by Gary Mintchell | Jun 6, 2017 | Internet of Things, News
Digitalization is the current hot word describing the latest manufacturing strategies. The concept has morphed from Industrie 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things, and smart manufacturing. The word was all over Hannover Messe this year, and one of the more fervent advocates was Siemens.
How important is this, really?
“What’s at stake with digitalization is the future of manufacturing competitiveness,” says Dean Bartles, Founding Executive Director of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute. “Germany is ahead, and China is making a big move in this area. More and more countries are adopting these technologies. To remain competitive, US manufacturers are going to have to master digital technologies.”
Bartles was quoted in a report commissioned by Siemens, The race to a digital future: Assessing digital intensity in US manufacturing.
On behalf of Siemens, Longitude Research surveyed 209 senior executives and directors of large US manufacturing organizations to understand the progress of digitalization among discrete and process manufacturers. Topics include trends in digitalization, examples of successful adaptation and suggestions to overcome barriers to moving forward in the digital age.
The Webpage includes a benchmarking tool so that you can compare your efforts to those in the study.
Based upon my own conversations with a variety of suppliers and implementers, I am not surprised that the researchers show two types of adopters: the ‘Efficiency Experts’ and the ‘Revenue Re-inventors’. Both groups are deploying digital technologies to improve productivity and efficiency, but the latter is leading the way in exploring how digital can be progressed even further – to transform their business model and unlock new markets.
Firms in the Revenue Re-inventors group are more likely than Efficiency Experts to say that their financial performance is ahead of their peers. In particular, Revenue Re-inventors are more likely to create new revenue streams from the provision of digital services – as Rolls-Royce has done through its Engine Health Management service, which uses onboard sensors and live satellite feeds to track the health of thousands of engines operating worldwide.
Once again, we should not be surprised. When did anyone cut their way to prosperity? On the other hand, I’d have expected the efficiency people to show more gains than they did. Wonder what their overall programs were?
The research evaluates manufacturers’ digital capabilities across the following core dimensions, using their relative progress in each to provide an overall score out of 100.
• Data intensity: data strategy, data collection, storage and analysis, and data-driven decision-making.
• Connectivity: sensor usage in production and output, and networking of production equipment and plants.
• Adaptability: customization capability, design and modeling, and robotics.
• Integration: enterprise and supply-chain data integration.
• Security: strategy and systems implementation.
• People: leadership, skills and training.
Does implementing a strategy show results, or is it more important as to how you implement a strategy? Research reveals that increased adoption rates do not necessarily translate into better results. Rather, the most successful manufacturers are those which take a bold and strategic approach to deploying the digital technologies they do invest in, and use this to predict trends and identify new opportunities to delight customers.
Here is a finding that is surprising—while 69% of the Revenue Re-inventers use predictive analytics, only 44% of the Efficiency Experts do. I’d figure that predictive analytics for such things as predictive maintenance would be enticing for the efficiency people.
Another finding that seems a little weird—the study sorted out the top five digital technologies. First off, this is definitely a Power Law curve, and secondly these don’t seem to fit together.
Cloud computing is almost universally adopted, a fact which should be no longer surprising. Drop some and then you have connected sensors—but we’ve been connecting sensors for years. Then a considerable drop off to 3D printing. The last is advanced data analytics—the one of all of these that seems to get the most media coverage.
This entire area has received at least four years of intense media coverage. Analyst firms have begun reformatting practices to specifically call out these strategies. Are we beyond the hype curve, yet? Or is it still in the smoke and mirrors stage?
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 23, 2017 | Data Management, Internet of Things, Operations Management
Digital Transformation and Internet of Things were prominent at this week’s user conference. I could be in San Francisco at the OSIsoft user conference. But, no, I’m in Detroit at a different one. However, we have two news items from the conference.
The first one is Marketplace, an online collection of software and hardware solutions for accelerating digital transformation for the industrial world. It links utilities, energy companies, manufacturers, food and beverage producers, and other industrial customers with the 300+ hardware, software, and integration partners in the OSIsoft Partner EcoSphere as well as the 2600 third-party developers in the PI Developers Club.
On Marketplace, customers can discover and compare leading solutions for the Internet of Things, predictive analytics and machine learning, reducing asset downtime, data visualization and cloud-based analytics. Customers can also engage specialists for remote asset and process monitoring, condition-based maintenance, and performance benchmarking.
