by Gary Mintchell | May 21, 2018 | Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, Software
Hannover Messe was the place to learn the latest about all things digital—digital twin, Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). SAP was one of the many stops in my itinerary advancing the trend.
My contact at the SAP booth at Hannover wasn’t around when I arrived for my appointment, so I left—only to get a text a half-hour later that he had arrived. But I was off to another appointment by then. However I did glean this information from the company at and following the show.
SAP enters the digital twin era
SAP SE has introduced SAP S/4HANA Cloud for intelligent product design, a new solution for collaborative research and development.
The solution, which is built on SAP Cloud Platform using SAP’s latest digital twin technology, is one of the building blocks for a network of digital twins to enable new business models.
Powered by SAP Leonardo and integrated with business processes in the digital core, SAP S/4HANA Cloud for intelligent product design enables customers to accelerate product design and development with requirement-driven systems engineering and instant collaboration across an extended network of suppliers and partners.
“The solution provides shared views of digital twin information for customers to gain live insights on new products and to store, share and review engineering documents with internal and external participants,” said Bernd Leukert, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products & Innovation.
SAP’s network of digital twins synchronizes the virtual, physical, conditional, and commercial definitions of assets and products in real time to accelerate innovation, optimize operating performance, predict service requirements, improve diagnostics and enhance decision-making. It enables new levels of collaboration among manufacturers of products, operators of assets, suppliers and service companies. The approach combines digital twins with manufacturing solutions from SAP, cloud networks and SAP Leonardo capabilities, including machine learning, blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), to optimize the product lifecycle with:
• Digital representation: SAP synchronizes digital twin business data, product information, asset master data and IoT-connected data from both on-premise and cloud solutions enabling companies to represent the world digitally. Solutions including SAP Predictive Engineering Insights, SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service and the SAP 3D Visual Enterprise applications provide access to rich data processing capabilities and live configuration, state, condition and control information.
• Business process: Rich enterprise-grade data processing capabilities allow customers to create, access and update digital twins to support business processes. SAP solutions provide an integrated data model from design, production and maintenance to service, including packaged integration to existing systems for computer-aided design, ERP, and product lifecycle management. Offerings providing end-to-end process support for manufacturers and operators include SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Engineering Control Center integration tool, SAP Hybris Service Cloud solutions, and the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence and SAP Manufacturing Execution applications.
• Business networks: With leading network offerings such as SAP Ariba solutions, SAP Asset Intelligence Network, and the SAP Distributed Manufacturing application, SAP is uniquely positioned to provide a virtual platform for collaboration on products and assets. The network of digital twins enables secure data access, sharing and governance on a global scale.
• Networks of digital representation: SAP enables twin-to-twin connections in systems within a specific asset and on an asset-to-asset level. SAP solutions such as SAP Asset Intelligence Network provide semantic and industry-standards support in an asset core modeling environment to enable live enrichment during the product or asset lifecycle.
Digital Manufacturing Cloud
SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud helps companies optimize performance, elevate production quality and efficiency, and ensure worker safety.
Drawing on SAP’s expertise in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), predictive analytics and supply networks, the solution enables manufacturers to deploy Industry 4.0 technologies in the cloud.
The new cloud solution extends and complements the digital manufacturing portfolio of on-premise solutions from SAP and is available in different bundles to serve manufacturers of varying sizes in both discrete and process industries and roles within their respective organizations.
SAP customers can choose from the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud solution for execution, which provides all solutions in the manufacturing cloud portfolio, or the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud solution for insights, which focuses on performance management and predictive quality.
“Manufacturers in the era of Industry 4.0 require solutions that are intelligent, networked and predictive,” said Leukert. “Our manufacturing cloud solutions help customers take advantage of the Industrial Internet of Things by connecting equipment, people and operations across the extended digital supply chain and tightly integrating manufacturing with business operations.”
SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud includes the following:
• SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for execution: Industry0-enabled shop floor solution features “lot size one” and paperless production capabilities. It integrates business systems with the shop floor, allowing for complete component and material-level visibility for single and global installations.
• SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for insights: Centralized, data-driven performance management enables key stakeholders to achieve best-in-class manufacturing performance and operations.
• Predictive quality: This helps manufacturers gain valuable insights to conform to specifications across processes and streamline quality management. It also allows manufacturers to apply predictive algorithms that can reduce losses from defects, deficiencies or variations, and recommend corrective actions.
