I think that cloud-based platforms supporting this Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon will proliferate for a while until we reach some sort of stability. Nadella came from this part of Microsoft, so I’m not surprised to see continued emphasis on these enterprise platform technologies.
An interesting highlight for us manufacturing and production geeks was that Microsoft brought an application by Rockwell Automation front and center. When Rockwell started doing these services, the Internet of Things phrase had not even been invented. It now finds itself in front of the IoT parade in the Microsoft keynote. I guess the time has come.
Quoting from its blog, “Microsoft’s vision is to help companies thrive in this era of IoT, delivering open, scalable platforms and services that any company, whether startup or the most established global enterprises, can use to create new value, right now. Nadella mentioned our investments in the Windows 10 IoT operating system for devices, and equally with the Azure IoT Suite, we’re bringing together a variety of Azure services to help our customers accelerate their transformation to digital businesses.”
This reminds me of conversations with Microsoft people stretching as far back as 1999 where the topic was Microsoft as a platform company that provided a foundation for industrial applications. Looks like it is consistently fulfilling that vision.
Microsoft introduced a preview of the Azure Intelligent Systems Service last April. It is designed to securely connect, manage and capture machine-generated data from sensors and devices. “If the Intelligent Systems Service was a starting point, the Azure IoT Suite is its evolution and maturation – a reflection of what we learned from the feedback provided by our customers and partners throughout the preview.”
The Azure IoT Suite is an integrated offering that takes advantage of all the relevant Azure capabilities to connect devices and other assets (i.e. “things”), capture the diverse and voluminous data they generate, integrate and orchestrate the flow of that data, and manage, analyze and present it as usable information to the people who need it to make better decisions as well as intelligently automate operations. The offering, while customizable to fit the unique needs of organizations, will also provide finished applications to speed deployment of common scenarios we see across many industries, such as remote monitoring, asset management and predictive maintenance, while providing the ability to grow and scale solutions to millions of “things.”
Additionally, the Azure IoT Suite will provide a simple and predictable pricing model despite the rich set of capabilities and broad scenarios it delivers, so our customers can plan and budget appropriately. This approach is aimed at simplifying the complexities that often exist with implementing and costing IoT solutions.
The Azure IoT Suite will be released in preview later this year.
Nadella even talked manufacturing industry featuring Rockwell Automation, playing this video. One of my Twitter contacts pointed this out and asked how much was real and how much was hype. Well, I’ve actually seen similar applications at Rockwell, so it is just good marketing communication of a real service built on what is now known as Internet of Things.
A blog on the HP site by Christian Verstraete offers yet another opinion on Industry 4.0. However, he never really talks about Industry 4.0. Instead, he discusses the Internet of Things. Even though this is not “mainstream media,” it is still an example of sloppy thinking.
Beware of Industry 4.0 Misinformation
Verstraete first off confuses two terms. He never really touches on what Industry 4.0 is–including digital manufacturing, cyber physical systems, or, indeed, manufacturing. While making a couple of aside comments about manufacturing, he really only talks about the consumer side of the equation.
He links it directly to the Internet of Things–catering specifically to the usage of the internet of things in industries.
“Let’s start with the fact that companies increasingly cooperate in product development, across their supply chain and in their maintenance operations. Then, let’s look at where the Internet of Things can actually help enterprises deliver better products, cheaper and faster while maintaining or improving quality levels and services.”
He continues, “So, collecting market research as well as user data and then making it available to the developers would really help them defining the next generation product. But given market concerns about privacy, your data collection approach should be thought through very carefully.”
From a manufacturing point of view, this is one of the two promises of machine-to-machine (M2M) theory. An OEM, for example, could monitor its machine in the customer’s plant for both providing maintenance service and for collecting data on machine performance and component performance for the purpose of improving its product.
“An Industry 4.0 example would then be that you, as part of the product development process, desire user data, but you are not interested in the individual. You will need to demonstrate to customers that the information gathered is anonymous and there is no way for anybody receiving the information, legally or illegally to trace it back to the end-user.”
He misses an opportunity to inform his readers about the “industry” in Industry 4.0. Here he once again uses consumer point of view:
He then progresses to “maintenance operations.” I’m not sure if he is confusing maintenance and operations or simply referring to maintenance. But he misses a great opportunity to discuss the value of predictive maintenance or condition-based maintenance.
“Whether we talk about maintenance operations within the production environment or services to maintain equipment at the customer site, the problem remains the same. When is an intervention required? Typically we have two approaches. Either regular preventive maintenance (for example yearly) or maintenance triggered by usage (typical in the car industry), it always happens before the fact and does not take into account the actual status of the equipment.”
Let’s all press people to define terms and resist just mixing up all the terms and then running with a half-baked idea. There is the Internet of Things. There is Industry 4.0 (of which you have probably heard much). There is Smart Manufacturing (of which you have probably only heard of here–and you most likely won’t any longer because I have been removed from the formation group).
