by Gary Mintchell | Aug 28, 2015 | Commentary, Data Management, Interoperability, News, Operations Management
This is a story about data interoperability and integration. This is a much-needed step in the industry. I just wish that it were more standards-driven and therefore more widespread.
But we’ll take every step forward we can get.
Arena Solutions, developer of cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) applications, announced that its flagship product, Arena PLM, now offers real-time synchronization with Kenandy Cloud ERP, an enterprise resource planning system for midmarket and large global enterprises built on the Salesforce Platform.
With this integration, the product record can be automatically passed from Arena PLM to Kenandy at the point of change approval. This eliminates errors and accelerates access of product information in Kenandy to create a more cohesive and efficient manufacturing process.
Arena PLM and Kenandy Cloud ERP can now communicate directly with each other, enabling customers to share up-to-date product data with finance, sales and manufacturing departments to ensure accurate financial planning and support operations.
“We are excited to be partnering with Kenandy to deliver a fully cloud-based integrated PLM and ERP solution.” said Steve Chalgren, EVP of product management and chief strategy officer at Arena Solutions. “The integration between our products is simple, clean, and can be implemented quickly. Isn’t that refreshing?”
Using the integration between Arena PLM and Kenandy Cloud ERP, customers can:
- Manage the product development process of product data (items, bill of materials, manufacturer and supplier data) in a centralized Arena PLM system through the entire product lifecycle; and
- Use Kenandy to quickly plan, procure and manufacture products upon handoff of the latest product release from Arena.
Primus Power Benefits from Seamless Integration
Delivering clean-tech energy storage solutions based on advanced battery technology, Hayward, California-based Primus Power was already successfully using Arena PLM for their design and engineering activities. It was essential that their new ERP and existing PLM system integrate seamlessly.
In Primus’ fast moving, design-focused environment, an engineer can now implement a product idea or improvement in the PLM system and within minutes the new part number is generated in Kenandy automatically. Instantly, people throughout the company can find that part; there’s a pricing history for it, a supply history. “People no longer say, ‘Did we order that bracket?’ They can now actually see that it’s on order. They can find the purchase order and the promised delivery date,” said Mark Collins, senior director of operations at Primus. “So much information is now available at people’s fingertips simply because we created a part number that’s now searchable in the system.”
“Cloud solutions deliver business agility in ways that on-premise solutions just cannot,” said Rod Butters, president and chief operating officer at Kenandy. “Together Arena and Kenandy are delivering a solution that can be deployed fast and, more importantly, helps the business run fast. Even though our customers are working with our two products, their entire team sees a single, complete, real-time source of truth from product design to product delivered to bottom-line results.”
I have written about Kenandy a couple of times this year here and here.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 24, 2015 | Automation, News, Technology
Rethink Robotics today provided a glimpse into the future of collaborative robotics with the introduction of Sawyer, a single-arm, high-performance robot designed to execute machine tending, circuit board testing and other precise tasks that have historically been impractical to automate with traditional industrial robots. Sawyer is a significant addition to the company’s smart, collaborative robot family, which also includes the groundbreaking Baxter robot that defined the category of safe, interactive, affordable automation.
Sawyer offers the same highly-touted safety, compliance and usability advantages of Baxter – including the iconic “face” screen, embedded sensors and train-by-demonstration user interface – while providing the smaller footprint and high precision performance needed for tasks that require significant agility and flexibility. In addition, Sawyer runs on the Intera software system, the same extensible platform that powers Baxter, so it works like humans do by dynamically adapting to real-world conditions on the plant floor and integrating seamlessly into existing work cells. Together, Baxter and Sawyer can address many of the estimated 90 percent of manufacturing tasks that cannot be feasibly automated with traditional solutions today according to the press release.
Weighing 19 kg (42 lbs), Sawyer features a 4kg (8.8 lb) payload, with 7 degrees of freedom and a 1-meter reach that can maneuver into the tight spaces and varied alignments of work cells designed for humans. Its high-resolution force sensing, embedded at each joint, enables Rethink Robotics’ compliant motion control, which allows the robot to “feel” its way into fixtures or machines, even when parts or positions vary. This enables an adaptive precision that is unique to the robotics industry and allows Sawyer to work effectively in semi-structured environments. In addition, Sawyer features an embedded vision system, which includes a camera in its head to perform applications requiring a wide field of view and a Cognex camera with a built-in light source in its wrist for precision vision applications. Sawyer’s vision system enables the Robot Positioning System for dynamic re-orientation, and over time will support more advanced features that are inherent to the Cognex system, such as barcode scanning and object recognition.
