by Gary Mintchell | May 20, 2016 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
When you put your MES solution in the cloud, you “simply login, configure, and use” or “ready to deploy immediately—can be configured and used the same day.”
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. That is from the PR agency for 42Q, a company that has extensive experience in cloud-based MES and is announcing availability of the “first, fully cloud-based MES solution.”
Let us get past the marketing fluff (I know of at least one cloud-based MES that has been around for a few years). They did get positive quotes from two analysts—Rick Franzosa of Gartner and Matt Littlefield of LNS Research.
This release doubles down on the trend toward cloud-based software services. This way of buying/using software applications offers a huge savings in buying and maintaining your own IT infrastructure. Updates are fast and painless. If your partner is good, you can scale your business rapidly with far less pain than when you own your own server farm.
“Companies are ready to leverage cloud-based MES solutions. On premises servers and software are no longer the best solution for today’s smart factories,” said Bob Eulau, CEO of 42Q. “At 42Q, we deliver cloud-based MES solutions that are easy-to-implement, flexible, scalable and cost effective.”
“With this offering, we provide manufacturers with the first, fully featured, cloud-based MES solution that is different from anything the industry has seen. Whether you have a large, multi-factory global operation, or a single production line, we can help your business get the most from your manufacturing process in just weeks,” added Srivats Ramaswami, CTO, 42Q.
42Q has more than 40 locations in the cloud across discrete manufacturing industries including medical devices, automotive and defense.
What makes it work
The company does recognize that, while it simplifies the IT side of the implementation equation, constructing an MES solution for your manufacturing plant does require engineering. You really must rationalize your processes and engineer your solution.
The company offers a deployment services team certified in its “RPM (Rapid Production Model)” implementation methodology. “Our RPM methodology ensures that implementation will be successful, based on our structured templates and proven approach. As appropriate, our methodology also incorporates steps for regulatory compliance requirements.”
Our deployment team can help you with documenting business requirements, developing a concept architecture and translating this into detailed solution design. We will then help you configure the system, conduct system testing and facilitate user acceptance test.
Our training team can deliver onsite and remote training programs based on standard or custom curriculum developed with you. Our training solution is targeted to enable you to achieve maximum value from 42Q, and achieve self service from a systems configuration and factory integration standpoint.
The company does recognize where there is work involved and offers assistance. Many times when you dive deeper than the marketing hype, you can find substance.
There is no more debate about if a hosted cloud solution can work. Now the decision is whether it is the best solution for my application.
by Gary Mintchell | May 11, 2016 | Operations Management, Software
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 custo
mers 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->progra
m/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 pa
rtner 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.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 28, 2016 | Automation, News, Operations Management
Echos of Industrie 4.0 were present around the Hannover Messe 2016, but times have moved on since 2013. The word of the week was digital–in many forms, such as digitalization, digital enterprise, digital factory.
Chancellor Merkel and President Obama (two friends says the headline) were not digital, however, as they made a grand tour through parts of the trade fair highlighting the latest manufacturing technologies. And when the US President appears, the rest of the world stops. There were a reported 10,000 police in Hannover. The building I was in during the tour was surrounded by police, we could see snipers on the buildings around us, and we were locked in from 9 am until 1 pm. Fortunately, we had food.
Fortunately also for Siemens, they had a “captive” audience for their press conference for an extra couple of hours.
Siemens captured a large chunk of my time in Hannover. (Disclaimer, two divisions of the company paid some of my expenses.) Because I had some good contacts, I was able to get many interviews and looks behind the scenes. But the main reason I spent much time there was that Siemens had much to show.
Digital Manufacturing Vision
The digital manufacturing vision that Anton Huber laid out for me at the ARC Forum in Orlando in 2006 has progressed considerably. With a backbone of Internet of Things technologies and adding in digital everywhere, Siemens revealed the benefits of bringing everything together.
Take a tour through automobile production, for example. Sebastian Israel took me through the process from designing in Siemens CAD solution (NX), to production planning and engineering (TeamCenter, both from Siemens (PLM). The process continues through designing and engineering the line–digitally of course. Because it is digital first, engineers can simulate the line removing constraints and interferences before any steel is cut.
