by Gary Mintchell | Sep 13, 2016 | Automation, News, Operator Interface, Technology
Rockwell Automation has announced acquisition of Automation Control Products (ACP), a provider of centralized thin client, remote desktop and server management software. ACP’s two core products, ThinManager and Relevance, provide manufacturing and industry with visual display and software solutions to, as the Rockwell press release put it, “manage information and streamline workflows for a more connected manufacturing environment.”
I met Matt Crandell, ACP CEO, years ago at a trade show touting Linux, as I recall, to a Microsoft crowd. He and his team had developed a thin client technology (“dumb” terminals connected to a server) that brought 1970s and 80s era corporate computing into the modern age. He had good relations with Wonderware but I’ve noticed increasingly strong partnership with Rockwell Automation. This exit was probably the best he could hope for. Congratulations to Matt and the team for a good run and a good exit.
The press release gives us Rockwell’s justification, “This acquisition supports the Rockwell Automation growth strategy to help customers increase global competitiveness through The Connected Enterprise – a vision that connects information across the plant floor to the rest of the enterprise. It is accelerated by the Industrial Internet of Things and advances in technologies, such as data analytics, remote monitoring, and mobility.”
“Today’s plant engineers turn to our technology innovation and domain expertise to help improve their manufacturing quality and reliability while increasing productivity,” said Frank Kulaszewicz, senior vice president of Architecture and Software, Rockwell Automation. “With ACP’s industry-leading products now in our portfolio, we can provide new capabilities for workers as the manufacturing environment becomes more digital and connected.”
ThinManager centralizes the management and visualization of content to every facet of a modern manufacturing operation, from the control room to the end user. It streamlines workflows and allows users to reduce hardware operation and maintenance costs. Relevance extends the ThinManager functionality through proprietary location-based technology, enabling users’ secure mobile access to content and applications from anywhere.
“We are a perfect addition to Rockwell Automation’s industrial automation offerings that aim to increase reliability, productivity and security as well as lower energy and maintenance costs while implementing sustainable technology for leading global manufacturers,” said Matt Crandell, CEO of ACP. “We are confident that our customers will quickly see the value from our two organizations working to address their needs together.”
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 14, 2016 | Automation, Manufacturing IT, Networking, News, Operations Management, Process Control, Technology
Second day Rockwell Automation TechED keynote speakers drilled down into the weeds a little to flesh out the High Performance Architecture and Connected Enterprise themes from day one. Unusual for a second day general session, the room was about as packed as for day one.
There is little mention of Internet of Things at this conference—it’s sort of assumed as part of the Connected Enterprise. However, speakers went from one “standard, unmodified Ethernet” comment yesterday to many mentions today.
Product group vice presidents Fran Wlodarczyk (Control & Visualization), John Genovesi (Information & Process), and Scott Lapcewich (Customer Support & Maintenance) showed how their groups supported the company vision.
Wlodarczyk discussed controllers getting faster (leading to added yield for an automotive assembly plant), improved workflows and tighter integration with control in the visualization portfolio, and how the latest motion control products are self-aware (auto-tuning) and system-aware.
Genovesi, who has learned the languages of process automation and information systems well in his time leading the area, spoke to both.
“Rockwell Automation is uniquely positioned to drive value-based outcomes”:
- Integrated Architecture that includes integrated software
- Intelligent Motor Control (smart, connected assets)
- Domain Expertise (Solution delivery)
When Rockwell finally made a real commitment to entering the process automation business, it specifically avoided the term “DCS” and used its “PAC” (programmable automation controller) terminology. A couple of years ago spokespeople made a point of saying they have a DCS. Genovesi said the Rockwell DCS brings a modern approach that established competitors cannot match. Plus, the Rockwell approach can be less expensive.
The Rockwell DCS (built on the Logix platform, but not a PLC) advantage is that it can integrate with other plant automation and control assets such as motor control.
On the Information Services side, he emphasized the partnership with OSIsoft—a company now saying it has moved from just a historian company to providing a “real-time infrastructure.” We’ve been in the Industrial Internet of Things for 35 years, the OSIsoft spokesman proclaimed.
Lapcewich listed five sets of services his group provides:
- networks & security
- product & application lifecycle
- remote monitoring & cloud analytics
- asset management & reliability
- people & asset safety
[Note: when Rockwell discusses asset management, it refers to the types of electrical and automation assets/products it provides.]
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 11, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Internet of Things, Operations Management, Technology
Remote monitoring and diagnostics is a key driver for the Internet of Things strategy adoption in manufacturing and production. Advances in both the technology and services involved in this area appears to be the area of best economic return these days.
Rockwell Automation recently released news about its take on a diagnostic reliability service. Rockwell doesn’t tie it to the Internet of Things, much to its credit. But this solution fits within the broad trend I’ve seen developing.
The solution deploys a layer of technology across plant devices and equipment to monitor and perform analysis, and create a continuous improvement approach to reliability maintenance, reducing operational risk. As part of the service, a Rockwell Automation domain service expert also closely tracks equipment performance to advise on reliability improvements to the production facility.
“Our customers have access to a huge amount of data within their assets, but they often struggle to turn data into useful operational intelligence,” said Ryan Williams, product manager, Rockwell Automation. “In the past, companies relied on maintenance personnel on-site to check the status of equipment in the field and then develop corrective action plans. Now, with the diagnostic reliability service, they can transform maintenance data into asset intelligence. This helps build a more Connected Enterprise, leveraging interconnected data systems and producing actionable information. Companies can better prioritize choices on maintenance and production, and do more with less.”
The solution automatically collects identity and health data from all networked devices on the production control network. The data is then modeled with asset management information to trigger events and send alerts to necessary personnel for proactive maintenance. With the service, Rockwell Automation asset reliability professionals assist users in applying the intelligence on their critical equipment to inform data-driven maintenance decisions and increase productivity.
Case in diagnostics
Case in point: A major oil and gas company used the diagnostic reliability solution to help centralize information gathering and monitor hundreds of critical control assets across a California rural valley. The company also needed inventory of all the field devices in its process control network for a companywide cybersecurity policy. The automated identification and monitoring solution helped the company’s California business unit comply with the new corporate policy, reduce costs associated with field service manpower through proactive maintenance, and increase its daily oil production.
Through integrated, automated device identification and tracking, other customers using the diagnostic reliability service can realize approximately 70 percent reduction in manual data-collection time.
The diagnostic reliability offering is applicable to all manufacturers, with an industry emphasis including oil and gas, mining metals and cement, auto tire and rubber, and consumer packaged goods.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 8, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Data Management, Operations Management
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.”