As the technologies evolve and engineers begin to implement, manufacturing efficiency and profitability should be experiencing a step change improvement.
Looks like there is a debate in the software development community again. This time around node.js
Dave Winer is a pioneer in software development. I used his first blogging platform, Radio Userland, from 2003 until about 2009 when it closed and I moved first to SquareSpace and then to WordPress. Below I point to a discussion about whether the node.js community needs a foundation.
His points work out for manufacturing software development, too. Groups of engineers gather to solve a problem. The problem usually involves opening up to some level of interoperability.
This is a double-edged sword for major suppliers. They’d prefer customers buy all their solutions from them. And, yes, if you control all the technology, you can make communications solider, faster. However, no supplier supplies all the components a customer wants. Then some form of interoperability is required.
Therefore, technologies such as OPC, HART, CIP, and the like. These all solved a problem and advanced the industry.
There are today still more efforts by engineers to write interoperability standards. If these worked, then owner/operators would be able to move data seamlessly, or almost seamlessly, from application to application solving many business problems.
Doing this, however, threatens the lucrative market of high-end consultants whose lock-in of custom code writing and maintenance is a billion-dollar business. Therefore, their efforts to prevent adoption of standards.
I am new to Node but I also have a lot of experience with the dynamics [Eran] Hammer is talking about, in my work with RSS, XML-RPC and SOAP. What he says is right. When you get big companies in the loop, the motives change from what they were when it was just a bunch of ambitious engineers trying to build an open underpinning for the software they’re working on. All of a sudden their strategies start determining which way the standard goes. That often means obfuscating simple technology, because if it’s really simple, they won’t be able to sell expensive consulting contracts.
He was right to single out IBM. That’s their main business. RSS hurt their publishing business because it turned something incomprehensible into something trivial to understand. Who needs to pay $500K per year for a consulting contract to advise them on such transparent technology? They lost business.
IBM, Sun and Microsoft, through the W3C, made SOAP utterly incomprehensible. Why? I assume because they wanted to be able to claim standards-compliance without having to deal with all that messy interop.
As I see it Node was born out of a very simple idea. Here’s this great JavaScript interpreter. Wouldn’t it be great to write server apps in it, in addition to code that runs in the browser? After that, a few libraries came along, that factored out things everyone had to do, almost like device drivers in a way. The filesystem, sending and receiving HTTP requests. Parsing various standard content types. Somehow there didn’t end up being eight different versions of the core functionality. That’s where the greatness of Node comes from. We may look back on this having been the golden age of Node.
OK, I can take a hint. Maybe. I keep looking at the latest manufacturing strategies—Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing—and asking all of you for your thoughts. The silence screams louder than a pundit trying to stir up “stuff.”
Interesting things are happening at a quieter level under the covers of the grand strategies. I’d call these industrial software mashups. That is now an old term, but I think pretty relevant.
People are building applications on top of existing platforms. Let’s not reinvent the wheel, they say. Let’s leverage an ecosystem of developers and integrators, they say. Let’s get to market faster.
At last week’s ARC Forum, I met another one. Setpoint (by the way, its marketers like it in all caps so that it will shout out on a page, but I’m not reproducing the logo, just the name).
Setpoint is in the condition monitoring market. It began life as an initiative of Metrix Instrument but rapidly grew to a stand-alone company. Metrix wished to grow beyond sensors and transmitters into the systems market. So it build a system with former Bentley Nevada engineers.
Dozens of innovations were embedded in this new system, including a self-contained “universal” monitoring module (UMM) that could be configured do any required measurements in a single module type – making the addition of new measurements no more difficult than loading a new app on your smartphone.
Now that it had the system, to provide more value to its customers, Setpoint needed an industrial software application. Here’s the mashup part. Rather than building a stand-alone software infrastructure the team was entered into a partnership with OSIsoft, – maker of the PI System. Together, they showed that high-bandwidth, sub-millisecond vibration waveform data could be streamed directly into a PI database – something that had been routinely dismissed by the vibration industry as “impractical” or even “impossible.” Time to market was less than 12 months – unheard of in this industry – and during that time the performance capabilities of the PI System continued along its Moore’s Law trajectory, doubling in speed and making high-speed, online vibration data collection completely practical.
OSIsoft PI is an industry standard for historians and analysis. Developers and integrators are plentiful. This was a great way to jump-start a system.
Another benefit is the elimination of redundant computing, network, and software infrastructure. Further is OSIsoft’s ability to envision future market dynamics that could affect the businesses tomorrow. One such trend in the condition-monitoring industry is the drive toward data analytics and predictive maintenance strategies.
A third reason is that making quick and informed decisions on the condition of an asset requires real-time analysis of large volumes of data, also known as Big Data. OSIsoft is a leader in Big Data.
