Manufacturing Software Beyond HMI/SCADA

Manufacturing Software Beyond HMI/SCADA

A manufacturing software supplier must go beyond where they are to keep pace with today’s needs. GE Digital just announced such an extension–to offer decision support capabilities. The new GE HMI/SCADA software offers “comprehensive and best-in-class monitoring and visualization capabilities,” as well as work process management, analytics, and mobility. Based on ISA high performance design principles, this solution enables companies to troubleshoot faster, reduce waste and increase productivity.

“Most SCADA systems are still configured as HMIs – simply a display to indicate status,” said Matthew Wells, General Manager Automation Software for GE Digital. “In developing this new generation solution, we have combined industry standards, GE research and Industrial Internet technologies to exceed traditional HMI/SCADA, increasing operational efficiency and delivering on business outcomes.”

Context-driven navigation and situational awareness

The new GE software features a context-rich HMI that changes as the user moves through the system. Navigation is derived from a structured asset model. Using the model, the software always can provide operators with the most relevant information – in context – and minimize time to response. Additionally, the structured asset model mapped to the SCADA database significantly speeds configuration. Modern technologies such as HTML5 and Web HMI allow for centralized development and deployment, as well as accessibility anywhere in multiple form factors.

“With high performance HMI/SCADA, operators are able to quickly determine an abnormal situation and get to the root causes of many issues,” said Sergio Chavez, Automation Engineer with Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power. “We help operators visualize a process and make alarms very visible. We’re shaving the time it takes for operators to act on a situation.”

To help engineers create the right user experience, GE also provides predefined smart objects and templates designed using efficient HMI concepts. Standard layouts and cards – such as trends, alarms, alarm summaries, and KPIs – are available out of the box, speeding configuration and improving user situational awareness.

Task management and mobility

Additionally, GE’s fourth generation HMI/SCADA portfolio has task management capabilities, triggering the right actions, at the right time, by the right person, in the right place based on alarms or other events. GE’s new Workflow 2.5 and Mobile 2.0 solutions extend the capabilities of Decision Support HMI/SCADA further, helping companies achieve their critical business outcomes with integrated workflows and intelligent alarming, available anytime and anywhere.

“Operator effectiveness allows operators the opportunity to grow professionally,” according to Bill Fritz, Director of Public Works, Waterford Township, Michigan. “They can reinvent themselves and gain new value-added skills. They can take on new roles.”

GE’s Wells explained, “Use technology to improve the operator experience and manage operations for greater efficiency. With just a quick look, operators today should be able to recognize which information requires their attention and what it indicates – which speeds response and drives to business outcomes.”

Manufacturing Software Beyond HMI/SCADA

Plex Manufacturing Software Connects to Microsoft Office

Linking manufacturing software with Microsoft Azure (not so surprising) and Office 365 (huh?) seems to be the new trend.

I wrote previously about GE Predix. People were curious if that was a statement about GE’s cloud. I thought maybe it was about linking to Office. Here is an announcement from Plex with a similar initiative.

[I’ve taken some vacation and am working on at least three intense projects. So my posts have slowed. Hopefully I pick it up soon.]

Here is the news about Plex.

Plex plus Microsoft

Plex Systems has announced an integration with Microsoft Corp. aimed at making it easy for companies to connect Microsoft’s desktop productivity applications to the Plex Manufacturing Cloud. Plex has also leveraged Microsoft’s Azure platform as the foundation for the Plex Developer Portal, the company’s new gateway for customers and partners using Plex’s growing portfolio of REST Application Program Interfaces (APIs).

The integration is part of Plex Connect, the company’s open integration framework that makes it easier for manufacturers to connect people, things and applications to the Plex Manufacturing Cloud.

Plex Connect: Microsoft Office 365

  • The new Plex Workcenter Lookup app is now available on the Microsoft store.
  • The app enables users to connect, view and analyze manufacturing data from Plex in Office 365, making it easier for business users to leverage that data for getting work done in the desktop applications they use every day.
  • Built using Plex Connect REST APIs, the app enables real-time lookups, while maintaining role-based security for customer data.
  • Leveraging Plex’s APIs, customers and partners can also create their own connections and applications to interact with the Plex Manufacturing Cloud in ways that support their unique business objectives.

Plex Connect: Developer Portal

  • Plex also launched the company’s new developer portal, providing customers and partners with secure access to the company’s expanding portfolio of RESTful APIs.
  • Leveraging Microsoft Azure, the Plex Developer Portal takes advantage of the platform’s scalability, tooling and managed services to support Plex customers’ growing requirements for enterprise connectivity.
  • The Plex Developer Portal provides sample code, sandbox capabilities, documentation and other resources to help customers and partners build secure, robust connections between the Plex Manufacturing Cloud and third-party applications.