“Industrial transformation is one of the largest, and most challenging, economic opportunities of our time. Marketplace will help our customers extend the value of their existing investments while laying the groundwork for new digital services,” said Martin Otterson, Senior Vice President of Customer Success at OSIsoft. “With Marketplace, customers will be able to connect with companies and service providers with deep experience in their fields and accelerate their journey for digital transformation.”
OSIsoft Marketplace participants and solutions include:
- National Instruments (NI) provides LabVIEW system design software and NI InsightCM Enterprise software for condition monitoring, which can bidirectionally communicate with the PI System
- Rockwell Automation, which integrates the PI System into its FactoryTalk platform, making it easy to aggregate plant automation data across the enterprise for real-time insights
- Power Factors, providing high-quality, independent performance data for renewable energy, which allows owners and operators to standardize across their diverse portfolios and drive improvements in the physical and financial performance of their assets.
- Element Analytics, an advanced industrial analytics software company that rapidly builds Asset Frameworks through software and empowers organizations to achieve new levels of operational performance, by rapidly turning data into actionable reliability, productivity, and sustainability insights.
- eVision Industry Software creates best-in-class Control of Work software. Innovative solutions that improve the way oil, gas, chemical and other hazardous industries operate on a global and local scale. eVision’s integration with the PI System provides users with real-time situational awareness, from permit draft to control room.
The OSIsoft partner EcoSphere helps customers maximize the value of their PI System infrastructure. Over 300 companies are official members of the OSIsoft Partner Ecosphere. In addition to the Marketplace, the Partner EcoSphere provides accreditation and specialization programs to recognize individuals from partner companies who have completed comprehensive technical training requirements. Globally, 250 people from more than 40 partner companies are accredited PI System specialists.
Industrial Internet of Things
The second announcement concerns collaboration with partners such as Advantech/B+B SmartWorx, ADLink, Arrow and RtTech to encourage the development of new products and offerings that will deploy PI-based gateways, for example, to link facilities data to production data or enable pipeline companies to harvest data in remote locations.
“Our customers face a digital dilemma. They want to invest in new IIoT technology and begin to capture and analyze new sources of data. At the same time, they worry about incompatibilities or integration challenges that can outweigh the benefits,” said Otterson. “Through these partnerships we can eliminate these problems by ensuring that these new sources of data can be added to existing data infrastructures easily. Ultimately we want to make it easier for any authorized person to get insight into any device or process at any time.”
OSIsoft has prepared a software portfolio for edge gateway hardware providers and others that contain the necessary PI System technology to accelerate connectivity with remote and mobile assets, IIoT sensors and the PI System. With this combination of OSIsoft software and partner hardware technology, OSIsoft enables a host of partners including equipment suppliers, application providers and system integrators to quickly and easily create solutions at the edge. This will allow customers to run the PI System closer to remote assets – transformers, gas compressor stations, distributed gas, electric and water meters, industrial vehicles, wind turbines – where the data can be stored, viewed, and analyzed, enabling robust data collection, faster decision making, and optimized network bandwidth utilization.
IIoT in Action
In addition, where existing control and monitoring systems cannot accommodate new sensors, or are too costly to upgrade, new streams of IIoT sensor-based data can be added in parallel to existing process data and viewed in a common interface.
As an early advocate of using the PI System for IIoT, RtTech is blazing the trail on what’s possible when combining these technologies. RtTech, for instance, is working with tissue manufacturers to instrument and monitor remote ‘log saws’ that cut lengthy tubes of paper into rolls of toilet paper or other consumables. Because of their isolation and age, the only option for monitoring their health was to rely on manual inspections with pencils and clipboards, or complex retrofits that are often cost prohibitive.
Using new edge gateway technology with integrated PI system technology, RtTech’s energy and reliability apps can now help with efficiency and energy savings on remote equipment. As a result, customers now have operational insight into isolated equipment and can take corrective actions in real time.
“We’ve seen manufacturers reduce power consumption by 7%, increase asset availability by as much as 10% and improve event capture rates to 99% accuracy,” said Keith Flynn, President of RtTech. “By working with OSIsoft and using IIoT technology, we are pushing these same outcomes to remote operations and assets regardless of their location. We want our customers to have the same insight and intelligence on all their equipment, local or remote.”
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 31, 2016 | Automation, News, Safety, Software, Technology
I have a little batch of process automation and industry news involving predictive technologies—two acquisitions and a new safety product. Congratulations to Mike Brooks and the team at Mtell for a good exit. Also congratulations to the MaxEAM folks. Finally, an important new take on process automation safety from PAS.