• Manufacturing network: The network provides a cloud-based collaborative platform integrated with SAP Ariba solutions connecting customers with manufacturing service providers, such as suppliers of 3D and computer numerical control (CNC) printing services, material providers, original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and technical certification companies.
Also at Hannover Messe 2018, SAP announced SAP Connected Worker Safety, a solution designed to reduce risks, costs and protect employees. Information from wearables and other sensor-enabled equipment can help companies react immediately to a hazardous situation or incident while proactively managing worker fatigue and other hazard inducers. Real-time information allows monitoring of compliance at all times against regulatory and other parameters.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 29, 2018 | Interoperability, Manufacturing IT, Standards
“Digital Transformation is so last year. While many legacy companies around the world are still grappling with “transforming” their digital ecosystems, the true leaders are already on to next hot topic: Digital Transformation 2.0. We’ll call it ‘Digital Reinvention.’ ” Media relations agencies, aka PR agencies, must be under constant pressure to get messages published however they can. I’m flooded with teasers such as this one. And few, if any, take the time to know if their target is a good place for the news. It’s almost like there is no strategy other than send out as many promos as possible and hope some land.
Most I just delete. Then I get the inevitable follow up, when are you going to run my news (that probably doesn’t apply to your coverage but I need numbers)?
I bit on this one. Is Digital Reinvention an attempt to coin a new marketing phrase? Is it a real thing with a real definition? Dr. Google told me that the phrase has been around for several years, but it has not caught on. Maybe Rick Bullotta will catch on with Industry 4.5? (Search on LinkedIn)
The press release introduced me to Alfresco co-founder John Newton. He was quoted, “the whole notion of infinite computing, infinite storage, and resilience is just completely different.” Those changes are having a profound impact on how companies think about their future. Cloud adoption is happening at the speed of light as companies embrace the idea that they are no longer limited by server space. Responsive design and responsive applications are driving not just apps, but the entire business model. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, TaskRabbit and the behemoth, Amazon, are taking those words to heart and constantly reinventing each day.
So, I talked with Newton. He mentioned they had done a survey on what companies were achieving with Digital Transformation, how fast they were growing—innovative, size, etc. That formed the foundation for his thoughts. He told me to look at platform, design, and business operations. How open are they to connecting to customers and suppliers. Innovators looked at Digital Transformation not as technology only but also as business operations stretching to customers and supply chain.
Newton called out ‘design thinking’ that looks from the users point of view to make technology human. Another type of today’s thinking is ‘open’—open source, open standards, open architecture. “This will trump all other forms. It is naturally attractive to customers. The more profound is platform thinking. This is dominating in the stock market. Five of the top 10 value companies are platform plays, including Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. They have a long term relationship with customers. In manufacturing think after-service care, maintenance and service relationships. Product is almost a loss leader. Digital twin is part of the platform play, for example, using it to predict failures.
Twenty-five minutes into the conversation, Newton had not tried to sell me on Alfresco. I had looked him up and noted he had founded Documentuum before founding Alfresco. So, I had to ask. Always need to learn about new companies. “We help create and manage documents and processes,” he told me. “We have a different way of thinking—open, open source, architecture, cloud friendly, AWS templates, manage in a matter of minutes.” Sounds interesting. All of my favorite concepts.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 1, 2018 | News, Software
The industrial software market seems to be undergoing quite a consolidation right now. I’m not entirely sure what that means. There are a couple of underlying factors but slowing growth of the market is often one. Another is that larger companies usually find it more expedient to innovate through acquisition. A portfolio manager or CEO can see what is working in the market and see gaps in their own offerings. Then it’s simply a matter of negotiation.
I don’t know Aras as well as I know many other companies, but interesting that I finally wrote about its digital twin and digital thread strategy this week and then comes the announcement of its acquisition of the Impresa Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) business from Infospectrum.
Aras states it gains a suite of complementary MRO capabilities to help Manufacturers and Owner-Operators digitally transform development and maintenance of complex products. With the Impresa acquisition, Aras will deliver PLM and MRO on a single platform that extends the Digital Thread to the field and provides the foundation for Digital Twin.
The Aras Impresa MRO software will be available as part of Aras enterprise subscriptions and is immediately available at no charge for current Aras subscribers.