“Microsoft’s desktop productivity applications are fundamental to business, providing people and teams with flexible tools for running their day-to-day operations,” said Karl Ederle, group vice president, products at Plex Systems. “Our goal with Plex Connect is to make it easy for manufacturers to achieve a completely connected enterprise, with rich data always available to support business and customer objectives, whether through desktop applications or connections to other enterprise systems. The Azure platform is an ideal foundation for Plex Connect as we scale to meet the needs of global manufacturers.”

“Microsoft Office 365 and Plex Manufacturing Cloud are more valuable for our joint customers when we bring them together,” said Rob Howard, director, Office 365 Ecosystem, Microsoft. “The power to quickly pull real-time data from Plex’s manufacturing system of record directly into a tool like Excel enables professionals to use and analyze data in ways that support today’s most dynamic work environments.”

Connecting ERP and MES and People

Connecting ERP and MES and People

QAD Lopker   QAD 2016 Explore ERP user conference report.

I am not an ERP analyst. I know a little about the space, but I don’t follow it closely. I had heard of QAD, but until about three months ago I couldn’t have passed a test on it.

So, imagine me at a conference populated more by suits than jeans. Actually, I was invited to participate in a panel on MES and ERP connectivity. An analyst and two users. interesting discussion.

The key words of the conference included “Effective Enterprise,” “Cloud,” and “User Experience.” All QAD speakers tied their remarks to effective enterprise. Carter Lloyds, CMO, pointed out that 30% of QAD custoIMG_2578mers now use QAD Cloud double from last year. That is an interesting indication of the acceptance of cloud by CIO organizations.

One of the things I noticed right away in the talks by company speakers was adoption of the latest trends from Silicon Valley. They are looking into such ideas as personalization, social messaging and alerts, and extensions / customization capabilities. Moving to the cloud allows QAD users to integrate with other applications (more later). QAD is also studying standards and interoperability—topics near to my heart. One other discussion concerned the use of bots. I’m beginning to hear that technology discussed frequently in manufacturing software circles. Usually such a migration takes years, not months.

“Hey, Siri, what are my supply chain KPIs?”

I was just in a conversation about marketing and how that’s more than just promoting product features. The “QAD Advantage” is an intriguing paradigm for aligning the company—standard solutions->flexible platform->prograIMG_2591m/project management->training / certification->customer engagement process.

The panel was interesting. Not because of me, of course. The room was full—more than 100 probably. Attendees wanted to know about integrating operations, MES, and ERP information. How people were doing it. What were the obstacles.

I’m used to discussions of both ERP and MES involving highly engineered solutions that take years and lots of dollars to implement. Most of these were smaller scale. Yes, they are smaller plants, but integration is still integration. And the benefits are what you’d expect—access to information. Plant managers continue to work on the problem of bringing accurate, real-time information to everyone who needs it to make better decisions.

QAD plus its paIMG_2594rtner Factivity (an MES supplier) offer a solution promoted by several in attendance.

We’ve heard forever about the promises of ERP originally about bringing factory data to the executive suite. Then we heard about the problems of connecting the levels. We’re getting there, finally.

Manufacturing Software Beyond HMI/SCADA

Data Drives A New Manufacturing Hero The Reliability Engineer

I chatted this week with two executives from GE Digital. Jeremiah Stone is the General Manager – Industrial Data Intelligence Software at GE Digital, and Jennifer Bennett is the General Manager – Manufacturing Software Solutions (Brilliant Factory) at GE Digital.

The conversation opened with the idea that it’s about data. Companies must become data-driven. But then it’s also beyond data. Not all data sets are equal. And it’s not just about finding anomalies–it’s really about finding that data and anomalies that matter most to business success.

Then we went a direction that I’ve never gone with GE before–remote monitoring and diagnostics (RM&D) targeted to reliability engineers. The often overlooked skillset of reliability engineers, and how their knowledge offers a distinct competitive advantage to companies battling it out in the industrial market.

As the advantages from unlocking big data insights continue to benefit enterprises of all sizes, data scientists – the gatekeepers and analysts of this data – have become an increasingly popular career choice. In fact, The Harvard Business Review proclaimed data scientists to be “the sexiest job of the 21st century.” But with more advanced Remote Monitoring and Diagnosis (RM&D) technologies being utilized to find and address problems before they happen, reducing the costs of planned and unplanned downtime, the emerging industrial superstars are reliability engineers.