“With Baxter, we introduced the concept of robots and people working together on the plant floor,” said Rethink Robotics president and CEO Scott Eckert. “With Sawyer, we have taken that relationship to the next level, with a high performance robot that opens the door for many new applications that have never been good candidates for automation. As we continue to redefine this industry, we also continue to give manufacturers new ways of adding efficiency and flexibility into their operations.”
Jabil, a global electronic product solutions company that is partnering with Rethink Robotics as an early adopter and field tester of Sawyer, recognizes the robot’s immense potential. “Flexible automation that addresses shrinking product lifecycles and helps companies align with consumer trends is a critical technology initiative for manufacturers,” said John Dulchinos, vice president of digital manufacturing at Jabil. “Rethink Robotics continues to lead the way in defining how workers and machines can coexist to leverage the strengths of each, and optimize productivity for all.”
Dan Kara, robotics practice director at ABI Research, also sees the value of Sawyer for the robotics industry and its customers. “With the introduction of Baxter, Rethink fundamentally changed the conversation in the robotics industry and pioneered a new way of thinking about automation. Today, the collaborative concept has been accepted, the value has been proven, and more companies are looking to standardize globally on these solutions. Sawyer incorporates advanced technology from the Baxter platform, but is different in other fundamental aspects, making it suitable for wholly new classes of applications. Rethink’s Sawyer is a very compelling technology that has the potential to once again change the way manufacturers think about their automation infrastructure moving forward,” he concluded.
Sawyer, which will retail for a base price of $29,000, will initially be available in North America, Europe, China and Japan. It is currently being field tested by several large manufacturing companies in those regions. Sawyer will be released with limited availability in the summer of 2015, with general customer availability targeted for later in the year.
About Rethink Robotics
Rethink Robotics, Inc. helps manufacturers meet the challenges of an agile economy with an integrated workforce, combining trainable, safe and cost-effective robots with skilled labor. Its Baxter robot, driven by Intera, an advanced software platform, gives world-class manufacturers and distributors in automotive, plastics, consumer goods, electronics and more, a workforce multiplier that optimizes labor. With Rethink Robotics, manufacturers increase flexibility, lower costs and can invest in skilled labor—all advantages in fueling continuous innovation and sustainable competitive advantage.
Committed to accelerating robotics innovation in manufacturing and beyond, Rethink Robotics’ Baxter Research Robot gives academic and corporate research environments a humanoid robot platform with integrated sensors and an open software development kit for creating custom applications.
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the company is funded by GE Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions, CRV, Highland Capital Partners, Sigma Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Two Sigma Ventures.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 4, 2014 | Operations Management, Software
Twice in a week—more news about companies incorporating the Cloud to expand the applications of their manufacturing software. In this release, Infor announced its use of Amazon Web Services Cloud.
Obviously proud of its new suite of products, the company notes, “Infor CloudSuite provides beautiful software with deep industry functionality and a flexible, subscription-based delivery model that significantly reduces upfront IT expenditure.”
Each industry suite within Infor CloudSuite is built by unifying multiple applications that historically were deployed independently to holistically support core business functions by industry. This core, along with fast and simple provisioning. Infor believes that this will “Change the way enterprise software is delivered to and consumed by customers.”
“SaaS today refers primarily to HCM, CRM or another edge application, never to mission-critical business operations,” said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. “Infor CloudSuite redefines cloud for the enterprise, delivering the first full suite of business applications purpose-built by industry running in a public cloud through Amazon Web Services.”
“Customers want help figuring out how to move more of their operations into the AWS Cloud. They want to shift their resources to focus on what they do best, rather than on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing IT and complex software,” said Andy Jassy, SVP, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “We are excited that Infor is addressing these needs using the AWS platform. Infor CloudSuite on AWS delivers a simplified and enhanced user experience, across a multitude of industries, and provides all the agility, elasticity, and cost benefits of the AWS Cloud to enterprise customers around the world.”
