Episodes
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
In the face of a rapidly evolving industrial landscape, agility and innovation have emerged as core drivers of growth. It is essential for manufacturers to adapt swiftly to changes, harnessing new technologies and embracing new processes that fuel their development. But achieving this level of agility and innovation is not without its challenges.
So how do organizations successfully navigate these hurdles to lay the groundwork for a meaningful digital transformation? To understand the complexities of implementing Industry 4.0 digitalization programs and a robust pathway to digital transformation I had a podcast conversation with Sandeep Sreekumar.
Sandeep is the Co-founder and COO of IndustryApps, a company focused on the Advanced Industrial data space and an Open Appstore for Industry 4.0.
Below is the outline of our conversation:
✅ Importance of agility in implementing Industry 4.0 digitalization programs.
✅ Key challenges organizations face when trying to implement agile digitalization processes.
✅ An Open Platform Strategy for open innovation in the context of Industry 4.0
✅ Scaling Governance and Compliance checks for Industry Apps
✅ Example use case of an Open Platform Strategy
✅ Scaling an open platform strategy across varying plants
✅ Industrial Data Space in Industry 4.0, and why is it critical for future business sustainability.
✅ Data modeling technologies for Industrial data space
✅ Ensuring security and privacy while leveraging the benefits of an Industrial Data Space
✅ Best practices to fully embrace the potential of Industry 4.0
Friday May 05, 2023
Friday May 05, 2023
In smart manufacturing, effective data collection and analysis are crucial. But to truly succeed, it's essential to integrate the coordination of personnel, equipment, and materials into the process.
For the factory worker, this would typically be through a series of digital nudges that guide their decision-making throughout the day, enabling them to work in harmony with smart machines for optimal results.
To discuss more the value and implementation of human-machine collaborative systems for smart manufacturing, I talked with Rafael Amaral.
Rafael is the CTO and Co-Founder of TilliT, a cloud-based digital operations platform that provides alternative approaches to traditional supply-chain management systems, MES platforms, and OEE software.
Below is the outline of our conversation.
✅ Opportunities for human-to-machine collaboration in manufacturing
✅ Benefits of effective orchestration of human-machine collaboration
✅ Assessing and redesigning processes to facilitate seamless human-machine collaboration.
✅ Connectivity Guideline for Real-Time updates
✅ Understanding human efficiency in influencing the operational value
✅ Identifying and resolving value-destroying behaviors on the shop-floor
✅ Impact of knowledge retention for digital transformation
✅ Selecting technology platforms for frontline workers
✅ Role of Unified Namespace in driving human-machine collaboration systems.
✅ Performance metrics and monitoring strategies for human-machine collaboration
✅ Deliver effective training programs to prepare frontline workers
✅ Case studies on implementing human-machine collaborative systems.
Tuesday Apr 11, 2023
Ep 34 Node-Red for IIoT in the Enterprise - [ Nick O’Leary, CTO Flowforge Inc ]
Tuesday Apr 11, 2023
Tuesday Apr 11, 2023
The Node-Red project turns ten this year.🎉
And yet, its remarkable potential remains largely untapped in the industrial software domain.
Having been a Node-Red user and promoter since its early days, I've observed that its preparedness for enterprise deployments is a key challenge limiting its broader adoption.
To discover the most effective strategies for deploying and managing enterprise-grade Node-Red applications in Industrial IoT, I invited Nick O'Leary for a podcast conversation.
As the co-creator of Node-Red and the CTO and Founder of FlowForge—a DevOps platform for Node-Red—Nick brought invaluable insights to the discussion.
Below is the outline of our discussion.
✅ Origins and Evolution of Node-Red
✅ Challenges and best practices for deploying Node-RED in Industrial environments
✅ DevOps for Node-RED in IIoT
✅ Key Features of Enterprise Ready Node-RED
✅ Best practices for industrial data acquisition using Node-Red
✅ Suitability of Node-Red for Semantic Modelling
✅ Node-Red vs Off-Shelf Solutions
✅ Use cases for Edge vs Cloud deployment of Node-Red
✅ Best Practices for Scaling Node-Red in large-scale IIoT deployments.
✅ Access control, data encryption, and authentication in Node-Red.
✅ Examples of successful IIoT projects using Node-Red
✅ The Future of Node-Red in Industrial IoT Applications
Monday Apr 03, 2023
Monday Apr 03, 2023
Digital transformation of a manufacturing enterprise is a complex process that goes far beyond simply sending data to the cloud and implementing “predictive maintenance”.
