Have you heard about the ‘internet of things’ (IoT)? The thing about this is that it doesn’t actually exist and never will. It’s a marketing term for a technological trend – a black-magic phrase invented by the IT industry and market analysts to sound futuristic and evoke exciting images.
That’s not to say there is no trend. But what’s happening is actually straightforward. Wi-fi, near-field communications, radio-frequency identification tags, sensors and similar technologies have all become better and cheaper, while communications infrastructure has grown in size and become more reliable. These advances mean that more ‘things’ can be connected to the internet.
The IoT is just connecting stuff up to the internet that isn’t computers and smartphones. Almost anything, from industrial gas turbines to doorbells, from the latest BMW cars to pacemakers, can be and are being given IP addresses right now.
Which may well be how consultancies and researchers measure and predict the IoT. According to IDC, the IoT market reached £1.2 trillion in 2013. McKinsey thinks the market will grow to be worth almost ?4 trillion annually by 2025. An oft-quoted report by IT networking firm Cisco says that in 2010, for the first time, more things than people were connected to the internet. The same report predicts that by 2020 the gap will have widened dramatically – there will be eight billion people in the world and 50 billion things connected to the internet.
The applicability of connectivity technology features is so broad that no one can define the trend definitively. Engineering group GE calls it the ‘industrial internet’. The German government calls it ‘Industry 4.0’. Some engineers call it ‘machine-to-machine communication’. For want of a better phrase, and to include its application in lots of different areas and sectors, the IoT covers all.
A company that has taken it upon itself to demystify the trend is engineering software specialist PTC. The firm’s roots are in its parametric CAD software ProEngineer, which is now part of the Creo design suite, but the company’s future strategy hinges almost entirely on embracing the IoT in all its connected glory.
PTC’s chief executive, Jim Heppelmann, is a strong advocate of the IoT and the impact it will have on business and industry, most recently co-authoring a report in the Harvard Business Review with economist Michael Porter. The article calls the internet of things the “third wave” of IT-driven change. The first wave was the computerised automation of individual processes, such as order processing and bill payment, in the 1960s and 1970s. The second wave was the rise of the internet during the 1980s and 1990s, which connected these types of individual activities. Both ‘waves’ enabled huge improvements to productivity and economic gains, as will be the case with the IoT.
The article says: “In the third wave, IT is becoming an integral part of the product itself... coupled with a product cloud in which data is stored and analysed, driving dramatic improvements in product functionality and performance. Massive amounts of new product-usage data enable many of those improvements. Another leap in productivity in the economy will be unleashed by these new and better products.”
Robert Gremley is executive vice-president of the IoT and service life-cycle management at PTC. He says: “The IoT is bigger than cloud computing and 10 times bigger than 3D printing. It’s a massive wave of technological innovation we are in the early days of. But if we separate out the IoT, it’s really only the things that are changing. Which is where engineers come in, the people who create, operate and service things.”
In the past year, PTC has acquired two software companies in the emerging IoT sector to strengthen its proposition. ThingWorx and Axeda cost PTC just over £190 million combined. “They were seen as competitors,” says Gremley. “The truth is that they are complementary. Axeda focuses on agent connectivity; ThingWorx on the middle of the stack.”
ThingWorx software is for making IoT software applications. Once machines and devices are connected up and equipped with sensors, applications are needed to organise and interpret that data so that it can be used. ThingWorx is a platform to
build those applications.
Axeda’s software is for connecting machines and devices to each other and gathering the data they produce into one place. The company already has a billion devices connected to the cloud, from medical equipment to petrol pumps and digital cinema projectors. Gremley says: “It focused on connectivity and storage as well as applications that sit on top of the machine cloud. It gives you the basic apps to connect, monitor and remotely access, push software and keep track of configuration for your device, out of the box.
“By the end of the year, we will have productised and integrated the two,” he says. “The next step is taking the ThingWorx technology and integrating it into the rest of the PTC software. We have deep domain knowledge in design and manufacturing, and we will build apps that use that knowledge.”
PTC’s strategy is to give engineers the software tools to develop connectivity features in machines, products and devices, alongside the existing tools they use for design, simulation and product lifecycle management. However, Gremley emphasises that everything still starts with the physical product. These products have advanced so much in mechanical and electrical ways that engineers now have to think about adding other features through embedded computers and software.
“It makes the product more valuable but also more complex,” he says. “We have to make a critical decision on a systems engineering level as to whether we put features in the hardware or software. But mechanical design remains critical to the functionality and performance.”
The IoT can enable four main functions. The first is monitoring, as seen in medical devices such as Biotronik’s pacemakers. The company now offers a service that constantly monitors a person’s heartbeat. Remote control and configuration of devices without proximity is also possible through the IoT. An example of this is the Doorbot, a camera connected to a smartphone, which allows people to look at their front door and open it for deliveries. The use of remote control and configuration also enables engineers to optimise products for use in specific environments – for example, lifts that are controlled according to time of day and expected traffic.Finally, increased levels of autonomy are possible in items such as delivery vehicles and production machinery.
Smarter products and connectivity allow increased levels of servicing. For example, ‘power by the hour’ business models are now being used for jet engines and HVAC rental. Philips recently installed 13,000 LED lights in parking garages in Washington DC. The company is being paid by the US government based on the savings made.
