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Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
Discrete Manufacturing Whitepaper V6 Sept 7 2023
OT and IT teams are deploying continuously
available, zero-touch Edge Computing
infrastructure, transforming operational data to
enhance productivity and drive reliable, efficient
operations with less cost and less risk
Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
Automation is improving the overall productivity of
discrete manufacturing plants and facilities, delivering a
range of goods from automobiles and electronics to
furniture and toys to countless other items. The complexity
of coordinating personnel, work procedures, material
handling, and automated equipment – all while meeting
production goals – make increasing digitalization and use
of data across the enterprise and in production essential.
Perhaps most important is the ability to put the control
engineer, line worker, and design engineer in the middle of
this critical data to derive actionable insights and provide
real-time decision support. The constantly growing
capabilities of digital technologies are creating more
opportunities for discrete manufacturers to drive
increasingly reliable and more efficient operations.
Smart manufacturing encapsulates the use of sensors and
entire systems that have become more intelligent, with
increased networking and vast amounts of available data.
Industrial internet of things (IIoT), Industry 4.0, and digital
transformation are a few of the principal trends describing
the ubiquity of devices and the increased connectivity to
those data sources in the manufacturing environment. Add
in advanced analytics and discrete manufacturers can
capture crucial insights that inform users on how to
improve operational efficiency and reliability. First,
manufacturers need to capture critical operational data
reliably and process it locally without latency in the face of
bandwidth constraints. This is driving the need to deploy
computing power – Edge Computing – into environments
close to critical equipment and processes, such as the
factory floor or on a machine or production line.
Whether the need is to improve the intelligence of a single
machine, a production line, an entire factory, or enterprise
operations, resilient and future-proof Edge Computing
infrastructure is essential for discrete manufacturing
companies. Edge Computing is a foundation for pursuing
smart manufacturing or digital factory initiatives. In this
context, Edge Computing platforms must be engineered to
provide the highest level of reliability, easy manageability,
and operational lifespan that manufacturing environments
require.
Smart manufacturing challenges for discrete
manufacturers
Taking the next steps toward optimized smart
manufacturing provides numerous benefits, but also
represents a commitment of talent and cost. Below are
some of the most prevalent challenges faced by
manufacturers implementing digital transformation.
This whitepaper discusses the challenges discrete
manufacturers face when implementing smart
manufacturing and how simple, protected, and
autonomous Edge Computing platforms are a requisite to
solving production challenges, accelerating digitalization,
and establishing reliable infrastructure that supports
Industry 4.0 software and applications.
White Paper | 2
Deploying a modern manufacturing software stack:
Discrete manufacturers are deploying a modern
manufacturing stack with a range of software
applications that connect PLCs with HMI/SCADA and
DCS systems to improve performance and create
visibility across the operation and enterprise. Smart
manufacturing stacks also incorporate asset
performance management (APM) strategies,
digitalization of manual workflows, and integration with
supply chain management, warehousing/material
handling, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other
specialized applications that require production data
without interruption. Smart manufacturing requires
computing infrastructure that helps seamlessly connect
these applications to enable data capture, processing,
and sharing in near-real-time.www.stratus.com
Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
White Paper | 3
Standardization and scalability: Most manufacturers
have accumulated a broad range of applications and
equipment, whether from investing in custom hardware
and software or from acquiring assets over years of
operation. This creates disparate elements and “islands
of automation.” These organizations know the pitfalls
associated with this approach, including high
development costs, unreliable and hard to manage
operations, and cybersecurity risks. Bridging these
systems, adding new capabilities, and achieving
operational efficiency requires standardized data and
architectures that can easily scale across the entire
operation.
Maintenance and support: Maintenance and support are
multifaceted considerations, especially when adding
new solutions to support smart manufacturing. With
disparate systems and legacy infrastructure, breakdown
or failure is common, leading to costly production losses
and unplanned downtime. Many manufacturers use data
and visualization to perform maintenance, although
these fixes may not come quickly, with limited resources
and on-site staff capable of making those repairs. Data
and the adoption of APM at the edge can help that staff
get ahead of these breakdowns and failures.
