Posts

Manufacturers and Machine Builders Weigh In on IIoT

/by

With all the conversation swirling around about Industry 4.0 and the Industrial IoT, you sometimes have to wonder what’s actually trickling down to those people who are expected to buy in, like manufacturers and machine builders.  The bottom line is that someone is going to have to invest in the IIoT, and they expect to get a return on that investment. IIoT proponents are counting on manufacturing companies and OEMs to put some skin in the game.  But who is talking to them?

At least one person is.  Larry Asher, Director of Operations at Bachelor Controls Inc., a certified member of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA), has been meeting with long-term customers in a number of industrial fields, and asking them for their thoughts on the IIoT. Their responses indicate an overall positive view of the potential.

Asher first reiterates a growing understanding that the IIoT is not just a new term for industrial networking, or SCADA as usual.  He says, “Though it is true that networking has existed as part of industrial control solutions for many years, traditional isolated control networks will not support the level of integration required for large-scale data and analytics, nor will they support the number of connected devices that will be a part of IIoT-based solutions. IIoT-based solutions demand connectivity, accessibility and security, making the network infrastructure critical.”

He then shares the insights garnered from his conversations, organized into four areas that the IIoT is expected to impact: data analysis, mobile/remote access, supply chain integration, and preventative maintenance.

Summary of Insights

Here is a summary of how the manufacturers and machine builders he met with view the impact of the IIoT:

Data and Analytics: Everyone agrees that investing in IIoT to enhance data collection and develop more sophisticated and powerful analytics is a good thing.  Applying this higher level of analysis is already impacting procedures and control implementation on the plant floor. Some manufacturers are even revising company organizational structures to bring in people who can maximize performance and profit using IIoT data.

Mobile/Remote Access: Access to data via mobile devices and/or from remote locations has seen less interest, but that is expected to change.  Right now the implementation is fairly low, despite the significant number of products and options available, perhaps due to a perception of high cost.  But, as Asher reports, “mobility remains as a central theme and poised for rapid growth with a change in the value proposition.”

Supply Chain Integration: As to supply chain integration, there was a wide range of experience.  Some saw little or no difference between current practices and what the IIoT has to offer, while others reported that the integration is so complete that suppliers now effectively have direct access to user inventory levels.

Preventative Maintenance: Manufacturers and OEMs alike appreciate the value of IIoT-based preventative maintenance.  With machines and equipment connected directly to the vendor, manufacturers can automatically generate maintenance work orders or request spare parts.  Vendors gain a competitive advantage when they are able to monitor and remotely service their equipment 24/7, which also provides them with a source of recurring revenue.

Overall, the views of those at manufacturing plants responsible for ensuring ROI validate the practicality and cost-effectiveness of the Industrial IoT.  As word gets out, and more decision-makers understand the benefits, we expect to see increased levels of adoption.

Realizing Profits from the IoT

/by

“Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It’s the only insurance against irrelevance. It’s the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It’s the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.”

– Gary Hamel, management expert

A recent study from MPI Group, “How Manufacturers are Profiting from the IoT” validates the importance of innovation in IoT technologies.  It shows that there is a strong correspondence between understanding the IoT, implementing the IoT, and benefiting from the IoT.  “A good understanding of the IoT is a strong indicator of better operational performance,” the study said.  “Two-thirds of innovators have fully achieved or made significant progress toward world-class manufacturing status,” the study found.

These “innovators” are defined in the study as those companies most willing to use smart devices and embedded intelligence in their processes, their manufactured products, or both. Contrast that with those in the planning stages, labelled “incipients”, and those with no interest at all, called “indifferents.”  The indifferents, according to the study, “are also indifferent to manufacturing success; a whopping 73% have made—at best—only some progress toward world-class status.”

The take-away here is that those companies that understand the IoT and how to apply it to their businesses have for the most part benefitted, and are realizing profits from the IoT, while those that lag behind risk falling futher behind.