Integrating the automation and controls to the process is the hardest part of the system. Siemens has begun this process. It does acknowledge much work remains in this area. Mechatronics integration is well along. Things do not stop here, though. TeamCenter helps with change management. TiA Portal enables control engineering collaboration. The process feed the execution level (MES) for production scheduling and other functions including feeding the resource manager of CNC tools to help select the proper next tool to use. This integrates into services–data is usable for such analyses as predictive maintenance.
So far as I can tell, no other company comes close to the ability to do all this within its own umbrella. Although remarkable for what I’d call the “old” Siemens, the “new” Siemens actually uses partnerships to fill the gaps in the system. This is not the same company I met 15 years ago.
I congratulate Mr. Huber for the vision and seeing it through to its current state.
Other Siemens News
Rihab Ehms led a personal tour on TIA Portal Engineering Software. This product continues to develop and flesh out gaps. The first glimpse from a few years ago was pretty much that of an Integrated Development Environment for programming control. Slowly, the Siemens team added drives, HMI, and now motion control and motor management. Also included is energy management. It is a multiuser environment enabling broad collaboration among engineers using a “smart library” concept and common data management.
Ulli Klenk, next on my list, discussed Industrial Additive Manufacturing. I mentioned some interviews I’ve had on additive manufacturing research at North Carolina State. A Duke grad, he was a bit disappointed. His passion showed on the ways Siemens is helping customers with additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing). Leveraging expertise from Siemens PLM and working with partner machine builders, the company has systems working in a number of application.
Not part of this exhibit but thoroughly fascinating as well, Local Motors sent an engineer to participate in the Siemens booth showing how the company is building a complete car (and now a minibus) using additive manufacturing methods.
The paper industry faces challenges as we all reduce the amount of paper we use. It is searching for alternatives to its product lines. Therefore the broadening of the industry term to “fiber.” Siemens is there, of course, to blend its process control, drive systems, simulation, and predictive maintenance capabilities. Dr. Hermann Schwarz explained the technologies and then said these technologies will help the paper industry broaden into the fiber industry.
One last technology that I didn’t tour but heard much about is MindSphere. Partnering with SAP HANA, this is an industrial cloud providing data driven services and eventually an App Store so that customers can wring the most value possible from their own data.
Not a Chance
When this vision was explained in 2006 and 2007, I didn’t think there was any chance Siemens could pull it off. The pieces are coming together well. They still have much work to do, but customers can certainly benefit right now with increased manufacturing flexibility, product quality, and efficiency.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 8, 2016 | Data Management, Operations Management, Software
A friend of mine wrote an editorial recently where he predicted the imminent demise of Layer 3– manufacturing execution –of the Purdue Model of manufacturing technology. He hides behind a paywall these days, so I don’t think I can link. Funny thing is, he’s always been focused on the lower layers of technology. For him to try to create controversy here was, to say the least, surprising.
Perhaps a recap is in order at this point. The Purdue Model has withstood the test of time. It described technology and application layers 30 years ago that are still true. Technology is always fluid, but certain things just have to be done in a manufacturing or production enterprise.
Layers 0, 1, and 2 describe the instrumentation, control, and automation layers. Layer 3 describes what has been known as the MES–or execution–layer. Layer 2 describes the enterprise layer–known as the ERP layer.
My writing has focused at the lower layers for the past 18 years. I have some work on the MES and ERP application systems. Prior to 2014 my work was almost exclusively for controls and automation magazines. There remain no magazines devoted to Layer 3. No advertising or promotion dollars exist for that area–or at least not enough to fund that level of journalism. I thought I would focus on that as a one-person digital media site, but there’s just not enough money or news available there. The ERP level magazines have also mostly folded, but there remain huge sites that cover enterprise applications.
So back to the (non)controversy.
Some people have been predicting (hoping?) that connectors could be constructed such that real-time data can flow directly from production/manufacturing to the ERP layer effectively squashing layer 3.
But wait! All those functions performed at that level still need to be done–inventory, work-in-process, scheduling, laboratory integration, routing, and the like. Yes, ERP suppliers such as SAP, IBM, and Oracle wish that their products could absorb the functions of Layer 3 and therefore they could be a one-stop-shop for all manufacturing and enterprise IT functions.
Just as certainly the suppliers of today’s MES solutions–GE, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric (Wonderware, et. Al.), and Siemens (plus many more)–hope that that scenario won’t happen. Unless, I suppose, that they could sell their solutions to one of the big ERP suppliers.
