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.
FDT Group’s latest significant release seems to be gaining traction. This release from M&M Software offers a migration path for users and vendors supporting modern intelligent device management and monitoring initiatives.
M&M Software released fdtCONTAINER version 4.8, a point-to-point device configuration tool supporting the latest FDT 3.0 specification to meet user demands for modern intelligent device management and monitoring initiatives. This release also includes updated developer tools which simplify the migration to FDT 3 systems and smart device DTMs for the vendor community.
Smart manufacturing initiatives drive end users and suppliers of industrial automation systems and devices to seek modern and comprehensive device management solutions that use interoperable, efficient, and sustainable plug and play engineering tools. FDT, an IEC 62453 embedded software standard, normalizes device data and communication between any host and device. The standard rooted in the host and device environment provides users a single tool for intelligent device management, operation, diagnosis, and maintenance. The latest FDT 3.0 specification enables a FDT Unified Environment (FDT UE) for IT/OT data-driven operations via authenticated OPC UA, FDT UE and mobile clients.
M&M Software’s FDT UE-ready product line includes:
OEM fdtCONTAINER application 4.8 – Free point-to-point device management and configuration tool supporting all DTM generations for users.
fdtCONTAINER component 4.0 (aka. FDT UE – Desktop Common Component) – The official component for integrating the FDT 3.0 interface and DTM runtime into an engineering application for system vendors with branded customizations and other value-add features.
dtmMANAGER development suite 4.0 – The comprehensive FDT 3.0 DTM development suite provides a simplified environment for device vendors to develop DTM’s allowing vendors to focus on the value-add device model features.
Some writers expound upon autonomous—machines and processes that run themselves, machines and processes that are self-diagnosing and self-healing, elimination of humans from manufacturing.
I disagree (or my favorite phrase from my high school years, “I beg to differ.”). We should be enhancing the human-to-process or human-to-machine collaboration. In so doing, we should be enhancing the role of the human. Promoting collaboration, creativity, ideas, innovation that only comes from thinking humans.
At least by 1995 I was configuring ways to propose to my customers ways to replace paper-based production and maintenance systems with digital equivalents. So, when a PR person sent a product release with the title “Why Ditch Paper Processes?”, I was transported Forward to the Past, so to speak.
The company is Beekeeper, a Swiss-based company founded in 2012 to enhance the experiences of the front-line worker. They have released a new maintenance workflow product. Here are some points:
Paper processes slow workflows down and increase disruptions.
Sharing information with the team is difficult when it’s kept on a sheet of paper.
Facilities teams need continuity of workflows from one shift to the next which is difficult when information is siloed and fragmented on multiple pieces of paper.
Poor maintenance management can lead to more downtime, higher repair costs, and loss of productivity.
Companies that rely on paper documentation and manual maintenance and inspection workflows grapple with data accuracy, problems with efficiency, and information accessibility. This impacts consistency and safety, can lead to more errors, and eventually impact a company’s productivity and revenue.
Beekeeper’s Maintenance and Inspections is a mobile-first solution for paperless workflows for frontline teams.
By switching paper workflows to digital ones with the Maintenance and Inspections package, frontline workers can:
Decrease downtime and disruptions
Stay compliant with easy tracking and automatic documentation
Ensure maintenance tasks are completed correctly and consistently to reduce the frequency of accidents, repairs, and unplanned breakdowns
Shorten the time between detecting and fixing potential hazards and the amount of time it takes to fix the hazard/time to resolution
Optimize your maintenance management process to reduce overall maintenance costs and enhance workplace safety
Use real-time checklist tracking so everyone knows jobs completed and issues addressed to avoid redundancy
Upload images to Beekeeper of maintenance issues or repairs for documentation
Enable managers to easily assign and track tasks
Have immediate access to all resources they need to complete tasks
Report safety hazards right away
Save time and reduce miscommunication with smart management software. Automatically translate all content into your employees’ preferred language.
Get up-to-the-minute data on who is reading your posts, message delivery confirmation, and employee engagement statistics to improve manufacturing processes.