MTell Acquired by Aspen Technology
Aspen Technology Inc., a provider of software and services to the process industries, announced it has acquired Mtelligence Corp. (known as Mtell), a San Diego, California-based pioneer in the field of predictive and prescriptive maintenance for asset performance optimization.
Mtell products enable companies to increase asset utilization and avoid unplanned downtime by accurately predicting when equipment failures will occur, understanding why they will occur, and prescribing what to do to avoid the failure.
The products provide a low-touch, rapidly deployable, end-to-end solution that combines a deep understanding of operations and maintenance processes, real-time and historical equipment data and cutting-edge machine learning technologies. As a result, customers can:
- Monitor the health of equipment, detect early failure symptoms, diagnose their root-cause and recommend the best responses to avoid the failure
- Continually learn and automatically adapt to changing equipment and process behaviors
- Automatically share findings across a network of similar equipment to improve the overall process performance.
Some of the world’s largest process manufacturing companies use Mtell. Customer results have shown significant benefits including improved industrial safety, removal of risk, reduced failures, enhanced productivity and increased profitability.
Mtell products include:
- Previse – Mtell’s flagship end-to-end machine learning solution that monitors equipment health 24/7, detects early indicators of degradation or failures, diagnoses the root cause and prescribes responses that prevent breakdowns and unplanned downtime.
- Basis – A connected condition monitoring application that facilitates collaboration between operations and maintenance organizations to determine the best course of action for equipment alert conditions.
- Reservoir – A high performance, scalable, big data repository that captures, manages and synchronizes large volumes of time series, event and asset data from multiple sources.
- Summit – A remote monitoring center application for monitoring, analyzing and benchmarking asset performance.
The purchase price of the transaction was $37M. Additional terms are disclosed in AspenTech’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the first quarter of Fiscal 2017 filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Schneider Electric Adds to Asset Management Portfolio
Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, announced the acquisition of MaxEAM, a software company with complementary applications that extend Avantis.PRO Enterprise Asset Management. The acquisition further solidifies the portfolio and adds valuable domain expertise to Schneider Electric’s existing team.
Schneider Electric and MaxEAM have a long standing business relationship working together to deliver successful customer projects on a global scale. The acquisition gives customers a single point of contact for support and delivery services, and more closely aligns future product development.
“The strength of our asset management portfolio continues to grow, both organically and through acquisition. MaxEAM enhances the functionality of our Avantis.PRO offering, securing the investment our customers have made in our products,” said Rob McGreevy, Global Vice President, Software at Schneider Electric. “The addition of MaxEAM subject matter expertise and technology will allow us continued expansion of our industry-leading Enterprise APM platform.”
“Our advanced technology linked to mobile work execution streamlines processes, adding tremendous capabilities for mobile workers,” said Eric Stern, President of MaxEAM. “Schneider Electric’s Enterprise APM platform is the broadest in the market today. I’m excited that our people and technology will be an integral component to the overall offering.”
Two years ago Schneider Electric acquired InStep Software, adding advanced predictive analytics. That acquisition furthered its delivery of Enterprise APM solutions leveraging the Industrial IoT, helping to close the gap between IT and OT.
PAS Launches Process Safety Analytics Software
PAS Inc., the solution provider of process safety, cybersecurity, and asset reliability for the energy, power, and process industries announces the general availability of its newest product, PAS IPL Assurance. The software provides real-time predictive analytics on the health and availability of the safety instrumented systems (SIS), Alarm Management Systems, and other Independent Protection Layers (IPL). In addition to managing operational risk, IPL Assurance reduces compliance costs by automatically reporting on the SIS performance during a demand on the safety system.
PAS IPL Assurance delivers actionable information on safety instrumented systems, alarm systems, control loops, and operational boundaries to streamline compliance activities and expose operational risk. As a result, plant personnel can mitigate abnormal situations before they impact plant safety, reliability, and profitability.
IPL Assurance provides the following analytics, alert, and visualization features:
• Safety instrumented function (SIF) performance management,
• Testing and maintenance management,
• Demand on safety system rate tracking,
• Status of safety related alarms,
• Safety system bypass management, and
• Safety and operational risk dashboard.
“IPL Assurance provides up-to-date IPL lifecycle management so that operations can immediately ascertain the overall risk profile of any facility,” said Mark Carrigan, Senior Vice President of Global Operations at PAS. “This visibility from an automated single source of truth is essential to preventing critical safety incidents and supporting IEC and OSHA compliance requirements.”
