Welcome back and all the best for 2017 from the team at SA Instrumentation and Control. We trust the December holiday has left you refreshed, invigorated and ready to face a new year of challenges as they unfold. Will it be a time of IT in manufacturing? There is a foretaste in the January magazine.
Skills
Regular contributing editor, Gavin Halse, starts things off with a look at the manufacturing IT skill set that will be required as information and operations technologies continue their convergence. Against the backdrop of the recession following the 2008 financial crisis, manufacturing companies had to lean-up their operations in order to survive. Now, if they wish to show growth in a still troubled global economy, they will require innovative new products and potentially new ways of doing business. A much better understanding of each individual customer and their unique requirements will characterise operations in the coming ‘Big Data’ era of personalised customer forecasting.
Outward looking companies will be the ones best positioned. Process control specialists, engineers and other technical professionals inherently have a unique perspective on the operational side of the organisation. Therefore, to contribute as business leaders in the future, Gavin’s advice is to make sure they develop themselves in at least one of the four key ‘next generation’ manufacturing technologies he has identified. More in 'Which IT skills will be needed to accelerate a career in manufacturing?'.
Standards
What Gavin is alluding to is how process specialists can ensure they remain current when the Industrial Internet of Things breaks free of its PR bubble and eventually delivers on the promise of a fourth industrial revolution. This is starting to happen now, but one of the liming factors is a lack of properly evolved standards.
The ARC Advisory Group’s Eric C. Cosman addresses this in an article titled 'Are automation standards ready for the IIoT?'
According to Eric, the full implications of the IIoT have yet to be properly understood. What is clear though is that to be successful, industrial applications will require far greater robustness, security and deterministic response than that of their general and consumer counterparts, which form the original focus of the IoT. Interoperability standards and common architectures to connect smart devices, machines, people and processes are essential to realise the full potential of the IIoT.
The IIoT’s connected infrastructure extends the fundamentals of automation into new areas, and on a much larger scale. The implication of this is that advancement of the IIoT will also require the identification or development of new standards. Leverage of synergies between existing automation standards development organisations like IEC, ISA and IEEE, and those newly emergent ones like the IIC (Industrial Internet Consortium), OMG (Object Management Group), and the Industrie 4.0 committees in Europe, could substantially speed up the process.
Africa Automation Fair with a connected theme
On the morning of 5 May 2015, the first Africa Automation Fair opened its doors and delivered emphatically on its promise to be the largest most comprehensive biannual showcase of industrial control technology in the southern hemisphere.
For 2017, organisers Reed Exhibitions tell of an Africa Automation Fair that will collaborate everything automation with everything IIoT/Industry 4.0. Hosted in tandem with the highly successful trade fair, the world-class ‘Connected Industries’ conference will cover topics such as ‘Building new business opportunities with IIoT/Industry 4.0 and M2M technologies’, ‘Smart Manufacturing: Building the factories of the future’ and ‘IIoT/Industry 4.0 data analytics for intelligent decision making’. In addition, a number of local and international case studies will be covered to underline the concepts.
This event promises to bring together industry leaders and professionals from around the globe at the Ticketpro Dome from 6-8 June. At the very least, the value of IT in manufacturing should be on the organisational radar screen, so mark the date and get ready to pave the way from the web to the cloud.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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