Turns out that I’ve been following developments of US leaders of Smart Manufacturing (yes, a thing, so capitalized) for going on to 10 years. I’ll put a number of links to previous posts that begin in 2011.
The beginnings were a group led by Jim Davis of UCLA, Jim Wetzel from General Mills, John Bernardin from Rockwell Automation, and a few others called the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC). They were developing ideas to fund and promote Smart Manufacturing when eventually the US Federal government began funding test beds and institutes through the Department of Energy.
By then Germany had combined with the Fraunhofer Institute and leading technology suppliers such as Siemens and Festo to use the concept of cyberphysical systems as the basis for Industrie 4.0—an initiative supporting the German machine building industry. The idea had spread to China, and several European countries. The US suddenly was playing catch-up.
At that point the SMLC dissolved and members reconstituted under the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) now called CESMII—The Smart Manufacturing Institute. I wrote an update to this last January after a lunch I had with old friend John Dyck at the end of December 2019. John had left his roles at Rockwell Automation and MESA International to lead this new initiative.
CESMII has been busy developing its own academic partnership with the North Carolina State University. The partners have launched the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. The objective of the SMIC is to link manufacturers, industrial technology vendors, systems integrators and equipment providers with academia, demonstrating and driving research and innovation that scales to all of US manufacturing.
At NC State, pilot plants for biomanufacturing, papermaking, nonwovens textiles, and advanced manufacturing are using Smart Manufacturing tools from CESMII and its nationwide partners.
The SMIC at NC State is a visible proof point of CESMII’s well documented network-of-networks strategy to make Smart Manufacturing readily available and accessible throughout the nation. The SMIC facilities now become available for industry to try innovative Smart Manufacturing solutions and drive their use of Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning, Energy Productivity, Asset Performance Management and so forth.
In its first 45 days this winter, the NC State SMIC successfully demonstrated the integration of a dozen vendor solutions (including: Siemens, Honeywell, Allen Bradley (Rockwell Automation), National Instruments, ABB, DeltaV (Emerson Process Technologies), Andritz and Sartorius) using the CESMII SM Innovation Platform. Avid Solutions of Raleigh, NC, is the strategic Systems Integration partner for this initiative.
A video demonstrating the interoperability of 3rd-party Smart Manufacturing solutions leveraging core CESMII technologies is linked below. This is an excellent presentation, especially the first part where the basics of the platform and ecosystem are discussed. I highly recommend checking it out.
The SMIC Director, Professor Yuan-Shin Lee of NC State, comments, “NC State is a ‘Think and Do’ nationally recognized university for research and innovation. With this CESMII partnership, the NC State SMIC will be able to build and sustain a skilled and innovative Smart Manufacturing workforce with expertise in the requisite technology and best practices, and the ability to develop, continuously update, and deploy customizable, interdisciplinary educational training resources and programs. With this partnership, the NC State SMIC will develop a world-class Smart Manufacturing demonstration facility through partnerships with industry and regional and national laboratories for sustainable workforce development and educational training. We are very excited about this new opportunity. “
CESMII COO, Howard Goldberg, added, “We’re just as excited as the NC State team to make this announcement. NC State is a valued Education & Workforce Development partner for CESMII and will offer CESMII-sanctioned Smart Manufacturing training and education offerings through the SMIC. Additionally, the CESMII technology infrastructure connected to the NC State manufacturing assets will demonstrate the openness and interoperability essential to scaling innovation through Smart Manufacturing solutions beyond a limited pilot phase. We look forward to ending the days of ‘Pilot Purgatory’ which have held industry back for decades by creating and testing solutions at a SMIC and moving them to production environments through the large-scale use of our platform technologies.”
Some analysts believe manufacturing generates more data than any other sector. Maybe, maybe not. But we do have the ability to rapidly generate a lot of data. Storage gets to be an interesting part of a manufacturing IT equation. This midsize storage solution from Hitachi Vantara could be just what you need at the plant level.
