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MEMEX - FROST & SULLIVAN 2016 AWARD

MEMEX wins 2016 Global Machine Monitoring System Product Leadership Award

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Frost & Sullivan has a global team of analysts and consultants continuously researching a wide range of markets across multiple sectors and geographies. As part of this ongoing research, they identify companies that maintain consistently high standards for product or service quality and innovation, allowing them to form deep relationships with their customers. This research involves extensive primary and secondary research across the entire value chain of specific products. Against the backdrop of this research, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present MEMEX with 2016 Global Machine Monitoring Systems Product Leadership Award.

Headquartered in Burlington, Ontario, MEMEX-operating as a publicly traded company under the stock ticker “OEE” earns its recognition as a global leader in the machine-to machine manufacturing market. MEMEX serves customers within the aerospace, automotive, and advanced industrial sectors by measuring manufacturing excellence in customers’ operations. MEMEX looks to continuously improve its turnkey machine monitoring and automation solutions for its customers, expanding the capabilities of its flagship product, MERLIN, to stay a relevant and highly efficient machine monitoring solution for customers through technical service, support, training, and software development. MEMEX and the MERLIN system received Frost & Sullivan’s 2013 North America Technology Innovation Leadership Award in the machine monitoring market and the company is once again recognized in 2016 as a global Product Leader with its continued commitment to innovation and customer value.

MEMEX - Real-Time Data Visualization

OEE May Not Be Enough

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Columns: 12/1/2016 | CONTRIBUTED BY DAVE EDSTROM ,Chief Technology Officer , Memex

Overall equipment efficiency (OEE) is a critical measurement of how well a manufacturing unit is doing. But shops should also focus on profitability, which is where Financial OEE comes in.

Overall equipment efficiency (OEE) is considered a critical measurement of how well a manufacturing unit is doing. The formula is simple: It multiplies the percentages of availability, performance and quality to yield a single percentage. This result enables similar units (one machine, one department, one plant or an entire enterprise) to be compared or rated against a target such as a plant’s best record or a benchmark of world-class performance. Focusing on OEE enables manufacturers to pinpoint factors that hold back productivity.

Significantly, recent developments in data-driven manufacturing make calculating OEE easier, faster and more accurate—and acting on it more effective. For example, these benefits are an important advantage of connecting machine tools to a network for data collection and monitoring.

However, shops and plants must also focus on profitability. Managers have to balance decisions about maximizing the part-making capability of their equipment with decisions about the money-making potential of this equipment. OEE ratings alone provide an incomplete picture. One development that seeks to address this shortcoming is called Financial OEE (FOEE), a trademarked name for a new feature of MERLIN Tempus Enterprise Edition (EE) from Memex.

MERLIN (Manufacturing Enterprise Real-time Lean Information Network) is a communications platform for real-time manufacturing analytics. Tempus is the company’s suite of applications for machine monitoring such as real-time views of the plant floor, custom dashboards, reporting, alerting and other functions related to data-driven manufacturing. Tempus EE adds OEE, job scheduling and other modules such as FOEE.

Memex has partnered with noted OEE expert and author Robert Hansen to develop this approach. FOEE answers the question, “What is the value of improving OEE on this particular machine for this particular product?” More to the point, it answers “How much profit is being left on the table by not performing at company-best or industry-best levels for that specific part?”  Thus, the FOEE concept shows the power of data-driven manufacturing and the Industrial Internet of Things to transform decision-making not only on the shop floor, but also in the front office.

Tempus EE automatically collects the event details necessary to compute OEE.  The first phase of FOEE applies to stand-alone machines making a finished product. FOEE requires three key financial input values for each product and the machine. These inputs are unit sales price, unit material cost and the hourly operational expense (OPEX) of the machine. This information can be derived from the ERP product standard and the income statement.

FOEE is the current-state hourly profit divided by a value representing a world-class level of profit. This ratio tells a company what profit it made compared to what profit could have been made at world-class levels. With this information, a company can see the financial value of improving the machine’s performance.

In the figure on page 40, a product called P0006 is analyzed over 180 days. The product-run OEE data is correlated with the three inputs necessary for FOEE. It also associates important actionable data such as profit contribution per hour and current FOEE based on the machine’s best FOEE percentage, as well as how much more profit would accrue by running the machine at its best OEE rate.

With FOEE, managers can look at jobs scheduled for a machine and make decisions based not just on utilization, but also on utilization and profit. This enables managers to compare a list of machines capable of running a certain job, and to determine which machine would yield the highest hourly profit. Just as the OEE figure related to each project or job is a key tool in prioritizing and evaluating continuous improvement projects, FOEE provides a quick view of the profitability opportunity for these projects. FOEE is a tool to make better business decisions for scheduling products, guiding continuous improvement efforts and giving important feedback to sales and marketing teams.

