How are PLM Suppliers Involved in IIoT?

​Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) suppliers have a clear stake in IIoT, but just what how are they involved and what are they delivering in terms of technology, applications, and products that support IIoT? To begin with, the first word in PLM is product. PLM suppliers provide their customers with tools and solutions that allow manufacturers to design and build products. A lot of these products are focused on the needs and desires of the consumer, from cars and trucks, to electronics and appliances, to recreation and sports. But beyond just products for the consumer, manufacturers produce products that run our factories and plants, automate our buildings, monitor our health, and drive our infrastructure. IIoT is often regarded to be a set of strategies, frameworks, and technologies that define connected networks, smart factories, plants, and businesses; but everything in the IIoT environment begins with the smart connected object, which just happens to a product. And this is how the PLM providers are approaching the overall concept of IoT, IIoT, and Industrie 4.0. They want to enable the creation of a new class of smart connected objects with PLM applications and solutions that foster continuous rapid, profitable, and sustainable innovation while building ecosystems of hardware, software, smart factories and plants, cloud, services, and content.

Two basic elements of IIoT are connectivity and intelligence.  Connected objects and smart products. In the design process both of these basic elements have to be included as a part of the design criteria. Connectivity to the Internet can be achieved through a variety of communications technologies, with the heart of most IoT and IIoT products being one or more wireless connections that enable Internet communications. Intelligence embedded into the product in the form of sensors and software completes the other critical element of IoT, and provides context, function, and analysis of the raw data collected. In this way the vast array of objects connected across networks will work for the manufacturer as well as the consumer rather than consist of alarms and distractions. Designing the next generation of connected smart products will be critical in delivering the promise of IIoT, both from the perspective of the machines that will communicate with each other to run factories and the individual consumer that is connected to the products they use.

Companies will need to design for ecosystems from the start. Service is one natural result of IoT: objects/things/devices/products are connected and can intelligently communicate their state, condition, or health so a service can be performed to respond to the communication. Thus, the fundamental relationship of IoT and services are truly a cause and effect relationship that should be designed into the product to exploit the full effect. Ecosystems of services will most likely be the case, at least in the beginning, and they won't be siloed but function in a holistic manner. Moreover, the real value of IoT will not be fully realized until services become interconnected, as opposed to being siloed.

While connecting machines, production systems, and a host of assets throughout factories, plants, and infrastructure has been already established in some cases, and remains a major element of IIoT, designing and producing the next generation of products across all industry sectors will define the ultimate scope of IIoT going forward. Stakeholders in many technology sectors that will contribute to the proliferation of IIoT such as networking providers like Cisco, IoT platform configurations like ThingWorx, embedded systems providers like Mentor Graphics, and product design application providers like PTC, Dassault Systems, and Siemens PLM. All of these companies are defining the IIoT in the broad context of all of components necessary to create an ecosystem of smart connected objects.

Each of the three PLM suppliers mentioned here are approaching IoT (for consumer markets) and IIoT (for factories and plants) with both common and distinct strategies and technologies. A common approach used by all is application lifecycle management (ALM), where the development of the software that provides intelligence and connectivity is based on systems or model-based methodology that integrates engineering design disciplines (mechanical, electrical, software) from a functional perspective.  This allows companies that manufacture the smart connected components required for an IIoT environment to use tools and solutions to design and build everything from smart sensors that monitor and optimize a production line, to smart and autonomous cars.

Siemens PLM is focusing on the digital factory, a higher level initiative of its parent business unit, Siemens Industrial Automation; where automated work stations and intelligent assembly lines are connected into a factory system of systems. This involves both IIoT and smart manufacturing, and will also address the basic principles of Industrie 4.0, where there is communication between intelligent products, machines, and production systems.

Dassault Systems (DS) is focusing on a systems engineering approach for smart product/component design where electrical, mechanical, software, and systems engineers can work collaboratively to develop one model of the system for a product and then virtually simulate the complete behavior of the product and the potential user experience. DS wants to provide a systems engineering development platform for multiple industries: smart cars, smart appliances, smart trains, and smart components for IIoT to name a few.

PTC, while remaining a market leader for PLM design tools, has gone all in on IoT/IIoT and service lifecycle management (SLM). With its acquisition of ThingWorx and Axeda, PTC has made IoT/IIoT a major technology and business initiative going forward, and believe that IoT/IIoT represents a fundamental shift in the way products are designed for the consumers and the manufacturers who produce them. PTC also embraces SLM as the role service plays in that customer experience is critical as the face of the company during the after-sales life span.

Clearly, PLM and the suppliers that provide the applications and solutions for designing the smart connected product, intelligent and connected manufacturing processes, and service strategies for smart connected products in the field are playing a significant role in the advance of IIoT.

Posted in IIoT and I4.0 Viewpoints