Two Areas for Realizing Profits

The study looks at two main areas of implementation of the IoT among manufacturers—in process and in products.  The process areas offering the most profit-making opportunities, according to survey respondents, were shipping and logistics, warehousing, document management, and manufacturing.  The most profit potential from products included adding IoT capabilities to the firm’s own products, as well as selling these capabilities in technologies, devices, software and/or materials to other companies.

There are challenges, of course.  One drawback is that most companies feel that their network infrastructures are not capable of handling machine-to-machine or machine-to-enterprise communications well.  Other top-of-mind challenges to survey respondents were in finding the budget needed for implementation, and in indentifying IIoT opportunities.

By the same token, though, when these companies learn how SkkyHub provides IIoT connectivity on existing networks and can be implemented with no capital expenditure, they may find that the Industrial IoT is within their grasp.  Using an end-to-end, secure-by-design IIoT solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, they may find that realizing profits from the IoT is not as difficult as they thought it might be.

Case Study: Plastics Manufacturer, Scandinavia

/by
Leading plastics manufacturere uses live process data to optimize production, saving time and materials

One of Scandinavia’s leading plastics manufacturers has chosen DataHub® software from Cogent Real-Time Systems (a subsidiary of Skkynet) to extract data and interact with their state-of-the-art plastic manufacturing equipment. The firm can now access any desired process data for the purposes of engineering analysis and enterprise-level resource planning.  DataHub software was the only additional piece of software required to realize substantial savings of time, materials, and production costs.

“The DataHub application is exactly the kind we needed,” said the project coordinator. “Our system is extensive, and we need to visualize a lot of production parameters. We looked at other solutions but they were too expensive and more complicated.”

plastics-manufacturer-plantWhen the company installed new equipment recently, the necessary system integration grew very complex. Progress was slow. After almost a year they were facing a deadline and had little to show for their time and effort. The goal was to pull together data from 15 machinery units, and feed it in real time into the company’s business processing systems. And if possible, to enable plant engineers to view and work with the live data as well. When they found DataHub software they were pleased to learn that most of the work had already been done.

The first test was to connect a DataHub instance to an OPC server and put live data into ODBC databases, Excel spreadsheets, and web browsers, as well as to aggregate OPC servers and tunnel data across a network. DataHub technology proved to be easy to use and reliable, and it performed remarkably well. The next step was to set up a test system.

The test system connected all of the OPC servers for the plant’s plastics production machines to a central DataHub instance. Another DataHub instance at a network node in the engineering department is connected to the central instance by a mirroring connection, for tunnelling data across the network. This second DataHub instance is then connected to an Excel spreadsheet to give a live display of the data in real time. When a piece of equipment machine starts up on the production line, the chart comes to life—cells spontaneously update values and bar charts spring into existence.

The engineering department was able to develop a custom TCP application that uses the DataHub C++ API to make a direct connection from the DataHub instance to their SQL Server database. Once connected that database gets updated in milliseconds with any change in the plastic-manufacturing machinery. From the SQL Server database the data is accessed by the company’s ERP and accounting software. Using DataHub software in these ways allows the company to:

  • Aggregate the data from all machinery into one central location.
  • Distribute the data across the network to various users.
  • Do decimal conversions of the data as it passes through the DataHub instance.
  • Put selected subsets of data into Excel for engineers to view and run calculations on.
  • Feed values into a SQL Server database in the company’s IT and business processing system. The OPC points are read-only to ensure a clean separation between the management and production areas.

“This system pays for itself,” said a company spokesman, “and we save money in many ways. We have seen substantial gains in productivity and performance because we can monitor our processes far more effectively. Our accounting and planning departments have, for the first time ever, an up-to-the-second record of actual production variables and statistics. At the same time, our engineering staff can use real-time data in their calculations, and feed the results directly back into the process.”

DataHub technology also saved substantial programming costs. The time alone saved on development work has paid for the system many times over. With a single tool the project coordinator has met the various needs of both the engineers and company managers. “The software is easy to install and it works well,” he said. “It’s at the correct level for our needs.”

