Smart Factory: The Edge to Enterprise Strategy

Smart Manufacturing Definition - A Technology-Driven Approach

Smart Manufacturing, or “intelligent manufacturing”, is a technology-driven approach that uses connected machinery to monitor the production process, the goal of which is to identify opportunities to automate operations and use data analytics to improve manufacturing performance.

With smart manufacturing, the data tells us what to do. While the smartest person in the room might still be human, computers control the manufacturing process.

To achieve this, it’s simply a question of setting up systems in factories in which the machines are connected not only to each other, but also to the enterprise in order to ensure optimal and scalable control of production processes.

The objective is to have manufacturing processes carried out more quickly, guaranteeing quality and profitability at a lower cost.

Smart Factory IoT - Automatically Collecting & Analysing Data

Smart manufacturing allows factory managers to automatically collect and analyse data to make better-informed decisions and optimise production. Data from sensors and machines is communicated to the Cloud by IoT connectivity solutions and then analysed and combined with contextual information to monitor and manage processes remotely and change production plans quickly, in real-time when needed.

Smart factory IoT dramatically improves manufacturing outcomes, reduces waste, speeds production, and improves yield. It replaces the traditional “shop floor” with a fully interconnected model that links R&D processes with supply chain management.

How Does It Work?

The AVEVA Edge to Enterprise software family offers connected components that coordinate across every business level. By integrating the software within this portfolio, you can leverage visibility across your supply chain through visualisation graphics. These graphics provide a faster and easier analysis experience and grant greater context to your data.

To increase accessibility, these graphics are cross-platform compatible, supporting a number of devices from desktops to tablets. Industrial Graphics enables better storage and management in the integrated AVEVA cloud, enabling standardisation to be captured across the whole HMI/SCADA portfolio, to different teams and plants. 

Edge to Enterprise is one platform, but it includes many functions, such as:

• Data-driven context Operations Management Interface (OMI) responsive visualisation - a world first.
• Mobile access through the latest web technologies.
• Hybrid IIoT ecosystem, incorporated through both a cloud and on-premise scalable, flexible architecture.
• Enterprise wide scalability with the ability to start small and grow as your needs and requirements develop.
• Platform & Vendor agnostic software, easily integrating with any PLC/PAC, IIoT or Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) device, including information technology and business platforms.
• Graphics libraries, automation libraries and out-of-the-box application standards.
• Integrated Process Historian, which is high-performance and includes a cloud-based SaaS offering.
• Node-to-node Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, ensuring quality security.
• A pedigree of 30+ years of operational technology experience behind its design.

Visualising Edge to Enterprise

Edge to Enterprise takes many viewpoints and capabilities and combines them into one platform.

Enterprise: AVEVA Unified Operations Center

The AVEVA Unified Operations Center acts as the foundation for experiencing real-time operational capabilities. With it, you can action closed-loop collaboration and execution.

It provides a centralised view, allowing for increasingly fast and well-informed decision-making. You can also capture end-to-end transparency and eliminate issues surrounding ‘automation sprawl’.

Multi-site: AVEVA System Platform

With AVEVA System Platform, experience world-first OMI visualisation for contextualised data. With visualisation like that, entire enterprises can gain standardisation.

AVEVA System Platform is an easily accessible, single dashboard that helps you to visualise performance. With both artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning being leveraged; the innovative components enable smart manufacturing.

Plant: AVEVA InTouch HMI; AVEVA Plant SCADA

A single source of the truth collected from the edge that has been around for decades and can be found in one-third of all industrial facilities. Now even more accessible with remote web-based browser support.

Line: AVEVA Edge

Improve embedded and OEM applications through this full-featured HMI. Route gathered data through SCADA or the cloud and monitor remotely - from your smartphones or devices, wherever you are. 

Edge: AVEVA Edge IoT

The super lightweight, Linux-based AVEVA Edge IoT provides Edge Management IIoT and is fully cloud-integrated.

