Advantech IoT, digital transformation products at SPS IPC Drives

During SPS IPC Drives Advantech will showcase the so-called "4C concept": Collect, Connect, Compute, Create - a collection of demos connected to the situation room present at the booth to show how the data from the field can be easily aggregated, analysed and displayed.

Recently Advantech introduced new features for WISE-PaaS 3.0 and shared a number of IoT SRPs, based on WISE-PaaS, developed with numerous co-creation partners. The company also outlined future co-creation strategies and schedules for the upcoming year.

Allan Yang, Chief Technology Officer at Advantech says: "While IoT is currently flourishing, and many companies have invested in connectivity and data collection equipment, we are still in the early stages of generating value from IoT data. Since WISE-PaaS launched in 2014, Advantech has continued its integration and improved connectivity with open source communities. Our IoT software modules are developed to create operational cloud platform services oriented around the commercial value generated by data acquisition. Data-driven innovation has thus become the main target for our WISE-PaaS evolution."

Process visualisation of OEE in manufacturing

Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) is an increasingly important KPI in today's production environments. Advantech provides its customers with a one-stop solution, integrating all the different steps from raw data collection through to creating meaningful KPI data. This demonstration shows this capability in a simulation from the factory floor to the back office using just some of the high technology options the company offers at each level in the architecture.

Advantech offers I/O interface products for wired and wireless data recovery, using a variety of transmission media and protocols. The Wi-Fi connected WISE series used for the demo offer a flexible selection of remote I/O configurations creating digital data that can be shared via Modbus, MQTT or REST.

Equipment interface and control

For equipment and machine builders, saving space and reducing maintenance costs are major motivators of innovation and optimisation in machine design.

This demonstration combines automation control, motion control and vision inspection within a single system, eliminating integration effort and increasing reliability. The system additionally provides direct connection of an industrial monitor acting as a local HMI, with data also available to the enterprise level via standard protocols and interfaces.

EtherCAT, used in this demo, is just one of several fieldbus connectivity options offered across a range of Advantech edge and communication products, with flexible protocol conversion provided by simple user configuration. The demonstration also leverages CODESYS soft PLC capabilities, PoE switches and Advantech's WebAccess SCADA system.

Wireless sensing

Often in industrial environments, potentially useful data is not recovered into IT or OT systems because the cost of recovering the information outweighs its value.

Wireless sensor networks can provide a significantly lower cost of recovery by eliminating the necessity to lay cables, meaning that a large proportion of these previously stranded data points can be made accessible to the enterprise.

Advantech is showcasing a range of local and wide area wireless sensing systems built upon a variety of wireless technologies. Besides enhancements to the existing Wzzard local area mesh system, also shown will be the newly launched WISE-4471 NB-IoT sensing node, which has already completed validation on Vodafones NB-IoT network in Ireland, and is being validated in other European countries as the networks roll out.

Finally, Advantech has further expanded its line of wireless products with the launch of the WISE-6610 LoRaWAN gateway and Wzzard LRPv2 LoRaWAN node. Suitable for both public and private LoraWAN deployments, the underlying wireless technology offers an effective option enabling users to have better control and management for applications in remote areas (e.g., for flood monitoring) and harsh environments (e.g., extreme temperatures, high humidity) overcoming the challenge of distance, thereby maximising monitoring efficiency and overall productivity.

Co-creating the future of IoT

That's the slogan of Advantech starting from the big event in Souzhu, China, on Nov. 1-2, the "IoT Co-Creation Summit". In the three phases of IoT growth, Advantech is transforming from a hardware provider to a service provider and is actively engaged in co-creating domain-focused systems with partners from various industries. To facilitate this co-creation eco system, Advantech organises the 2018 Advantech Co-Creation Summit and during SPS the company will host partners at the booth to showcase the total offering to the customers, from hardware to software to services.

As an example of co-creation, during SPS Advantech will showcase a Time-Sensitive Networking demo presented on High-Performance Rugged PPC for MES, showing how TSN guarantees data transport with bounded low latency, low delay variation and extremely low loss.

Jash Bansidhar, IIoT Sector Head - Advantech Europe says: "We are optimistic about the European IIoT market, and we welcome more partners to join us in embracing increased business opportunities with Industry 4.0."

Supporting manufacturers' digital transformation

Industry 4.0 is now up and running and the results are beginning to take shape. Advantech is talking about the digital transformation of the customer's process in order to improve efficiency, throughput and reduce downtime, energy losses, quality issues and product losses. Most companies are in a stage between strategy, definition & orientation through proof of concepts, change management and large-scale implementation. In these stages there will be challenges that need to be addressed, such as data ownership, data context, the need to avoid creating data silos and to have one version of the data. In addition, the connection with (legacy) equipment and machines, (cyber) security and (wireless) infrastructure are topics to define very carefully. Also, once the implementation has been finalised and the first results are coming in, there is the challenge of managing the application now and in the near future, supporting maximum flexibility and maintainability - hardware, software and infrastructure. This requires the help of experienced and domain-focused partners.

Advantech as Global IoT Enabler has created a working model in order to bring the best domain focus knowledge & technologies to the customer by setting up a dedicated partner network. They call it Co-Creation, and a number of their partners will be showcasing their expertise across multiple domains in a dedicated "partner solutions' area on the Advantech booth.

In addition to Advantech's traditional German partner demos, AMC (condition monitoring), GBM (real-time OT-ready platform for Programmable Automation Controller), Inonet (customisation and OEM services), Lucom (predictive maintenance & IoT systems) and Sphinx (smart IoT infrastructure), there will also be demos from other European partners such as ErreUno, an eco-partner showing a live demo about Predictive Maintenance and Remote VPN Assistance. This highlights the full integration of Advantech hardware, Codesys software and Eagle-eye remote VPN assistance - an approach aimed at preventing failures in the production plant with a visible reduction of the costs of maintenance and enabling predictive technology through VPN, audio/video and augmented reality.

Finally there will also be a demonstration from Advantech's Global partner Atos. Together, Atos and Advantech are actively engaged in co-creating domain-focused offerings such as Industrial IoT for manufacturing, retail, and transportation. At the Advantech booth, Atos demonstrates various IIoT approaches on how to securely cloud-enable the Industry 4.0 factory, both on the Edge and in the Cloud.

Advantech awaits you on Nov. 27-29, 2018, at the SPS IPC Drives exhibition in Nuremberg (Germany) in Hall 7 - Booth 180; www.advantech.eu.