ABB Launches New Products And Digital Enterprise Platform

ABB Launches New Products And Digital Enterprise Platform

ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer

ABB held its customer conference in Houston this week and showcased many new products and unveiled its digital enterprise platform ABB Ability.

ABB Ability is the name given to its portfolio of digital solutions. I was trying to place it into a competitive landscape when one speaker showed a slide positioning ABB Ability with GE Predix, Siemens Mindsphere, and Schneider Electric’s Ecostruxure. CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer likened it to putting all the Lego blocks of ABB’s digital offerings together.

ABB Chief Digital Officer Guido Jauret

ABB Ability is a platform, database, and analytics that allows such things as helping customers in utilities, industry, transport and infrastructure develop new processes and advance existing ones by providing insights and optimizing planning and controls for real-time operations. The results can then be fed into control systems to improve key metrics such as factory uptime, speed and yield.

“As a pioneering technology leader in digital solutions, with an installed base of more than 70 million connected devices and 70,000 control systems, ABB is uniquely positioned to support its customers’ digital transformation,” said Spiesshofer. “With ABB Ability, we are combining ABB’s entire portfolio of digital solutions and services. We are creating additional customer value by bringing together ABB’s domain expertise, advanced connectivity and the latest digital technologies. With this, our customers can achieve unprecedented improvements in operational performance and productivity.”

Digital offerings provided by ABB Ability include performance management solutions for asset-intensive industries; control systems for process industries; remote monitoring services for robots, motors and machinery; and control solutions for buildings, electric-vehicle charging networks and offshore platforms. Some of the more specialized offerings address energy management for data centers and navigation optimization for maritime shipping fleets, among many others.

Customers who are already using the portfolio of digital solutions that are now part of ABB Ability include some of the world’s leading utilities, manufacturers and service providers, among them Shell Oil, CenterPoint Energy, Con Edison, BASF, Royal Caribbean, Cargill, Volvo, BMW and many others.

“Building our solutions on the Azure platform means we can take advantage of all of its capabilities and add value with our domain-specific offering,” said ABB Chief Digital Officer Guido Jouret. “In effect, we are turning ABB’s decades of industrial domain expertise into software offerings that our customers can access through the world’s largest and most advanced digital platform. From being a hidden digital champion, we are becoming the partner of choice for customers embarking on a digital transformation. They can now know more, do more, do better, together. We can help them assess, automate, optimize and collaborate.”

This product was the coolest thing at the show for me. It is ABB’s take on the trend toward smaller I/O devices with configurable racks. Admittedly not having first-mover advantage, ABB was able to build on existing competitive offerings and release an updated take on the technology.

 

ABB Ability System 800xA Select I/O, a new addition to System 800xA, is a redundant, Ethernet-based, single-channel I/O system. It supports ABB’s next-generation project execution model, Intelligent Projects, which offers a range of efficiency improvements for automation projects. With Select I/O, customers can undertake major projects on a faster schedule with fewer cost overruns. It uses standardized cabinets that allow installers to digitally marshal signals instead of using labor-intensive marshalling panels. Loop checks can be done before the rest of the system is delivered, minimizing the impact of late changes and allowing for project tasks to be executed in parallel.

ABB Ability Asset Health Center – Among the first ABB Ability solutions to be launched on Azure is ABB’s next-generation asset performance management solution, Asset Health Center 3.0. Available since January 2017, it uses predictive and prescriptive analytics and customized models to identify and prioritize emerging maintenance needs based on probability of failure and asset criticality.

ABB Ability Collaborative Operations – This powerful solution, now being brought to scale across industries, helps customers collaborate more effectively. It allows experts to work together across organization boundaries, using the same data and analytics platforms. It focuses on such outcomes as improving productivity, reducing equipment failures, lowering the cost of asset maintenance and transforming overall business performance. This is done while maximizing security and protecting data, people and assets at every level of integration. The solution has been delivering sustainable, long-term results to early adopters.

