Repost, with comments: FMI’s Surfing Lessons

http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/headlines/on-our-minds/id40791/fmis-surfing-lessons/

 

I read this article with interest, not for the "surfing" aspects but for the Toffler similarities, mapping the transformations of the food industry to the development undergone by the industrial automation industry. The two industries are interconnected for a number of reasons: one, due to the supplier/provider relationship--the food industry, like the automotive industry, is one of the key consumers (and drivers) of the automation market.  Their needs--for faster, more accurate production, operations visibility; deep quality functional integration, more advanced analytics, reporting, and control, are answered by the automation industry's developments for better Human Machine Interface products, the dashboards of Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence software, and the convenience of mobile-based reporting. 

 

Taking technology advances and making them usable solutions--that's the focus of industrial automation.

Repost, with comments: Big Data Strategy: s+b’s Strategy of the Year

http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Big-Data-Strategy-sbs-Strategy-of-the-Year

Big data has become part of the "triliogy" of new initiatives for businesses--along with the cloud and mobile, really transforming the way companies are doing business and interacting with systems, people and equipment.

This post from Strategy & Business discusses the value & initiatives that a company should consider for using and leveraging a big data strategy.

At Wonderware, we've supported manufacturing "big data" for many years, whether it's for real-time series process analysis (Historian, Historian Client), or for manufacturing intelligence (Wonderware Intelligence) where multiple databases can be accessed, the data related in context to one another, and then presented in a graphically rich dashboard.

The point is that depending upon a user's needs, these different "industrial big data" products can help them make more sense of the data that's within their plant or enterprise--providing relationships to events, allowing for better drill down and analysis.  If you have a data historian, and aren't using one of these analytical products, you may be missing important aspects of your process that you could easily improve, or gain better insight into.

What You Missed: Invensys Expo Showcased Operator Effectiveness, Mobility, Big Data and the Cloud

http://www.automationworld.com/expo-showcases-operator-effectiveness-mobility-big-data-and-cloud

Invensys' Rob Kambach speaks of Operator Effectiveness through new generation InTouch HMI

 

 

What did you miss at last week's Invensys Software Conference & Technical Support Symposium?  A lot!  Besides stellar presentations, a riveting general session, and outstanding keynote speaker, futurist Jack Uldrich, there was an interactive Expo area featuring the latest offerings from Invensys and its partner community.

 

Offerings around big data, the cloud, mobility and operator effectiveness underplayed the theme of #SoftwareRevolution. From new SmartGlance features to situational awareness capabilities from InTouch 2014, this year was all about looking at industrial software in a new way--as a partner bringing you more productivity, profitability, and empowerment.

Invensys and Microsoft, Together Again at the LATAM CIO Leadership Forum 2013

From Sept 30 through October 3, 2013 Invensys joined Microsoft’s Latin America CIO Leadership Forum in Miami, FL.  This event was created for CIO’s from government, industry and education, and offered a full program for both peer networking and deep-dive presentations.

Covering key IT topics as the cloud, devices and apps, mobility, big data, the forum also featured a case study from HP, and product updates from their CRM, Office and ERP teams.

Building on the interest for big data, the cloud, and mobility, Invensys showed solutions for food and beverage and CPG, water/wastewater and oil and gas.

Invensys Solutions for Food and Beverage, CPG were shown at the CIO Summit, based on Microsoft's technology stack

Bill Schiel and Marcelo Zaremba discussed with attendees scalable solutions based on Wonderware MES, SCADA as well as Consulting and Services offerings.

Invensys' Marcelo Zaremba discusses manufacturing operations solutions with CIO

For CIO’s, key care-abouts are keeping up with the pace of technology that is occurring today.  The cloud offers opportunities for cost savings, scalability, and ubiquitous access to applications enterprise-wide, but it also brings with it needed policies for security and standardization.   Mobility and the “Bring Your Own Device” momentum challenge CIOs with creating policies for compliance and multi-platform support. And Big Data feeds the needs for better analysis, knowledge management and decision making, but CIO’s must face multiple data source consolidation/acquisition and visualization.

Microsoft and Invensys, together have created solutions that build on the base technologies of big data, mobility and cloud.  For more information, please visit http://iom.invensys.com/EN/Pages/IOM_PartnersMicrosoft.aspx and for our cloud solutions based on Azure,  http://global.wonderware.com/EN/Pages/InvensysCloudforManufacturing.aspx

Megatrends: The Cloud, Big Data, Mobility: Why Should You Care?

