July 2019

www.smartmachinesandfactories.com July 2019 | 13 | | FEATURES – GAMBICA three-part digitalisation series | security concerns (more about this in the next instalment) or have an unreliable network at your site, edge computing is the better option. And as Alan Conn points out, “it also reduces the costs, the more you put into the cloud the more expensive it is”. As always, the balance between the two will depend on your specific needs. For now the balance may be heavily towards the edge side of computing. Andy Hodgson notes that at the moment “you look around a factory and you think there is no need for cloud. When you move towards servitisation and have mobile assets all around the country or around the world then it starts to make more sense”. However Andy Mills highlights, even now: “If you’re a machine builder, if you’re selling... particularly outside the UK, you’re going to want remote access, so you can diagnose faults. Immediately that’s IOT. If you’re sending an engineer out without having done some kind of remote diagnostic first, that’s a massive waste of money.” Either way, it is envisioned that in the future more and more computing will happen in the cloud, especially with 5G and increased network capability. All the GAMBICA members agreed that we can’t rule out PLCs sitting in the cloud layer and virtual machines becoming more common in the future. Andy Graham always gets asked the question about SCADA in the cloud: “ Is that the next step? ever say never” though he concedes that this is still far off. If you’re going to take smart manufacturing to its logical extreme, complete connected supply chains – this can only happen in the cloud. But this doesn’t mean there won’t be a place for edge. “Ultimately” says Andy Mills, “It comes down to what people are comfortable with and what you need”. The table quietens down and I am getting ready to move on to the final session of the day, when Andy Hodgson asks a question: “Why are people still wiring up machines rather than moving to wireless options?” It’s an interesting question, Andy Mills feels that it’s down to “lack of understanding of what the capabilities are and trust”. I, automatically proving his point, question whether Bluetooth is particularly trustworthy – don’t we always hear of how notoriously unsecure it is? But Andy corrects me, we are talking about industrial Bluetooth, he makes it sound weapons grade. As ever there are pay-offs between the wired and wireless options. Wireless allows modularity, and flexibility in your plant – both of which are very desirable for any smart factory. On the other hand, machines that require a high sampling rate, at the microsecond level for example, would struggle to be controlled over wireless. So as with cloud versus edge, there is an application limit at the moment. But industrial Bluetooth is rugged and can work in electrically and physically noisy, not to mention dirty environments and over fairly long distances, 200m or so. Plus it doesn’t require troughs to be dug, pipes and other cables to be negotiated when the site is being networked, when you consider that the overall costs for wireless can be much less than wired. So, control for high-speed application has to remain local for the moment, but if that is not a consideration wireless has all the advantages. In this episode we have talked a lot about how to get data from your process, as we have suggested there are a number of options and what you decide to do always start with what your goal is. However, Chis Evans has a final word on the matter: “At the end of the day, you’re just collecting data. How you do it will change. The thing for me that has made digitalisation possible is the advancement in sensor technology. It used to be “it was on, it was off” and you got very little information. Now you get so much [more] information out of these sensors and that is what is going to make the difference.” In the third and final chapter in the next issue of Smart Machines & Factories, the GAMBICA members will talk about how to protect your smart factory and what they think the future holds for smart manufacturing.