ABB Ability Digital Substation – ABB’s digital substation provides customers in the utility sector with unmatched control and efficiency. The digital substation incorporates fiber optic current sensors and disconnecting circuit breakers to reduce maintenance requirements and the need for miles of conventional cabling. ABB Ability takes these advances several steps further by combining the latest electrical gear with digital sensors and cloud computing. The result is that grid operators can make decisions based on comprehensive, up-to-the-moment information, while predictive algorithms can improve maintenance practices and asset management.

ABB Ability Smart Sensor – This smart sensor solution, unveiled last year, connects low-voltage electric motors to the Industrial Internet, allowing them to be monitored continuously. The solution, which can be easily affixed to a motor, transmits data on vibration, temperature, loads and power consumption to the cloud. Alerts are generated as soon as any of the parameters deviates from the norm, allowing the operator to take preventive action before the motor malfunctions. Early indications are that the smart sensor solution leads to a reduction in downtime of motors by up to 70 percent and extends their lifespan by up to 30 percent. Acting on the data to optimize the motor’s performance reduces energy consumption by as much as 10 percent.

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

ethernet-industrial-ip-elearning

Industrial IP Advantage has launched an eLearning course focused on IT/OT integration for Industrial Ethernet. This is the fourth in a series of training courses designed to meet the emerging needs of control engineers and IT professionals tasked with deploying a secure network architecture. These courses are jointly developed by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation and available on the Industrial IP Advantage website.

Controls engineers have the plant-level domain knowledge needed to identify and analyze new industrial technologies that will help improve production efficiency and flexibility. Meanwhile, IT engineers have the domain knowledge needed to present actionable information where it is needed within an enterprise and throughout the value chain. This new course provides both with a sufficient level of knowledge to collaboratively architect a smart, integrated control system.

“Convergence between the IT and OT worlds is demanding new skills and knowledge,” said Ricardo Borlone, product manager at Precision Inc. “These self-paced courses are filling the skills gaps, and allow each participant to advance in their own time, rhythm and learning capacity. I especially enjoy this training format as it provides me the opportunity to focus on areas that match my interest and needs.”

The online training brings together the combined knowledge, best practices and application-specific expertise of three industry leaders to help engineers build a holistic IP-based network architecture. The courses are designed to help engineers drive design decisions from the device-level to the enterprise-wide network, leveraging interactive, scenario-based training on topics, such as logical topologies, protocols, switching and routing, security, physical cabling and wireless considerations.

The four available courses include:

  • Courses 1 and 2: Designing for the Cell/Area Zone
  • Course 3: Designing for Industrial Zone
  • Course 4: IT/OT Integration

The full training program is offered for $350 on the Industrial IP Advantage website.

“A critical mass of industrialized networking technology is now available. And for many manufacturers, the real challenge is finding qualified staff to design, deploy and maintain these networks,” said Paul Brooks, networks business development manager, Rockwell Automation. “The eLearning courses offered by Industrial IP Advantage are designed to help fill this skills gap.”

“Building a skilled and competent workforce ready to deploy a converged architecture presents businesses with more than just greater connectivity. It offers tremendous productivity gains, process efficiencies, and business value,” said Paul Taylor, senior manager, Cisco.

“A structured, engineered approach to assessing, designing, deploying and monitoring the physical infrastructure is necessary to ensure that investments in critical manufacturing networks deliver optimum performance,” said Ryan Lepp, director of business development, Panduit.  “These new training courses help both IT and OT professionals work together to deliver optimal network performance with adherence to industry standards.”

Industrial IP Advantage is a community established by Cisco, Panduit and Rockwell Automation – three like-minded organizations joining together to educate the market on the benefits of Ethernet, Internet Protocol and EtherNet/IP. Industrial IP Advantage was formed in cooperation with ODVA, the organization that manages and commercializes the EtherNet/IP specification and standard.