I've written a lot over the past year on the 2013 Megatrends that we see for industrial automation: The Cloud, Big Data, and Mobility.  When we first started talking about the cloud more than a year ago, the overall response we got from our customer base was "please no." There was no interest in the cloud--it was seen as disruptive technology that had no relevance to an industrial environment.

Repost: Retailers, CPGs Using Big Data Analytics to Outperform Others

http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/headlines/national-supermarket-chains/id39544/retailers-cpgs-using-big-data-analytics-to-outperform-others/?icid=homepage

In this story from Progressive Grocer, IBM partnered with Kantar Retail Global to uncover the effectivity of using Big Data for feeding analytics and decision making in supermarket supply chains.  It comes as no surprise that those using Big Data for feeding sales, marketing, IT were more productive and lead in their market standings.

As we've seen from a manufacturing perspective, Big Data can also improve operations performance.  Having a unified view of Key Performance Indicators, fed in real-time, allows management to be more responsive to unplanned events or changes.   That's where Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence fits in--think of it as Business Intelligence (BI) for industry.  Bringing a holistic view of the enterprise, providing actionable information, giving you the capability to become a high performance organization.  There are a host of EMI providers--Wonderware Intelligence notably is a leading brand.

Smart grid challenges: Annual survey reveals a worried industry

Smart grid challenges: Annual survey reveals a worried industry

An interesting survey by Black & Veach indicates that the utilties industry is concerned about costs, availability, economic stability--ie, status quo.  What can we do, as automation providers, to ease these concerns?  Certainly, providing access to information to help them make better decisions, gain more operational visibility, and fine tune operations, are critical.  Taking advantage of the latest technologies (mobile, cloud, big data) gives them more knowledge and collaboration. It's a start.

I'm now an Americas Board Member At Large for MESA International!

I'm now a voting Board Member of MESA International, Americas Board, representing Invensys.  You may recall a post I did last month, introducing (or in some cases, re-introducing) you to MESA, its charter, and its purpose.

MESA has been in existence for almost 20 years, and I personally have been involved, in some manner, since 1996.  MESA has always fostered open cooperation between industry participants, be them collaborators, or in some cases, competitors, by providing a forum for bettering the state of the operations management industry.

Big Data requires Pattern Awareness to Provide Situational Awareness

Big Data requires Pattern Awareness to Provide Situational Awareness

What You Want to Read-- A Recap of My Top Posts

You, my readers, are the ultimate determinator (is that even a word??) of what we write.  When I look at the posts I've had over the past year or so, the content that you seem to respond to isn't necessarily the heavy duty, technical specs and product details of the wonderful portfolio of software products that Invensys Operations Management offers.  Instead, it's a higher level, socially conscious view of what's going on in the world of industrial automation.

What’s the Big Deal about Big Data?

Data is everywhere—lurking in our inboxes; languishing in our plant databases; and lingering in BI tools and analytics meant to provide insight, and intelligence to our everyday tasks.  Long ago I did an analysis of how many plant floor software applications a typical large manufacturing plant had—and it was well over 50.  This included legacy, custom, and commercial off-the-shelf applications for a variety of operations, from quality to production to maintenance.  That’s a lot of data hiding in a lot of applications. 

It’s logical to think that this data can be used for more than the sum of its parts—and that’s the foundation for products such as Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI). EMI puts real-time and near-real time transactional or plant data into context or relationships with one another, allowing users to define Key Performance Indicators that can be measured (or quantified) and monitored.  Think of quality by shift, energy usage by plant.  But is there more? 

Big Data in Manufacturing

By Michael Schwarz, Invensys, Manager, Advanced Applications Product Marketing

The term “Big Data” describes the dramatically growing amounts of data being generated, transferred and stored. It is overlaid with the increasing use of information technology, global networking, and digital devices to manage, view, store, and control it.

Big Data is not just for consumers.  The same phenomenon is happening in business management, commerce, entertainment and social communications, as well as in manufacturing operations.  Big Data demands storage capacity and computing performance, driving new opportunities for enhanced intelligence and tools to offer users informed decision making.