Infor will leverage the AWS cloud infrastructure to allow customers to take advantage of Amazon’s expertise and economies of scale to access resources when they need them, on demand and with auto-scaling built into the Infor applications. Infor is in the process of consolidating existing subscribers and transitioning current internal infrastructure to the AWS platform. AWS provides services in 10 Regions, with 25 Availability Zones and 51 Amazon CloudFront Edge locations globally.
“AWS has the best and most advanced cloud infrastructure in the world, providing a delivery model, cost structure, and focus on operational excellence that perfectly complements and enhances our products,” said Phillips. “Moreover, the tie between Infor and AWS is strengthened through a common focus on customer experience, rapid-pace of innovation, and standards-based architecture.”
Infor plans to roll out industry suites, delivered on AWS, throughout 2014, beginning this spring with Infor CloudSuite Automotive, Infor CloudSuite Aerospace & Defense, and Infor CloudSuite Hospitality. Early this summer Infor expects to deliver Infor CloudSuite Corporate, with a core of best-in-class financials and Infor’s complete human capital management suite.
The Infor CloudSuite platform also includes:
- Analytics – CloudSuite Analytic Packs provide industry components, data models, and industry dashboards to transform information into actionable insights
- Technology – Infor ION middleware, Infor Ming.leTM social collaboration, Infor Analytics, and Infor Mongoose development platform
- Core Enterprise Management – Infor LN, Infor M3, Infor Lawson, Infor SyteLine, and Infor SunSystems
- High Value Extension Applications – Infor EAM, Infor Expense Management, Infor HR Service Delivery (Enwisen), Infor PeopleAnswers Talent Science, Infor Learning Management, Infor Workforce Management, Infor Epiphany Interaction Advisor, Infor Orbis Marketing Resource Management, Infor Product Configuration Management, Infor Supplier Exchange, and more.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 7, 2013 | Operations Management, Software
ARC Advisory Group Changing Dimensions
Tim Sowell, VP and Fellow at Invensys, has been writing some thoughtful blogs at his Invensys Evolution blog. The link takes you to this first note. Check out a couple of other recent ones. In these posts, he looks at trends and challenges for manufacturing intelligence software.
In his first post of two where he discusses his customer conversations of last month, he talks about their needs for support for making decisions today–not waiting until more information comes in. They need the information presented clearly and in real time.
“All through this week in Europe I have spoken with customers looking for decisions in the NOW, and more people empowered to make these decisions. This does mean the traditional worker is evolving to knowledge worker, and this is across the different roles in the operational plant. But following on from last week’s blog the drive for realtime decisions is driving up the requirement for more advanced analytics to enable that decision, especially as the experience and time in the role of the decision maker reducers.”
He cites a study by the ARC Advisory Group (see chart) that emphasizes the following points:
- The shift in time focus from Past to Future: in the industrial world I would put that as truly an expansion from the past and current to now past, current and future.
- From a performance to a predictive view that enables that decision
- Move from Batch data to realtime, this is key as we move from reports to dashboards that are dynamic with small trend tails showing now and immediate past easy to understand from a glance.
- Move from IT intensive creation to Self service: this is even more apparent in the industrial space as operations want to be self empowered without the complexity and delay in engaging either engineering or IT.
- Users move from a few Gurus to a collective team of people what I referred to as the flexible operational team (many blogs on this) where experience is shared to achieve realtime decisions. Virtual experts in an active community either from within a company across sites, and subcontractors/ suppliers can now be in the realtime decision with the on plant person.
- Deployment will shift from “on Premise” to a “Managed set of on demand services” this while only just starting in the industrial space makes logical and even more sense in the industrial space. Because the information and these virtual communities will live outside of plants and across the world. Companies are talking of Asset Facebook concepts to where a community of peers and experts across plants working on similar equipment and processes can interact share and make informed decisions together. The concept of a hosted set of services for an Information environment will be foundational for this to work.
Another comment is the automated actions, I see this more in the industrial space as the shift from just supplying information to having embedded operational procedures to guide users through consistent actions.
Key Operational Challengers
While you’re on his site, check out the post on Key Operational Challengers. discussing a conversation with three end users who own strategy, he discovered that their key challenge was the high level operational drivers not the technical hurdles that they are facing as these are just constraints that designs and new practices must absorb.
They identified three key drivers in the course of the discussion:
Agility to adjust to market conditions and change. The clear common requirement was the end to end operational alignment, understanding across the value chain. This holistic operational control, was a significant change in all three industries the sites had run with independence, in all cases the expectation was that site / regional uniqueness will be maintained but now alignment and traceability of action, product across the total value chain, e.g.| multiple assets/sites.