Cost and complexity: While operational technology (OT)
teams hesitate to change processes or equipment due
to risk, they face the equal challenge of cost justification
and how to support future complexity. This is also a
hurdle for their counterparts in information technology
(IT) where modernization or other initiatives can risk
disruption to operations. Both teams are focused on
solution efficiency, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness at
all phases of design, deployment, operation, and support
while ensuring critical capabilities – such as automation
and control – are always available.
Although the challenges listed above seem intimidating,
manufacturers have successfully managed them and
achieved smart manufacturing improvements by
leveraging reliable Edge Computing platforms.
Edge Computing is foundational to solving
smart manufacturing challenges
Discrete manufacturing is complex, with many moving
parts to track, ranging from multiple departments and
personnel to vast amounts of critical data, technology, and
equipment. Leveraging a simple, protected, and
autonomous Edge Computing platform enables
manufacturers to meet the digital transformation demands
of smart manufacturing. An Edge Computing platform
helps organizations to:
Cybersecurity: Smart manufacturing entails greater
connectivity among plant floor automation systems and
devices, and to higher-level on-premises and
cloud-based computing assets. Connectivity is usually a
key part of implementing data aggregation, visualization,
and analytical projects, whether over a private or public
network. As a result cybersecurity concerns are
paramount in edge locations where deployment of more
OT and IT assets – combined with connected access –
increases the number of systems to be protected from
cyberattacks.
Availability of IT skills in operations: Companies of all
sizes recognize the need to adopt smart manufacturing
practices as they modernize. In fact, Gartner reports that
“67% of industrial discrete manufacturing respondents
stated having a dedicated organization for smart
manufacturing (although most report skill shortages)”
(Reference 1). These skill shortages compound the other
smart manufacturing challenges discrete manufacturers
face — manufacturing stack integration, standardization
and scalability, maintenance and support, cost and
complexity, and cybersecurity.www.stratus.com
Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
White Paper | 4
Eliminate unplanned downtime and maximize
availability: Modern Edge Computing platforms deliver a
combination of built-in fault tolerance, supportability,
and manageability to run mission-critical manufacturing
applications without downtime. Fundamentally, this
capability is essential for manufacturing success as well
as smart manufacturing applications that rely on data
from the factory floor. Beyond application and system
reliability, Edge Computing allows for the reliable
collection, organization, and processing of data to
support operations. This includes support for
automation and control as well as APM and condition
monitoring to ensure equipment that is physically or
geographically difficult to service is visible and available.
Seamlessly deploy and integrate a modern
manufacturing stack: Built to run at or close to the edge
of operations, often in harsh and/or remote
environments, Edge Computing platforms have cohesive,
real-time access to data sources and can be deployed
throughout an operation, increasing both processing
power and overall availability. By connecting manual
workflows, ERP systems, HMI/SCADA, PLCs, supply
chain management, production equipment, machinery,
and more, Edge Computing platforms are ideally situated
to aggregate, collect, and analyze vast amounts of big
data sourced from the plant floor. They then efficiently
preprocess it and communicate the resulting
information to higher-level IT-based enterprise systems
improving efficiency, productivity, and visibility in
discrete manufacturing operations.
Simplify, standardize, and scale deployment: Many
discrete manufacturers do not just have one
manufacturing facility, but many. Implementing a simple,
reliable, and scalable Edge Computing platform provides
a unified framework for developing, deploying, and
managing smart manufacturing solutions across the
organization. Using a standard platform with the ability
to pull reusable profiles to additional platforms,
engineers now have a standardized way for achieving
seamless connectivity and data exchange among
diverse components, whether on a single OT machine, or
spanning dozens of installations across a multi-site
implementation.
Discrete manufacturers greatly benefit from leveraging
Edge Computing platforms to spearhead smart
manufacturing efforts. This is especially true for
organizations with multiple manufacturing sites and
locations. Rolling out a reliable and scalable Edge
Computing platform – or multiple platforms – to ensure
global standardization helps companies attain smart
factory initiatives.
Achieve KPIs and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO):
Edge Computing platforms provide the required
reliability with built-in redundancy, while simplifying
maintenance and support of essential infrastructure.
This translates to improvements in overall equipment
effectiveness (OEE) and production goals as well as less
cost and complexity. Using simple, protected, and
autonomous Edge Computing platforms, discrete
manufacturers achieve a lower total cost of ownership
(TCO) as they modernize and future-proof their
operations, while increasing OT and IT productivity.
