by Gary Mintchell | Jul 18, 2016 | Automation, Operations Management, Software
SafeMove2
[Industrial] “Software’s Where It’s At.” The blog title was intriguing. It was implied that industrial software was increasingly more important than hardware. Then I began to look at my accumulating queue of news. There is a bunch. Here is a sampling. It appears that more innovation time and investment is going into software than hardware. What do you think? Software is now where it’s at?
Cloud and Analytics
GE and Microsoft announced a partnership that will make GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet available on the Microsoft Azure cloud for industrial businesses. The move marks the first step in a broad strategic collaboration between the two companies. This continues a trend I’ve noticed recently of a newly resurgent Microsoft adding clients to Azure cloud.
“Connecting industrial machines to the internet through the cloud is a huge step toward simplifying business processes and reimagining how work gets done,” said Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. “GE is helping its customers extract value from the vast quantities of data coming out of those machines and is building an ecosystem of industry-leading partners like Microsoft that will allow the Industrial Internet to thrive on a global scale.”
Bringing Predix to Azure, according to GE, means industrial customers will now have access to additional capabilities such as natural language technology, artificial intelligence, advanced data visualization and enterprise application integration.
Microsoft predicts Azure will support the growth of the entire industrial IoT ecosystem by offering Predix customers access to “the largest cloud footprint available today”, along with data sovereignty, hybrid capabilities, and advanced developer and data services. In addition, GE and Microsoft plan to integrate Predix with Azure IoT Suite and Cortana Intelligence Suite along with Microsoft business applications, such as Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI, in order to connect industrial data with business processes and analytics.
“Every industry and every company around the world is being transformed by digital technology,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Working with companies like GE, we can reach a new set of customers to help them accelerate their transformation across every line of business — from the factory floor to smart buildings.”
Software’s Where It’s At
This is the blog that brought my thinking to a focus. ARC analyst Mark Sen Gupta wrote about a recent CEO appointment. Honeywell recently announced that Dave Cote is retiring after 14 years at the helm and will be succeeded by Darius Adamczyk.
In the announcement Mr. Cote states, “Scanning & Mobility and Honeywell Process Solutions are software-based businesses with advanced offerings that blend physical and digital capabilities, and they serve as benchmarks for where the rest of Honeywell is heading. Darius’ deep expertise in software will open new growth paths for all of our businesses, which are blending Honeywell’s advanced software programming capabilities with leading-edge physical products and unparalleled domain expertise in a wide variety of industries.” This is a very interesting statement because it recognizes a crucial shift in automation.
Says Sen Gupta, “When we think of automation we normally think of hardware: DCS, PLC, sensors. However, most of the innovation in the industry is happening in software. This aspect of automation innovation has not escaped the attention of ExxonMobil and has led to culmination of it’s open automation initiative. IIoT, cloud, analytics, edge computing have far more to do with what is provided from a software aspect than from a hardware aspect. This is not to say that hardware has no value. In fact if you were to check the balance sheets, you would find that the large automation companies earn more revenue on what we consider hardware, and something has to host the software.”
Digital Twin
Fellow ARC analyst, Dick Slansky recently wrote on how manufacturing and production systems will undergo significant changes. He foresees the eventual realization of the “lights-out” factory with adoption of all the new digital technologies.
“This is a case of leading PLM solutions providers offering advanced analytics solutions applied to the manufacturing processes and to operational optimization. The common objective is to use predictive and prescriptive analytics to improve the overall performance of production operations.”
He continues, “One of the most sought after but elusive goals of product design engineering is to validate that you have achieved all the design criteria in the as-built product. That is, closing the loop between the as-built to the as-designed, and validating that the physical product will meet all design criteria before the product is manufactured. This is where the concept of the digital twin in now being applied to product design criteria, and the goal of ‘closed-loop PLM’.”
“As IIoT, the digital thread and digital twin evolve within the overall ecosystems of product and process, the methodologies, including analytics, for both product development and production processes will converge. The intent and goal of the digital enterprise is to maintain a continuous and real-time digital thread that connects the lifecycle from concept through design, test, and build, to supply chain and products in field.”
ABB Robotics
There has been little radical innovation within industrial robots for some time. Improvements, yes; Innovation, not so much.
But ABB has been working on the software side. It just announced SafeMove2, the latest generation of its safety certified robot monitoring software.
SafeMove2 includes a host of cutting-edge safety functions, including safe speed limits, safe standstill monitoring, safe axis ranges and position and orientation supervision. The new generation functionality encourages the development of innovative robot applications by integrating safety features directly into the robot controller.