As the justification for the acquisition, Aras says, “To stay ahead of competition, manufacturers must continuously innovate next-generation products and offer the flexibility of capacity-as-a-service offerings. As a result, they need to transform how they develop products and plan to service them in the field. Connecting their PLM to MRO gives these companies a path to achieve both goals with a closed loop between product development and field data.”
And further, “Adding PLM functionality enables Owner-Operators to bring product engineering to their maintenance practices. With a combined PLM and MRO solution, they gain the PLM capability necessary to manage designs, decisions, and part selection related to maintenance and service of their assets.”
Peter Schroer, Aras CEO, states, “Companies choose Aras as a digital transformation partner to modernize their most complex engineering and manufacturing processes today and for the future – and have been asking for an MRO application to extend their journey. With the acquisition of Impresa, we are adding a highly-talented team and proven solution to further expand our MRO capabilities and to be first to connect MRO to the Digital Thread on a single platform.”
As part of the transaction, Aras will acquire technology, intellectual property, and subject matter expertise. Aras plans to immediately begin incorporating the Impresa MRO technology onto the Aras PLM Platform to continue to deliver full product lifecycle traceability on a single platform and code base.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 29, 2018 | Data Management, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
I am a sucker for open platforms. When the PR agency wrote with a teaser about discussing open platforms with Marc Lind, SVP Strategy at Aras, a PLM supplier, I bit. They threw in “digital twin” and “digital thread” as the topping and cherry atop the sundae, and the appointment was made.
We talked just before Christmas, but I’ve had such a crazy January that I’ve just now gotten to this in my pile of things to write.
PLM is often thought of as an enterprise application and covered by analysts who also watch such areas as ERP. I’ve talked with suppliers for years as a magazine editor, but they didn’t really seem to fit well within the magazines and they most likely were not advertising prospects, so there wasn’t pressure to write much. I’m saying that I’m not an expert in the area like some of my friends.
But I’ve followed the technology for many years. I’ve seen it coming—this coordination of digital and physical. As soon as the digital folks could get it all together—especially better databases and interfaces—then I knew we’d be much closer to the realization of digital manufacturing.
Lind told me something about the Aras platform. First, he said, was the attempt at doing away with silos where you might have your mechanical CAD, then have your electrical CAD, then perhaps your MES, and your ERP. He said not only was there a problem within manufacturing, think about the next step, say connected cars and other systems of systems, where things really need to interact across boundaries.
Check out the Aras platform. It’s interesting. And once again as I’m seeing more often, it is exploring a different business model that can make its platform and products available to a wider customer base. For other writing I’ve done on open platforms, click the small “ad” on my site to download the MIMOSA white paper.
Digital Twin
We also talked digital twin, one of the foundation concepts for digital manufacturing.
He said the term Digital Twin was coined back in 2002 by Dr. Michael Grieves while at University of Michigan. Effectively, the Digital Twin is an exact virtual representation of a physical thing. It’s as if the physical product or system was looking in a virtual mirror.
Grieves describes it as a mirroring (or twinning) of what exists in the real world and what exists in the virtual world. It contains all the informational sets of the physical ‘thing’ meaning its cross-discipline – not just a mechanical / geometric representation, but also including the electronics, wiring, software, firmware, etc.
Many people talk about Digital Twins in the context of monitoring, simulation and predictive maintenance which are all incredibly valuable and potentially transformative in their own right, however, there would seem to be much more to it.
“As products of all types move to include connectivity, sensors, and intelligence we can’t just think about the data streaming back from the field.”
Without accurate “Context” – Digital Twin – time series data generated during production and ongoing operation is difficult or even impossible to understand and analyze.
In addition, the ability to interpret and act upon these data often require traceability to prior information from related revisions – Digital Thread.
“To complicate matters further as artificial intelligence / cognitive computing is introduced the necessity for the Digital Twin becomes even greater. If Knowledge = Information in Context, then without a Digital Twin, machine learning won’t work as intended, will be rendered ineffective or worse… potentially leading to risky misinterpretations or misdirected actions.”
Finally, Lind warns, “Because without Context – Digital Twin – the IoT-enabled value proposition is severely limited and could introduce real liability.”
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 27, 2017 | Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
GE Digital continues to build out its platform and ecosystem of applications while new GE CEO John Flannery confirmed his commitment to the digitalization strategy begun under his predecessor.
The sixth Minds + Machines conference featured about 90% growth in attendance from last year. Begun five years ago not long after the company began assembling its digital strategy as a thought leadership gathering, the conference has evolved into a substantial user conference. Attendance was reported at about 3,700 filling much of Moscone Center West in San Francisco.