I don’t know what the grand strategies will bring you, but most of you will benefit greatly from this mashup trend.
You could also check out this video that demonstrates the system.
Asset management, analytics, modeling, safety—some of the significant trends highlighted at last week’s ARC Industry in Transition Forum in Orlando—all popped up at the Bentley Systems press conference session. Highlights were acquisition of C3global and its Amulet Operational Analytics, acquisition of Acute3D and its reality modeling solution, and added process safety and risk management capabilities.
Operational Analytics
Bentley Systems has acquired U.K.-based C3global, provider of web-based Amulet software for operational analytics. Bentley’s AssetWise platform, which serves configuration management, asset health monitoring, inspection, maintenance, and compliance for infrastructure assets, can now deliver additional actionable insights as asset performance management is extended, through AssetWise Amulet, for asset performance modeling. AssetWise Amulet offers unique value in applying predictive and prescriptive analytics that are easily configurable at industrial scale to leverage just-in-time data for improved operational efficiencies.
Gartner recognizes C3global as part of the industrial analytics transformation helping digital businesses (as noted in Gartner’s “Industrial Analytics Revolutionizes Big Data in the Digital Business” report [G00264728], published August 19, 2014). Among the many infrastructure owner-operators benefiting from Amulet operational analytics are water utilities, oil and gas, and power transmission grids. User organizations include Babcock, BP, Chevron, Danfoss, Emerson, MWH, National Grid, South Australian Water, and Total.
AssetWise Amulet can be readily configured to build sophisticated applications tailored to infrastructure operations needs without having to know a programming language. It bridges the gap between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), enabling advanced analytics to be an integral part of all aspects of the business process. Through AssetWise Amulet’s interactive and easily configurable operational dashboards, owner-operators are provided with the context they need to be confident in their decisions and are afforded an easy method of measuring and managing the outcomes.
AssetWise Amulet is designed to integrate and analyze “big data” generated by a wide range of external applications and systems – from SQL or Oracle databases to enterprise data warehouses, industrial data historians, and control systems, as well as maintenance and work order management systems. The data can be structured or unstructured and include systems data, photos, video, log books, Microsoft Excel files, event failures, scanned notes, witnessed events, and more.
Once data from the IT and OT systems has been captured and aggregated, the software applies the users’ business rules, models, and knowledge to provide an improved view and understanding of operational performance for decision support. In conjunction with AssetWise-certified integrations to SAP EAM, IBM Maximo, and Oracle eAM, AssetWise Amulet will help drive the right actions at the right time, reducing operational risks and improving operational efficiency.
Reality Modeling
Bentley Systems also announced that it has acquired France-based Acute3D, provider of Smart3DCapture software for reality modeling. Through reality modeling, observations of existing conditions are processed into representations for contextual alignment within design modeling and construction modeling environments. Rapid technology advancements in scanning and photography – and especially the burgeoning application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for these purposes – are making the capture of such observations broadly and continuously affordable in sustaining infrastructure.
Acute3D software automates the generation of high-resolution, fully-3D representations from digital photographs taken with any camera, whether highly specialized or embedded in a smartphone. Scalable from site to city, and with precision limited only by the quantity and quality of photography, Acute3D technology can assure that existing conditions are contemporaneously considered throughout the architecture, engineering, construction, and operations of any infrastructure asset. Now that photo sequences from UAVs are likely to become the most feasible source for surveying, construction monitoring, and inspection workflows, Acute3D’s industrial-level accuracy and unlimited scalability are making it a preferred technology for UAV manufacturers and professionals around the world.
Process Safety and Risk Management
AssetWise APM V7.3 the enhanced version of Bentley’s asset performance management (APM) offering – an all-in-one analysis and information management software platform for asset reliability and asset integrity – now also advances process safety.
Alan Kiraly, Bentley senior vice president, server products, said, “Our AssetWise APM V7.3 meets the demanding requirements of reliability, integrity, safety, and maintenance managers and engineers in industries ranging from oil and gas, petrochemical, and mining and metals to power generation and other utilities. The software ensures assets are safe and reliable and that they are inspected and maintained to reduce or eliminate risk. Users further benefit from the elimination of unexpected downtime, increased asset availability and utilization, reduced maintenance costs, and support for regulations and safety standards, including ISA 84, IEC 61511, IEC 61508, and IEC 61882.”
AssetWise APM V7.3’s new process safety features help users manage the integrity of safety systems and hazardous processes, thereby preventing failures and catastrophic incidents and keeping people, assets, and the environment safer. Capabilities include safety instrumented function (SIF) analysis, safety instrumented systems (SIS), safety integrity level (SIL) and safety provisions, overrides, and incidents. AssetWise APM V7.3 also provides version control and approval, the analysis of loss of containment scenarios, and the identification and assessment of risks at the system level, as well as for related assets (risk matrix).