The operational workforce transformation operational role retention / rotation. The impact of the operational culture, approach with gen Y and more holistic operations. [Gary note: I think this holistic operations concept is powerful, and I’ve been looking at ways to cover that more extensively.] Two critical factors are knowledge transfer from the retiring generation and how is the captured, and they are already seeing people in roles for much less time, and this is across the operational roles. So the issue is how to embed and design the experiences to enable to become effective dramatically faster, e.g.| 20% of the time today.
New Product Introduction. The life time of products and services is dramatically reducing, and the companies stated that seem to have ever change and introduction of new products and services. The move is to individual products and services for each consumer. How do we introduce, absorb these new products and services to the operational systems that will deliver them in a timely manner without significant error.
Sowell concludes, “Are these three points new no, but the fact that 3 decidedly different thought leaders from three different industries rapidly agreed on these as operational drivers, combining this with the fact that each point effects the others. The eventual take away was they were being asked to deliver one operational ecosystem to run the end to end product production over multiple assets with operational consistency. While 3 dynamics constantly change, the value assets / plants are added and taken away, new products and services are added at an ever increasing rate, while the operational workforce is becoming dynamic with a culture of evolution of the role and job, and people will not be in a role longer than 2 years.”
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 27, 2013 | Operations Management, Software
Tim Sowell, Invensys Fellow and VP of System Strategy at Invensys in the Common Architecture team in R&D, writes the Operations Management Systems Evolution blog on the Invensys blog site. He offers thoughtful pieces about where operations management software and practice could be going.
In his latest post, he talks about a dinner conversation with people in the industry and what his companions thought were the most important transformations occurring now.
I’d have to agree with them. People who talk to me echo much the same. Check out his blog page for the complete details, but here’s a teaser.
Agility to adjust to market conditions and change
The clear common requirement was the end to end operational alignment, understanding across the value chain. This holistic operational control, was a significant change in all three industries the sites had run with independence, in all cases the expectation was that site / regional uniqueness will be maintained but now alignment and traceability of action, product across the total value chain, e.g.| multiple assets/sites. A fascinating discussion here was both water and food talked that they expect this end to end to include outsourced assets that make up the chain, and effect the quality of the product or service that their brand is delivering. This is why it is the ability to federate assets and systems while still allowing site uniqueness is key. The inclusion of non company assets in the value chain and requiring operational traceability, accountability and agility to change are just around the corner.
The operational workforce transformation
Operational role retention / rotation. The impact of the operational culture, approach with gen Y and more holistic operations. These have covered extensively in the blogs, but is the area both of my dinner companions spent over 50% of dinner time.
The key areas are:
- The knowledge transfer from the retiring generation and how is the captured.
- The highest critical concern is the fact they are already seeing people in roles for much less time, and this is across the operational roles. So the issue is how to embedded and design the experiences to enable to become effective dramatically faster, e.g., 20% of the time today. Our conversation went away from industrial operational systems, to commercial systems, such as Facebook, banks, mobile phone applications. The key here is these applications are being delivered to market without having to train the users, they have intuitive experience that leads users through the steps. Agreement that this is a paradigm shift in operational design, from today’s approach where user interface is thought of well after the control, and we have engineers who are not human in factor people, designing the systems. All attendees said we need to continue this discussion, as this is not just control rooms, but reports, and information etc.
New Product Introduction
The life time of products and services is dramatically reducing, and the companies stated that seem to have ever change and introduction of new products and services. The move is to individual products and services for each consumer. How do we introduce, absorb these new products and services to the operational systems that will deliver them in a timely manner without significant error.
This could be considered agility, but both wanted this pointed out separately as it is a real dynamic that effecting them, vs the infrastructure and assets that are also changing and must absorb agility of change. An intriguing point here was that they commented that operational system and automation system absorb new product introductions without change, but all commented on the challenge of new assets with existing systems requiring federation into the system, and how do introduce new products procedures to operational staff. So the discussion for new product introduction was not just for systems, but also for people to execute, how can they take the new product from the PLM system, and deliver the control, and instructions, across many sites with different systems, and different cultures.
Your thoughts
What do you think about all this? What would you add? Let me know.