“To be efficient, robots must be able to move at speeds suited to the given application. At high speeds this can present a potential hazard for people working in the immediate vicinity. Historically, fences or cages have been used to separate man from machine in an effort to keep them out of harm’s way,” says Dr. Hui Zhang, Head of Product Management, ABB Robotics. “SafeMove2 allows robots and operators to work more closely together by restricting robot motion to precisely what is needed for a specific application.”
SafeMove2 allows for the creation of more efficient and flexible production scenarios, and provides tools that speed the commissioning workflow for faster setup and validation. It also integrates safety fieldbus connectivity into ABB’s IRC5 robot controller family as well as the IRC5 Single, Compact and Paint controllers.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 11, 2016 | Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Organizations, Technology
The Industrial Internet of Things is a phrase encompassing a range of technologies and applications across consumer and industrial worlds. Where there is a technology and/or new application with suppliers poised to provide the technology or application expertise, there is an organization. And the organization exists to provide information.
The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), the global, not-for-profit, open membership organization formed to accelerate adoption and enablement of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), announced the second edition of The Journal of Innovation. A biannual publication written by IIC members, the second edition of The Journal of Innovation features articles about the Industrial Internet technologies and services that are disrupting the global economy.
“IIoT technologies and processes are expected to generate remarkable business outcomes that will impact the global economy across all industry sectors. The IIC Journal of Innovation showcases innovations driving this transformation through the integration of people, processes, and data,” said Dr. Richard Soley, Executive Director, Industrial Internet Consortium.
The Journal of Innovation includes the following articles about disruptive IIoT technologies authored by IIC member companies:
- Organizations can expect business-model disruption from IIoT platform innovations – an example in transportation – InterDigital.
- The requirements for a connected, interoperable environment for the Industrial Internet – Thingswise/GE Global Research.
- Developing secure, interconnected medical systems – Real-Time Innovations, Inc./Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare.
- Vertical Taxonomy Landscape – the business dynamics and technical considerations of IIoT by industry sector – MITRE.
- How IIoT technologies are transforming retail – Tata Consultancy Services.
Note the keywords that are important to the entire IIoT ecosystem.
- Interconnected (key enabler)
- Interoperable (the data must be in a form to be used by multiple applications)
- Secure (if we are connecting plant assets, security is essential)
- Business-model disruption (bright people in a myriad of industries are figuring out new ways of doing business by utilizing data and advanced data analytics)
I took a few vacation days last week, so only a couple of posts. Remember to check out my podcast on Deep Work. I’ll also be taking a couple of days off this week. Tuesday evening I will be moderating another Dell Think Tank (this one in suburban Chicago) on IIoT. Many people are interested in the concept. They just need to figure out what it means to them and how they can use it.
![GE, Honeywell Release IoT Products Enhancing Decision Making [Updated]](https://themanufacturingconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Manufacturing-Connection-Logo-web.png)
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 15, 2016 | Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
The race to be the best at providing information to aid plant personnel decision making continues unabated. Here are new products from GE Digital and Honeywell Process Systems.
GE Pulse Optimizer
GE Digital announced the availability of a new Brilliant Manufacturing Suite module, Plant Pulse Optimizer. Lack of plant wide visibility often results in lost opportunities, and manufacturers’ need to easily integrate, access, analyze and visualize data to improve collaboration and information transparency within the plant. The Plant Pulse Optimizer provides a Panoramic view of all production activity for all factory personnel via real-time, multi-shift based KPIs (machine-material-labor-product intelligence) as scorecards.
The module provides insights focused on production analytics to organize manufacturing data into a structure to provide information on inventory, yield and achievement of production plans. The module is also device and back-end agnostic, which allows it to be connected to both GE and non-GE manufacturing operations systems.
Plant Pulse Optimizer is an out-of-the-box solution that requires minimal configuration. The “card”-based views aid in execution for various roles within the plant, with associated drill down cards to allow quick identification of bottlenecks at the operation level.
Plant Pulse Optimizer is available at the end of June. Brilliant Manufacturing Suite will leverage GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet to further drive enterprise optimization, helping customers maximize productivity while ensuring product quality and sustainability.
Honeywell Suite
Honeywell has launched Uniformance Suite, an integrated system of process software solutions that turn plant data into actionable information enabling smart operations.
