The latest trends in automation are wide-ranging. They include the integration of the cloud, Big Data and the Internet of Things; protecting the software that runs a plant from hackers; manufacturing execution system (MES) apps that can be deployed a la carte; collaborative cobots that can safely do the heavy lifting side-by-side with humans; and robots that can do more than ever before—both on the production line and well away from it.
You have heard it before, today’s manufactured products are becoming ever more complicated. As computers and microcontrollers get ever cheaper and more powerful they have become more enticing for product engineers to use and incorporate. This means the intellectual property in the embedded software has grown increasingly in value – possibly exponentially.
My original intention for this column was to discuss a phrase getting a lot of buzz lately, artificial intelligence (AI). By any measure, interest in AI is expanding exponentially, both in the number of articles one can read on the subject and, according to Google Trends, the number of searches for those articles.
Q&A with Ben Mund, Senior Market Analyst, CNC Software Inc.
As the move toward a more connected manufacturing industry gains momentum and manufacturers start collecting factory-floor data, the need for fast, efficient data analysis becomes ever more critical.
Data mining and Big Data are hot topics. Your company develops process mining software; how does it differ from data mining?
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., a manufacturer of diverse motorized products in Japan, has selected Siemens to provide product lifecycle management (PLM) software to support its digitalization initiative.
Our software covers any of the HMI software that runs on our industrial panels, our industrial computers and distributed HMI, which is more of a server-based offering that runs on standard industrial data servers.
Our focus has always been on helping manufacturers improve quality, productivity and visibility. In Sight Machine 2.0, among other things, we’ve added a set of enhancements to improve visibility.
PLM strategies move manufacturers ahead with improved simulations in the Digital Thread and the latest Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications