by Gary Mintchell | Sep 21, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, News
Hannover Messe brought a slice of its automation trade show to this year’s International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS)—a venue known for huge machine tools. This was the second time, and it seems to be gaining some traction. Most exhibitors seemed to be central European, but there was a presence from a number of other North American automation companies not to mention many from Asia.
I stopped by a large number of stands. Below are five that had press releases new for the show. Opto 22 was at the show with an opportunity to see its recently released product with a RESTful API in the real plastic, so to speak. That plus a promised MQTT support maintains Opto’s usual spot as an early adopter, if not first adopter in many cases, of IT technologies in its OT products. I also stopped by to talk with Tom Burke and Stefan Hoppe at the OPC Foundation stand. Its news was reported here last week.
(My two-day silence was caused by travel to California and participating in the Inductive Automation Ignition Customer Conference. More on that later.)
Companies addressed below:
- Dell Technologies
- Beckhoff Automation
- Bedrock Automation
- Universal Robots
- Carbon (3D printing)
Dell Technologies
Appearing at IMTS in the automation hall for the first time, Dell Technologies showed its IoT Gateway and Embedded capabilities along with several partners that help it provide a complete Internet of Things solution from data collection through storage, analysis, and uploading to the cloud.
The major solution thrust for Dell thus far in its first year of existence has been predictive analytics especially for predictive maintenance applications. One of the featured partners was IBM Watson, using the famed supercomputer power for predictive analytics and EAP—its predictive maintenance solution.
Eigen showed a real-time quality application with in-process inspection. Some real-time analytics are performed in the gateway before sending data asynchronously to the cloud for further analysis.
Software AG, a partner from the beginning, provides a predictive maintenance software module that provided high speed streaming analytics in an ice cream factory. The module can also create service requests, see anomalies, order spare parts.
Beckhoff Automation
Check me out in these cool Microsoft Hololense Augmented Reality (AR) glasses. In this demo, I could see live data streaming from a robotic application. Beckhoff also showed support for MQTT and AMQP transport technologies (it also has OPC UA embedded), an Internet of Things coupler to Microsoft Azure cloud, and power over Ethernet on EtherCat P.
Bedrock Automation
Bedrock Automation has built an entirely new automation and control platform from the ground up. Security is designed in, even to the point of designing and manufacturing its own chips. It offers single, double, and triple redundancy, IEC 61131 programming along with a powerful function block editor that brings it into the DCS world. And it features software configurable I/O, software configurable serial module (5 to a card can be RS-232, RS-422, RS-485), and software configurable Ethernet card (think Profinet, EtherNet/IP, etc.).
At IMTS it announced its new intelligent, standalone power supply. The SPS.500 Secure Power Supply provides deep trust cyber security authentication and onboard intelligence for diagnostics and secure Ethernet communications. Encased in a NEMA 4X sealed aluminum enclosure, users of any PLC, SCADA RTU, PAC or DCS can retrofit to the new SPS.500 inside or outside enclosures, anywhere in a plant and in harsh environments.
Additional features include:
- Ethernet and OPC/UA communications, enabling local or remote monitoring of power supply health for greater system reliability and plant safety
- A powerful cyber secure microprocessor and onboard memory for diagnostics and software-defined functionality
- A built-in redundancy module, which simplifies installation and increases reliability by eliminating the need for an external redundancy module
- Two built-in, software-configurable Form C contact relays, which provide operating and diagnostic status
Universal Robots
One of the big things in automation this year is collaborative robots, or cobos. A leader in this area is a new entrant—Universal Robots. This Danish company showed its products at IMTS. It also announced two unique new initiatives.
- Universal Robots+: an ecosystem of products and applications, users choosing accessories, end-effectors, and software solutions from Universal Robots+, both distributors and end-users, get high security and predictability that applications will run well from the start.
- +YOU: a unique, free-of-charge developer program, offering a powerful marketing and support platform for the flourishing eco-system of UR-robot application developers.