“The Uniformance Suite is Honeywell’s analytics platform for digital intelligence and a big part of our Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) strategy,” said Ali Raza, vice president of HPS’ Advanced Solutions business. “The software suite provides powerful data analytics capabilities to enable customers to capture the data they need, visualize trends, collaborate with other users, predict and prevent equipment failures, and act to make informed business decisions.”
Using a common asset model, the Uniformance Suite:
- Collects and stores all types of data for easy retrieval and analysis
- Predicts and detects events based on underlying patterns and correlations
- Links process metrics with business KPIs for better decision making
- Enables IIoT, mobility, cloud, big data, and predictive and enterprise analytics
“Our customers are challenged to drive a culture of safety, reliability, efficiency and agility in their organizations, more so now than ever before,” said Raza. “They need access and visibility to real-time performance against business metrics. The Uniformance Suite software solutions are designed to work in unison to give businesses the ability to put their data to work.”
As part of the expanded Uniformance Suite, Honeywell has introduced Uniformance Insight, which allows customers to visualize process conditions and investigate events from any web browser. Built on an intuitive platform using thin-client software, there are no downloads or installations required. It correlates historian information along with KPIs and an asset database all in one tool, and enables collaboration with others.
“Uniformance Insight’s thin client capability means I can have more team members use this tool without having to install any special software on their computers,” said Heath Case, process control engineer and Uniformance PHD Administrator for DuPont Protection Solutions. “Because I don’t have to go to each user’s PC to roll out these changes, it translates into both cost and time savings.”
by Gary Mintchell | May 4, 2016 | Automation, News, Operations Management
Hannover Messe 2016 industrial trade fair was large, busy, cold and rainy, and exciting. Several news items are posted below including items from OPC Foundation, PI International, Beckhoff Automation, and a new-ish security company C-Labs.
Most of the news and analysis of Siemens was published on Thursday. The next post will document the highlights with analysis of the Dell Internet of Things Think Tank that I was privileged to moderate.
Panel discussion—Industrie 4.0 meets Internet of Things
One area of Halle 8 was set aside for a continuous stream of presentations mostly around “Industrie 4.0 Meets Internet of Things. I stopped by a few times. One of the first panels featured a couple of views.
The moderator posed the topic question as a Germany vs. US debate. The panelists refused to sink that low. They did offer a couple of interesting insights. Harel Kodesh of GE talked of the need to experiment. The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) is working on a test bed. He said to let industry learn how to build standards—there needs to be a global standard—then see about building platform.
Prof. Siegfried Russwurm of Siemens said, “This is not an either/or. The consumer Internet is big in the US due to scale of the US consumer market. For Industrial Internet, Middle Europe is used to making things so that emphasis on the Industrial Internet of Things is more natural.” In an insightful conclusion, Russwurm mentioned, “Customers don’t like monopolies. We will see competing platforms.”
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OPC in the World
Monday at Hannover Messe 2016, Microsoft Corp. announced it is working with the OPC Foundation to enable virtually any industrial Internet of Things (IoT) scenario through interoperability between the millions of applications and industrial equipment compliant with the OPC UA standard. Microsoft will further enable its industrial IoT customers to connect a broad range of manufacturing equipment and software that can span decades of investment with extended support of the OPC UA open source software stack.
Interoperability between devices and assets is critical for today’s factories, which are increasingly bringing new and legacy systems online and modernizing their plants and facilities. OPC UA provides a standardized communication, security, and metadata and semantics abstraction for the majority of industrial equipment. It also serves as a gateway to cloud-enabled industrial equipment, including data and device management, insights, and machine learning capabilities for equipment that was not designed with these capabilities built in.
Microsoft’s extended support for the OPC UA open source software stack spans its IoT offerings, from local connectivity with Windows devices to cloud connectivity via the Microsoft Azure platform. Integration with Azure IoT allows customers to easily send OPC UA telemetry data to the Azure cloud, as well as to command and control their OPC UA devices remotely from the Azure cloud. In addition, Windows 10 devices running the Universal Windows Platform can connect and openly communicate with other IoT devices via OPC UA.
“As Industry 4.0 reaches a tipping point, we believe that openness and interoperability between hardware, software and services will help manufacturers transform how they operate and create solutions that benefit employees’ productivity,” said Sam George, director, Azure Internet of Things at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s support of OPC UA in Azure IoT and Windows IoT will reduce barriers to industrial IoT adoption and help deliver immediate value.”
Meanwhile OPC Foundation announced more organizational collaboration ventures.