The Real Manufacturing Execution Problem
The real problem at this level has little to do with technology or application. It’s the name. MES evolved from the earlier (think 70s) MRP and MRP II. Thanks to the stellar work of the ISA 95 committee, the term MOM has sprung up. And I read more about “operations management” than I do about “execution”.
Operations management holds a clue to the future. It is not all about the technology or the application any longer. It is all about business benefit–to the customer. New technologies such as the rise of importance of analytics and new visualization such as smart phone interfaces are changing the nature of Layer 3. There is still a Layer 3. It may not look like the Layer 3 I implemented in 1978. It may not look like the Layer 3 of five years ago. But the functions are still required, still being accomplished, and getting better all the time.
My friend sometimes tries more to be controversial than enlightening. Controversial gets page views (OK, so I pulled out an SEO headline myself). But I’d rather spark a conversation.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 21, 2016 | Automation, Operator Interface, Technology
Apps are so last year. Now the topic of the future appears to be bots and conversational interfaces (Siri, etc.). Many automation and control suppliers have added apps for smart phones. I have a bunch loaded on my iPhone. How many do you have? Do you use them? What if there were another interface?
I’ve run across two articles lately that deal with a coming new interface. Check them out and let me know what you think about these in the context of the next HMI/automation/control/MES generations.
Sam Lessin wrote a good overview at The Information (that is a subscription Website, but as a subscriber I can unlock some articles) “On Bots, Conversational Apps, and Fin.”
Lessin looks at the history of personal computing from shrink wrapped applications to the Web to apps to bots. Another way to look at it is client side to server side to client side and now back to server side. Server side is easier for developers and removes some power from vertical companies.
Lessen also notes a certain “app fatigue” where we have loaded up on apps on our phones only to discover we use only a fraction of them.
I spotted this on Medium–a new “blogging” platform for non-serious bloggers.
It was written by Ryan Block–former editor-in-chief of Engadget, founder of gdgt (both of which sold to AOL), and now a serial entrepreneur.
He looks at human/computer interfaces, “People who’ve been around technology a while have a tendency to think of human-computer interfaces as phases in some kind of a Jobsian linear evolution, starting with encoded punch cards, evolving into command lines, then graphical interfaces, and eventually touch.”
Continuing, “Well, the first step is to stop thinking of human computer interaction as a linear progression. A better metaphor might be to think of interfaces as existing on a scale, ranging from visible to invisible.”
Examples of visible interfaces would include the punchcard, many command line interfaces, and quite a bit of very useful, but ultimately shoddy, pieces of software.
Completely invisible interfaces, on the other hand, would be characterized by frictionless, low cognitive load usage with little to no (apparent) training necessary. Invisibility doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t physically see the interface (although some invisible interfaces may actually be invisible); instead, think of it as a measure of how fast and how much you can forget that the tool is there at all, even while you’re using it.
Examples of interfaces that approach invisibility include many forms of messaging, the Amazon Echo, the proximity-sensing / auto-locking doors on the Tesla Model S, and especially the ship computer in Star Trek (the voice interface, that is — not the LCARS GUI, which highly visible interface. Ahem!).
Conversation-driven product design is still nascent, but messaging-driven products are still represent massive growth and opportunity, expected to grow by another another billion users in the next two years alone.
For the next generation, Snapchat is the interface for communicating with friends visually, iMessage and Messenger is the interface for communicating with friends textually, and Slack is (or soon will be) the interface for communicating with colleagues about work. And that’s to say nothing of the nearly two billion users currently on WhatsApp, WeChat, and Line.
As we move to increasingly invisible interfaces, I believe we’ll see a new class of messaging-centric platforms emerge alongside existing platforms in mobile, cloud, etc.
As with every platform and interface paradigm, messaging has its own unique set of capabilities, limitations, and opportunities. That’s where bots come in. In the context of a conversation, bots are the primary mode for manifesting a machine interface.
Organizations will soon discover — yet again — that teams want to work the way they live, and we all live in messaging. Workflows will be retooled from the bottom-up to optimize around real-time, channel based, searchable, conversational interfaces.
Humans will always be the entities we desire talking to and collaborating with. But in the not too distant future, bots will be how things actually get done.
