by Gary Mintchell | Jul 15, 2024 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
The CTO and co-founder of a tech company chanced to have lunch with me at a conference several years ago. After I asked about technologies that would become important, I mentioned the series of conference themes that seemed to chase the latest fads. He told me that the company does what it does, and that conference themes reflected both the current conversations and the company’s strengths.
My boss induced me into manufacturing software in the late 70s exploring the benefits of a single repository of manufacturing data. The name of that software space has changed at least four times since then. The technologies have become immensely more powerful. The applications remain just as unwieldy to install and use.
Tim Ferriss has been rerunning past podcasts celebrating 10 years of podcasting. This week he featured venture capitalist Ann Miura-Ko. The conversation initially aired in 2018 (and I probably noted this then) and the comment remains relevant. “Enterprise software sucks.” It’s still complicated without providing useful guidance and assistance for users.
These thoughts came to mind when I saw a blog post attempting to explain the latest software—Namespace. The writer explained it as one unified place for all manufacturing data. Professional LinkedIn commenter and serial entrepreneur Rick Bullota commented, “Isn’t that what Lighthammer did 20 years ago?”
Sort of, yes.
Technology moves on. We collect more data. We store more data. We compute more data faster. We even invent new terms such as artificial intelligence (AI).
But, intelligence? I think not.
Executives often bring in high-priced consultants to make sense of the data. They just do a lot of complicated mumbo-jumbo providing a few answers, collecting their fees, and leaving.
I think we still try to solve the problem I worked on 45 years ago as the “kid in engineering”. And, I think we’ve been actually solving the wrong problem.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 9, 2024 | Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management, Security, Software
Cycles of marketing thought intrigue me. Suddenly PR people are flooding my email inbox with offers to interview CTOs of security companies who wish to comment on how cybersecurity breaches are a major cause of downtime. I chose this one to post for now partly because it’s a new company. I’m also intrigued by how the IT guy from Uber thinks he can disrupt industrial automation.
Oh, and yes, this is yet another survey done by a developer company. It’s the new way to generate media coverage when you don’t have a new product to release. And, yes, I’m an enabler.
In brief:
- Copia Automation Finds $4.2M Per Hour Lost in Manufacturing from Cybersecurity Breaches and Coding Errors
- Survey of 200 U.S. executives on the emergence of Industrial DevOps reveals half of all downtime is caused by programming mistakes
Another point. Copia is taking the IT idea of DevOps (see previous blog post) into industrial settings much as HighByte did with DataOps.
Copia Automation, empowering companies to gain end-to-end visibility and control of their operational technology, released its first annual State of Industrial DevOps Report today, the first survey of its kind on the application of information technology (IT) DevOps principles and practices to the industrial sector. The report reveals that industrial coding errors cause manufacturing shutdowns lasting 30 hours on average, costing $4.2M per hour and $126M per shutdown. Half of all downtime is caused by industrial code changes, code confusion, lack of visibility into industrial code, and issues with programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
The survey highlights significant vulnerabilities in operational technology (OT) — the software and hardware that control industrial equipment. A possible cause for these is ad hoc fixes in industrial programming, with 79% of respondents saying they are commonplace.
“The cost of downtime minimizes or eliminates the margin between profitability and failure for manufacturers,” said Copia Co-founder and CEO Adam Gluck. “With coding errors and cybersecurity breaches shown as significant causes for downtime, manufacturers need to take every technological measure to protect their bottom line and ensure continuous operations with enhanced productivity. Industrial DevOps delivers the technology and the process-change to do this.”
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 3, 2024 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
This company intrigues me. Copia Automation. Its co-founder and CEO’s credentials include heading IT at Uber. They have taken the IT technology of DevOps and ported it to industrial use. HighByte performed a similar adaptation of DataOps to Industrial DataOps in 2016.
Maybe the time is ripe for better programming paradigms for industrial control? We’ll see. I hope so.
I thought Copia PR had queued me for an interview, but that evidently fell through. Here is the press release.