The vision of Industrial IP Advantage is enabling smart manufacturing with a workforce that is fully prepared to accelerate the transformation to secure information architectures with best practices, education and training that drive IT/OT convergence.

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

Time Sensitive Networking to Promote Interoperable Ecosystem

News regarding Time Sensitive Networking continues to flow. The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry, announced the launch of three industry-specific time sensitive networking (TSN) consortiums – Automotive Networking, Industrial Networking, and ProAV Networking – designed to provide deterministic performance within standard Ethernet for real-time, mission critical applications. By providing high quality test plans, tools, and test beds for TSN, UNH-IOL allows businesses to improve products and accelerate market readiness.

“Standards-based precise time, guaranteed bandwidth, and guaranteed worst-case latency in a converged Ethernet network is a game-changer to many industries,” said Bob Noseworthy, Chief Engineer, UNH-IOL. “Through UNH-IOL’s industry-specific TSN consortiums, companies can be at the forefront and drive the technology forward by validating their solutions with a full suite of testing services, which will allow applications such as self-driving cars and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to take off.”

Originally established as a “best effort” network, Ethernet needs additional specific features to deploy mission critical applications. TSN standards enable deterministic real-time communication over Ethernet, allowing solutions to be built to provide extremely precise, predictable timing across the network. By adding features to Ethernet such as time synchronization, ingress policing, seamless redundancy, frame preemption, scheduled traffic, and stream reservation, TSN ensures mission-critical, time sensitive data is not held up on the network, promoting an interoperable ecosystem spanning across many industries. As TSN standards mature, UNH-IOL consortium members are able to support rapid development of conformance and interoperability solutions for emerging standards, validating their silicon and early products by gaining access to test solutions as well as multi-vendor test beds.

A major driving force behind the development of TSN standards is the emerging Automotive Ethernet market. The future connected, autonomous vehicle requires the time sensitivity and predictability in networking that TSN provides to support Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) requirements, infotainment expectations from consumers, and other elements of vehicle electronics. Supporting automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and manufacturers supplying OEMs enabled with deterministic Ethernet solutions, the TSN Automotive Networking Consortium provides a setting for collaboration and participation in shaping the emerging standards through neutral, third party conformance and interoperability testing.

TSN’s importance is also emerging in industrial automation due to the rise in interest around the IIoT, specifically the mission-critical, time sensitive data that must be transferred and shared within strict bounds of latency and reliability. TSN enhancements for Industrial Ethernet provide standards-based determinism and reliability needed for these applications. The TSN Industrial Networking Consortium brings together stakeholders to realize the benefits of TSN – bandwidth, security, interoperability, and latency and synchronization for IIoT, robotics, assembly plants, and machines, as well as shape the standards and protocols for TSN in the industrial market.

Recent enhancements and certifications in the audio/video market have created a wider choice of compatible products and open technology that brings high-quality AV networking within the reach of any size Professional AV system.  TSN enhancements provide the important timing audio and video systems need. The Pro AV Networking TSN Consortium is a testing ground for the promises of seamless redundancy, low-latency, and synchronization in the professional audio/video market.

UNH-IOL provides the test facility for stakeholders across multiple industries – automotive, industrial, and Pro AV – to drive the emerging, maturing TSN standards. To learn more about joining the new consortiums, please visit: Automotive Networking TSN Consortium, Industrial Networking TSN Consortium, Pro AV Networking TSN Consortium.

IT and OT Training for Industrial Ethernet

Belden Joins Industry-Leading Effort For Time-Sensitive Networking

Time-Sensitive Networking holds the promise for great advances in industrial networking when it gets adopted for deterministic high-speed Ethernet. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) has taken a leading role in advancing the standard. Belden Inc. has joined the IIC Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) Testbed, which aims to improve multi-vendor interoperability and to display the value of the IEEE 802.1 Ethernet standards for time-sensitive networking in a manufacturing ecosystem.

