AspenTech Makes an Asset Reliability Acquisition & adidas’ SPEEDFACTORY [Roundup]

In this weekly Roundup, LNS Research explores recent announcements and events, such as AspenTech acquires Fidelis Group, LLC; adidas goes completely robotic in its first factory in Germany after 20+ years; and HPE further commits to Iot/IIoT. 

AspenTech Acquires Fidelis, LLC

Early this week, Aspen Technology, a process industry software and services provider, announced the acquisition of Fidelis Group, LLC an asset reliability software provider. The transactions is aimed towards servicing the process industry better by providing a software that optimizes assets with the ability to increase design operation and maintenance through the asset lifecycle.

What Fidelis Group brings to the table is its two asset reliability software products, Fidelis Titan 2 and Fidelis WST. Fidelis Titan 2 offers:

• An event simulation tool for asset reliability modeling to increase design and availability
• An evaluation of process reliability and design
• Reducing redundancy systems to ensure plant availability, and therefore achieve cost savings

Fidelis WST offers:

• A Warehouse Spare Part Sufficiency Tool which optimizes stocking and availability, and ultimately achieves cost savings.

As AspenTech enters the business of asset reliability, we are excited to see what the future holds. To read more details on the acquisition click here.

adidas Opens SPEEDFACTORY in Germany

adidas announced late last month that it would be opening the doors to its first factory in Germany in over 20 years. The factory will be referred to as the SPEEDFACTORY and will be operated by partner Oechsler Motion GmbH across an area of 4,600 m2. Perhaps most interestingly is that this factory will enable lot-size of 1 manufacturing, or in consumer terms, custom footwear with next-day delivery.

The SPEEDFACTORY was set up in December, 2015 as a testing ground with collaboration with industry experts to design a smart manufacturing system. The company will reveal its first pair of SPEEDFACTORY produced shoes later this year, and move to a large scale operation in 2017. Commenting on the SPEEDFACTORY is Glenn Bennett, Executive Board Member of the adidas Group, Global Operations, stating ““Every day our teams come together to bring speed to life, and with the adidas SPEEDFACTORY, we have a game changer in our hands. It enables us to combine speed in manufacturing with the flexibility to rethink conventional processes. Our goal is to give consumers what they want when they want it.” To read more on this click here.

HP Dives Deeper into IoT Commitment

For the past few months we’ve been reporting back on the news of Hewlett Packard’s (HP) interest in the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Since the initial announcement at Hannover 2016, the company has taken the initiative and begun to invest itself into the world of the IoT.

While HPE spun off services several weeks ago, it is increasing focus on IoT and specifically IIoT

• A hardware centric approach with connectivity solutions that enable data capture, device management, security, and analytics at the edge (Edgeline 1000 and 4000)
• A partnership based strategy to provide a full platform that includes a new partnership with GE Digital and Predix

To read more on HPE’s approach to the IoT/IIoT click here.