To derive actionable data from the factory floor means overcoming the divide between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). Sensor to cloud solutions offer a scalable and robust way of bridging this gap. Turck Banner, industrial connectivity specialist, and Accenture, digital transformation consultancy, discuss the benefits of this approach.
In their efforts to reach Industry 4.0, manufacturers face a host of challenges, from the growing labour and skills shortage, to increasing operational costs squeezing profit margins and reducing CapEx investment. Gaining actionable insights from the factory floor and using it via enterprise intelligence systems will be pivotal to solving these problems and driving manufacturing towards Industry 4.0, and beyond.
Speaking at a press event late last year, Tony Coghlan, Managing Director of Turck Banner, explained that cloud to sensor technology simplifies the journey of data from the factory floor to enterprise systems – such as MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management Systems) – by circumventing the connectivity and compatibility challenges present between the two. While Turck Banner’s focus is on turnkey solutions, its end customers are increasingly interested in the IT-OT crossover and Industry 4.0.
In the spirit of bridging the OT-IT divide, Turck Banner had invited guest speakers Jonathan Parr and Daniel Winter from Accenture, a consultancy that helps companies to reinvent products, processes and business models through digital technologies, to provide insight from an IT-centred perspective and help build a broader picture of the challenges faced by the industry and the benefit cloud to sensor can offer.
Jonathan Parr, Managing and Operations Lead, had often found that Accenture’s clients want reassurances around the value of Industry 4.0., before fully investing in it, but this can be challenging with Proof of Concepts (POCs) as they only provide value at scale, which, he advised, requires a clear strategy from the outset.
Using AI adoption as a fitting example, Jonathan pointed out that for AI to be effectively implemented requires having the right data, and that was where companies such as Turck Banner come in; the “ability to get the data off the shop floor quickly, surface it, and what we call contextualise it, which is basically providing clarity around where it’s come from, is what the real step change in the ability to get data, and get value from AI.”
Addressing how this advancement is moving away from the traditional data journey topography (see Fig.1), Daniel Winter, Manufacturing & Supply Chain System Manager, explained that sensor to cloud allowed them to “bypass” the usual layers of complexity between the two, a particularly attractive proposition for a Brownfield facility, where the equipment is legacy, or even obsolete, and extracting data in the traditional way is an arduous and highly skilled process.
“The beauty of this new approach” Daniel summarised, “is getting raw data, unfiltered data from the shop floor to intelligence in the cloud with minimum transition and transformation and handling of the data.”
Traditionally, getting data from the hardware on the factory floor is challenging due to the varying formats (OPC UA, REST APIs, MQTT, RFID, IO-Link, etc.), and this is then exasperated by legacy systems, which traditionally requires OT-skilled people to resolve.
In an economic climate where CapEx spend is increasingly hard for companies to get approved, being able to benefit from digital transformation utilising existing hardware is an attractive prospect, and Turck Banner prides itself on being able to facilitate this with its multiprotocol approach. Despite being a sensor manufacture, Turck Banner often use an existing hardware, made possible by methods of digital shadowing and parallel networks. In these instances, the company acts as a systems integrator.
Circling back to the IT-OT divide, while having sensors in place and getting that data to a cloud system makes it actionable, it doesn’t follow that this will lead to process optimisation or improve overall operational efficiency. This is where higher level conversations with the IT department are required, as they would typically drive a digital transformation project.
“The beauty of this new approach is getting raw data, unfiltered data from the shop floor to intelligence in the cloud with minimum transition and transformation and handling of the data.” Daniel Winter, Manufacturing & Supply Chain System Manager, Accenture.
Turck Banner is offering an holistic approach to this challenge. In the first instance, it will work with companies from the point of scoping the project and selecting the appropriate hardware, through to Functional Design Specification (FDS) and deployment of the selected hardware and software, including connectivity, before then assisting with data integration to ensure real-time insights are communicated in the desired format, to where they are needed most.
However, those businesses need to have a clear understanding of what they want to do with that data. Otherwise, they risk what Jonathan termed “pilot purgatory”, where a solution works but won’t scale. To avoid this, businesses should start with scalability in mind and support this with Proof of Value (POV); measurable, tangible benefits, which can only be proved with real data.
But what is viewed as a desirable Return on Investment (ROI) to a business can vary. Broadly speaking, Jonathan sees businesses taking two paths:
“The first is to identify some of the really key challenges that they want to go and solve, that they can use digital or availability of data to solve it. But actually, the longer-term value comes from being able to understand how the entirety of your process can be improved and getting greater visibility.”
Another ROI-pertinent factor is that decentralised data collection reduces the need of intervention by OT staff, an expensive overhead, best applied on more skilled tasks.
Summarising the benefits of sensor to cloud and Turck Banners end-to-end approach, Tony explained that they can near guarantee a scalable solution because they know that their systems will scale. Whatever stage of the process a company wishes to save money on, the goal will always be improving that company’s bottom line.
With sensor to cloud technology, Industry 4.0 will be more accessible to manufacturers than ever before. But to maximise the value, manufacturers must have a clear understanding of how to utilise this data, and recognising the insights it provides on their end-to-end operations.
For more information on sensor to cloud solutions, visit Turck Banner Ltd’s website.
