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One of the drivers of the Industrial Internet of Things is the increasing capability of sensors: higher accuracy, smaller size, reduced energy consumption, multi-variable sensing, self-diagnostics, wireless – and all at ever lower costs. Against this backdrop and given that sensor manufacturers have not been overly prominent in the IIoT conversation, I was intrigued to learn about some interesting things the German sensor company ifm electronic is doing in the space and, particularly, its relationship with an organization at the opposite end of the “edge to enterprise” chain, SAP.
With a product range that includes position sensors, vision sensors, process sensors, and sensors for safety and condition monitoring, ifm’s products are commonly applied in machinery for the automotive, food & beverage, and metalworking sectors. Headquartered in Essen, Germany, the company employs some 5,000 people around the world and recorded revenues of €663 million in 2014.
Recognizing that the rising data volumes from these sensors – of the order of 0.2 terabytes a year for a flow sensor, 1.3 TB/year for a vibration sensor, and 4 TB/year for a 3D vision sensor – could be of greater value if not constrained within the machine, together with the fact that a large proportion of its customers’ customers, i.e. the end users of the machinery, use SAP enterprise applications, led to ifm’s collaboration with SAP and the development of Connectivity Port.
The LINERECORDER-Agent Connectivity Port (LR Agent CP), a combination of SAP PCo (Plant Connectivity) and ifm’s LINERECORDER Agent software, is a configurable, bidirectional communication interface that allows sensor data from a machine to be passed to SAP manufacturing applications such as SAP ME (Manufacturing Execution) and SAP PM (Plant Maintenance) without complex installation.
Because no customer-specific programming is necessary to make the machine “SAP ready”, integration costs are greatly reduced – from $10,000 for a single machine to $100, according to ifm. Target uses include machine condition monitoring and energy consumption.
One machine manufacturer that is looking to take advantage of the sensor-to-SAP capability is food processing equipment supplier GEA. At this year’s CeBIT 2015 show in Hannover, SAP announced “an “Industry 4.0 implementation project with GEA to address condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.”
Specifically, GEA will use the cloud-based SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service (PdMS) to monitor the status of separator and decanter machinery at its customer sites and thereby spot unusual trends or behavior in real time. Machinery data is collected via integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) services of SAP HANA Cloud Platform and the LINERECORDER-Agent Embedded from ifm.
Within the context of IIoT-enabled business models, it is not too surprising to hear that GEA is also looking to offer new services around modular service-level agreements, warranted availabilities and insurance to its customers. For SAP, planned innovation in the areas of vibration and predictive analysis are set to further complement the solution. And back at the edge, for ifm, going beyond core sensor development and working to ensure that sensed data can cost-effectively get out of the machine and into the enterprise looks to be quite a smart move.
With a product range that includes position sensors, vision sensors, process sensors, and sensors for safety and condition monitoring, ifm’s products are commonly applied in machinery for the automotive, food & beverage, and metalworking sectors. Headquartered in Essen, Germany, the company employs some 5,000 people around the world and recorded revenues of €663 million in 2014.
Recognizing that the rising data volumes from these sensors – of the order of 0.2 terabytes a year for a flow sensor, 1.3 TB/year for a vibration sensor, and 4 TB/year for a 3D vision sensor – could be of greater value if not constrained within the machine, together with the fact that a large proportion of its customers’ customers, i.e. the end users of the machinery, use SAP enterprise applications, led to ifm’s collaboration with SAP and the development of Connectivity Port.
The LINERECORDER-Agent Connectivity Port (LR Agent CP), a combination of SAP PCo (Plant Connectivity) and ifm’s LINERECORDER Agent software, is a configurable, bidirectional communication interface that allows sensor data from a machine to be passed to SAP manufacturing applications such as SAP ME (Manufacturing Execution) and SAP PM (Plant Maintenance) without complex installation.
Because no customer-specific programming is necessary to make the machine “SAP ready”, integration costs are greatly reduced – from $10,000 for a single machine to $100, according to ifm. Target uses include machine condition monitoring and energy consumption.
One machine manufacturer that is looking to take advantage of the sensor-to-SAP capability is food processing equipment supplier GEA. At this year’s CeBIT 2015 show in Hannover, SAP announced “an “Industry 4.0 implementation project with GEA to address condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.”
Specifically, GEA will use the cloud-based SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service (PdMS) to monitor the status of separator and decanter machinery at its customer sites and thereby spot unusual trends or behavior in real time. Machinery data is collected via integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) services of SAP HANA Cloud Platform and the LINERECORDER-Agent Embedded from ifm.
Within the context of IIoT-enabled business models, it is not too surprising to hear that GEA is also looking to offer new services around modular service-level agreements, warranted availabilities and insurance to its customers. For SAP, planned innovation in the areas of vibration and predictive analysis are set to further complement the solution. And back at the edge, for ifm, going beyond core sensor development and working to ensure that sensed data can cost-effectively get out of the machine and into the enterprise looks to be quite a smart move.