This list summarizes our conversation:

  • RM&D in the cloud uncovers the gap of reliability-centered maintenance and operations. This new technology shines a light on an old problem for customers– frustrations around the fact that they’re not able to executive consistently on maintenance and operations.
  • Successful asset monitoring is more than just software. Organizations have a false sense of security that if they install monitoring software, they instantly have a handle on their operations. But the real secret in handling the complexity that monitoring creates with RM&D is the reliability engineers that can run and interpret the technology.
  • Identifying anomalies in RM&D is not the problem. Identifying anomalies that matter to operations is the problem. RM&D create numerous alerts so it’s hard for an organization to know which ones to really focus on. Reliability engineers have the expertise to shift through the notifications and identify false positives, telling their organizations which ones to ignore and which ones to pay attention to.
  • Cloud-based business strategy is becoming less about technology and more about knowledge sharing. The benefits of utilizing cloud technology are increasingly becoming centered on the fact that organizations can internally share and learn from a pooled knowledge base, no matter the location. The cloud offers a way for reliability engineers to capture and preserve knowledge that is crucial to the business’s ongoing success.

Stone said that this idea ties in to GE’s strategy itself. As disciples of Deming, the company is data driven, and a lot of that means remote monitoring and diagnostics for GE’s fleet. Incorporating technologies such as those from the SmartSignal acquisition, company engineers and managers are now excited. With the RM&D, they now can execute on goals, avoid failure, achieve greater reliability, and be more proactive. “Now we are excited to bring tools we use to the rest of the industrial world.”

Today’s RM&D enables excellence in manufacturing from a larger, systemic view, in order to deliver business advances, added Stone. Now engineers and managers can look at the entire scope/span of problem, not just one process or loop. “We help companies on the journey beginning with an assessment of where they are and what they want to achieve. We offer professional services to help them figure out what are outcomes they want to achieve. Not just getting connected to get data but doing it in a way that makes sense.”

Bennett pointed to the variety and complexity of data. “The problem has been all data has been in silos, but the value is upstream and downstream. Some challenges in manufacturing are often quite complex. Data flows from contexts requiring tracking back to cause. The platform we’re building on Predix brings data together. We can make insightful decisions. In RM&D we’re looking at history records, maintenance records, and the like. In the past  we relied on people who have knowledge and experience for data. Now we can combine and analyze.”

We started discussing workforce and the challenges of recruiting and retaining younger people. Stone noted that young people today are looking for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. “What was magic 20 years ago isn’t now.  We find a sense of curiosity in new people and a desire for a job with meaningful impact.”

One improvement in the job situation is the ability to spend more time problem solving and less time gathering data. According to studies, a typical data and analytics project required 80% of the time just collecting and collating data. Stone noted, “Our focus is on dramatically minimizing amount of time to get the data so people can start moving toward problem solving and analytics. Traditionally reliability engineers have been frustrated by availability of data. We are talking about taking it from calendar time to wrist watch time. Then we give collaborative capability. Both newer and more senior engineers are delighted with this new possibility to spend more time problem solving.”

Manufacturing Software Beyond HMI/SCADA

GE, The Digital Thread, The Digital Twin, The Digital Company

UPDATED: Carpenter’s title changed after I wrote this. Also GE Intelligent Platforms is now called GE Digital.

GE now bills itself as the “digital industrial” company. It has realized the benefits of technologies such as the Watchdog Agent developed by the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems for monitoring and prognostics and the Industrial Internet of Things within its own manufacturing processes—especially aircraft engines.
Evidently it now all starts with the “digital thread.” To understand what was meant by this term, I was chatted with Rich Carpenter, Chief of Strategy Technology Strategist for GE Intelligent Platforms Digital.

I asked if this was essentially just a marketing term. “The digital thread is a way to describe a concept,” he told me. “People have become good at “leaning” out the manufacturing process. Now we are leaning out the entire new product introduction cycle. They are optimizing to the end of the path from design to engineering. Closing that loop and carrying forward to manufacturing.”

Companies have accumulated big data infrastructures, so they are also leaning out interactions between digital silos by managing the data flows. This enables remote diagnostics.

Carpenter also mentioned a process I’m beginning to hear around the industry. First you connect things—people, sensors, machines. Then you collect and analyze the data you get from the process. Finally given all this, you can begin to optimize the process.

Official word

Here is a definition from GE, “While the Industrial Internet may be unchartered territory to some manufacturers, early adopters are starting to understand the benefits of the ‘Digital Thread – a web of data created the second they initiated their Industrial Internet journey. The digital thread is the result of several advanced manufacturing initiatives from the past decade, creating a seamless flow of data between systems that were previously isolated.

“This data is essentially the manufacturing health record, which includes data from everything to operator logs to weather patterns, and can be added to as needed. For example, you could compile the digital threads across multiple plants to get a full understanding of the efficiency and health of particular processes and product lines. This record provides data context and correlations between downtimes and outside factors, allowing operators to be proactive in their maintenance strategies.”

