Focus for the INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE FORUM: here are 4 things that IT can 'lend' to colleagues in production

Smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet: these names, albeit with subtle differences in approach, mean a single fundamental thing, that the manufacturing world has also entered the era of digital transformation.

Whether it's really the fourth industrial revolution or a natural technological evolution, the advent of digitization is profoundly changing the way manufacturing companies will approach technologies, processes and markets.

One of the aspects that is still too little talked about is the impact that digitization is having within the organizations corporate. In fact, production departments are traditionally reluctant to adopt technologies that are more than consolidated and that do not have a horizon of use of less than a few decades.

In a panorama in which the "meeting places" on Industry 4.0 topics are very often IT centric, finally an event in which the main theme is the processes, the factory, the manufacturing ... in short, what Italy is done: the Forum on the evolution of software technologies in industry 4.0 is organized by Messe Frankfurt Italia and promoted by ANIE Automazione Gruppo Software.

They exhibit companies that design and develop software solutions for industry and companies specializing in information security.

The event is free to participate with the recognition of training credits for engineers (requested and awaiting recognition), industrial experts and graduate industrial experts, for which participation in the technical meeting entitles you to the recognition of 4 CFP.

The thematic areas of the forum will revolve around the main topic, namely the Italian Manufacturing Industry: how should SMEs and Large Companies deal with the delicate issues of SAFETY, EFFICIENCY and QUALITY?

FORUM TOPICS (click on the links to access the agenda)

Here is the complete agenda: ServiTecno will be present as a sponsor and will participate in the session dedicated to Industrial Cyber ​​Security.

Agenda and link to Free registration at the INDUSTRIAL SOFTWARE FORUM

Better, then, if they are based on "iron". This different mentality has historically made attempts at dialogue between those who work in IT departments and those who work in operations (OT) difficult.

But things have been changing since the beginning of the XNUMXs: the emergence of industrial controllers built on PC-based technology, the advent of Ethernet on the shop floor were the first signs of a phenomenon that is unstoppable today and which sees impose, even in the factory, the use of tablets, apps and othernewfangled” which has always been used in the IT sector.

The logical consequence is that, at least in the most enlightened companies, those who work in the production departments start calling colleagues in the IT departments, asking them for advice, collaborate to manage the digital transformation, especially in some areas which, for those who work in production, are still difficult today.

From big data to information

The first topic – apparently the most trivial – is how to manage i big data which risk becoming only an ocean of meaningless bits, if the right steps necessary to transform them into information actually usable. Anyone who wants to have faster processes, higher quality, less waste and more flexibility – in a word to be more

competitive – must be able to access operational information in a simple, immediate and intuitive way, integrating the information into its decision-making process.

To do this, it is necessary to use tools designed for this purpose, able to understand the languages ​​of production equipment and those of the IT world, to create reports and dashboards that offer an overview of business processes, regardless of the sector in which companies operate. We talk about it this article.  

Business continuity

The second theme instead has to do with an all-industrial priority, operational continuity. In manufacturing, especially in certain sectors, every hour of downtime risks costing too much. An industrial system must first of all be "turned on", always and in any case.

If the high availability it is important in almost all manufacturing activities, in the most critical applications, the availability of the system must be fault tolerant, i.e. able to remain standing in the event of a failure of one of its components.

Today thanks to virtualization you can achieve the business continuity levels you need quickly – and at reasonable cost – where and when you need them. We talk about it in more detail in this post.  

Restart quickly

Another factor of fundamental importance in this perspective is to get off again quickly when, despite all the precautions, an accident occurs.

The timeliness of a restart, which can be worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of euros, also depends on "small" details. For example, knowing which software version was running on a certain hardware and where the copy of this application is located.

In this post we explain how to implement a change management and versioning management system which not only keeps a strict record of the versions installed in all company assets, but also keeps a copy of them ready for use.

An eye on factory safety

The last theme – last obviously only in order of exposure – is that of cyber security. In this case it is important that those who work in the IT department actively collaborate with colleagues in the OT because it is simply not possible to use the "usual" security solutions used in the server room even in the manufacturing sector.

In this post we present a system designed to help companies improve reliability, safety and operational efficiency of control systems: as soon as it is installed, the platform helps to rebuild the structure of the network architecture.

Thanks to the analysis of the relationships between the various terminals and of the traffic volumes, the rules of a "normal" communication are defined and the platform learns about the legitimate behaviours. Enjoy the reading!