Dec 2, 2024
Achieving Greater Resilience and Flexibility Through Standards
To succeed in today’s market, companies need flexibility and transparency in production to significantly lower costs than before. However, companies in the manufacturing or process industries often find themselves trapped by the technologies they use and the associated methods, requirements, and mindsets, some of which are decades old.
In daily operations, only selected optimizations are made, which can consume a lot of resources. For example, when it comes to using an outdated serial interface on a machine to integrate it into the new board project for the introduction of AI. This leads to what can be described as “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw; I’m too busy sawing!”
When companies in the manufacturing industry ask themselves, “We’ve achieved a strong position in the global market, but what do we need to do to survive the coming years?” the answer is clear: “Master processes, digitize consistently, and adopt standards”.
Creating Information-Flows and Breaking Down Silos
More than 30 years ago, product development began to focus on processes and standardization opportunities. Only by truly understanding their processes can companies start to optimize them or replace them with better ones. This marked the birth of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and its accompanying methodologies, which had a massive impact on workflows and the IT systems used. This was accompanied by the need to establish and adhere to data and process standards. Transformation isn’t always enjoyable, and this new world didn’t emerge on its own. But at the end of the day, the result was structured and seamless information-flows, even across company boundaries.
If companies want more flexibility and lower costs in production, they must first understand what resources are working together and how. They also need to cultivate a natural interest in modularizing and standardizing as much as possible, regardless of vendor or solution. Otherwise, optimizing existing heterogeneous, sometimes manufacturer-specific machine environments and traditional automation solutions becomes a tedious task, and companies will fail to fully leverage the digitalization opportunities available today and in the future.
The Path to Software-Defined Manufacturing and Production
Solutions for software-defined manufacturing offer an alternative to traditional, resource-intensive, and outdated automation technologies. They provide transparency in production, flexibility in the use of available resources, and the ability to dynamically adjust processes during operation. These are the goals companies must achieve to remain competitive in the global market.
The prerequisite for this is a clear understanding of processes. This includes not only the value streams, and the machines and systems involved but also the data exchanged between machines and between machines and humans. The more you describe these processes in (standardized) modules and defined interfaces, the more flexibly you can operate in production. This approach enables the creation of a future-ready, intelligent production network. Ascon Systems supports this journey with its consulting program, Ascon AIM.
With our software solution, Ascon Qube, we provide the technical means to implement software-defined production. Digital twins manage value streams in production online. To facilitate communication with operational assets as well as enterprise IT systems, our "Connectivity" module delivers a protocol-agnostic layer that makes information easily accessible, including for AI applications. Our connectors for standards such as EtherCAT (IEC 61158), OPC UA (IEC 62541), MQTT, and many others ensure seamless collaboration between IT and OT. This breaks down the silos between these domains and offers our customers unprecedented flexibility and scalability (see image).
IT-OT-convergence enables seamless data flow in production
Software-Defined Manufacturing: Flexibility for the Future of Manufacturing
Software-defined manufacturing, through clear abstraction and modularization, provides the flexibility required for the production of the future (see also The Evolution of PLCs: What Will the New Normal be?).
With its strong process orientation, it also naturally bridges the gap to the data spaces of Industry 4.0, notably Catena-X and Manufacturing-X or Process-X. At the technical core lies the asset administration shell (IEC 63278), which supplies data and information about assets and products. Solutions for software-defined manufacturing are uniquely positioned to continuously fill this pool and make it available in the data spaces—for instance, in production-related applications like the digital product passport to track CO2 emissions
Just as standards are effectively used in communication, many other established standards can also be leveraged to save costs. There's no need to reinvent the required services and modules—they have long been defined in ISA-95/IEC 62264 or IEC 61499 and, as demonstrated below, can be seamlessly utilized.
Software-defined manufacturing takes existing standards into account
In the production of the future, where design changes, logistics updates, or AI-results automatically reconfigure production, it is critical to know your processes, keep information flowing, and easily leverage existing standards.