Copia Automation, empowering companies to gain continuous quality control and streamlined production, launched Copia Industrial DevOps Platform, a cloud-based Git solution that serves as an operational technology (OT) control center. The platform provides a clear view of all code within industrial operations to eliminate unexpected disruptions resulting from coding errors.
Industrial operations gain a strategic advantage with continuous quality control, production optimization, and preemptive crisis management to minimize product recalls, downtime, and safety or cyber threats, saving millions of dollars in lost productivity.
Amazon recently deployed Copia’s technology at its warehouses and expects an 80% reduction in unexpected downtime due to unapproved control changes — a significant increase in the scalability of code improvements — and a 25% improvement in high-severity issue resolution time. Copia has raised $30 million from investors since 2020, and has been adopted by more than 1,500 developers at 100 companies globally.
“We’re going beyond increasing efficiency to fundamentally transform how the manufacturing industry operates where the application of code is a strategic asset to enhance efficiency and foster innovation,” said Copia CEO and Co-founder Adam Gluck. “By deploying the principles of Industrial DevOps, manufacturers can bring established IT practices into the world of operational technology to ensure their operations run smoothly with minimum downtime.”
Copia brings many of the concepts, tools, and best practices that helped DevOps revolutionize the IT industry (e.g. visibility, automation, validation, and quality control) to the operational technology industry. As coding at scale increases at industry sites, Copia offers enhanced code visibility to:
- Enable greater collaboration among coders
- Provide a one-stop platform for all files and upgrades
- Boost efficiency by standardizing code and upgrades across multiple sites
- Supply actionable visibility and control, and immediate disaster recovery
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 2, 2024 | Data Management, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management, Sustainability
- “Spotlight on the Future” Report Highlights How PLM and Digital Thread Solutions Address Key Challenges with Sustainability Data Accuracy, Availability, and Analysis
- Aras Research Finds That Three Out of Four Companies Feel Pressured by Regulation, Customers, Investors, and Employees to Become More Sustainable
Most news invading my email client these days involves companies sending out some questionnaires and compiling a report. This one from PLM and Digital Thread developer Aras called “Spotlight on the Future 2024,” focuses on sustainability.
The report highlights that three out of four companies say they feel pressured by customers, investors, and even their own workforce to operate more sustainably. The research also uncovered a potential reason why in-demand sustainability initiatives are not implemented sooner: a majority of companies reported that in order to do so, they must greatly improve the collection and processing of their data.
“Progress towards greater sustainability is key to continuing economic advancement,” said Roque Martin, CEO of Aras. Whether in the U.S., Europe, or Japan, 90% of companies who took our survey say that management has already recognized that sustainability is an important contributor to future business success.”
The so-called three Rs – reduce, reuse and recycle – already play a central role in the implementation of companies’ sustainability goals. 83% of the companies surveyed said that the lower consumption of raw materials and products is already a high priority. In addition, 70% of companies are already relying on the use of recycled machines, the conversion of existing systems, and the return of materials to the economic cycle. Interestingly, with 84% of companies reducing, 72% reusing, and 70% recycling, industrial companies in the United States are at the front of the pack when compared to other nations’ sustainability efforts.
74% of respondents acknowledge that they are missing data (i.e. from suppliers); 72% of companies said they have poorly prepared data; and 67% admit that they simply lack the ability to properly manage their data.
A throwaway economy is being replaced by a production model based on reuse. However, for the transition from linear resource processing to a circular economy to succeed, companies have to think about and plan their development and production processes differently. To fully take advantage of the green potential, companies must not only collect and analyze their data from the design and manufacturing phase, but also integrate the supply chain.
Aras’ “Spotlight on the Future 2024” study, conducted in December 2023, surveyed 835 executives from Europe, the US, and Japan. Survey participants work in companies with a minimum turnover of 40 million euros in the automotive, aerospace & defense, mechanical engineering, medical technology, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and food industries.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 28, 2024 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
Long-time acquaintance Travis Cox, Inductive Automation Chief Technology Evangelist, writes in Efficient Plant magazine (check it out—I had a very small part in that a long time ago and run by some friends) that SCADA is Changing the Game.
