such a company—HighByte. I then had an opportunity to talk with the Snowflake people at the Ignition Customer Community meeting last September. This Data Cloud company has some interesting technology. This news relates to a relationship and interoperability service.
If you have not explored the utility of DataOps, check out HighByte and also Snowflake.
HighByte announced in February 2024 the release of HighByte Intelligence Hub version 3.3 that offers new and improved interoperability with industry-leading cloud services, including the Snowflake Data Cloud and AWS IoT SiteWise. The latest release introduces two new native connectors for Snowflake supporting a broad set of use cases for industrial enterprises.
The first new connector, Snowflake Streaming, utilizes the Snowflake Snowpipe Streaming API. This interface enables direct publishing to Snowflake tables without the need for staging files or third-party applications. This significantly reduces the compute, latency, and cost of frequently moving telemetry events into Snowflake. The second new connector, Snowflake SQL, enables HighByte Intelligence Hub users to directly query Snowflake tables. Rather than merely publishing to Snowflake, the Intelligence Hub can operationalize insights and context derived through the Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud by making this data available for industrial devices and applications.
HighByte Intelligence Hub is an Industrial DataOps solution that contextualizes and standardizes raw industrial data at the edge, delivering usable information to cloud service partners. Receiving consistent, usable industrial data accelerates adoption and scale of these cloud services, helping industrial companies orchestrate digital transformation projects across their enterprise. The Intelligence Hub gives operational technology (OT) domain experts a no-code application to curate and contextualize industrial data according to standard data models.
Intelligence Hub version 3.3 also introduces tighter integration with AWS IoT SiteWise. The Intelligence Hub’s modeling engine and the IoT SiteWise connector have been refined and enhanced for working with hierarchical asset structures. These improvements simplify the user experience, reduce effort, and provide a single, no-code approach for composing and delivering asset-model hierarchies to IoT SiteWise as well as hydrating them with industrial data.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 2, 2024 | Business, Manufacturing IT, News
I have been wondering where ThinkIQ is going to wind up. It’s a pretty cool startup in the smart manufacturing software space (aka, MES). The company has taken an investment by Mitsubishi Corporation and a collaboration agreement to jointly accelerate the growth of ThinkIQ’s digital manufacturing platform in Japan. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
ThinkIQ has built its open platform working closely with U.S. and European government smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 initiatives and global standards bodies. The investment is further testament to ThinkIQ’s technology and will drive expansion leveraging Mitsubishi’s global presence.
ThinkIQ provides visibility to the manufacturing shop floor across each tier of complex supply chains. The SaaS platform securely connects to the physical world of legacy and smart equipment, IoT sensors, OT and IT systems to bring all relevant data into a single analytics platform that brings context, meaning and discoverability for all participants in supply chain and manufacturing operations. ThinkIQ Vision brings vision-processing software combined with powerful pre-packaged Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities to turn standard cameras on the shop floor into sensors that eliminate blind spots across equipment, materials, and people to greatly enhance the available data for Continuous Intelligence.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 19, 2023 | Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
Once upon a time surveys were the purview of analyst firms and media. None were mathematically rigorous. Most do show trends and yield ideas for thought.
Digital transformation is top of mind for companies who develop and market software solutions but maybe not so much for customers. This survey is from iBase-t. I knew them as an MES supplier, but now the are the company “that simplifies how complex products are built and maintained.” In other words, MES. That’s OK. My background in that application goes back decades.
This original survey of more than 100 discrete manufacturing executives in the U.S. found that a lack of a clearly defined roadmap is the biggest challenge for manufacturers looking to digitally transform their operations.
None of this surprises me. Many studies have found similar statistics. Upper management in manufacturing organizations “know” these problems. They don’t seem to know how to go about implementing solutions. Or, they don’t want to spend the money!
In brief, their study revealed:
- 60% of manufacturers don’t have a clear understanding of the model-based enterprise
- 67% of manufacturers say that less than half their operations are digital
A full 60% of respondents said they did not have a clear understanding of the model-based enterprise (MBE), which employs CAD systems, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to help manufacturers fully digitize their operations.
Respondents confirmed that although paperless manufacturing and digital transformation are very important priorities, more than two-thirds (67%) of manufacturers reported that less than half of their operations are digital.
The survey found that more than half (54.5%) of respondents lack the interoperability across operations to adopt an MBE strategy. An additional 55% said that their manufacturing systems are not mature enough to support MBE.
Other Key findings:
- According to the survey, 62% of total respondents said that they believe paperless manufacturing is “very important” to their organization.
- The top four goals for manufacturers heading into 2024 are efficiency (66%), on-time delivery (66%), done-right first time (49%) and profitability (47%). An MBE strategy empowers manufacturers to reach all of these goals.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 7, 2023 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
I found this an interesting survey from Control Engineering (CFE Media). It ran a survey of its readers about SCADA. They received 135 responses from the USA. Some of the results were surprising. It should be noted that this survey is not statistically valid. It’s the opinions of those who cared to respond. Most were from the East Coast. (Thank you graduate school course on running statistically valid surveys which are definitely not run by journalists.)
