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At the ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, ARC’s Harry Forbes, spoke to Tripp Partain, CTO for Edge and IOT Systems, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), about the company’s place in the manufacturing sector, driving next generation efficiencies, and advice for those starting on this journey. This post summarizes the highlights and quotes of the interview. You can view it here or/and on YouTube.
HPE in the Manufacturing Sector
Tripp noted that HPE has been around a long time in the IT business. “We're one of the original founders of Silicon Valley and definitely proud of that,” he said. But from a technology standpoint, there has been a transformation – the company has moved from an edge to cloud platform as a service company. “And, where that really applies is industrial companies on more of their traditional IT (more back office data center type applications),” said Tripp. However, the company’s industrial focus has been to take some of these technology advancements that they’ve been working on over the years, and put them in form factors to move much closer to the actual manufacturing and industrial processes and help drive some of the next generation efficiencies.
What is New?
How would you respond to this statement asked Harry: “IOT, Industrial IOT, edge computing – that's really nothing new. We've been connected for 20-30 years. We're doing the same thing.”
This is a true statement, said Tripp. Over the years there has been a lot of technology that has been infused into industrial operations and manufacturing processes and often people don’t even realize it. “I think the difference is most of that has been very purpose-built,” said Tripp and cited the example of a manufacturing process in the automobile sector. If a piece of steel has to be bent into a certain form, there is technology-infused equipment to do just that. But that equipment is specific for this job and cannot resolve problems encountered three steps behind (for a different job using different technology). What is new is, “Being able to actually tie all of that together, start to look at that information in a holistic manner and make decisions based on tradeoffs between one area or another and how that affects the entire manufacturing process from a technology standpoint,” explained Tripp.
In the past, this process of knitting the silos of technologies together was done by people with 20-30 years of experience in the operations, who knew what adjustments need to be made. But now, HPE’s customers are telling them that experienced employees are retiring, and the next generation are not likely to go through the ranks and gain the same level of experience and expertise. “So, we're looking to try to leverage technology to help fill what looks to be potentially a skills gap that's growing,” said Tripp. Addressing the skills/talent gap are common concerns across industries.
Effective Project Scaling and Case Studies
“New projects often get stuck trying to expand beyond pilot stage. What are your recommendations for projects to grow and scale effectively?” asked Harry.
This happens because a proof-of-concept (PoC) is used to solve just a specific problem, and over the years the company has seen this in traditional IT as well. Scaling and replicating enterprise wide have to be taken into account while planning the PoC. To facilitate this, HPE has developed techniques and advisory capabilities in the IT sector, and now they want to apply the same to the manufacturing sector. Tripp spoke about one use case of a large tool manufacturer. The baseline was set up so that the platform that was selected could be replicated across plants.
Another manufacturing customer outsourced factories across a number of industries. HPE worked with them to develop a video analytic-based QA process (using robot arms and cameras). This replaced a manual process, resulting in significant manufacturing efficiency improvements.
Advice to those Starting on the Journey
Tripp’s advice was to start small. “Because if you try to boil the ocean and solve 20 factory problems in one day, you're going to get mired into a combination of the differences, the different kind of inputs you're going to have to deal with, and the politics of trying to organize around 20 different facilities at one time,” he said. Further, he said that you can begin with a problem area where the result can be measured (positive or negative). “So, if you are successful, you can ensure that the baseline that you use to put that together is something that at least you've thought through from a repeatability standpoint. So that you don't box yourself into one proof-of- concept that never actually goes anywhere.”