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MEMEX - IIoT

The IIoT or Industry 4.0: Who will win?

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Written by Dave Edstrom & David McPhail, Memex | Tuesday October 11, 2016
Oct. 11, 2016 – At Memex, we are frequently asked questions about both the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0. The questions usually start off, “What do you see happening in [IIoT/Industry 4.0]?” The conversation will quickly zero in on their real concern, which is to find an answer to the question: “What and when should I be doing something with [IIoT/Industry 4.0]?”
Conceptually, are either IIoT or Industry 4.0 really new in manufacturing? The answer to that question is an emphatic “no.” One only needs to go back 36 years to the Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) effort led by GM to see just one standardization attempt applied to manufacturing. For either to be successful, they must provide a net bottom line benefit for the dollars invested by delivering tangible and measurable business outcome(s).At Memex, we would argue what is changing even faster is that manufacturing is catching up, and even surpassing, other industries in truly understanding what is happening on the plant floor. Only two to four per cent of all shops or plants are monitored, a fact Dave Edstrom, Memex CTO, picked up when surveying the industry during his time as president and chairman of the board of the MTConnect Institute. When asked, most plant or shop managers will state their plant utilization is in the 65 to 75 per cent range. When hardware/software is deployed that can properly quantify this number, it is shown time and again to be actually 25 to 32 per cent. A significant inflection point for both IIoT and Industry 4.0 is MTConnect. A fact that cannot be overstated is that the open and royalty-free manufacturing interconnectivity standard MTConnect has been a huge enabler for manufacturing and provides the viable highway for information sharing from the shop floor to the top floor.

The evolution
Industry 4.0 first came to life in 2011. The name Industry 4.0 represents the fourth industrial revolution, with steam power being the first, mass production using electricity being the second, and digital computing being the third revolution for improving manufacturing. It is interesting to note in 1966, Karl Steinbuch, a German computer scientist, stated, “In a few decades’ time, computers will be interwoven into almost every industrial product.”

Industry 4.0 recognizes there are significant technical challenges that all come into play and the only way to address those are with a comprehensive framework. A key paper for Industry 4.0 is the Working Paper No. 01/2015, titled Design Principles for Industrie 4.0 Scenarios: A Literature Review by Mario Hermann, Tobias Pentek, and Boris Otto. In this paper, they bring out key design principles for Industry 4.0:

• Interoperability
• Virtualization
• Decentralization
• Real-time capability
• Service orientation
• Modularity

Interoperability is listed as the first design principle and this is where a standard, such as MTConnect, becomes critically important. While MTConnect is not yet part of Industry 4.0, there are conversations going on at very high levels. This fact was stated by Prof. Dr.- Ing. Dr. h.c. Detlef Zühlke when he sat on an Industry 4.0 panel with Dave Edstrom, Memex CTO, at McMaster University this past April.

GE is credited with coining the term IIoT, while Cisco is credited with coining the term IoT. By adding Industrial to Internet of Things, how does GE differentiate the two? We find the following on the GE Digital blog: “In today’s ever-changing and volatile market, manufacturers seek a single version of the truth that will help them make the right decisions for improving profitability, while at the same time mitigating risk as much as possible. They wish to grow their profits and their organization, while ensuring safety for employees, the general public and the environment. To obtain all of this, they need increased visibility and better insights into the performance of their equipment and assets.”

GE is positioning IIoT brilliantly in its commercials. In one, “Owen” is given a hammer by his father and is told it was his grandfathers. Owen’s father asks Owen to pick it up. Owen tells his parents that while GE builds industrial equipment, he will be writing software that will allow machines to speak to each other. These commercials are laying the groundwork for data-driven manufacturing.

Taking advantage of the platform
Now that we have provided the definitions directly from the sources and the relevant context, let’s look at how we would respond to the next question, “What does Memex see happening in [IIoT/Industry 4.0]?” For many, IIoT means that after a plant has attached all of their manufacturing equipment, they come to the conclusion that data analysis begets more data analysis and they want to start adding sensors — everywhere. These sensors include coolant, vibration, temperature, humidity, motion, current and amperage, to name just a few. These sensors come into play after shops have electronically connected to their major assets, such as machine tools and operators. This attention on connecting everything in manufacturing underscores the importance of interoperability, the first design principle of Industry 4.0.

What both of these efforts are trying to establish is to be the platform for manufacturing. What is a platform? Microsoft Windows, Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Apple’s OS X are all examples of platforms. A platform is not just the operating system, but it is also the rules of the road in terms of interoperability between systems, security, licensing, interfaces, reference implementations, working groups and countless other critical aspects of a platform. Building a platform that becomes an industry standard is extremely difficult and expensive.

What should a shop owner or plant manager being doing today with either IIoT or Industry 4.0?