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 21, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, News
Hannover Messe brought a slice of its automation trade show to this year’s International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS)—a venue known for huge machine tools. This was the second time, and it seems to be gaining some traction. Most exhibitors seemed to be central European, but there was a presence from a number of other North American automation companies not to mention many from Asia.
I stopped by a large number of stands. Below are five that had press releases new for the show. Opto 22 was at the show with an opportunity to see its recently released product with a RESTful API in the real plastic, so to speak. That plus a promised MQTT support maintains Opto’s usual spot as an early adopter, if not first adopter in many cases, of IT technologies in its OT products. I also stopped by to talk with Tom Burke and Stefan Hoppe at the OPC Foundation stand. Its news was reported here last week.
(My two-day silence was caused by travel to California and participating in the Inductive Automation Ignition Customer Conference. More on that later.)
Companies addressed below:
- Dell Technologies
- Beckhoff Automation
- Bedrock Automation
- Universal Robots
- Carbon (3D printing)
Dell Technologies
Appearing at IMTS in the automation hall for the first time, Dell Technologies showed its IoT Gateway and Embedded capabilities along with several partners that help it provide a complete Internet of Things solution from data collection through storage, analysis, and uploading to the cloud.
The major solution thrust for Dell thus far in its first year of existence has been predictive analytics especially for predictive maintenance applications. One of the featured partners was IBM Watson, using the famed supercomputer power for predictive analytics and EAP—its predictive maintenance solution.
Eigen showed a real-time quality application with in-process inspection. Some real-time analytics are performed in the gateway before sending data asynchronously to the cloud for further analysis.
Software AG, a partner from the beginning, provides a predictive maintenance software module that provided high speed streaming analytics in an ice cream factory. The module can also create service requests, see anomalies, order spare parts.
Beckhoff Automation
Check me out in these cool Microsoft Hololense Augmented Reality (AR) glasses. In this demo, I could see live data streaming from a robotic application. Beckhoff also showed support for MQTT and AMQP transport technologies (it also has OPC UA embedded), an Internet of Things coupler to Microsoft Azure cloud, and power over Ethernet on EtherCat P.
Bedrock Automation
Bedrock Automation has built an entirely new automation and control platform from the ground up. Security is designed in, even to the point of designing and manufacturing its own chips. It offers single, double, and triple redundancy, IEC 61131 programming along with a powerful function block editor that brings it into the DCS world. And it features software configurable I/O, software configurable serial module (5 to a card can be RS-232, RS-422, RS-485), and software configurable Ethernet card (think Profinet, EtherNet/IP, etc.).
At IMTS it announced its new intelligent, standalone power supply. The SPS.500 Secure Power Supply provides deep trust cyber security authentication and onboard intelligence for diagnostics and secure Ethernet communications. Encased in a NEMA 4X sealed aluminum enclosure, users of any PLC, SCADA RTU, PAC or DCS can retrofit to the new SPS.500 inside or outside enclosures, anywhere in a plant and in harsh environments.
Additional features include:
- Ethernet and OPC/UA communications, enabling local or remote monitoring of power supply health for greater system reliability and plant safety
- A powerful cyber secure microprocessor and onboard memory for diagnostics and software-defined functionality
- A built-in redundancy module, which simplifies installation and increases reliability by eliminating the need for an external redundancy module
- Two built-in, software-configurable Form C contact relays, which provide operating and diagnostic status
Universal Robots
One of the big things in automation this year is collaborative robots, or cobos. A leader in this area is a new entrant—Universal Robots. This Danish company showed its products at IMTS. It also announced two unique new initiatives.
- Universal Robots+: an ecosystem of products and applications, users choosing accessories, end-effectors, and software solutions from Universal Robots+, both distributors and end-users, get high security and predictability that applications will run well from the start.
- +YOU: a unique, free-of-charge developer program, offering a powerful marketing and support platform for the flourishing eco-system of UR-robot application developers.
Alongside the launch of Universal Robots+, a new update for the robot arm’s operating software has been published. The new release (Software Version 3.3) includes updates such as the Profinet IO device functionality. The new compatibility with Profinet protocols opens up numerous additional areas of deployment and activities for robots. “A key feature of the update supporting the Universal Robots+ platform is the ability for providers to now offer solutions that interface seamlessly with the UR software,” says Østergaard.