Qualcomm’s product development department has been busy extending the chip-maker’s presence in the smart device market. This news release announces what they term to be next-generation IoT devices. The new devices are Qualcomm QCS8550, Qualcomm QCM8550, Qualcomm® QCS4490 and Qualcomm® QCM4490 Processors.
The new Qualcomm QCS8550 and Q/CM8550 Processors combine maximum compute power, extreme edge AI processing, Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, and vivid graphics and video to enable and quickly deploy performance-heavy IoT applications, such as autonomous mobile robots and industrial drones.
The Qualcomm QCS4490 and QCM4490 Processors deliver key advanced features such as premium connectivity and next-gen processing to industrial handheld and computing devices. The solutions are equipped with both 5G and Wi-Fi 6E for multi-gigabit speeds, extended range, and low latency, and powerful, efficient processing to handle complex computing tasks. The Qualcomm QCS4490 and QCM4490 Processors are designed with planned support for Android releases through version 18, meaning they can be used in industrial designs through 2030, providing flexibility and longevity for maximizing development time and cost savings.
Gartner released its 2023 Magic Quadrant of MES suppliers. Almost immediately a news release from Rockwell Automation popped into my inbox. Followed quickly by one from GE Digital and then Critical Manufacturing. Later I chatted with Parsec and complemented them for their placement
Since Rockwell was first in my inbox, I’ll send you to their page to download the report if you are interested. It’s an interesting view of the MES landscape.
Critical Manufacturing ranked quite high as a leader. Rockwell Automation/Plex and GE Digital each ranked as a leader. Parsec ranked high as a challenger.
The 2×2 matrix evaluates completeness of vision x ability to execute.
Inductive Automation has released an update to Ignition—Ignition 8.1.27. This one includes increased OPC UA write flexibility, Open ID Connect request options, new web properties for the Designer, timeout properties for the Gateway Configuration page, and more.
OPC UA Writes
OPC UA clients can now attempt writes to exposed tags that include a StatusCode. This StatusCode is converted to an equivalent QualityCode, passing the write value to the system as a QualifiedValue, which encompasses the quality, value, and timestamp. By supplying more than simply the raw value, a QualifiedValue provides more information and increases write request flexibility and specificity.
Additionally, for those who are scripting-inclined, supplying a QualifiedValue (quality, value, and timestamp) to system.opc.writeValue now sends the corresponding StatusCode in the DataValue to the server. Essentially, this scripting function allows you to pass the entire object to a point in the OPC UA server.
Finally, 8.1.27 also includes support for writing struct array values represented as a Document tag. Previously, while a read would populate a tag with no issue, writes to the full value of Document tags were not possible when subscribed directly to Siemens array data type instances. This update aligns with IA’s long-term effort to provide more flexibility with unique Siemens data types.
OIDC Requests
Ignition 8.1.27 adds a new setting control dropdown menu for Open ID Connect, with options to choose GET or POST as the HTTP Request Method for UserInfo API calls. This improvement also better aligns with current OIDC standards, helping Ignition to be interoperable with even more IdPs.
Designer
In 8.1.27, two new system properties, ignition.jxBrowser.userDataDir.browser and ignition.jxBrowser.userDataDir.perspective, replace the deprecated ignition.jxBrowser.userDataDir property. These new properties offer improved control and separation for user data directories in both Vision and Perspective. Previously, the AppData folder was the Web Browser Component’s default location for storing cache data and browser files. The two properties let you specify where web data is stored. For example, you can now choose to store web data on the desktop for quick access or in a particular folder that better aligns with your system’s data organization structure.
Gateway Configuration
A triple shot of timeout. 8.1.27 adds three system properties — ignition.gateway.connectTimeout, ignition.gateway.readTimeout, and ignition.gateway.opcBrowseTimeout — for setting client connection, tag reading, and OPC UA point retrieval timeout thresholds, respectively. The purpose of these properties, which only apply to connections between Designers and clients, is to set parameters at the Gateway level that globally apply to all of your active projects. If you have certain projects that require different timeout thresholds, you can then adjust those properties within the projects themselves.