In brief:
4:1 Data De-Duplication Delivers a Guaranteed 75% Improvement in Storage Capacity
New Ops Center Software Features AI-Driven Management Tools to Simplify Storage Provisioning For AI, ML and Containerized Apps
New EverFlex from Hitachi Vantara Provides More Choice to Help Customers Move to Pay-Per-Use Consumption Models
Hitachi Vantara, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., introduced Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) E990, the company’s new storage platform for midsize enterprise customers.
Feature summary. The E990 combines high performance and low latency with industry-leading data de-duplication guarantees storage cost reductions. Hitachi Ops Center’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven management software can simplify storage provisioning for AI, machine learning (ML) and containerized applications. The E990 with Hitachi Ops Center provides an NVMe all-flash option for Hitachi Vantara’s family of solutions for midsize enterprises including Hitachi’s signature 100% data availability guarantee for businesses of all sizes.
The company also unveiled EverFlex, a program that provides simple, elastic and comprehensive acquisition choices for the E990 and the entire Hitachi Vantara portfolio. EverFlex adds consumption-based pricing models that range from basic utility pricing, to custom outcome-based services, to Storage-as-a-Service.
Availability
Hitachi VSP E990, Hitachi Ops Center and EverFlex are available globally from Hitachi Vantara and its network of partners.
In a turnaround, this time I’m doing an interview. First one in years. This episode is an interview with Yuval Boger, CMO of Wi-Charge, who talks about wireless remote power for charging IoT devices with light. There was a gap between this and my last podcast. In the interim, we sold a house, bought a house, and moved to another state–all at the beginning of the covid-19 rise and the shelter-in-place orders. It has been crazy times. Now, we’ve plenty of time to get used to the new house. I hope everyone listening is doing well.
My new office is getting organized. Better than my outside life. Remind me why we moved 200 miles north when I went outside for some exercise in 0.5-in. of snow with some icy patches on the trail. Didn’t do my Fartlek run this morning. But, I am relishing one of my new favorite news sites–Morning Brew. Check it out.
I might have a new office with the getting into a new routine with a new house and neighborhood plus the revised routine due to shelter-in-place. Some things remain the same. Half of my emails deal with “Digital Transformation.”
Sometimes I think we’ve been going down this road for such a long time that no one except the worst of the laggards is not already reaping dividends from digital projects.
Speaking of laggards, let me drift a moment into what must be a gross lack of leadership and management. No, I’m talking about government.
Virginia-based Smithfield Foods announced Sunday that it is closing its pork processing plant in Sioux Falls until further notice after hundreds of employees tested positive for the coronavirus — a step the head of the company warned could hurt the nation’s meat supply.
Here is a statistic—Health officials said Sunday that 293 of the 730 people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in South Dakota work at the plant.
So what does our genius leader say? Is he concerned about the health and safety of his workers for whom he has responsibility? Well, “The closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply,“ Smithfield president and CEO Kenneth Sullivan said in a statement. “It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running. These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation’s livestock farmers.”
Sounds more like he’s whining than stepping up to the plate taking responsibility and changing the culture and workplace.
Back to the regularly scheduled program—lack of digital transformation.
Some of the shift to digital is unwanted, fraught with risk and lonely.
But in some areas, organizations and leaders are realizing that it’s actually more powerful and efficient.
So why didn’t you do it before?
Because it’s easier to follow.
Because it’s more comfortable to stay where we are.
Waiting to do something because you’re forced to is rarely a positive approach to growth or leadership. Abrupt shifts against our will may cause change, but they’re inefficient and destabilizing.
Next time, take the lead. Not because you have to, but because you can.
The “edge” has become one of the most popular words in manufacturing enterprise architecture over the past several years. Want to know what it is? Here is an organization attempting a definition. Linux Foundation is definitely an information source to bookmark. Maybe even get involved with.
The news in short:
• State of the Edge will continue as the industry’s first open research program on edge computing
• Under LF Edge, State of the Edge, Open Glossary of Edge Computing and the Landscape will continue to pave the way for industry alignment
LF Edge, an umbrella organization under The Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, announced that it has acquired State of the Edge, a vendor-neutral platform for open research on edge computing. The State of the Edge will merge with Open Glossary of Edge Computing and the combined project will assume the State of the Edge name as a Stage 2 project (growth) under LF Edge.