“By enabling a single Ethernet network to deliver time-guaranteed messages for both mission-critical and time-sensitive applications, while simultaneously delivering high-bandwidth, supervisory, data collection, video and other traffic, TSN fulfils a critical need in bringing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to manufacturing environments,” said Jeff Lund, senior director of product line management at Belden and co-chair of the IIC marketing working group. “Belden has been a leading participant in the IEEE standardization effort of TSN since 2009 and we’re excited to be at the point where that hard work is now demonstrated in a multi-vendor environment. We hope our many years of experience with TSN will add valuable insight to the testbed and ensure it delivers on its mission.”

The TSN Testbed was on display at the 2016 IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 25-27. Event attendees viewed live demonstrations of the testbed, which includes Hirschmann’s prototype TSN-enabled RSP Ethernet switches, and see first-hand the possibilities TSN enables for industrial networks.

“The addition of Belden to our TSN Testbed will help bring our collective efforts one step closer to reality – as we all work together in the pursuit of converging IT and operational technologies,” said Dr. Richard Soley, executive director of the IIC. “Testbeds serve as a center of innovation, and we know Belden’s TSN experience will help us achieve our goal. This testbed in particular seeks to show the value of TSN technology, as well as identify and address any implementation challenges to continue improving the standards.”

Following the event, the testbed will be moved to National Instruments’ headquarters in Austin, Texas. In addition to National Instruments, Belden is working alongside leading industrial companies, including Schneider Electric and Bosch Rexroth, among others.

Does ProfiNet Have a Future–Industrial Networking

Does ProfiNet Have a Future–Industrial Networking

In this new world of the Industrial Internet of Things, is ProfiNet still relevant as an industrial network (fieldbus)? Is there a future for ProfiNet?

These were the questions I had heading into Phoenix and the 22nd annual meeting of PI North America. And I received answers.

Karsten Schneider, director of Profibus International, gave the technology update keynote and raised several interesting points.

More nodes of ProfiNet were sold in 2015 than were nodes of Profibus. This is the anticipated crossover point where Ethernet is becoming the dominant bus as well as network. Further, cooperation between PI and the Fieldcomm organization (combination of HART Communication Foundation and Fieldbus Foundation) has proceeded with agreement between FDI and EDDL. Further cooperation was obvious by the presence of a representative of the CLPA (CC-Link Partners Association). CLPA and PI have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a standard method of communicating from one bus to the other.

Remember the “fieldbus wars”? Well, “times change.”

Time Sensitive Networking

Many application areas beyond industrial seriously need higher speed, determinism, real-time in their networks. Think of the growth of video streaming in real time, for example. Therefore the IEEE has been working on a new standard–Time Sensitive Networking or TSN.The standard is being built on IEEE 802.1. Many tremendous benefits will follow.

Think on this tidbit. When adopted as a standard, it will likely be build into commercial Ethernet chips. With a large number of industries wanting this technology, the number of TSN-enabled commercially available Ethernet chips will be huge. With huge commercial market potential, the price will drop. TSN Ethernet chips will be readily available and affordable for industrial devices. This will also likely replace Profinet IRT in the future (but not for a few years).

Take note that this will be a generally available and used chipset. It will primarily be IT oriented, but used also by OT. Perhaps this is the technology that brings the two together?

Future Work

A wide-ranging panel discussion sparked the creative juices of the group. One topic became the future engineer. We’ve had mechanical engineers, control engineers, data (software) engineers. Panelists expect that in the not-very-distant future, engineers will be multi-disciplinary.

I’ve maintained for several years that control and automation engineers must become network engineers–at least to a certain level. It is becoming even more important that they know something about SQL, programming in languages such as C, C++, Java, Python, and in scripting languages. Depending upon what sort of industry within manufacturing/production they should also be familiar with mechatronics or processes, too.

Is there a future for ProfiNet? Yes, but it will look only slightly like the present.

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