Internet of Things Catch here
before in industrial environments, and with the addition of cloud-based data storage, national and international data can be monitored and acted upon in real time. OT to IT convergence allows more effective collaboration between various operations in businesses, for instance, connecting manufacturing to engineering, and then on to sales. Transparency and reporting on the production line gives the sales department the tools to manage customer expectations. Similarly, if a customer requests a change in specification, this can be delivered immediately and acted upon by the manufacturing team, rather than a more manual process which is prone to human error. Automatic alerts can be sent from inspection robots to engineering to highlight a run of defects which could be caused by malfunctioning machinery further down the production line. If this information can be pushed to the relevant departments in real time, they can be acted upon quickly, minimising waste and downtime. Asset management is another useful tool available to OT/IT integrated systems. A fleet of freezer trucks could be fitted with gateways / IoT devices, which transmit both GPS data and temperatures of their freezer units to a central control room. This gives
full visibility of the location of all units, along with complete traceability on the temperature of the freezer unit throughout its whole journey, allowing for accurate delivery estimates to customers and reporting on temperatures to mitigate temperature-related liability after delivery.
Predictive maintenance is one of the key benefits of integrating IT technology into legacy OT machinery. A great example we’ve seen at Impulse is the integration of a small device, no bigger than a matchbox, into legacy lathes used in metal machining. These tiny devices simply stick to the outside of the machine and monitor acoustic levels and temperature, alerting operators of a change in either of these. These changes indicate vibration or wear, and allow maintenance to replace components nearing their end of life before they fail. Predictive maintenance is one of the most popular uses of IT in the OT space, as it both removes the need for routine maintenance and cursory checks, and minimises downtime by alerting of impending issues before they occur.
E-MAR16-030-E-TEC_Layout 1 10/03/2016 16:54 Page 1
Finally, Overall Equipment Effectiveness, or OEE, is a popular method of monitoring the health and effectiveness of OT machinery. The method is to analyse three key components of the machine’s operation
and use them to form a figure of efficiency: availability, or the amount of uptime the machine has had over a certain time period, performance, which is denoted by the speed in which a machine is able to perform its function, and quality, which is generally a comparison of good to bad output per unit, or the “first pass yield”. OEE is calculated by multiplying these three values together, which gives equipment owners and operators the ability to tweak processes, alter operation, and make hardware adjustments, with a view to improving this figure and seeing it happen in real time. By improving the OEE value of one or more machines, the productivity and efficiency of the overall production facility is therefore increased. There are various applications and methods to calculate this OEE value. For instance, Moxa’s UC8112 ARM-based embedded PC runs their ThingsPro software, which essentially uses Python applications to bridge the gap between OT hardware and sensors, and reporting and maintenance UIs. Of course, Python applications can be developed to run on a raw Linux installation without the need for any third-party software, but what ThingsPro brings is a templated system which can be accessed via Python code, which does the hard work
of connecting to IO, creating tags and more users, straight out of the box.
Security risks
When physical machinery can be hacked, that’s when things can become dangerous, so OT networks need to be protected in just the same way as the most sensitive of data. There are many processes, barriers and security measures that can be put in place, down to a simple locking mechanism on the PC itself, but OT / IT security goes much further than physical access. You can learn more about how to secure your OT network from the Impulse knowledge base, where we highlight some of the key physical and software barriers that can be put in place when securing an OT network.
In summary
Bridging the gap between OT machinery and IT data tools can do nothing but improve productivity and efficiency. From a simple sensor through to a full suite of devices, taking measures to improve transparency and monitoring of OT devices opens the door to much more efficient operating procedures, the end product being a potential reduction in overheads and downtime.
impulse-embedded.co.uk
Obsolete Chip?
E-tec offers a range of competitively priced package adaptors to solve obsolete package problems. These high quality adaptors are typically produced in 1.6mm thickness material or where the upper footprint interferes with the lower footprint then 2.4mm material is used. Here the pins are fitted into blind holes from below and the combination of a press fit and a solder fillet around the pin shoulder provides a reliable and robust connection.
Daughter boards can be created to customer requirements and raised pins are available to raise the complete assemble off the pcb to the required level.
E-tec welcomes special adaptor enquiries, send the chip package details for the top and bottom parts and we will respond promptly with a quotation.
t: 01892 530260 f: 01892 515560 e:
info@e-tec.co.uk
www.cieonline.co.uk
www.e-tec.co.uk Components in Electronics
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