Factory Talk Optix HMI process visualisation for visionaries

The world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, Rockwell Automation, has begun rolling out its cloud-enabled human-machine interface (HMI) platform, FactoryTalk® Optix™, throughout Australia and New Zealand.

FactoryTalk Optix, enhances the capabilities of the FactoryTalk software suite. This suite is used globally to support advanced industrial applications, such as IoT, creating a robust ecosystem.

“FactoryTalk Optix enables users to design, test, and deploy applications directly from a web browser, allowing them to achieve new levels of collaboration, scalability, and interoperability in optimising automation and IoT systems,” says Anthony Wong regional director, South Pacific, for Rockwell Automation.

One of the new software’s first showings in Australasia will take place at ROKLive September 5-7, 2023, on the Gold Coast, Queensland, an event which showcases the future of manufacturing by bringing together hundreds of operations, maintenance, engineering, and technology leaders to connect and learn about the industry’s latest innovations and solutions.

FactoryTalk Optix is one of the five core solutions in FactoryTalk Design Hub™, which helps industrial organisations transform their automation design capabilities with a more simplified, productive way to work.

FactoryTalk Remote Access, along with FactoryTalk Optix, allows users to access machines, controllers, or HMI from almost anywhere with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that uses industry standards for cybersecurity.

Remote access is an enabler for on-demand remote assistance, installation, programming, updates, troubleshooting, and maintenance of remote systems and applications.

The result is increased design productivity, faster time to market, and systems that cost less to build and maintain.

“I’m calling this release ‘Visualisation for Visionaries’, because FactoryTalk Optix unlocks unprecedented collaboration and innovation through cloud-based engineering workflows. The result is visually stunning, data-driven, scalable solutions with seamless connectivity, which are faster to create and easier to maintain, to better support our customer’s smart manufacturing efforts,” said Adrian Giecco director, software and control, Rockwell Automation Asia Pacific.

FactoryTalk Optix is designed to help improve processes and efficiency. Among its features and benefits are:

• Design options: Design and test projects in a modern object-oriented programming environment.

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023

1. Flexible Batteries

Standard rigid batteries may soon be a thing of the past as thin, flexible batteries – made of lightweight materials that can be twisted, bent and stretched –reach the market.

This new generation of battery technology – expected to hit a market value of $240 million by 2027 – has applications across medical wearables, biomedical sensors, flexible displays and smart watches.

2. Generative Artificial Intelligence

This year’s list would not be complete without mentioning generative AI – a new type of AI capable of generating new and original content by learning from large datasets that was catapulted into public dialogue at the end of 2022 with the public release of ChatGPT.

Evolving rapidly, generative AI is set to disrupt multiple industries, with applications in education, research and beyond.

3. Sustainable Aviation Fuel

With 2%-3% of annual global CO2 emissions coming from aviation, and no sign of long-haul electric flights, sustainable aviation fuel produced from biological (e.g. biomass) and non-biological (e.g. CO2) sources could be the answer to decarbonize the aviation industry in the short to medium term.

4. Designer Phages

Phages are viruses that selectively infect specific types of bacteria. Equipped with increasingly sophisticated genetic engineering tools, scientists can now reprogramme phages to infect the bacteria of their choosing, allowing them to target one type of bacteria in a complex community of co-existing types of bacteria such as in plant, animal and human microbiomes.

Though many of the near-term applications will be in research, there are signs these “designer” phages could eventually be used to treat microbiome-associated diseases or eliminate dangerous bacteria in

• Reduce design time with: o Multi-user collaboration o Simplified standardisation through libraries of reusable content, custom templates, and style sheets o Responsive graphics, easy wizard-based workflows o Pay-for-what-you-need runtime licensing model based on application features used. o Scale hardware requirements based on application complexity. food supply chains.

• Improve Development and deployment flexibility: Create an application once and deploy it to any device.

• Reduce Risk: better manage changes to applications and libraries through cloud-based storage with version control.

• Drive Standardisation with Graphic options: Style graphics to support a global audience.

• Reduce costs.

• Extensible options: Achieve openness and interoperability through machine-to-machine and machine-to-cloud communications enabled by Open Platform Communications (OPC), Unified Architecture (UA), Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), Internet of Things (IOT) native connectivity and an open C# interface.

• Standardise HMI platform regardless of controller selection. Connect with any controller or device with built-in 3rd party drivers.

5. Metaverse for Mental Health

Responding to the growing mental health crisis, product developers are starting to build shared virtual spaces to improve mental health. Video games are already being used to treat depression and anxiety and VR-enabled meditation is on the rise.