Founded in 2017 by industry pioneers Vapor IO, Packet by Equinix, Edge Gravity by Ericsson, Arm, and Rafay Systems, the State of the Edge organization has published three major edge research reports, all offered free- of- charge under a Creative Commons license: the 2018 State of the Edge report, the 2019 Data at the Edge report and, most recently, the 2020 State of the Edge report. The organization’s founding co-chairs, Matthew Trifiro, CMO of Vapor IO, and Jacob Smith, VP Bare Metal Strategy & Marketing of Equinix, will remain as co-chairs of State of the Edge.
“We launched State of the Edge in 2018 as an effort to align and educate the market on what edge computing truly is, and what is needed to implement it,” said Trifiro. “Edge computing represents a long-term transformation of the Internet, and together this coalition has created a community-supported research model second to none. We’re thrilled to contribute this program to LF Edge, where we believe it can flourish even further.”
With its open governance model, LF Edge will continue to advance the State of the Edge under the project’s original mission, which has been to accelerate the edge computing industry by developing free, shareable research that can be used by all.
“As edge computing continues to evolve and expand, our goal with State of the Edge is to bring clarity and simplicity to the critical infrastructure required to support the future of edge computing,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “The LF Edge projects span the continuum from cloud to device and, with the addition of State of the Edge, we’ll be able to bring our community and ecosystem closer to a more comprehensive edge stack, delivering shared innovation across technology sectors at the edge”.
The State of the Edge project will manage and produce the following assets under the LF Edge umbrella:
• State of the Edge reports (the 2020 report was published in Q4 2019; the 2021 report is scheduled for Q4 2020)
• Open Glossary of Edge Computing
• Edge Computing Landscape
All State of the Edge projects will continue to be produced and funded collaboratively, with an explicit goal of producing original research without vendor bias and involving a diverse set of stakeholders. Supported by member funds and a community-driven philosophy, the State of the Edge mission has been to accelerate the edge computing industry by developing free, shareable research that can be used by all. The program will continue alongside a community that cares deeply about edge computing and the innovations that will be required to bring its promise to fruition.
Launched last January, LF Edge’s projects (Akraino Edge Stack, Baetyl, EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge and Project EVE) support emerging edge applications across areas such as non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, and faster processing and mobility. By forming a software stack that brings the best of cloud, enterprise and telecom, LF Edge helps to unify a fragmented edge market around a common, open vision for the future of the industry.
For information on how to participate in the project, please contact [email protected].
Resources
• LF Edge website
• State of the Edge website
• Blog
About The Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration.
Supplier companies have been working to find innovative ways to support the newly remote work force. Some of us have been set up for years for remote work with appropriate security and workflow. Others by the thousands were forced into it in order to stymie the spread of the Coronavirus. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has responded in many ways. Here is a new program.
This will empower administrators to manage their environments in a safe and reliable manner through HPE iLO’s robust remote capabilities via a rich remote server management experience that’s easy to use – and it also provides end-to-end server security.
To learn more how HPE iLO Advanced can help our customers and partners, and to learn how to register for the free trial, you can read the recently posted HPE community blog.
Here is an excerpt from the blog post by Sandy_Ono, VP Marketing Strategy, eCommerce, and SMB Marketing worldwide at HPE.
In today’s environment, many HPE customers and partners have been faced with new challenges, such as closed offices, inaccessible server rooms, and and/or work-from-home mandates. And like many businesses across the globe, they may find themselves needing to quickly adapt to continue to serve their customers’ needs. If you are an HPE customer or partner (or plan to be), know that we are here to support you, so you can focus on your customers.
Here is one way we can help. We have made HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) Advanced FREE OF CHARGE for all HPE customers and partners through December 31, 2020. Normally offered at a cost, this server management software enables you to configure, monitor, and update HPE servers (see footnote) seamlessly – from anywhere. This will empower administrators to manage their environments in a safe and reliable manner through HPE iLO’s robust remote capabilities via a rich remote server management experience that’s easy to use – and it also provides end-to-end server security. When paired with our FREE HPE iLO Amplifier Pack software, this license provides scale and additional recovery capabilities to support your business continuity.