Case Study: Excavator Manufacturer, Brazil

/by
Key decision makers gain access to live production data

A heavy equipment manufacturing plant near Sao Paulo, Brazil has been producing excavators, track-type tractors, and other earth-moving equipment for many years. Recently upgraded and expanded, the facility currently employs thousands of people and has an outstanding reputation for high-quality production methods.

Several years ago, in an initiative to keep top decision makers informed of current plant status in real time, company management decided to implement a web-based data visualization system. “We needed a way to quickly view the production status in each of our two plants,” said the plant director, “as well as the machinery common to both facilities. So we put out a request for a pilot project for an effective way to present high-level production figures to our key executives in real time.”

Responding to the request, Exata Sistemas de Automação, Cogent’s distributor for the Brazilian market, developed a solution using the OPC DataHub Web Server. Linking a DataHub instance to the facility’s main OPC server, they then created a web page that would display production data from 5 different machines around the plant to people in production and management offices. The plant engineers were pleased with the results, and were ready to implement the system, but they were faced with an obstacle.

“Although the production manager approved our pilot project, the IT Department has strict regulations on what software is allowed on their system,” explained Murilo Bevilaqua, Director of Exata, “So instead of implementing our solution, the company decided that the best approach would be to add this type of functionality to their existing MES system.”

The company’s technical staff asked their MES vendor to create a solution similar to the Exata pilot project. After several months of attempting to do this, they were not able to achieve the same results. So those responsible for the project returned to Exata and asked them how to best implement the system. More discussion ensued between the technical personnel at the company and the automation experts at Exata to address the security and reliability issues raised by staff in the IT department. Finally, when it was clear that using DataHub software would have no impact on the company’s IIS system or anything else in the IT domain, Exata was given the green light to go ahead.

The long wait actually proved to be beneficial for all parties. In the course of the year, a major upgrade of OPC DataHub software was released, now renamed Cogent DataHub® software. This new version included many new features, including DataHub WebView™ HMI technology. Now it would be much easier for Exata to build web pages, the results would be more attractive and robust, and data in the displays would update instantaneously.

“We used our original ASP-based pilot page as a pattern,” said Bevilaqua, “and quickly created the pages we needed in the  DataHub WebView HMI. It was simply a matter of opening a new page, putting in a few labels for the machines, and changing background color for machine status, such as running, stopped, in maintenance, and whether or not it was communicating with the PLC. This was a lot easier to do in the WebView HMI than trying to write a lot of HTML code. We just added a control, set the limits, chose the colors, and then started testing locally and remotely.”

The finished application is accessed remotely from several places around the company, including on a 40″ monitor in the director’s office. It displays 3 different web pages in slide-show mode, changing every 15 seconds, scrolling through production status on various lines. At any location, an operator or a manager can pause on a given page as long as necessary. It is possible to monitor the status from a total of 49 different machines among these three plant areas, with color identification of their current main status, and read more detailed information coming from the PLC.

“We were very pleased with what Exata has done,” said the plant maintenance analyst. “These web pages give us a complete overview of our production at a single glance.”

Case Study: Citect (Schneider Electric), USA

/by
Citect optimizes OPC-based system using the DataHub

A major battery manufacturing plant in the United States was recently faced with an interesting data integration challenge. Management needed access to data coming from a large number of different processes. Over 220 OPC-enabled field devices across the plant had to be connected to a single Citect MES system. The many OPC servers used for these connections are unique in that their data set is very dynamic. From one minute to the next any of the 220 devices may be present or absent in the data set.

citect-logo “Our challenge was to provide data from our dynamically changing OPC servers to a Citect system that is designed to work with a fixed data set,” said the company project leader. They decided to bring in a team from Citect to come up with a solution.

Citect, of Schneider Electric, is well known in the industrial process control world for their line of automation and control software solutions, particularly their MES systems. Dan Reynolds, the team leader for Citect, had heard about the DataHub® through his support department, and thought it might work. They configured the DataHub for OPC tunneling, to communicate across the network without the hassles of DCOM. And, thanks to the DataHub’s unique approach to OPC tunnelling, Dan found that it also solved the problem of providing a fixed data set.

citect-battery-manufacturing-system

“The DataHub mirrors data across the tunnel,” said Dan, “so the Citect system sees a constant data set. When a device goes offline, the tag remains in the DataHub. Just the quality changes from ‘Good’ to ‘Not Connected’.” Confident in their approach, the Citect team moved the testing from their location to the battery plant. But they soon found themselves faced with another challenge.

