Manufacturers are under pressure to realize a data-driven enterprise, and achieve the agility needed to meet customer demands with optimized operations management, more personalized products and services, and resiliency in overcoming any future value-chain disruption. To accomplish the desired level of performance manufacturers are pursuing Smart Manufacturing (SM) systems to connect their plants and value chain.
SM systems strive to enable these strategies and significantly increase productivity and competitiveness for manufacturers by semi-automating and optimizing processes in the plant while providing data-centric services for internal and external stakeholders in the value-chain.
To achieve these goals, SM technologies and systems need to collect data from sensors, machines, and processes throughout the factory, connect the data across enterprise systems, and organize the data to form a complete real-time picture of what is happening in the plant. In this post I discuss why manufacturers should promote and require their SM technology vendors to adopt an open technology ecosystem approach.
The open technology ecosystem is not a new concept. We see it working at home when we download apps from different vendors to our smart phone to control our Wi-Fi network, TV, air conditioner, or sprinkler system. All the capabilities provided by this home technology ecosystem would not exist if it was not open. From phone manufacturers to service providers to app developers—all need to be able to interact seamlessly.
However, when we look at the plant, we often see paper and outdated technology. Technology is evolving very fast, but our plants are not keeping up. Why? Because in manufacturing, technology vendors have historically aimed to monopolize the market and lock-in manufacturing clients to their specific solution stack. If the smart phone vendors had not opened their platforms and developed a technology ecosystem, we would not have all the options of apps available for easy download that we have today.
The tactics of the last few decades caused high cost of implementations and became a constraint to scaling Smart Manufacturing practices. Implementations have depended heavily on system integrators with specialized skills in proprietary data acquisition and integration methods specific to each machine and software vendor.
Manufacturers and vendors must realize that no single vendor solution stack is going to meet all digital needs for a manufacturer. Technology vendors should instead enable and support the open ecosystem and collaborate to make implementations more practical for the average manufacturer which is a small to medium manufacturer (SMM). The effort, cost and skills needed for implementations have been preventing SMMs from widely adopting and integrating the latest SM technologies.
Natan Linder wrote the article "Open Technology Ecosystems are the Future of Manufacturing" last year on the Forbes forum. [1] I agree with him on the urgency for this type of ecosystem and want to elaborate on positive trends and where this ecosystem can go if manufacturers rally in support of these efforts.
Advanced manufacturing technologies have matured considerably in the last twenty years. However, the cost and complexity of integration are still barriers to adoption for many manufacturers. We are at an inflection point where new digital infrastructure and platforms can be catalysts to higher levels of technology adoption in manufacturing. The combination of a Smart Manufacturing infrastructure and an open technology ecosystem can address the interoperability challenge, but manufacturers have a key role to play.
Newer machines and IIoT devices are starting to support open protocols like MQTT and OPC-UA to improve industrial connectivity. But the new manufacturing operations technology (OT) strategy must require technology vendors to support open technologies, specifications, interfaces, and open source wherever possible to build a future-proof technology stack. Open specifications and standards ensure a healthy, heterogeneous and interoperable ecosystem for innovation. They break information silos, and prevent vendor lock-in, maximizing consumer choice and motivating vendors to compete by creating better offerings and user experiences.
A higher level of openness will lead to unprecedented knowledge sharing and innovation across the industry. The open strategy will pay off for technology vendors in volume of sales since over 90% of manufacturers are SMMs that would be able to widely adopt the latest technologies if the cost of implementation and integration was reduced through innovation in the open technology ecosystem.
Manufacturers with older equipment and systems may feel discouraged if they are not able to share data due to a lack of adequate digital interfaces. However, advances in IIoT technologies are making it practical for manufacturers to gather data from legacy processes and machines even when they don’t have native digital capabilities. New IIoT sensors can be layered on top of older machines with edge gateway devices that communicate data to analytical and data platforms via Wi-Fi, the local network, and the Internet.
Cloud computing and cloud services including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are further enabling the ecosystem by allowing manufacturers to combine resources, connect information and scale capabilities. Gartner discusses the role of cloud computing and cloud services in the webcast “The Future of Cloud in 2028” [2]. Gartner states that around 50% of current digital initiatives are using cloud-native platforms as a foundation and predicts that by 2028 the number will be closer to 95%.
A component library of modular cloud services and apps can offer capabilities like specialized analytical algorithms for different industries in the ecosystem. These specialized components and modular applications can be made available to SMMs that typically cannot afford to develop their own algorithms or apps. Some of these solutions might even be open-source solutions donated to the ecosystem library. When manufacturers implement the needed infrastructure, information models, and data exchange standards, they can download and easily implement the Smart Manufacturing functionality they need.
The combination of open specifications and a modular approach to Smart Manufacturing systems will also reduce software maintenance concerns for future solutions implementation and upgrades. Manufacturers can extend commercial solutions or build their own unique, best-in-breed technology stacks with the confidence that they can continue to make modular enhancements without breaking the whole system.
The open technology ecosystem strategy for manufacturing is already in motion thanks to initiatives driven by industry leaders and consortia like CESMII that are helping bring this ecosystem together to address the barriers in democratizing access to the technology by the average manufacturer which is a SMM.
CESMII, the U.S. Smart Manufacturing Institute, is a key enabler of the ecosystem contributing to open SM specifications, open-source examples, and the library of open information models through their work with OPC foundation and international groups like PI40 and VDMA in Germany.
The Smart Manufacturing Executive Council is a group of manufacturing business and technology executives, thought leaders and visionaries organized by CESMII and SME (the Society of Manufacturing Engineers) to advocate for the strengthening of U.S. manufacturing competitiveness through strategies, like the open technology ecosystem, that drive democratization and adoption of Smart Manufacturing technology and techniques.
The CESMII ecosystem has also organized the Smart Manufacturing First Principles as an important checklist for manufacturers designing their next generation systems foundation. OT-IT teams must ask their potential vendors how their solutions are helping them create a strategy that is: (i) real-time, (ii) open & interoperable, (iii) secure, (iv) scalable, (v) proactive & semi-autonomous, (vi) orchestrated, and (vii) sustainable & energy efficient.
References:
[1] Open Technology Ecosystems Are the Future of Manufacturing, N. Linder, Forbes, 2023
[2] The Future of Cloud in 2028: From Technology to Business Necessity, Gartner, 2024
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