For more information on Edge to Enterprise’s components and capabilities, take a look at this useful infographic on the real-time Operations Management Platform for Supervisory Control, SCADA and IIoT.

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Smart Factory System - Combining Artificial Intelligence & Human Intelligence

The synergy of machine and human skill combined increases productivity and quality, while maintaining a sustainable working environment.

A Smart Factory system motivates manufacturing scenarios where humans and industrial automation devices operate cohesively within the same working space.

The industrial robot has clearly demonstrated its capability to be the core component in any Smart Factory, due to the fact that it provides an optimum level of high working capacity and flexibility.

By connecting the robot even closer to the human, in terms of direct collaboration or task sharing, there is potential for a highly productive, user-friendly, rapidly changeable system.

Smart Manufacturing - Optimising Operations, Increasing Visibility & Improving Quality

Smart manufacturing helps manufacturers to transform their business and operations through data integration, machine learning, and predictive analytics.

Consider, for example, the ability to predict when downtime is about to occur. Even better, imagine being alerted as to what to do to prevent it. This is just one small example of what can be achieved through automation, sensors, system integration, and data entry.

By embedding sensors in manufacturing machines to collect data on their operational status and performance, manufacturers are able to discover any potential chinks in the process before they occur. In the past, that information typically was kept in local databases on individual devices and used only to assess the cause of equipment failures after the event.

In 2021 and beyond, we’ll see more workers performing their jobs from home. This makes it more important than ever for manufacturers to implement solutions that consolidate, aggregate, and transform manufacturing data across an entire enterprise.

Out of the box analytics are crucial to success. Rapidly changing market demands, changing consumer preferences, and the need for production agility will make unified command and control at all levels of any organisation ever more vital.

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Industrial Digital Transformation - How Digitisation Transforms Industries

Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. It's all about technology, data, process, and organisational change.

In the face of digitisation, companies need to be ready to automate processes, gather IIoT data, analyse performance, capture knowledge, share best practices, visualise real-time process data, and standardise all of this across the enterprise. It’s a tall order.

This calls for a hybrid, on-premise and cloud-enabled, architecture for development, storage, and visualisation. Which is where Edge to Enterprise comes in by seamlessly connecting operations, workers, and the enterprise.

Transformation in Digital Manufacturing - Stay Ahead of the Smart Industrial Curve

Digital manufacturing helps businesses stay ahead of the ever-disruptive but oh-so-necessary effects of digital transformation.

Continuous advances in computing and industrial automation technology are providing companies with the opportunity to collect large amounts of real-time data that can be transformed into actionable insights, enabling the business to operate more efficiently and productively.

Digital transformation is not about technology, it’s about establishing a mindset that will change organisational practices. It’s about deciding which technologies to use, which area of the business will best benefit from switching to those new technologies, and whether the transition should be rolled out in stages.

That’s what makes Edge to Enterprise so unique - it’s about finding the solution that best benefits the organisation’s needs. It’s the manufacturer’s vision for the future that drives the technology, not the other way around.

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If the Edge to Enterprise software family interests you but you’d like to learn more about how it can be applied to your bespoke situation, explore these resources.

First you can look at one of the products that makes up the Edge to Enterprise offering: AVEVA System Platform.

Secondly, why not explore one of our case studies to see the software in action? You can see how Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) are using AVEVA within their Panorama Digital Command Centre. Through our help, they’re able to:

• Empower themselves within strategic decision-making and create a better environment for collaboration.
• Increase the reliability and performance of their assets while reducing the chance of unplanned downtime.
• Maximise their net profit through aligning their operational processes and value chain.

Click here to explore ADNOC’s case study.  

Thirdly, below are a few blogs that our clients and visitors have found helpful.

Control Room 101: Software, Security and Design

Revolutionising Industrial Operations from Edge-to-Enterprise

4 Reasons why Cloud Computing is the right choice for OT Networks

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