Totally!

Thank you for the kind words ❤️

We're glad to help Mike. Our Mentorship program focuses on developing the technical skills necessary to be a technical resource in Digital Transformation. You can take a look at the program here: iiot.university/mentorship-program

Glad you like them! There is more to come!

Andrew -- thank you.

Thank you so much! We're glad to help!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Happy to -- a little sneak peak. I will be visiting Tulip in the next month or so and documenting the trip for KZfaq and iiot.university courses. Right now, it looks like we will do it the week of May15th.

Thanks for the feedback. We'll see what we can do for the future.

I agree with Andrew, opcenter execution can handle that with no problem. Also all the graphs and overview dhasboards can be done with opcenter intelligence , everything out of the box

Good question -- the short answer is I don't see the necessity in most use-cases for back-end for front-end when informative namespaces serve the same purpose. That is, an informative namespace is an abstraction for data and information to inform consumers -- either in dashboards or software consumers. The namespace, itself, is built upon the layer that acts as our API (MQTT). The long answer is -- there is real power in split back-end and API, which is why I'm a big fan of GraphQL's mechanisms for mapping data infrastructure. The long answer is more complicated than that, even. Scalability, agility, time to value -- are all key elements in DT. And I think we create technical debt if the split back-end and API approach is managed wrong. As orgs get smarter through digital transformation, what they want changes exponentially -- as a function of their knowledge. It is very important that the infrastructure is optimized for short time to value and agility for the end-user over scalable and manageable for the developer. No code and low code is limited by the assumptions the platform developers make -- best case, low code/no code gives us 50 - 70% of the solutions we need, for all others -- we must develop from our infrastructure out. Had a great chat with Erik today -- looking forward to touring Tulip's facility shortly. Great comment.

Good questions for discussion, Youri. Will chew on it for another video.

Happy to - I have some great stories on MPDV. Stay tuned.

@@walkerreynolds973 thanks, looking forward to it!! :)

You're welcome!

There is no short answer to this question -- the short answer is 'yes' but with some caveats and qualifications. What you use sepasoft for and how you architect the infrastructure and capabilities will make all the difference. Sepasoft integrates with Netsuite via their web dev module over REST. I can give you a more comprehensive answer if we have a chat.

I like Mindsphere -- but it isn't my first choice (its the best of the platforms from the major players but it isn't THE best for most use cases). Which platform you select is based on your needs -- specifically your digital strategy, architecture and minimum technical requirements. I can give you a better answer with some more info. You can get in touch with our team at www.iiot.university/contact and they can set up a an intro call.

I was asked to review FW+ and after an initial look, I chose not to. We have specific technical rules for iiot platforms -- edge driven, report by exception, open architecture and FW+ did not meet any of those minimum requirements. The team at FW knows MES use cases for Life Sciences and Semiconductor, but their platform did not make it past the initial review.

@@walkerreynolds973 ahh that is probably why i rarely hear them or being mentioned. Thank you

The answer is -- you could, but it wouldn't be worth it. ROI can better be captured using other platforms. I like TWX but only for enterprise level dashboarding. The 'Things' stack just makes it problematic in open architecture. Big fans of Siemens IoT.

@@walkerreynolds973 thank you for the reply👍 Yeah twx is probably more suited for enterprise lvl than mes

Think of it this way -- its about modularity for function as opposed to stack for function. In the example in this video, the OEE analysis was done by a Sepasoft engine -- installed as a module, with the ability to interact with the data and information models it needs through a UNS, consumed by the IIoT Platform. The analysis function is a Sepasoft module, the OEE function is custom, downtime tracking is a template, work orders is a template, scheduling is custom. There were no pre-defined objects.events to map to. The MES capabilities are a representation of the reality on the plant floor, not an abstraction to fit a pre-defined model.

Any MES is dependent on the quality and accessibility of the data you have available for it. That is true.

Yes, but there are mes software out there which propose a modularity approach with recipe management, batch management or other. Whenever you standardize your data in your scada or iiot platform using uns or not, this could be possible. Most of the modules will be connected through internal protocols or open industrial protocol like mqtt or opcua. So again not sure I agree with the proposition. It all depends on how modular and open is your mes. Perhaps, in your case sepasoft and ignition weren’t open and modular enough

@@belleflamm All pre-built functions start with an object, all objects have definitions. If the definition doesn't fit the reality on the floor (for example, state isn't state, its a list of alarms, or its a NO bool where 0 = Stopped, 1 = Running) then one has to fit the square peg into the round hole. Think about it -- software developers rarely have actual manufacturing experience -- when they are designing a software function to sell to many manufacturers, they make assumptions about how manufacturers do things -- and those assumptions are occasionally right for some and mostly wrong for others -- and even in the cases where they are right for one use-case, they may have been wrong for the same use-case in a different area of the same organization. At the end of the day, this is one primary reason manufacturers go through a 'maturity journey' when it comes to MES. Paper to Buy to Build. Its almost always the same journey. We worked with a large Pharma company in 2020 -- they had spent north of $25M on Pharmasuite, off the shelf for Life Sciences (about as standard as it gets -- a bio-reactor is a bio-reactor is a bio-reactor, as long as you can account for deltas in telemetry, you're golden) and even they came to the same conclusion. The 20% edge cases couldn't be covered with the square hole -- and the vendor focused on lock in over interoperability. They looked at the 12 year rollout schedule, the $50M in additional expenditure and pulled the plug -- and put $6M into a 2 year rollout of their own MES built in an IIoT Platform, covering 100% of their capability needs.

The IIoT / Industry 4.0 Rant is a good video that covers software at all the layers in the manufacturing workflow. have you seen that one?

In our MES Bootcamp we use Ignition (Inductive Automation) as the open-source SCADA and IIOT software to build our MES with, along with HiveMQ as the MQTT broker, which can be installed on the edge or in the cloud. So yes, both the custom software build and the data is owned by the manufacturer.

​@@4.0Solutions I wonder if the frontline operations plaform from Tulip would be the good choice to build "basic" MES with adding later some other functions, like SPC etc.? What would be the cons and pros?

Great video BTW ❤

I touch on this in part 2 - next whiteboard video.

We thought so... Very nice 😏

Thanks, Zack. I am always hesitant to do any technical content on YT -- even if I'm just talking basic object integration -- they don't seem to perform well. Its why we stay high level on YT and do all of the technical weeds on iiot.university. You can even see the delta -- 600 students on iiot.university, 20k+ on YT.

Thank you 🙌

@@walkerreynolds973 please continue these kind of videos. The community needs it ! You could have all the YT folks in your training platform if it was for free 😅

@@belleflamm thank you!

💯❤️

Thank you for commenting!

We moved back to using the light board, so he no longer blocks what he writes!