Combined with next-generation wearables that allow the user to feel touch and or respond to the user’s emotional state, the future metaverse could be ripe for improving mental health.

6. Wearable Plant Sensors

Drones and satellites have been a game changer in monitoring large-scale farms that traditionally relied on manual soil testing and visual observations. Now we have a new generation of plant sensors – small, non-invasive devices that can be “worn” by individual plants for continuous monitoring of temperature, humidity, moisture and nutrient levels.

Assuming they can overcome scaling costs, wearable plant sensors could improve plant health and increase yields.

7. Spatial Omics

By combining advanced imaging techniques with the specificity of DNA sequencing, spatial omics allows scientists to “see” biological processes at the molecular level inside cells.

By revealing previously unobservable biological structures and events, this powerful new technology is poised to speed up our understanding of biology and help researchers develop new treatments for complex diseases.

8. Flexible Neural Electronics

Brain machine interfaces allow direct communication between the brain and external computers. They have potentially life-changing applications in medicine and neuroscience such as the treatment of epilepsy, depression or paralysis. So far, the technology has been based on rigid electronics and limited by the mechanical and geometrical mismatch with brain tissue.

But breakthroughs in flexible electronics and more biocompatible materials mean a less invasive and uncomfortable experience for patients. The $1.74 billion market for this technology is expected to grow to $6.18 billion by the end of the decade.

9. Sustainable Computing

Data centres consume approximately 1% of the electricity produced globally. Multiple technologies are intersecting to make the dream of net zero-energy data centres an achievable reality.

Bucketed together as “sustainable computing” technologies, they include liquid cooling systems, AI analytics and modular data centres that can be co-located with existing energy sources such as methane flares.

10. AI-Facilitated Healthcare

From diagnostics to drug design, AI has been widely reported as an enabler of better healthcare. The application pulled out in this report goes one step higher and focuses on the role of AI to support the entire healthcare system – from monitoring pandemic outbreaks to reducing hospital wait times by optimizing resource allocation.

Embracing smart manufacturing With futureproof technologies: Two industry experts weigh in

As flexibility, efficiency, resilience, and sustainability take centre stage in the post-pandemic world, many industry leaders now believe the era of smart manufacturing will arrive sooner rather than later.

Indeed, new technologies and standards, such as Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture Field Exchange (OPC UA FX), time-sensitive networking (TSN), Wi-Fi 6/7, 5G, and Single-pair Ethernet (SPE)/ Ethernet-APL, are increasingly adopted to enable Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks for smart manufacturing.

Two seasoned experts in the field of IIoT have decided to share their insights on the future of smart manufacturing and how we can get there. Stefan Schönegger, Vice President of Product Management Control Systems, Machine Vision and Networks at B&R Industrial Automation (a member of ABB Group), joins Jack Lin, Product Manager of Industrial Networking Infrastructure at Moxa, in answering five important questions many industries face as they plan and implement industrial networking solutions for intelligent manufacturing.

1. What makes the key technologies enabling smart manufacturing so important and how do they interact?

Stefan: Smart manufacturing is a technological concept that uses machines networked via the Internet to seamlessly monitor the entire production process. The devices in smart manufacturing continuously collect and analyse data from a variety of sources, including real-time data, to enable a new level of adaptability and rapid design changes through digital information technologies. In addition, data scientists can use the data to simulate manufacturing processes and figure out how to do certain things more efficiently.

It is therefore crucial that all this data can be extracted and analysed, which will allow knowledge and insights to be gained from it. Seamless and secure interoperability is a mandatory prerequisite for this, which is exactly what OPC UA does.

In addition, OPC UA

• supports a wide range of applications from the cloud to the field level, such as OPC UA FX (Field eXchange)

• complements TSN, which enables different IT and OT protocols to coexist in a common network infrastructure by supporting IEC/IEEE 60802 profiles

Moreover, the OPC Foundation cooperates with the organisations behind

• new 5G and Wi-Fi 6/7 technologies

• the Advanced Physical Layer (APL) project group, which defines the requirements of the process industry continued on Page 14

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Thus, OPC UA is becoming universal for many applications in both factory automation and process industries.

Jack: Since OPC UA FX, TSN, 5G, Wi-Fi 6/7, and Single-pair Ethernet (SPE)/Ethernet-APL share the same packet switching and Ethernet foundations. They easily connect with each other and align with comprehensive efforts from all industrial partners involved with most standards bodies and communities, such as IEEE 802.1, TSN TG, 802.3, 802.11 TGbe, IETF, 5G-ACIA, and IEC/IEEE 60802 joint projects.

In a nutshell, these technologies have a high level of effective interactions with each other in a variety of industrial applications.