Adhering to IT security standards: Edge Computing
platforms that meet your IT security standards provide
an additional layer of defense against cyber threats by
keeping important data within the manufacturing facility
while safely bridging IT and OT networks. Developers
can still establish secure connectivity to external
resources using proven communications protocols and
methods designed for this purpose, such as OPC UA
over a virtual private network (VPN). Another tool for
protecting data is keeping source data on-site – with an
Edge Computing platform – and transmitting just what is
needed. Additionally, a trusted Edge Computing platform
can run locally modern cybersecurity solutions to further
protect aging OT assets effectively.www.stratus.com
Bridging the gap between OT and IT
Historically, there has been a gap between OT and IT. More
recently, digitalization of discrete manufacturing
environments involves these two distinct, yet related
domains, especially as smart manufacturing and digital
transformation efforts have become increasingly
necessary.
End users, OEMs, and SIs have expended significant effort
to customize, integrate, and support OT/IT solutions. In
recent years, Edge Computing has emerged as an
essential intermediate technology, effectively bridging and
overlapping both OT and IT environments.
OT personnel in discrete manufacturing must be able to
focus on OT tasks – from equipment operation,
maintenance, and testing to process optimization,
machine and process health, and safety and compliance.
However they are often at risk of playing an IT functional
role troubleshooting industrial PCs or aging servers.
They additionally must work with IT counterparts to select
manufacturing applications and capabilities to progress
operations and deliver value.
Conversely, IT personnel well-versed in network
infrastructure, cybersecurity, software and system
integrations, and data analytics often lack the insight of
running OT and the factory floor.
IT expertise is valuable to the deployment of infrastructure
for operational requirements. An area of intersection is
often associated with control rooms and enterprise
servers, which are the IT foothold in the OT world. IT
benefits OT by bringing its skillset and tools, including
cloud services, to the manufacturing environment.
Although different, these domain priorities are intertwined
with one another – the combined expertise of both OT and
IT enable integrations between new software and OT
production processes as well as improved data-driven
decision making, which in turn enhances productivity.
Industrial hardware, software, and communications
technologies have improved greatly over the past decades,
but standard OT-based products have fallen short as
complete smart manufacturing solutions. Greater data
connectivity and processing capability is needed at the
edge to support both OT and IT smart manufacturing roles,
including:
Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
White Paper | 5
Edge Computing platforms are filling these roles by
providing a reliable, easily supportable, and OT-capable
solution in a compact form factor. Edge platforms meet
the IT-based computing, communications, and cyber
standards needed to overcome challenges and create truly
smart manufacturing solutions.
Unified connectivity with OT and IT devices, new and old
Data aggregation, storage, contextualization, and
pre-processing
Improved operator visualization experiences, especially
when using mobile devices
Remote access for support of equipment by specialists,
regardless of where both are located
Hosting analytics and applications for determining key
performance indicators (KPIs), overall equipment
effectiveness, asset utilization, production performance,
predictive maintenance, and morewww.stratus.com
Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
White Paper | 6
A modern Edge Computing solution must be much more
than an off-the-shelf server installed on the plant floor and
more convenient to use than a complex server
configuration in a data center. Instead, edge applications
demand fit-for-purpose hardware with native redundancy
suitable for the plant floor or on-site data cabinets.
Provisions for managing these platforms must be
comprehensive yet easily used by site personnel.
Virtualization is also key for deploying the variety of
applications needed for smart manufacturing and should
be readily available.
Discrete manufacturing specifiers and designers should
focus on Edge Computing platforms with redundancy,
management, and virtualization provisions to deliver the
simple, protected, and autonomous computing needed to
overcome smart manufacturing challenges and deliver
valuable results.
Edge Computing benefits and use cases
Here are a few use cases highlighting the previous points:
Production monitoring and control: One of the most
common initial uses of an Edge Computing platform is to
improve the monitoring and control of one or several
machines. With built-in system redundancy, modern Edge
Computing platforms are ideal for many tasks – collecting
data from PLCs, sharing HMI information via thin clients,
and monitoring multiple systems or production lines. Edge
Computing is an ideal way to run HMI/SCADA applications
near equipment for responsive, low-latency, real-time
monitoring. Edge platforms also have computing and
networking capabilities to extend this experience to mobile
users.