Alongside the launch of Universal Robots+, a new update for the robot arm’s operating software has been published. The new release (Software Version 3.3) includes updates such as the Profinet IO device functionality. The new compatibility with Profinet protocols opens up numerous additional areas of deployment and activities for robots. “A key feature of the update supporting the Universal Robots+ platform is the ability for providers to now offer solutions that interface seamlessly with the UR software,” says Østergaard.
Carbon 3D
Carbon 3D announced new funding from strategic investors toward the goal of bringing additive technology to more customers transitioning from prototyping-only use cases, to applications requiring final production quality parts with great surface finish, broad and expanding material options and the plans to transition to mainstream manufacturing. A Silicon Valley 3D printing company working at the intersection of hardware, software and molecular science, Carbon also plans to offer its proprietary CLIP technology internationally and is accelerating production to meet worldwide demand for its M1 printer.
The expansion is supported by $81 million from new investors GE Ventures, BMW, Nikon and JSR, as well as existing investors, bringing Carbon’s funding total to $222 million. More details of additional strategic investors involved in this round of financing will be announced in 2017 along with details of their manufacturing projects that utilize Carbon’s technology.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 6, 2016 | News, Security
Siemens invited a couple of writers to the Cincinnati area headquarters of PLM and a Cyber Security Center of Excellence to witness an internal presentation to Siemens employees. The presentation included both an overview of cyber security and the Siemens response plus Siemens’ plans to build a sizable business in the area. I was there along with safety and security writer Greg Hale.
Eric Spiegel, President and CEO, Siemens USA, kicked off the day with a presentation on the importance of cyber security and Siemens’ intent to build the business. In fact, Spiegel noted, “We want to grow the cyber security services in the US at 2x market speed. Cyber was a small part of our business, but we see much potential for growth.”
Spiegel related, “I was at a White House meeting in the situation room, had a chance to meet the President. He talked to me directly about the need to protect critical infrastructure.” Spiegel continued that hacking is top of mind in this area. Recognizing Siemens’ own strategies in the area, he continued, “If digitalization is important for the future of manufacturing, then cyber security is also important. Attacks on critical manufacturing are becoming more frequent and intense. Two-thirds of CEOs rank cyber security as one of the top two things on their agenda. In response, we have 50 differentiated service offerings in cyber today.”
Cyber Security Golden Nuggets
Joanna Burkey, U.S. CISO, moderated the first panel discussion which was more technical in nature. She suggested to look for what she called “Golden Nuggets”, that is, places where a risk-based approach suggests vulnerabilities. For example, she noted, one is source code.
Siemens began the effort to uncover these golden nuggets and then decided to take what it learned to its customers. When Siemens goes out to a customer to consult on cyber risks, it follows a process that includes mapping IT assets (for example, SAP, end points, encryption), developing an asset classification system, designing an holistic protection process coordinating with business, IT, and vendors.
Siemens has identified about 700 of these golden nuggets and is in the process of mitigating 121 of them. It expects the number to grow to about 1,000.
Rolf Reinema, Head of Technology Field, added that protecting Intellectual Property goes beyond hardware and software, but it also includes algorithms. In process industries, these might be called recipes residing in a processor. “OT attacks are complex. Having so much legacy equipment creates vulnerabilities.” Then he left us with this sobering thought, “If a hacker shows they can attack, they’ll ask for a substantial deposit of bitcoins so that they won’t carry out the attack.” Think of the blackmail you could be open to.
Udo Wirtz, Head of Technology Field, calls the Internet the new company Intranet. “We are shining a light in a cave, we now can see some of the problems where five years ago not so much.” Wirtz also addressed phishing attacks. These attacks are still an important problem tricking people into clicking on what looks like a legitimate link which instead gives the hacker access to user accounts and even administrative rights. “So they are phishing all of us,” he concluded.
