Industrial Transformation Blog

How to do a virtual conference right? Ask SAP! TechEd 2020 ran for 48 hours with barely a moment’s pause and attracted over 60 thousand non-SAP registrants. Ten parallel technical tracks allowed everyone to find the level of detail and expertise to suit them and gave access to board level executives, particularly CTO, Juergen Mueller, who gave both day’s keynotes and sat on at least one executive Q&A panel. The stage management and organization of the event is to be heartily applauded. The target audience of technical experts and development leaders of 440,000 SAP customers is somewhat beyond the scope of LNS Research, but there were many interesting announcements about improvement to the development environment and move to the cloud.

Manufacturing and IT leaders have been pursuing IT-OT convergence strategies for many years now. To reach that converged state, LNS Research sees establishing a common data model including both IT & OT data as an essential step. This common data model ensures that the data leaving the plant from multiple sources and of multiple types are accurate, trusted, and secure.

LNS Research recently had the opportunity to listen in on Rockwell Automation’s first virtual Automation Fair. Rockwell Automation strove valiantly to replicate the massive Automation Fair virtually: they continued to have Perspective Keynotes, detailed product and technical sessions, hands-on training, a partner exhibit, and even a virtual tour of the Product and Technology showcase. Rockwell Automation is known for its partner and channel-based strategy and this event reconfirmed, yet again, how strong Rockwell Automation’s orientation to partners and channels really is.

AWS recently launched a new set of services called “AWS for Industrial” designed to make it easier for industrial customers to innovate, automate, and scale industrial workloads on AWS through purpose-built services, solutions, and the widest ecosystem of partners. AWS for Industrial features new and existing services and solutions built specifically for developers, engineers, and operators at industrial companies. AWS for Industrial claims to simplify the process for customers to build or deploy innovative Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), analytics, and edge solutions to achieve step-change improvements in operational efficiency, quality, and agility.

Every year, LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends around the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics on which we focus our research. As the IX Readiness, IX Platform, and Quality specialist at LNS, I have the opportunity to make predictions across a range of topics. Luckily for you, I am only going to make five!

Every year, LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of Asset Performance Management (APM 4.0), our 2020 forecast focused on Digital Twins, closing the APM 4.0 loop, the consolidation in the advanced analytics market, the battle for the OT Ecosystem, and the evolution of the OPA market.

Every year, LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of Asset Performance Management (APM) 4.0, our 2020 forecast focused on Digital Twins, closing the APM 4.0 loop, the consolidation in the advanced analytics market, the battle for the OT Ecosystem, and the evolution of the OPA market. How did we do? Let’s do our self-evaluation to compare.

LNS has long focused on Operational Excellence (OE) as part of our Digital Transformation (DX) Framework, now Industrial Transformation (IX). In 2013 and 2014, we talked about Operational Excellence as a journey and stated that people, processes, and technology are the underpinnings of Operational Excellence initiatives.

AspenTech recently announced the general availability of the aspenONE® V12 software release, which embeds Artificial Intelligence (AI) across the portfolio and uses the Cloud to deliver enterprise-wide analytics and insights. The v12 release continues to support AspenTech's strategy of embedding AI and Machine Learning (ML) inside their products such that end-users can take advantage of these powerful tools without having to rely on data scientists or layer on external third-party analytics solutions.

GE Digital recently announced a series of products and service enhancements across their Digital Plant Software Applications portfolio. In addition, they released enhancements and new functionality in their Operations Performance Management (OPM) suite for power generation and announced their Remote Operations solution for Power Generation. All of these announcements culminated in a well-attended 2020 Virtual User Conference in October 2020.