Another rising trend for discrete manufacturers is the
increasing production of customized or build-to-order
products, some with small production runs. This bucks the
historical trend of high-volume/low-variability production
and, in years past, the manufacturer would need to
implement many complex and costly manual procedures
to add variation to production runs. Today, modern digital
automation supplemented with Edge Computing provides
the flexibility needed to define, implement, and track these
variations efficiently.
Connection to manufacturing execution systems (MES):
As discrete manufacturers become more sophisticated,
Edge Computing platforms provide a bridge between PLCs
and SCADA systems to higher-level manufacturing
execution systems (MES), extending monitor and control
and creating an integrated manufacturing stack. This
includes both operational and support efforts for not only
the production line equipment, but also for upstream and
downstream connections to material supplies and
packaging or warehousing.
An Edge Computing platform provides the connectivity and
application availability to act as a production line
coordinator for a single line, multiple parallel lines, or for
multiple serial lines that can be consolidated into fewer
lines. While each piece of equipment or production line
may already run well in a localized manner using a PLC, it
takes a supervisory application that is always available to
recognize the big picture and orchestrate operations on a
greater scale. High availability and fault tolerant Edge
Computing platforms ensure these applications are always
on.
Many digital transformation implementers focus on two
main technical aspects of the task:
The ability to rapidly modernize in a future-proof fashion
for optimized operations
The reliability and serviceability of the solution and the
production equipment it servesFurthermore, because the Edge Computing platform can
connect to an entire fleet of equipment, asset
management – such as predictive maintenance and
energy management efforts – can be expanded far beyond
a per-machine model. This oversight allows users to gain
information on how each type of machine can and should
work so best practices can be applied across the fleet,
while spotting and addressing any issues with
underperformers.
When paired with application virtualization – the ability to
run multiple applications concurrently within an Edge
Computing platform – discrete manufacturers are able to
rapidly deploy layers of software, backed by fault
tolerance, to simplify operations while gaining operational
efficiencies. This workload consolidation provides a
streamlined and cost-effective path forward and quickly
modernizes manufacturing operations.
www.stratus.com
Modern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
White Paper | 7
Enabling edge-to-cloud data architectures: Discrete manufacturing companies operating at the highest levels of
excellence optimize the entire value chain. This goes beyond the performance on the production line and includes
coordinating all aspects, from the machinery and equipment on the plant floor, to the local data center, up to the cloud or
global data center. (Figure 1).
Figure 1: To implement an edge-to-cloud smart manufacturing architecture, Stratus offers the ztC Edge and ftServer redundant computing families, which provide a
completely scalable, readily deployed, and easily managed Edge Computing infrastructure so users can create and grow their smart manufacturing solutions.
Regional Data Center Edge
Global Data Center
Compute & Local
Data Center
Device Gateway,
Compute Edge
Equipment
Redundant
pair ztC Edge
Redundant
pair ztC Edge
Redundant
pair ztC Edge
Redundant
pair ztC Edge
Single node
ztC Edge
Single node
ztC Edge
ftServer ftServer
ftServer
Command Center Cloud
Equipment Machine Machine Line Line
everRun on
existing 3rd
party serverModern Edge Computing Accelerates Smart
Manufacturing Initiatives for Discrete Manufacturers
White Paper | 8
For leaders in the complex discrete manufacturing
environment, Edge Computing platforms bridge OT and IT
so they can realize the full benefits of digital
transformation and smart manufacturing. Stratus Edge
Computing platforms meet this need for both the
production floor and the data center, and are purpose-built
to drive reliable, efficient operations at all levels. Stratus
ensures the continuous availability of production-critical
applications by delivering zero-touch Edge Computing
platforms.
For more information about Stratus Edge Computing
platforms, please contact us here today.
About Stratus
For more than forty years, Stratus has provided highly
reliable and redundant computing systems and expert
services to complex and constrained operational
environments, enabling partners and customers to
securely and remotely turn production data into actionable
intelligence so they can run operations safely, reliably, and
efficiently.
Reference 1: “Smart Manufacturing Challenges Every Industrial Manufacturing CIOs
Must Resolve,” by Alexander Hoeppe, Sohard Aggarwal, Simon Jacobson, Gartner; 2
September 2022
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