I’ve summarized the announcements from the event below. My initial takeaway for the biggest news of the day was GE’s emphasis on building a partner ecosystem. As the company built out its Predix platform, it seemed to be on a track for keeping everything close to home. Saying that they could move more quickly to market, they talked about working more with partners. One executive told me that the partnership with Microsoft for Predix on Azure was the most significant announcement of the week.
This is my first time here and reinforces the idea that GE Digital is a major player in the industry segment begging comparison with Siemens. Some thought also ABB (they should not have forgotten Schneider) also.
Most of my discussions involved Asset Performance Management, the new Operations Performance Management (see below), and helping me understand Predix.
Following is a summary of announcements:
Flannery touched on some statistics from a survey concerning the “digital gap” of perceived importance of a digital transformation and how far along companies are.
GE Digital Industrial Evolution Index
The inaugural Index reflects a total score of 63 on a scale of 100 and indicates that while outlook for the Industrial Internet is very strong, scoring 78.3 (out of 100), company readiness significantly lags, scoring 55.2 (out of 100). This disconnect – between outlook and company readiness – presents both a challenge and opportunity for companies seeking to benefit from the IIoT. 86% believe digital industrial transformation is important to the competitiveness of their companies, with the majority (76%) rating the ability to provide higher quality services as the foremost outcome of digital industrial transformation.
GE unveiled expansions to its suite of edge-to-cloud technologies and industrial applications.
Edge-to-Cloud Intelligence on Any Industrial Asset, Anywhere
GE Digital is expanding its Predix Edge capabilities to help run analytics as close to the source of data as possible. Predix Edge gives customers with limited connectivity, latency limitations, regulatory or other constraints a way to deploy applications closer to the originating data.
Enhancements include:
• Predix Edge Manager allows customers to support large fleets of edge devices – up to 200,000 connected devices from a single console.
• Predix Machine enables microservice-based applications to run at the edge on customers’ virtualized data center infrastructure or on server-class hardware from GE or its partners. This also supports Predix Edge Manager, which was previously available only as a cloud service.
• Predix complex event processing (CEP) allows for faster and more efficient analytics and other event processing at extreme low latency, available at the edge in Q1 2018.
Predix Platform on Microsoft Azure
Announced last year and available generally in 2018, GE Digital and Microsoft partnership extends the accessibility of Predix to Microsoft’s global cloud footprint, including data sovereignty, hybrid capabilities and advanced developer and data services, enabling customers around the world to capture intelligence from their industrial assets.
Operations Performance
Alongside its Asset Performance Management (APM) software, the core application, GE Digital introduced Operations Performance Management (OPM), a solution helps industrials optimize the throughput of industrial processes.
OPM uses real-time and historical data – along with advanced analytics – to help customers make better operational decisions. The solution provides an early warning if industrial processes deviate from plan, arms operators with the information and time to troubleshoot operational issues and helps them take preventative actions to meet business goals. GE Digital’s OPM software initially targets the mining industry and will expand to additional industries early next year.
Enhanced Field Service Management Solutions
With service technicians looking to embrace technology to improve their productivity and deliver a better experience for customers, ServiceMax from GE Digital announced several enhancements to its FSM suite – enabling even greater efficiencies and bringing advanced analytics to service operations.
• Artificial intelligence-enabled predictive service times now integrate the Apache Spark AI engine to improve service time estimates.
• Additionally, a new application integration solution enables service providers to launch and share FSM data with third-party mobile applications installed on the same device.
• New capabilities in schedule optimization allow for dependent job scheduling between work orders for multiple visits aimed at improving first-time fix rates.
Predix Studio
GE Digital also introduced Predix Studio to help companies build and scale their own industrial applications and extend its Asset Performance Management (APM) suite. Available in Q1 2018, Predix Studio simplifies the development process by giving customers the ability to extend applications and empower industrial subject matters experts to build apps in a low-code, high-productivity environment.
Digital Twin Analytics Workbench
A solution that applies a library of algorithms and templates to make it faster and easier for companies to build their own digital twins on Predix. The Analytics Workbench, currently a technology preview from GE Power, can be used to augment existing digital twins with new data streams. For example, power producers using drones to inspect wind turbine blades, pipelines or fuel reserves can integrate visual inspection data into the digital twins they already use to manage generation assets and grid infrastructure.