An engineer at a Phoenix Contact event approached me about 20 years ago. “You!” he exclaimed. “It’s all your fault. The boss reads your articles about remote monitoring and access to the control system. He now thinks that even when I’m on vacation at the beach, he should be able to reach me and have me fix a problem.”
We have come a long way since then.
The pandemic and government-mandated shutdowns had a significant impact on industrial organizations. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s the importance of staying connected to our industrial processes not only within the factory but remotely. It accelerated the demand for data and, for most organizations, was the catalyst for digital transformation.
My conversation was a couple of years before I met Steve Hechtman, founder of Inductive Automation. A few years later:
The biggest question many organizations faced was whether their SCADA system was ready for transformation. The most obvious requirement was the ability to remotely see and control their process so operators and managers could stay connected from home. For some, this meant setting up VPNs, VNC servers, remote desktops, providing company laptops, purchasing additional SCADA client licenses, and installing modern SCADA systems.
I believe open standards foster innovation and better solutions for the user.
To meet the needs of today’s world, SCADA needs to be based on open standards, integrated with OT and IT, inherently secure, and deployed through modern practices. The days of siloed or closed systems are behind us, as they don’t work for today’s connected world.
Cox delineates the required capabilities of SCADA systems broken into five key areas.
- Distributed architectures and edge technologies
- Data modeling and UNS
- Visualization and dashboards
- Security
- Leveraging the cloud.
His article details these five areas.
I am not going to copy the entire article. Check it out at Efficient Plant.
Cox concludes:
SCADA is not just SCADA anymore. The pandemic has forced a new way of thinking. Data is vital, and the true power of today’s SCADA is the ability to get access to data, move that data to the people who needs it, and be a conduit for getting insight into that data through analytics, dashboards, and machine learning. That’s why organizations everywhere are taking small steps to realize the benefits of these technologies today.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 26, 2024 | Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management
AVEVA (nee Wonderware) HMI/SCADA has been trying for several years to catch up to one of its competitors. Things like unlimited tags and attractive pricing. The unfortunate thing for them is that this is a big company. If you build a company from the ground up (as I’ve advised for years) with a certain financial model, you have a chance to be successful. It is much harder to take a fixed and big company financial model and be profitable with a new model.
Many years ago, the then President of Wonderware explained the strategic thinking that brought out what the marketers dubbed ArchestrA through the book, Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution, by Geoffrey A. Moore. It is very hard for the incumbent to innovate. You, the users, can tell me how well AVEVA InTouch HMI/SCADA has done in this iteration.
The news in brief:
Truly unlimited tag counts, clients, and scalability—combined with access to advanced AI/ML analytics and CONNECT services—streamline developer workflows, while delivering unprecedented value.
From the press release:
AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software driving digital transformation and sustainability, announced updated capabilities and commercial models for their award-winning InTouch Unlimited HMI/SCADA software. New features, optimized commercial models, and pricing make it easier for end users, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and systems integrators (SIs) to develop and scale HMI/SCADA applications from edge-to-cloud, with the ability to incorporate analytics and CONNECT, AVEVA’s industrial intelligence platform.
It is an all-inclusive licensing package available in perpetual and subscription models with unlimited tags, clients, and scalability. The InTouch Unlimited package features comprehensive process historian and reporting functionality, equipping users with the ability to collect and unlock the value of data sourced at the edge, and from multiple plants and systems spanning the enterprise. The modernized development tools are now available free of charge and include prebuilt templates to accelerate design productivity, as well as simplified tag and application development workflow leveraging industry standard protocols such as OPC-UA and MQTT.
As a component of the broader AVEVA Operations Control software portfolio, InTouch Unlimited can utilize hybrid-cloud architecture to easily integrate AI features such as predictive quality, throughput, and energy efficiency into traditional HMI/SCADA applications. By pairing AVEVA Operations Control with CONNECT, developers can consolidate operations data from various production lines, plants, and value chains. This provides a centralized view of operations and allows the system to scale with business growth without the need for application redevelopment.