The tremendous interest in both Industry 4.0 and IIoT are proving the point that many of us in manufacturing have known for years manufacturing is ripe for analytics. Both Industry 4.0 and IIoT fall into the data-driven manufacturing camp. Woody Allen once said, “If you live in a country run by a committee, make sure you are on the committee.” Your level of involvement today with these efforts should directly reflect the possible outcomes and the tangible net business benefits to your business. If you are running a large plant with many software developers, you might want to invest some of a software developer’s time into either investigating these efforts or possibly joining Industry 4.0.

What steps should a plant manager take with either IIoT or Industry 4.0?

• Realize these efforts are a means to an end, not an end in itself.
• The bottom line with any effort in manufacturing should answer the fundamental question, “How does this help me improve my efficiency so I can make more parts and more profits with less resources in less time?”
• Far and away, the best investment of time is to truly understand what is happening on your plant floor. The way to accomplish this is with a shop floor monitoring system. The ROI of shop floor monitoring is measured in weeks and months, delivering an average of 300 per cent Internal Return Rate of capital — the percentage is based on the information we track from our customers.
• When it comes time to connect your assets on your shop floor, use MTConnect as the interconnectivity standard.
• If you are one of the less than five per cent who have completely connected your plant floor and can see exactly what is happening on any given manufacturing asset at anytime and from anywhere, then you should start looking into where it makes sense to work with Industry 4.0.

In our opinion, IIoT for manufacturing is really about adding sensors to manufacturing and the basic challenge is interoperability; interoperability is always the challenge in computers.

Will IIoT or Industry 4.0 be the MAP of the 21st century and end up in the graveyard of industrial standards initiatives that promised much but didn’t deliver, or will both truly be worthy of the term “revolution?” Only time will tell, but our bet is it doesn’t matter what you call it, if you are not connecting your plant’s assets to be monitored, then it is not if you will go out of business, but when.

David McPhail is the CEO and president of Memex, and a current member of Manufacturing AUTOMATION’s editorial advisory board. He has chaired several working groups of U.S.-based MTConnect Institute. Dave Edstrom is the CTO for Memex, as well as the former president and chairman of the board for the MTConnect Institute. Based in Burlington, Ont., Memex is the global leader of M2M manufacturing productivity solutions. Its connectivity technologies bridge the shop floor to the top floor and provide machine efficiencies, maintenance savings, and eradicate productivity gaps.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of Manufacturing AUTOMATION

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MEMEX - CISCO - logo

Cisco and MEMEX partner to win the secure IIoT Market

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Kicking Some Digital Ass in Las Vegas

July 21, 2016 | Sophic Capital | Sean Peasgood & Marcel Valentin

 

99% of manufacturing machine data is trapped inside the machines. Real-time machine data is essentially non-existent because manufacturers fear security breaches in a net worked machine environment. Unlocking this data via secure networks and allowing overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) analysis would weed out invisible and expensive inefficiencies. This issue was at the forefront of IIoT experts in the connected machines pavilion at Cisco live, Cisco’s annual technology conference. We saw Cisco’s secure network solution for manufacturing environments, which was exhibited with partner MEMEX’s manufacturing operations management system platform. Mass adopt ion of using real-time, machine data analytics to create business outcomes is beginning, and MEMEX (a Sophic Capital client) is positioned to become the industry leader.

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MEMEX - Measuring Manufacturing Excellence Logo

Can Connectivity Be Converted to Competitiveness?

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Robert Brooks | July 6 2016 | American Machinist

Manufacturers need more convincing; new PLCs, switches, and platforms aim to cut through the fog and make a performance-based case for IoT

  • 92% of machines disconnected
  • Pluggable micro-services, and more
  • Low-power-wide-area network
  • Fully integrated process software

For all the enthusiastic predictions from high-tech analysts, manufacturers seem to be only tentatively embracing the Industrial Internet of Things — the concept of a universal operating platform: according to Cisco, the developer of network programming and devices, 92% of 64 million manufacturing machines in operation worldwide are not connected to any network.

The IoT, you may recall, is the virtual network established by tying together individual sensors, connective devices, analytics programs, and process controls, and unifying systems worldwide to optimize information flow and responsiveness. And, manufacturing is only one facet of this proposition, others being the energy sector, transportation, and civilian/governmental information networks (shorthand, “smart cities.”)

While most manufacturers are familiar by now with “cloud computing” (i.e., remote, secure data storage), this arrangement is more commonly described as “fog computing”, or fog networking, because it uses one or a collaborative multitude of end-user clients for computing and data storage (in contrast to using cloud data centers.) The fog cluster is also responsible for communication, control, data configuration, and more essential functions of a data network.