It requires a strategic architectural approach that effectively utilizes your data ecosystem to make informed decisions in real-time and drive innovation at every level of your organization.
While there are various architectural approaches, the Unified Namespace (UNS) stands out as the most effective approach to achieve optimal results and reap the full economic benefits of digital transformation.
The UNS serves as a critical building block for your overall strategy.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Walker Reynolds, the President of 4.0 Solutions, a renowned industrial IoT expert who introduced and popularized UNS. He provides a masterclass on understanding, implementing, and benefitting from the Unified Namespace approach.
If you'd like to gain a solid understanding of leveraging the Unified Namespace for your manufacturing enterprise, don't miss out on this valuable conversation.
Outline
✅ Origins and evolution of Unified Namespace
✅ A Description of the Unified Namespace
✅ Why MQTT is the de-facto protocol for UNS implementation
✅ The role of MQTT Sparkplug in UNS Implementation
✅ The role of OPC UA in UNS Implementation
✅ Workflow for designing a Unified Namespace for IIoT System
✅ Mapping physical assets and devices to a Unified Namespace, tools and techniques.
✅ Metadata definition for consistency and accuracy across different systems and devices in UNS
✅ How MES fits into UNS architecture, specific functions and capabilities
✅ Challenges and Mitigation strategies in implementing a Unified Namespace
✅ Impact of Industry4.0 Community Discord Platform
✅ Industry4.0 Influencer Lists
✅ Impact of ChatGPT on Digital Transformation
#iot #iiot #industry40 #industrialiot #uns
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
In this latest episode, I explore the capabilities of OPC UA PubSub and how it can be integrated with Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) to standardize industrial field-level data transfer.
I speak with Melvin Francis, the Project Manager for OPC UA and TSN-related services at BE.services GmbH, to discuss the challenges faced in developing related applications due to the lack of ready-made OPC UA + TSN stacks or SDKs.
We also delve into the value of OPC UA + TSN integration and how it can address the requirements of time-critical industrial systems.
Furthermore, we explore the ongoing research project by BE Services, in partnership with Hochschule Offsberg University, the German government, and various hardware vendors, to develop a hardware and OS-independent low-footprint OPC UA + TSN SDK for wired and wireless TSN networks.
Below is the outline of our conversation.
✅ How Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) Works
✅ OPC UA PubSub + TSN Integration
✅ Low-footprint OPC UA PubSub TSN Architecture
✅ SDK Test Suite for low-cost testing ecosystem
✅ Practical Demonstration
Monday Dec 12, 2022
Monday Dec 12, 2022
The Unified Namespace has countless advantages over traditional architectural approaches when it comes to IIoT implementation in manufacturing.
Some of these are:
👉 More efficient communication and data sharing between different devices and systems.
👉 Improved scalability due to a unified interface that is consistent across the entire enterprise network.
But how do you go actually go about building a Unified Namespace Architecture?
To gain an understanding of this, I invited David Schultz for a podcast session.
David is the President of G5 Consulting where he works with manufacturers to help them develop and execute strategies for their digital transformation and asset management initiatives.
Below is the outline of our conversation.
✅ What is The Unified Namespace?
✅ MQTT/Sparkplug for Unified Namespace
✅ Tools and Strategies for Building the Unified Namespace
✅ Data Normalisation and Contextualisation Techniques for UNS
✅ Role and Significance of ISA 95 Schema in UNS
✅ Using Multiple MQTT Brokers for a Unified namespace
✅ Role played by Historian, MES, and ERP in UNS Architecture
✅ Use Cases and Technologies for Data lake Integration with UNS
✅ Approaches for Extending UNS with transactional Capabilities
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
Sunday Oct 23, 2022
When you look around a factory, you are likely to see objects interacting with other objects. And there are specific things that each object can do.
It, therefore, makes sense that, in order to build autonomously reconfiguring factories, each object needs to be able to describe its capabilities to other objects so that they can interact with no human intervention.
OPC UA Information Modelling is an effort to enable the description of complex industrial systems through a standardised and object-oriented interface.
To gain a deeper understanding of how it works, I invited Jouni Aro for a podcast conversation.
