Rockwell Automation

Data is at the core of any successful digital transformation. Unfortunately, this currently sits in silos within most organizations, often only accessible through proprietary systems. To gain visibility along the entire production value chain, everyone must have access to this data from one central source. This is a single version of the truth and is at the heart of Rockwell Automation’s Connected Enterprise Production System (CEPS). This system brings together the end-to-end value chain for the customer, which starts from design, supports the three layers of automation and production, and then works with the maintenance of that production line itself. 

These three offerings bring together the data from FactoryTalk Edge, the solution based on Microsoft Azure, and bring it into FactoryTalk Hub. That is the central production platform strategy that facilitates collecting and contextualizing data from a production system perspective and can communicate that data upstream and downstream in the manufacturing value chain. 

CEPS allows us to take our customers on a journey from the initial simulation and emulation engineering capabilities before a brick or even a circuit board is laid all the way through to the value outcomes of production operations, communications, maintenance, and supply chain. The CEPS reduces the silos between hardware and software and combines a holistic system engineering approach delivered via Rockwell capabilities. For Rockwell, it is both a strategic and a tactical advantage.

So how do you ensure that your connected enterprise delivers the planned benefits to the business? The answer is to follow the five steps set out below.

Step 1: Unleash core automation with a refreshed portfolio and new software

This comes through FactoryTalk Hub. As the name suggests, it is a centralized hub where all the data collected throughout the factory comes to be stored and contextualized. With this data from various software and hardware systems converging at the FactoryTalk Hub, the user can make informed data-driven decisions and gain insights. It also helps to build additional toolkit applications that could be around technologies such as augmented reality or an analytics-based solution that delivers deeper data analysis through that hub. 

Step 2: Go big on cloud-native production operations apps

The cloud has so many advantages regarding enterprise software, including the ability to access the software anywhere, anytime, from anywhere around the world, not having to pay license fees, not having to have large IT departments, not having to host a data centre, being able to use OpEx financing instead of capital expenditures, heightened security, and version list software. There are so many advantages to being in the cloud that it is almost a question of why you would not be there. 

“The connected enterprise converges plant-level and enterprise networks and securely connects people, processes, and technologies.”

However, an exciting change in the last couple of years is worth noting where sensors, machines, and devices have become smarter. That has created more data and necessitated computing power at the edge to do machine learning and analytics. So, there is some movement back towards the edge, but the cloud is the place to be for your leading enterprise workhorse software.

Two of Rockwell’s cloud-based products, PLEX and FiiX, facilitate production and maintenance planning and execution in the cloud that is differentiated with OT connectivity.

Step 3: Expand, enrich, and expose industrial data

A traditional production system comprises pillars from design, ordering a part, material planning, scheduling resources, production, quality control, and then the supply chain, which delivers commissioning, and customer success. These pillars have been managed through individual siloed processes and software, such as CAD for design, PLM and ERP for resource management, MES for manufacturing, and so on. 

What is happening now with digital transformation, and what FactoryTalk Hub and the overall strategy are enabling, is creating a digital thread that brings all of these things together in a way where one process can take advantage of what is happening in the previous process or the process that comes after. It combines all those things through the edge, IoT, and augmented reality technologies. 

FactoryTalk Hub is a cloud-based and Edge-as-a-Service tactic where the data, the process, and the power of whatever the customers are doing are accessible everywhere, so that is ubiquitous data. It will enable collaboration in the cloud; it provides the customer the ability to share production projects live and create flexible workflows. 

Step 4: Realize new sources of value with apps and analytics

Within this CEPS landscape are some significant partner collaborations that add value all along the production life cycle. Rockwell Automation has identified and collaborated with crucial industrial companies that are the top global specialists in their respective domains, including networking, consulting services, and cybersecurity. 

Amongst these partners are Microsoft, Cisco, PTC, Accenture, and Ansys. These partnerships enable Rockwell to help customers design their digitization roadmap, identify use cases for the fullest ROI, conduct network and security assessments and train the teams. This will allow them to get the most out of digital transformation.

The Rockwell ecosystem provides technology-agnostic consultants with extensive backgrounds in IT and OT to bridge the gap in ways only manufacturing consultants can, enabling users to supplement their workforce without sacrificing quality. In addition, the partners in the ecosystem are carefully selected to allow us to build the best solutions without added complexity for procurement, implementation, or utilization.

Step 5: Modernize the production system design

The ability to build out a complete design and simulation portfolio focused on the needs of manufacturing engineers designing new production systems is crucial to optimized production and can be achieved through products such as Emulate3D. This solution is part of our design portfolio that helps customers simulate and emulate a production cell, complete production system, or manufacturing line before you even lay the first circuit board.

Emulate3D develops dynamic digital twin software for virtual commissioning, throughput simulation, and industrial demonstration. It allows users to test your control system operational logic and create control testing models of your machines directly within your CAD system. Users can also accurately analyse systems throughput, identify bottlenecks, and dimension layouts, and test different operational modes to understand better how a system responds to changes. Finally, it allows users to build impressive and accurate demonstration models, create CAD layouts, and generate a bill of materials from the plug-and-play catalogue elements in time for those project discussion meetings. 

A connected solution

The vision for smart manufacturing helps industrials unlock the value of digital transformation at scale across the enterprise. Nobody is better positioned to bring information technology (IT) and plant floor technology (OT) together than Rockwell Automation. We have partnered with leading IT companies for joint solution development and integrated solutions and services as a whole ecosystem approach to accelerate the digital transformation journey of our customers. 

Together, we help bring the connected enterprise to life for our customers by accelerating industrial transformation with a trusted, integrated ecosystem of experts to improve productivity and agility in our rapidly changing environment.