In March the FBI came to Siemens and GE and said that both had been contacted by Facebook. It seems that someone was “friending” employees on Facebook and building an innocuous relationship. Then they sent a link that turned out to be malicious. “It used to be stupid to click on a link. But today the messages are so sophisticated that it is hard to tell legitimate from phishing.”
Growing Cyber Security as a Business
The next session was a Marketing Panel addressing how Siemens will move cyber from internal to a customer service. Rajiv Sivaraman, VP and Head of Plant Security Services, said that given the development of digital manufacturing, cyber is high on the enterprise list. Siemens is laying foundations for taking customers on a journey to awareness. Answering the question about scaling the business, Sivaraman noted a progression of going from consulting and “hand-holding” to ultimately scaling to managed services. Siemens is also checking out partners for both C-Level and operations level consulting.
Ken Geisler, VP of Strategy & Markets, Energy Management Digital Grid, reported grid suppliers do have compliance requirements. As they grow many more points of access, e.g., smart meters on homes, there is growing concern for cyber security. Cyber is a huge potential market with many competitors.
Judy Marks, Executive Vice President, Global Solutions, Dresser-Rand, A Siemens Business, says that with the oil & gas market it’s all about business and enterprise risk. Especially with the exposure of offshore facilities. They also have the challenge of operating in a heterogeneous environment. Siemens, through acquisitions, is now a leading service provider to O&G and plans to leverage that into growing the cyber business.
In his first year at Siemens, Leo Simonovich, Director, Global Cyber Strategy, said operations is the new frontier for attacks. Of all attacks, 30% are targeting of coming from OT. Customers are turning to Siemens “because we understand that environment. We can secure the technology stack.” Another sobering thought, your chances of an attack? 100%.
Jeremy Bryant, Head of PD PA secure networking solution business, added that customers (and Siemens) need to be worried about inside-out attacks as well as outside-in.
Overall, a profitable day in Cincinnati to learn what Siemens was up to. Several of the majors have some type of cyber division or initiative. Siemens appears to be ahead of that pack right now. As a user, you should be happy that suppliers are developing solutions to help in the battle.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 24, 2016 | Automation, News, Security
This partnership enhances both OT and IT cyber security for industrial smart manufacturing networks. 
SCADAfence, a pioneer in securing industrial networks in smart manufacturing industries, announced Feb. 24 an alliance with Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. This collaboration mitigates the inherent risks for manufacturers, such as operational downtime, process manipulation and theft of intellectual property, that can come with connecting operation technology (OT) networks with traditional information technology (IT) networks, in the pharmaceutical, chemical, automotive and food & beverage industries.
“We are excited to join forces with Check Point to provide manufacturers with a holistic solution that effectively protects IT/OT environments,” said Yoni Shohet, Co-founder and CEO of SCADAfence. “Together, we have developed a platform that strikes the perfect balance between security and availability by ensuring operational continuity while maximizing the pace of manufacturing.”
While combining OT and IT environments reduces costs and improves productivity for smart manufacturing companies, connecting the two environments opens OT networks to an array of risks, from malicious malware to non-malicious human error. The integration of SCADAfence’s solution and Check Point’s security solutions for IT and OT creates a comprehensive, risk-free security solution for entire industrial networks and provides security administrators with a single pane of glass for IT and OT security incidents.
With SCADAfence’s passive, non-intrusive solution, administrators and operators have visibility of day-to-day industrial operations and real-time detection of cyber-attacks. Smart manufacturers can also leverage the technology to improve their planning of IT/OT network separation, and internal OT segmentation within industrial networks.
“Check Point’s ICS/SCADA cyber security solutions provide advanced threat prevention paired with ruggedized appliance options and comprehensive protocol support with full visibility and granular control of SCADA traffic in order to ensure vital industrial assets are never compromised,” said Alon Kantor, vice president of business development, Check Point. “We are pleased to have SCADAfence join us in offering an augmented solution to help keep customers one step ahead in securing these critical infrastructure and industrial control organizations”
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 17, 2016 | News, Operations Management, Podcast
While I was at Dell World last fall, Dell Chief Research Officer Shawn Rogers interviewed me on Internet of Things. The video has been posted.
Meanwhile I have recorded a YouTube video report from the recent ARC Forum. I made a podcast of the recording for those who download from iTunes and listen while driving or exercising.
As I stated in the video and podcast information, “Gary reports from Orlando at the ARC Advisory Group 20th Annual Industry Forum. No surprises that Internet of Things and cyber security were headliners. The real surprise was the amount of Keynote space president Andy Chatha gave to an ExxonMobil initiative of engaging Lockheed Martin to essentially drive an open-specification DCS. Reception by technology suppliers was lukewarm at best. Reception by peers was difficult to gauge because so few were in attendance. But the conversations were intense.
Enjoy.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 16, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, Networking, Operations Management, Security, Technology
Security and Internet of Things rocks. The annual ARC Advisory Group Industry Forum in Orlando maintained its value as a venue for company announcements. Many good ideas floated around the conversations. Since every post goes out as an email, I’m sensitive to how many I send. Therefore, I’m approaching all this news in the traditional “round-up” format. So, scroll down and pick them all up.
Attendance was most likely down slightly. The oil & gas economy undoubtedly cost a number of potential attendees. The thought eventually came to me that the process (asset intensive) industries were well represented as well as various information technology companies. Discrete manufacturing companies were in shorter supply than usual. Don’t know what that means, if anything, but just an observation.
Announcements in no particular order:
Honeywell
Honeywell Process Solutions introduced its iPhone app, Honeywell Pulse. It improves efficiency and safety at facilities by remotely connecting plant managers, supervisors, and others needing to have visibility into operations.
Inductive Automation
Don Pearson, Chief Strategy Officer of Inductive Automation and Travis Cox, Co-Director of Sales Engineering, along with Arlen Nipper, President of Cirrus Link Solutions and co-inventor of MQTT, announced and demonstrated the addition of IIoT functionality to the existing HMI/SCADA functionality of the Ignition industrial application platform. Pearson, Cox and Nipper showed how enterprises can set up their own IIoT solution on a secure MQTT Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) infrastructure by adding the Ignition MQTT Modules by Cirrus Link Solutions to Ignition by Inductive Automation.
The new modules — MQTT Engine, MQTT Injector, and MQTT Distributor — are the result of a new partnership between Cirrus Link and Inductive Automation. These modules will accelerate organizations’ ability to leverage the IIoT.
ABB
Greg Scheu, President, ABB Americas, speaking at the Monday press conference, introduced a new version of IoT and IIoT–IIoTSP (Internet of Things, Services, and People). All need to be connected to deliver tangible results.
Peter Terwiesch, President, ABB Process Automation, discussed some current applications including moving people from danger zone, improving energy efficiency, and increasing output in a mining application. He concluded, “It is a great time to be in automation, many technology limitations are going away, IoTSP will help us make it.”
Yokogawa
Satoru Kurosu, Director and Executive Vice President, Head of Solutions Service Business Headquarters, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, spoke at the press conference on creating customer value beyond the plant. His new role at Yokogawa is leading this new initiative. Simon Wright, CEO of Yokogawa’s Industrial Knowledge business unit, will discuss the introduction of new cloud-based, customer-connected advanced solutions. (Mr. Wright was formerly CEO of Industrial Evolution, a leading provider of cloud-based plant data-sharing services, which Yokogawa acquired in January 2016).
Yokogawa has established a new business unit, Yokogawa Venture Group, dba Industrial Knowledge. Its role is to accelerate expansion of Yokogawa’s business in asset intensive industries through the provision of cloud-based advanced solutions.