Health

I especially appreciate the term “manufacturing health record.” That’s a term Jay Lee at the IMS Center used often in the first phase of prognostics and the Watchdog Agent—a consortium that GE played an active part in.

Digital twin

We’ve heard of cyber-physical systems, and then Industry 4.0 which is a digital manufacturing model based upon it. Now we have a new term, “digital twin” which Carpenter says is a new way to describe a real world physical asset. Then, trying to optimize it, we’ll create a digital representation—a model based on statistics or physics. We run the model, then apply successes of the simulation in the real asset. Then feedback the information.

News release predictive analytics

GE held a conference in September that I could not attend. So, I talked with Rich Carpenter and some marketing people and obtained these press releases. These technologies and applications reveal where GE is heading as a Digital Industrial Company—and where it can take its customers, as well.

GE’s predictive analytics solution, SmartSignal, will be available as part of GE Digital’s Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions on the Predix platform, the purpose-built cloud platform for industry. SmartSignal powered by Predix will deliver anomaly detection with early warning capabilities that is SaaS-based and therefore at a lower cost and at a higher speed, making it accessible to a broader range of distributed equipment.

“Until now, advanced equipment monitoring and predictive anomaly detection capabilities have only been available to enterprises with significant resources, both in terms of machinery expertise and capital,” said Jeremiah Stone, General Manager, Industrial Data Intelligence Solutions for GE Digital. “Because of this, insight gained through predictive analytics has been limited to high value assets due to these cost and knowledge barriers.”

Companies see condition-based maintenance as a means to cut existing operations & maintenance costs. With SmartSignal powered by Predix, they will be able to capitalize on cloud and Big Data platforms to drive more efficient and productive operations.

“There is an unmet need in the industry for a cloud platform that supports the unique requirements of industrial data and operations,” said Harel Kodesh, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President & GM of Predix. “GE Predix is the first cloud platform to meet these demanding requirements. By leveraging GE’s deep domain expertise in information technology and operational technology, Predix provides a modern cloud architecture that is optimized for operational services like asset connectivity, managing and analyzing machine data, and industrial-grade security and regulatory compliance.”

Today, SmartSignal technology provides early warning detection for more than 15,000 critical assets in customer operations. According to May Millies, Manager of Power Generation Services, Salt River Project, “SmartSignal has us listening to the right data and using that data to impact our work operations.” Salt River Project provides reliable, reasonably priced electricity and water to more than two million people in Central Arizona. Integrating data to improve visibility into operations was a key to maintaining their standing with customers. “Now that we have realized the incredible performance of the software and how strong and robust it is, we are improving asset utilization across the enterprise.”

Brilliant manufacturing

In a second announcement, GE announced the next version of its Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. Field-tested and optimized within GE’s own factories, the suite maximizes manufacturing production performance through advanced real-time analytics to enable all manufacturers to realize GE’s Brilliant Factory vision.

“Today’s demands on manufacturers are driving an unprecedented rate of change, innovation and agility,” said Jennifer Bennett, General Manager for GE Digital’s Manufacturing Software initiatives. “Manufacturers are challenged to decide what to build, how to build it, where and when to build it, and how to efficiently maintain it. We believe that the key to optimizing the full product life cycle from design to service is through analytics of data that has been traditionally locked inside corporate silos.”

GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite allows customers to begin to realize their own vision of a Brilliant Factory. Integrating and aggregating data from design to service and leveraging analytics to support optimal decision-making allows manufacturers to drive improvements in end-to-end production. Analyzing data in context and providing the right information at the right time allows for better decision support throughout the manufacturing process. Data-driven analytics encompassing machines, material, people and process will transform the factories of today into Brilliant Factories.

GE’s next generation Brilliant Manufacturing Suite includes:

  • OEE Performance Analyzer – available for early access today, it transforms real-time machine data into actionable production efficiency metrics so that Plant Managers can reduce unplanned downtime, maximize yield and increase equipment utilization.
  • Production Execution Supervisor – digitizes orders, process steps, instructions and documentation with information pulled directly from ERP and PLM systems. Factories are able to ship higher quality products and deliver new product introductions faster by getting the right information in the right hands to focus on the highest priority manufacturing tasks.
  • Production Quality Analyzer – real-time identification of quality data boundaries that catch non-conforming events before they occur. Quality engineers can analyze this information to identify patterns and trends that enable factories to ship higher quality products faster.
  • Product Genealogy Manager – builds a record of all personnel, equipment, raw materials, sub-assemblies and tools used to produce finished goods. Service personnel can respond to customer and regulatory inquiries with confidence, knowing who, what, when, where and how for an individual shipment.

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