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Beckhoff Automation Reports Results
Beckhoff Automation posted global annual revenue of 620 million euros in 2015, an increase of 22 percent. This follows a similarly successful 2014 financial year in which sales rose by 17 percent. Managing Director Hans Beckhoff was very satisfied with the company’s development: “We won market share and grew much faster compared to the market as a whole. Our PC Control technology is increasingly the acknowledged market standard, and we are winning new customers worldwide with this extremely powerful technology.”
Beckhoff explained that the favorable euro exchange rate naturally helped increase growth, as with all German manufacturers who export a large share of what they make, but added that, even after revising the figure to compensate for exchange rate influences, the resulting growth rate is still an impressive 17 percent.
Beckhoff is well-represented in more than 75 countries with 34 subsidiary companies and distributors. Exports in 2015 accounted for 65 percent of total sales. “Asia is contributing strongly to our growth,” said Hans Beckhoff. “However, subsidiaries in southern Europe and North America are also performing quite well.”
Hans Beckhoff maintains an optimistic outlook on 2016 and anticipates continued double-digit sales growth: “We have strong and growing levels of incoming orders.” In order to prepare the company for this expected growth, the campus at the company headquarters in Verl will be expanded by a further 27,000 sq meters in 2016. Existing neighboring industrial buildings have already been leased for this purpose and, after being renovated, will provide additional storage and production space in the second half of the year. “This appropriately prepares us for two further years of strong growth in terms of production output,” says a confident Hans Beckhoff.
Beckhoff North America contributed to these results with an increase in revenue of 6.5 percent which followed a 16.2 percent revenue increase at the end of 2014. These positive business developments from Beckhoff North America were reported at a press conference held at Hannover Messe 2016 – the first year ever that the USA has been highlighted as the official partner country at the world’s largest industrial trade show. The intense growth in revenue was fueled by a number of factors in the North American market, including robust automation and controls purchasing from the existing customer base and several significant new customer contracts, including dramatic increases on the part of major consumer products manufacturers. “Beckhoff North America also drove double digit growth in terms of order in-flow in 2014 and 2015,” reports Aurelio Banda, CEO and President of Beckhoff North America. “We expect this encouraging trend to continue throughout the 2016 financial year, resulting in further strong results.”
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OMG statement with OPC
One of the many organizational collaborations for OPC Foundation is the Object Management Group (OMG). This collaboration brings together two protocols previously thought to be competitive. Stan Schneider, CEO of RTI and spokesperson for OMG, talked with me about the situation of DDS and OPC UA. He told me there is no competition between the two. With the new OPC UA publish/subscribe specification, OPC UA can use DDS in the same manner of UDP. The collaboration is in active development.
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PI News
At the end of last year, PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) established a new “I4.0” working group with the goal of preparing use cases relevant for Industrie 4.0 from the perspective of industrial communication. On this basis, existing and new technologies will be assessed from the standpoint of use in Industrie 4.0 production systems and the standardization environment will be analyzed. The working group will identify requirements for communication that are important in the Industrie 4.0 environment and bring them to standardization consistently as further development of PI technologies.
As one of the first results, a new sub-project is now being started for specific measures for the merging of IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operations Technology). IT networks and production networks are increasingly growing together. In the past, however, they were always identified by different characteristics. For example, IT networks mainly handle large bandwidths and connect different locations, while production networks mainly feature high performance and short latencies. With TSN (Time Sensitive Networking), technologies are now being developed in the IEEE that will connect the bandwidth of IT networks with the latency of OT networks.
A distinction of PROFINET is that it relies on standard IT technology while satisfying stringent real-time requirements. PI sees a large opportunity to combine the strengths of PROFINET and TSN and to generate further added value from this for customers, thereby setting PROFINET on a future-oriented foundation for Industrie 4.0. The combination will also yield versatile use of new TSN-capable standard Ethernet blocks for manufacturers of PROFINET devices. Proven PROFINET services, profiles, and user interfaces, such as diagnostics, alarms, PROFIsafe, and PROFIdrive remain unchanged for the user. PROFINET already provides a very good starting position for the use of TSN mechanisms. The convergence of real-time-capable traffic with IP-based traffic, which will increase significantly in Industrie 4.0 applications, is already firmly anchored in the PROFINET architecture today. In addition, new ideas discussed in the IEEE, such as establishment of real-time-capable dynamic ad-hoc connections, can be integrated. PROFINET is thus a consistent participant in the further development in the IEEE.