Responding to “SCADA helps you to…” most responses were operational—maintenance and uptime. Not so many responded Industry 4.0 or IIoT.
Whose SCADA software do you use?
- Siemens
- Emerson and GE Digital (tied)
- Inductive Automation
- AVEVA (Wonderware?)
- Advantech (hardware?)
- Mitsubishi (Iconics)
- 45 of the 135 picked Other.
Rockwell Automation didn’t get enough responses to get its own line on the graph.
Who would you prefer?
When asked who would you like to use Inductive Automation grew to second. Everyone else slipped. GE Digital slipping the most.
- Siemens
- Inductive Automation
- Emerson
- GE Digital
- AVEVA
- Advantech
- Mitsubishi (Iconics)
I am not surprised at the growing preference for Inductive Automation. They have a solid product and the pricing model is outstanding. But given that Siemens has never been able to provide much competition for Rockwell Automation in the USA for control, how is it that its SCADA product leads the pack? Interesting.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 1, 2023 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
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The headline of this article comes from a survey conducted by MES solution provider Parsec Automation Corp. The company spent several months surveying 530 manufacturing professionals in the United States and Canada. Every security company I know does surveys. These are becoming quite a popular marketing tool.
I’m interested partly because I wonder how much talk about digital transformation is simply marketing hype and how much refers to real work. I’ve concluded that although manufacturers in general have digitized many sources of data they mostly fall short of gathering sufficient data from important sources and using that data intelligently in order to make better decisions.
This survey suggests as much.
Survey Highlights:
- Manufacturers are pleased with digital transformation but may need to go further, as 31% of “fully transformed” companies still collect most of their data using manual processes.
- Supply chain issues remain top of mind, with 53% of manufacturers saying their organizations are “hardly” or “somewhat” prepared to weather a storm.
- Manufacturers anticipate using AI/ML, but just one-third (34%) feel their businesses are prepared to leverage this advanced technology.
- MES (manufacturing execution system) technology is facing a knowledge gap, with 75% of manufacturers who report being familiar with—but not yet using MES—saying they don’t know how the technology would benefit their operations.
One telling thing is the lack of knowledge about the benefits of MES. MESA, the trade association, has been working alongside both solution providers and active users for many years to promote the benefits of the technology. Trainers told me 15 years ago that the greatest interest came from manufacturers in Asia followed by Europe. They had trouble filling classes in North America. This survey of manufacturers in North America seems to confirm what my current sources tell me—we are still falling behind over here.
Overall, nearly three-quarters (73%) of manufacturers have begun the digital transformation process, with 40% reporting significant progress or completion. However, more than one-third (35%) still report relying on paper-based data collection, which suggests a significant gap among manufacturers’ willingness and preparedness to embrace today’s technology.
“Although manufacturers are steadily advancing towards digital transformation, there remains a significant scope for progress,” commented Eddy Azad, Founder and CEO of Parsec. “It’s heartening to note that over half (53%) of the survey participants are utilizing enabling technologies like MES. This insight underscores the need for technology providers to not only effectively showcase the benefits of their solutions, but also to furnish the requisite tools and education for the seamless and sustainable adoption of these transformative technologies.”
In perhaps the understatement of the report, Parsec’s survey findings suggest that manufacturers may be underutilizing technology or underestimating its capabilities. Among the respondents whose companies have reportedly “completed” their digital transformations, nearly one-third (31%) still collect most or all of their data using non-digital processes.
When it comes to MES platforms, which leverage IIoT technologies to automate and optimize nearly every facet of manufacturing operations—from receipt of raw materials, through production, to shipping, warehousing, and distribution—more than one-quarter (27%) of respondents said they had never heard of MES before.
All is not lost, though:
Those who have adopted MES, however, are pleased with their results. An impressive three-quarters (75%) of respondents who are actively utilizing an MES platform said they were “very” or “extremely satisfied” with the product. These active users said they adopted the advanced technology to increase efficiency (73%), improve quality (57%), and reduce operating costs (47%).
I’ve become increasing interested in the power of various AI technologies. Here the report agrees.
Across the industry, manufacturers are keenly aware of the trajectory of today’s technology, with more than half (52%) agreeing that enterprise software solutions should include capabilities for AI and ML.
At the same time, just one-third (34%) feel their business is prepared to leverage this advanced technology. When asked about the barriers standing in their way, respondents cited lack of knowledge (46%), lack of trust in the technology (39%) and implementation costs (33%).
“Manufacturers need to adopt advanced technology to propel the industry forward,” Azad elaborated. “Contemporary software solutions must be developed with enhanced accessibility and exceptional user experience in mind. It is imperative for technology providers to proactively engage with manufacturers, address their apprehensions, and offer guidance to fuel their success.”
Parsec is the developer of TrakSYS, a proven operations management software application and solution platform designed to significantly improve manufacturing processes. Parsec is committed to providing best-in-class products and solutions to our worldwide community of clients to assist them in optimizing their manufacturing operations. There are thousands of TrakSYS licenses in use around the globe in a wide variety of Industries.