Industrial Knowledge will rely on Industrial Evolution’s secure cloud platform and technologies for the collection, integration, and analysis of real-time process data from firewall protected systems. A prime example is a major process licensor that gathers data in real time from licensees’ plants around the world and provides remote monitoring and support services for plant operations, including start-up assistance, warranty obligation fulfillment, and plant performance guidance.
Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems CEO, Greg Bentley, discussed how the convergence of IT (information technology), OT (operational technology) and ET (engineering technology) is enabling owner-operators to go beyond asset performance monitoring to asset performance modeling, and thereby achieve demonstrable improvements in asset performance. He will also explain why digital engineering models are critical to realizing the benefits of the Internet of Things, and how new breakthroughs in reality modeling—enabled by way of UAVs, digital imaging, and innovative software—are making the continuous creation of as-operated digital engineering models possible for every infrastructure asset.
With businesses squeezing more and more out of their aging assets, today’s asset managers have to be able to prioritize and direct their limited resources towards things that really matter. This latest release of AssetWise APM (v7.4) helps asset managers comply with API 580 risk based inspection guidelines and provides enhanced capabilities for integrity management and process safety.
Bedrock Automation
Bedrock Automation has introduced a cyber secure, standalone Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for industrial control system applications. The Bedrock UPS.500 features powerful onboard electronics that enhance the performance advantages of lithium ion (Li-ion) polymer battery technology, manage Bedrock’s patented deep authentication cyber protection, and enable secure Ethernet communications. A sealed NEMA4x aluminum housing provides protection from cyber tampering and enables use amidst the most challenging field installations.
Statseeker
“Interdependencies between applications, servers, and your network facilitate your businesses operational efficiency, or will contribute to its failure”, remarked Frank Williams, Statseeker CEO. He continues by saying “this is quite a challenge and one that is becoming tougher to manage. Using the right network monitoring solution makes the above challenges much easier to manage”.
The new features of Version 4.0 strengthens the already successful Statseeker platform by providing improved functionality and helping to streamline workflow. The Statseeker solution delivers real-time visibility right to the edge of the network no matter how big the infrastructure. It installs in minutes and delivers value immediately as it discovers a network of more than 600,000 interfaces in less than an hour, keeps data indefinitely in its original granularity and provides total visibility across the entire network infrastructure. Statseeker is the only network performance monitoring technology to seamlessly and successfully combine speed + scale + value .
Indegy-stealth security startup
Indegy, the industrial cyber security company, emerged from stealth mode and announced the first cyber security platform that provides comprehensive visibility into the critical control-layer of Operational Technology (OT) networks to identify threats that place the safety, reliability and security of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) at risk. By detecting logic changes to controllers that manage power grids, gas pipelines and manufacturing facilities, Indegy provides advanced protection against cyber attacks, insider threats and unauthorized modifications.
To gain the visibility needed to detect and respond to unauthorized ICS changes, control-layer activity must be monitored. This includes modifications to controller logic, configurations, firmware downloads and any variations in controller state.
C-Labs
C-Labs Corporation announced its new Factory-Relay Internet of Things (IoT) Software Development Kit (SDK). For manufacturing plants and other industrial equipment sites, the new SDK simplifies the connection of different types of machinery, devices, and sensors and streamlines the development of new applications to collect, store, analyze, and act upon machine data.
The Factory-Relay IoT SDK allows companies to securely connect equipment regardless of age or protocol, and easily develop new applications using tools and technology already familiar to enterprise application developers.
“Customers told us they needed to adapt and extend IoT deployments without sacrificing security or requiring significant training for either operations technology (OT) or information technology (IT) teams,” said Chris Muench, CEO of C-Labs. “Building on the success of our Factory-Relay, this new SDK makes it easier to extend IoT deployments in a way that is compliant with enterprise IT policies, protecting data and ensuring efficient operations. Our patent-pending approach provides a connection point among previously incompatible protocols.”