Jouni is the Chief Technology Officer at Prosys OPC Ltd, a leading provider of OPC and OPC UA technology with over 20 years of experience in the field. He's been the main architect for Prosys OPC UA SDKs and is an active member of the Technical Advisory Council and several working groups of the OPC Foundation.
Below is the outline of our conversation
✅ What is OPC UA Information Modelling
✅ Benefits of Information Modelling for Industry 4.0
✅ OPC UA Unified Object Model for Description of Complex Systems
✅ Tools for Building and Managing OPC UA information models
✅ OPC UA Companion Specifications, Custom Information Models
✅ OPC Cloud Library, Online Information Model Repository
✅ Workflow for integrating OPC UA Information Model into Products
✅ OPC UA Information Modelling in Industrial System Integration
✅ OPC UA Information Modelling and ISA95
✅ OPC UA Information Modelling for Vertical Integration
✅ OPC UA Information Modelling for Horizontal Integration
✅ Is OPC UA Information Modelling Future-Proof?
✅ Information Modelling for OPC UA PubSub Over MQTT
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Gaining competitive advantage is the main driver of innovation in nature as much as it is in technology. And the manufacturing ecosystem is no different.
In manufacturing, this manifests in the deployment of production automation systems on the shop floor, and enterprise planning systems on the top floor.
But yet, there's a grey area in between that has, for the most part, remained underutilised or wrongly implemented altogether.
This is where a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) would live.
To understand how manufacturers can gain a competitive advantage by leveraging a Modern MES Architecture for data-driven manufacturing, I invited Kevin Jones for a podcast conversation.
Kevin is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Ectobox, Inc., a Manufacturing Intelligence Solutions company and
Industry 4.0 systems integrator based in Pittsburgh, PA.
Below is the outline of our conversation
✅ Drivers for Data-Driven Manufacturing
✅ Introducing MES for Manufacturing
✅ Functions of Manufacturing Execution Systems
✅ Selecting and Implementing an MES System
✅ Modern Manufacturing Execution System Architecture
✅ Problems with Current Manufacturing Data Systems
✅ Unified Namespace for Manufacturing Execution System
✅ Brownfield Integration into Unified Namespace Architecture
✅ The Future of MES in Manufacturing
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
Ep 28 Predictive Analytics in Manufacturing - Maciek Wasiak, CEO Xpanse AI
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
I invited Maciek Wasiak for a podcast conversation on Predictive Analytics in Manufacturing and he delivered a masterclass.
Maciek is the CEO and Founder of Xpanse AI, a company that develops technology that rapidly accelerates Data Science delivery by replacing manual data science with AI-driven processing
Here's the outline of our conversation:
✅ Xpanse AI
✅ Introduction to Predictive Analytics
✅ Real-World Data Science Use Cases in Manufacturing
✅ Semiconductor Fabrication Predictive Analytics Solution Demo
✅ Traditional vs Automated Predictive Analytics
✅ Predictive Analytics Workflow Based on AI and ML
✅ Identifying and qualifying plant-floor data sources for Predictive Analytics
✅ Managing plant-floor data variety for Predictive Modelling
✅ Predictive Modelling Techniques
✅ Meeting plant-floor real-time requirements with ML Processes
✅ Role played by domain-level expertise in Predictive Analytics
✅ Role Played by Industrial System Integrators in Predictive Analytics implementation
✅ Working with AI and ML platforms for non data scientists
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Whenever you're faced with information overload on any subject matter, as is the case with many manufacturers considering Smart Manufacturing, it's important to take a step back and understand its first principles.
Without which it would be difficult and costly to realise the vision of Smart Manufacturing.
To help bring the First Principles of Smart Manufacturing to light, I invited Conrad Leiva for a podcast conversation. Conrad is the VP of Ecosystem and Workforce Development at the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, CESMII.
CESMII is a US Government funded institute with a mission to democratise Smart Manufacturing and make its methodologies and technologies more affordable and accessible to SME manufacturers.
Here's the outline of our conversation
✅ Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII)
✅ A Brief History of Smart Manufacturing
✅ Smart Manufacturing Definition and Description of Key Terms
✅ The Seven Principles of Smart Manufacturing
✅ Flat and Real-Time Principle
✅ Scalability Principle, Enabled by Cloud and Edge
✅ Interoperable and Open Principle, Information Modelling
✅ The Role of ISA 95 in Smart Manufacturing
✅ Proactive and Semi-Autonomous Principle
✅ Sustainable and Energy Efficient