For this reason, PI will actively advance the further development of TSN and point out ways this technology can be used in PROFINET networks. In doing so, special attention will obviously be given to a seamless transition for today’s installations so that users have an easy path to TSN-based networks. First results of the working group can be expected at SPS/IPC/Drives 2016.
Other topics such as the use of OPC UA and expanded access to asset management data are also needed for implementation of Industrie 4.0 applications and are being actively advanced by the I4.0 working group.
The annual determination of the installed base of the portfolio of PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) continues to show a growing acceptance in the market. The numbers for PROFINET and PROFIsafe are still very pleasing. IO-Link is exhibiting a strongly accelerated growth. The somewhat leveling-off growth of PROFIBUS and simultaneous surge of PROFINET is evidence that Ethernet-based communication is starting to replace conventional fieldbus technology in production automation. The positive trend of PROFIBUS in process automation continues, in contrast.
Three million PROFINET devices were brought into the market in 2015. The total number at the end of 2015 was 12.8 million devices, which represents a 30% increase in the installed base over the previous year. In the case of PROFIsafe, 1.3 million nodes were brought into the market in 2015, increasing the installed base by more than 30% to a total of 5.5 million PROFIsafe nodes. The growth trend is thus continuing at a high level. IO-Link experienced the greatest increase this year with 63%. The total number of installed IO-Link devices is now more than 3.6 million. A total of 2.8 million PROFIBUS devices were brought into the market in 2015.
Karsten Schneider, Chairman of PI (PROFIBUS & PROFINET International) , views the latest projection of node counts very positively. “For the first time in the history of PROFINET, its numbers exceed those for PROFIBUS. This demonstrates the positive trend for the PI technologies, not least because Industrie 4.0 means that the future belongs to Ethernet systems. With its total number of well over 50 million, PROFIBUS is the absolute world market leader. Beating a world market leader is an art. And the fact that this was done – for the first time over this past year – by PROFIBUS’s in-house competitor PROFINET is an unmistakable sign that the future belongs to our technologies.”
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C-Labs Security Solution Gains Acceptance
C-Labs, an industrial Internet of Things (IoT) software developer, today announced that its Factory-Relay software was selected by AXOOM for use in industrial automation products. C-Labs also announced that its Factory-Relay software was selected by Nebbiolo Technologies for use in its Fog Computing System for process automation.
“We’re thrilled that AXOOM and Nebbiolo selected C-Labs to advance their industrial IoT solutions,” said Chris Muench, C-Labs CEO. “These customer and partnership wins underscore industry demand for secure, simple and integrated IoT solutions that work right out of the box.”
Industrial IoT is estimated to become a $151 billion market by 2020 but security and complexity are slowing adoption. A Cisco survey of more than 7,000 global executives shows that the leading obstacles to adopting industrial IoT are threats to data or physical security; followed closely by inability of IT systems to keep up with change. C-Labs was founded to deliver the most secure and simplest to deploy factory automation software.
“We selected C-Labs software for its multilayered security and simplified deployment and operations,” said Florian Weigmann, Managing Director, AXOOM. “IoT is one of the greatest opportunities for our customers and C-Labs helps us deliver it securely and easily.”
Security and IT policy integration were key factors in Nebbiolo’s selection of C-Labs Factory-Relay software. Factory-Relay automatically provisions a user interface that can replicate the factory equipment HMI on a smartphone, tablet or PC, removing an onerous integration step and making factory IoT automation simpler to deploy. “C-Labs extends our reach to a broader range of industrial equipment and protocols such as OPC UA, and simplifies the creation of industrial IoT solutions,” said Flavio Bonomi, CEO and Co-Founder of Nebbiolo Technologies. Security, IT policy and ease of deployment are the issues holding back industrial IoT according to industry analyst firm ARC Advisory Group.
“Industrial IoT has proven its value for factories and industrial infrastructure, but companies need solutions that are secure and easy to deploy; that bridge OT, IT, and mobile environments; and provide rapid application development,” said Greg Gorbach, vice president, ARC Advisory Group. “C-Labs solutions focus on all of these.” “Customers told us they needed to adapt and extend IoT deployments without sacrificing security or requiring significant training for either operations technology or information technology (IT) teams,” said Muench. “Our patent-pending approach provides a secure and IT compliant connection point among previously incompatible protocols.”
We asked the group what things you are excited about with IoT.
Then we asked, ‘What does IoT mean to you?”