While all this promises to make data collection and analysis faster and more dynamic, and thereby improve process control, it’s still a vast and challenging proposition for manufacturers. It requires more than the usual level of trust between supplier and customer. But, it’s a vision that’s hard to contain, and Cisco is rolling out a bundle of new devices and capabilities it intends to use to make the possibilities more realistic to individual manufacturers.

Mazak Corp. adopted Cisco Connected Machines as the technology platform for its SmartBox package, which connects manufacturing equipment to a factory network. SmartBox uses the Cisco IE4000 with the MTConnect fog network and connected streaming analytics.

Cisco Connected Machines is a control platform the developer promises will connect control devices securely, create fog networking feasible and effect, and convert machine data into real-time analysis. Connected Machines functions as a link between machine designers/builders and the manufacturers using them, which is foreseen as a way to promote process improvements via “real-time corrective action and continuous, predictive maintenance.”Two products being introduced this month will expand the scope of the Connected Machines platform, including a new series of switches (IE4000) operating on the IOx operating system. This means the platform is able to deliver pluggable micro-services and can integrate with IoT sensors and cloud applications while processing data nearer to the machine. Cisco also introduced “Connected Streaming Analytics,” real-time analysis of process activity via the IE4000, for small footprint deployment.

Cisco has made significant progress in the machine-tool space thanks to its co-development efforts with Mazak Corp. Cisco Connected Machines is the operating system for Mazak’s SmartBox technology, which connects manufacturing equipment to a factory network. SmartBox uses the Cisco IE4000 with MTConnect (a “fog network”) and connected streaming analytics.

Connecting Machines, Connecting Plants

“Mazak continues to drive toward its iSMART Factory concept that uses advanced manufacturing cells and systems together with full digital integration to achieve free-flow data sharing in terms of process control and operation monitoring,” stated president Brian Papke. “Within that concept, the connection of today’s manufacturers to the Industrial Internet of Things allow them to achieve levels of efficiency and productivity never before realized.

“And, while the Mazak iSMART Factory concept centers around open connectivity and the Internet, we must also provide those manufacturers the highest level of security possible,” Papke added, noting that Mazak’s collaboration with Cisco is achieving that security.

Cisco also is expanding its Connected Factory platform, which allows industrial organizations to integrate industrial automation and control with business systems, build a common “plant-to business” network, and locate and resolve problems to improve uptime and equipment availability. It is introducing a new multi-gigabit speed ruggedized switch (IE 4010) that offers in-line Power over Ethernet/PoE+ multi-speed Ethernet ports, that can power up to 24 other devices in industrial applications. Another new switch, IE 1000, is a rugged but more compact option, with in-line PoE/PoE+ multi-speed Ethernet ports for up to eight other industrial devices.

Because an increasing number of IoT devices are connecting to the Internet (Cisco predicts the number will reach 50 billion by 2020); and because approximately 45% of such IoT devices are constrained by battery power and require long range for IoT connectivity, Cisco is offering a new platform low-power-wide-area network (LoRaWAN) enabled with WiFi and cellular technologies, to connect with “billions of such battery powered, low-data rate and long distance IoT sensors.”

Cisco is not the only developer trying to help manufacturers find their way in the fog. Honeywell Process Solutions is offering fully integrated system of process software to convert plant data into actionable information. According to Ali Raza, v.p. of HPS’ Advanced Solutions business, the Uniformance® Suite lets users “capture the data they need, visualize trends, collaborate with other users, predict and prevent equipment failures, and act to make informed business decisions.”

Using a common asset model, Uniformance collects and stores all types of data for easy retrieval and analysis; predicts and detects events based on underlying patterns and correlations; links process metrics with business KPIs, to inform decision-making. Besides the IoT access, it allows user mobility and cloud connectivity, big data access, and predictive and enterprise analytics.

HPS also offers a new programmable logic controller it contends will manage dual requirements of connectivity and device integration necessary for plants to realize IoT in their own operation. The ControlEdge PLC, combined with Honeywell’s Experion®Process Knowledge System (an enterprise-wide control system), will work with devices from multiple vendors, simplifying configuration and reducing maintenance.

“Plants seek to maximize their return on assets by making sure that their automation investments are scalable, future-proof, adhere to open standards, and can seamlessly integrate to existing assets, avoiding having to ‘rip and replace’ current infrastructure,” commented Craig Resnick, vice president, ARC Advisory Group, articulating one of the most apparent, but consistent inhibitors keeping manufacturers from achieving IoT connectivity. “Future-proofing” everything from the controller to the enterprise platform so that it integrates with existing assets, is the Honeywell strategy to accelerate manufacturers’ IoT availability.

Still, manufacturers understand the current state of development well enough to realize that IoT signifies a conversion of their current production processes, transferring competitive advantage from machinery to “information.” It will take the proof of performance from these devices to make manufacturers IoT-ready.

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