Stefan: Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) require high quality data inputs for highly likely predictions. My thoughts on this are twofold:

1. Thanks to advances in chip technology and new single-pair Ethernet connectivity, there will soon be even smaller intelligent sensors with Ethernet connections that can communicate over OPC UA. Real-time requirements for smart manufacturing can be achieved via copper with TSN or via new wireless signals with 5G/Wi-Fi 6/7. These next-generation sensors will also become new sources of data and insights.

2. These new data sources will also provide high-quality inputs for machine learning and artificial intelligence through the comprehensive data semantics of OPC UA.

As such, operational technology (OT) will adopt many proven productivity advances from information technology (IT). IT will find its way into machines and factories, albeit in a modified form.

To this end, OPC UA allows cross-platform, cross-industry, and cross-country industrial communication to take place. The devices of the future will be smart devices capable of performing updates remotely for cybersecurity with extended functions and features. It is important that devices can communicate with one another and with the cloud using the same set of standards.

Therefore, OPC UA, TSN, 5G, Wi-Fi 6/7, and Single-pair Ethernet (SPE)/Ethernet-APL will all continue to play key roles into the future.

Jack: If Industry 3.0 is characterised by independent, pre-programmed loops and processes, then Industry 4.0 will see the development of a collaborative, fast-response and harmonised single loop.

All resources, whether they are people, machines, data, or networks, tie in together harmoniously so that the right resource is mobilised and made available in the right place and at the right time to achieve production objectives.

5. What obstacles are keeping us from realising the future of smart manufacturing?

2. Are the new technologies for smart manufacturing only reserved for greenfield applications? What about brownfield applications?

Stefan: It must be remembered that customers have invested in existing technologies and cannot change everything overnight. Therefore, there must be a harmonious transition from good to better. The extensions made to OPC UA technology, called OPC UA FX, support this transition by allowing different established communication protocols to coexist in a common network infrastructure. This supports the migration from traditional fieldbus and real-time Ethernet protocols to a unified communication solution, which is exactly the right approach to evolve existing industrial operations into smart factories in a practical way.

Jack: When looking to adopt these new technologies, we’re not just looking at greenfield applications but also brownfield applications too. Let’s take IEEE 802.1 TSN TG as an example.

Those features are considered “TSN related” and are based on technologies that have been established for more than 40 years. We’ve been developing those features on top of a solid foundation, which means they are both backward and forward compatible.

3. How are technologies contributing to machine learning and artificial intelligence?

Complete information about values, their units and thresholds, together with an absolute timestamp, means that the prediction quality of algorithms will become qualitatively better and better. It is a dream of every data scientist come true.

Jack: Good data always needs to be abstracted from large amounts of information, but the space and speed for information to be shared is restricted due to physical limitations. That is where TSN and ultra-reliable wireless technology such as 5G come in. TSN provides 10 to 100 times more bandwidth over proven industrial Ethernet networks, whereas 5G provides 10 times the capacity of previous cellular technologies.

With determinism and ultra-low bounded latency, these technologies are capable of deterministically transmitting more precise and higher quality information, such as high-resolution images or video streaming. Furthermore, with the Single-pair Ethernet (SPE) and Ethernet-APL technologies, data access has been seamlessly extended to devices on the very edge as well as sensors within applications, so a holistic view can then be obtained.

4. What will smart manufacturing look like in 10 years?

Stefan: People will still be indispensable in the factories of the future, but they will need to cooperate more with robots and intelligent machines to achieve safer, more efficient, and hopefully carbon-neutral manufacturing.

Stefan: The silos separating information technology and operational technology need to be broken down so that IT and OT can continue to converge. Promoting a culture of openness and cooperation across disciplines can help IT and OT stakeholders exchange and transfer knowledge to achieve synergies and carbon neutrality.

Jack: We have discussed many positive aspects of these key technologies. However, there are still realities to be considered such as business initiatives and investment ROIs.

Sometimes we see our customers struggling to reach a balance between satisfying current market demands and investing for the future. In fact, investing for the future is sometimes delayed due to current market demands.

I suggest that organisations take steps to identify variables, mitigate risks, overcome unforeseen obstacles, and provide leadership for businesses to evolve.

Conclusion

As Stefan and Jack noted, the future of smart manufacturing is a journey built on a foundation of interoperable standards including OPC UA, TSN, 5G, W-Fi 6/7, and Single-pair Ethernet (SPE)/Ethernet-APL across many sectors. To learn more about the road to smart manufacturing and TSN, please visit our TSN microsite.

Moxa Inc ( www.moxa.com )

Acelink ( www.acelink.co.nz ) is the representative of Moxa in NZ.