Carbon 3D
Carbon 3D announced new funding from strategic investors toward the goal of bringing additive technology to more customers transitioning from prototyping-only use cases, to applications requiring final production quality parts with great surface finish, broad and expanding material options and the plans to transition to mainstream manufacturing. A Silicon Valley 3D printing company working at the intersection of hardware, software and molecular science, Carbon also plans to offer its proprietary CLIP technology internationally and is accelerating production to meet worldwide demand for its M1 printer.
The expansion is supported by $81 million from new investors GE Ventures, BMW, Nikon and JSR, as well as existing investors, bringing Carbon’s funding total to $222 million. More details of additional strategic investors involved in this round of financing will be announced in 2017 along with details of their manufacturing projects that utilize Carbon’s technology.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 30, 2016 | Automation, Internet of Things, Operations Management, Software
Software platforms that provide specific “apps” for industrial applications was the theme of the week for me. I received a better look at Siemens’ Mindsphere along with a competitor’s app that I’ll discuss in a later post. Tuesday and Wednesday this week found me in Las Vegas at the 2016 Automation Summit—Siemens US users group. There were many sessions and quite a lot of training for customers.
The keynote was given by Klaus Helmrich, a member of the managing board of Siemens. He continued the theme repeated during Hannover Messe—digitalization. His point was that digitalization enhances competitiveness, time to market, flexibility, quality, efficiency. You design in the virtual world; take it to real world; receive feedback from real world to the virtual world to assure design is current to reality.
Although I’ve been told that Europeans are not fond of the term “ecosystem” in this context, Helmrich uttered the “e-word”. The Digital Enterprise Ecosystem enables customers toe realize their wish to interact with the production process making their product.
Memorable quote—“using software is key to realization of Industry 4.0.”
Maintenance and Reliability
Terry O’Hanlon CEO of ReliabilityWeb.com and Uptime magazine invited me to a panel presentation he was on. From the description in the program, I’d probably have never looked a second time. Plus, I’m not fond of panels. Usually each one talks for 10-15 minutes and then there is 10-15 minutes at the end for questions.
This one went against that grain. Each panelist gave about 2 minutes of their interest in the topic, then moderator Bob Vavra, editor of Plant Engineering magazine, proceeded directly to asking questions of the panel. The panel did not just sit back but each chimed in appropriately.
They did hope to hold questions to the final 15-20 minutes of the 105-minute session, but the audience would have none of that and started waving hands to ask follow up questions soon after the beginning.
The other panelists were Jagannath Rao, President of Siemens Industry Services; Brian Clemons, process automation manager at Dow Chemical; and, Keith Jones, of Prism Systems—an integrator.
It was a wide-ranging discussion. So, here are some quotes that capture some of the flavor of the discussion.
O’Hanlon, “What maintenance delivers is capacity.”
Clemons, “We bring a new process into the plant, but we’re still dealing with the same people.”
Clemons, Reliability usually talks MTBF, but what is really important is MTTR (repair or recover).
Rao, “Technology Suppliers more than component sellers, but look at larger solution.”
Jones, “Big data going to analytics is a difficult proposition—both doing and defining.”
O’Hanlon, “You need sensors that are appropriate to the health of the asset. That’s why you need predictive analytics.”
Jones, “IoT increasing traffic on network is a burden and sometimes affects production.”
O’Hanlon, “Reliability as a function of the business case.”
Data Analytics — Mindsphere
MindSphere is Siemens Cloud for Industry built on SAP HANA. It is a platform, which Siemens, customers, and OEMs can build software apps (App Store) on top of.
Speakers acknowledged that some customers are still uncertain about the cloud, but the cloud is where analytics run.
One app already developed is control loops. Customers can connect selected control loops, send data to cloud, analytics check for status of tuning and other things. The customer gets a dashboard. The analytics can even see stiction in valves.
This solution (like many) moves the software expenditure from CapEx to OpEx (note: look for this as a theme for how technology suppliers are beginning to price software).
This formula:
Domain Knowhow + Context Knowhow + Analytics Knowhow = Customer Value
is the foundation of app development.
Siemens has a product “MindConnect” secure data acquisition box. This is a similar idea to the Dell IoT Gateway or Advantech. These edge computing and communicating engines are the current IoT trend.
Current apps include:
Drivetrains (gearboxes)
Energy
Networks
Machine Tools
Control Loops
Cyber-security