The production system is designed so that a field device can add or remove OPC items at any time. So, not only the OPC servers, but individual tags can suddenly appear or disappear from the system. When a new tag comes online, the server updates its tag count, but doesn’t say that a new value is available, because the OPC specification doesn’t require a server to say when a new point is created. This looked like a show-stopper for the configuration team. They knew that there is no OPC product on the market that can deal with that kind of behavior. Continually rereading the data set was not possible, because new points may be added during the read. So Dan got in touch with Cogent (a subsidiary of Skkynet), and working together they came up with a plan.

The solution was two-fold. First, the device behavior was modified to compact the tag add/delete cycle to a limited time. Then Cogent wrote a DataHub script that monitors a few OPC server tags, and when these tags change, a time-delayed function in the script re-reads the server’s data set. The scripted time delay allows for all the new points to be added before the data set is reread, and the DataHub thus discovers all of the new data as soon as it all becomes available.

“We are pleased with the performance of the DataHub for this application,” said Dan Reynolds. “There is no way we could have done this project with any other OPC tunneling product, or combination of products.”

“The Skkynet software has become an integral part of our MES solution,” said the project leader. “Without the DataHub, we would not be getting reliable data. If we hadn’t had it, our MES integration project would probably have come to a halt.”

Case Study: RWTH Aachen University, Germany

/by
Closed-Loop Control of Weaving Machines using the Cogent DataHub

From ancient times people have been using looms to weave cloth, canvas, and carpets. As the centuries passed, weaving became one of the first tasks to be mechanized in the industrial revolution. The various repetitive tasks such as raising and lowering rows of threads (the warp), and passing a shuttle with the cross-thread (the weft) back and forth between them, were a good fit for simple machines. Today, high-speed air-jet weaving machines are fully automated, and capable of sending a warp thread between weft strands at a rate of 2000 times per minute.

One of the challenges of automating a weaving machine is maintaining proper tension on the threads. With each pass of the weft, a certain amount of tautness must be applied to the warp to keep the woven fabric uniform at all times. Early looms used the weaver’s body weight or hanging stones to keep the warp taut, but an air-jet machine needs a more sophisticated technology.

This challenge has been addressed by the students and faculty of the Institut für Textiltechnik (ITA) der RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany, who are investigating how to optimize the tension of warp threads in an air-jet weaving machine.

“Our main research goal is self-optimization of the warp tension,” said Dr. Ing. Yves-Simon Gloy, Research Manager at ITA, “to enable the loom to set the warp tension automatically at a minimum level without reducing the process stability.” Keeping the proper tension maximizes the speed of the process, while yielding the highest possible quality of fabric.

“We started by creating an automated sequence routine, with the help of regression models for a model-based setting of the loom, and implemented in the weaving process,” said Dr. Gloy. “The automated sequence routine was implemented using the ibaPADU-S-IT as a fast, stand-alone control system and the software ibalogic from iba AG in Fürth, Germany.”

Once the necessary hardware was in place, the team needed to choose a way to monitor and control the loom. They got in touch with Logic Park, in Heimberg, Switzerland, who recommended the Cogent DataHub® as the ideal solution. Connecting the DataHub to the iba System OPC server, Dr. Gloy and his team were able to use WebView™ to quickly build a web HMI.

“The DataHub was the perfect tool to develop the new HMI – easy to install, easy to handle. I got very fast results and the control of the loom via the web browsers is totally stable,” said Dr. Gloy. “Our students are very impressed by the DataHub and its functionality. We can even view the HMI on a tablet, which is beyond state-of-the-art for a textile machine. Now we are investigating new applications for other textile machines in our Institute.”