The IoT has many applications throughout industry, many of which are already being used to optimise performance and service delivery. Some companies monitor whole fleets of machines, whether pumps and valves in mines or oil platforms miles out at sea.
The prime example is GE, with its ‘industrial internet’, which remotely monitors its power-producing gas turbines, collecting and analysing the data for maintenance and servicing purposes.
Another recent example is ABB. The company installed a communications system to enable remote device support in its manufacturing robots. Retrofitting of the connectivity technology enabled each of its robots in the field to report back to the service office while in use.
The company now manages thousands of industrial robots from a central office, and no longer has to dispatch technicians to sites to perform diagnostics. The central office can generate automatic responses based on a robot’s status, such as changing rate plans, deactivating or reinstating devices, or performing remote diagnostics.
Christophe Alt, project manager at ABB Robotics in France, says: “We’re monitoring to help customers avoid the high cost of over-consumption. The real-time information we receive in the control centre allows us to pinpoint the exact robot and precise issue that require immediate attention.
“Before, we were reacting when customers would call us with wireless communication issues, and it was difficult to get information to understand what was happening at the device level. Now we have real-time monitoring data across our remote devices and can automate responses before incidents occur.”
ABB worked with IT firm Jasper to implement the communications system. Jasper has its own software platform for adding connectivity features to machines and products, was started in 2004. It counts several global manufacturers as customers, including Ford, GM, Amazon, Sony and TomTom.
Sanjay Khatri, Jasper’s director of product marketing, says it advises clients to start by assessing exactly how it is going to use connectivity and, if the benefits outweigh the costs of development, how to set up the associated systems and maintain a reliable service throughout a product’s lifetime. “They then have to ask what type of connectivity is most suitable. For most, it’s cellular networks. But then you have to look at guaranteeing the connectivity, which can be challenging,” he says.
Companies often find the most challenging aspect of introducing connectivity features is adjusting their business models, says Khatri. “The engineering challenge of building in an additional piece of circuitry to integrate connectivity, like a GSM interface, is easily overcome. But there is a much larger business transformation question to address – how does a company evolve from being a manufacturer, dealer and distributor to leasing a product out and keeping control of it during its entire lifetime? A lot of organisations struggle with getting the whole organisation on the same page, to transform themselves into a services-orientated organisation. They have to think about how you maximise the opportunities and use the features over the lifetime of the product. It’s challenging.”
Using connectivity and data to improve maintenance, provide remote access, servicing and diagnostics is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ with IoT applications. Now, some companies are moving further up the value chain.
This process is occurring particularly in the automotive sector, which is one of the first to heavily integrate connectivity into products in significant volumes, to create functionality focused entirely on connectivity that generates revenue. Such technology includes infotainment features, as well as functions that provide feedback on driver behaviour. Legislation is also playing a role in the automotive sector – from this year it will be mandatory for all new cars sold in the EU to have the ‘E-call’ feature, which automatically calls the emergency services if the car is involved in an accident.
However, Khatri at Jasper believes that the most advanced application for IoT functionality is its potential to improve product life cycles and enhance the engineering and design of machines, devices and products. “The data can be used to assess how it is performing, or how it can be enhanced to improve the product during the design phase,” he says.
The information that a smart, connected product provides to improve its design, such as how it is used, where it is used, how often it is used and what causes it to break, is important to PTC. The company calls the idea “closing the loop”.
PTC’s Gremley says: “We think that the term ‘life cycle’ has been misused and overstretched. You lose sight of your product for most of its life cycle, and lose connectivity with your product. If you know how it is being used, you can optimise its use. We want to close the loop on life-cycle management.
PTC boosts CAD productivity
Engineering software specialist PTC is known for its parametric CAD software, ProEngineer. This software now forms part of the company’s Creo design suite – worldwide, 75% PTC software users have upgraded from ProEngineer to Creo.
The company’s latest software suite offers a range of apps, from sketch to layout through to parametrics and simulation, and is on its third release since July 2014. The latest release allows potential productivity gains of up to 30%, according to Michael Campbell, executive vice-president of CAD at PTC.
Improvements to the software include ‘intelligent fasteners’, where the software automates the process of creating fasteners in machines.
PTC has also enhanced interoperability, adding the ability to import all the significant CAD formats, including Solidworks, Catia and Siemens NX, and open them natively. Creo designs can be linked to these designs and updated to changes in them. Previously, importing was achieved by opening a duplicate file, which created a
lot of data to manage and increased complexity.
“Some customers have seen this technology and called it game-changing,” says Campbell.
He adds that the latest version of Creo has more flexibility, but that this is “balanced with control”. PTC has also introduced a module that automates the backing up of different versions of design alternatives.
In further releases later this year of Creo and of its Windchill product life-cycle management software, PTC will for the first time introduce modules that deliver usage data from the software, allowing the design process itself to be improved.
Germany moves to next level
‘Industry 4.0’ is an idea from Germany that takes the internet of things, combines it with embedded systems – sensors and computers small enough to be placed inside products – and applies it specifically to manufacturing.
Originally devised as a result of joint government and industry research in Germany, the idea is spreading throughout Europe. Industry 4.0 goes beyond using the IoT as the basis for providing more services and remote support. It aims to create flexible, more efficient factories that can create highly individualised products in the same way that identical mass-produced goods are made today.
The aim is that, within 10 to 20 years, manufacturing will have largely moved from its current iteration, ‘Industry 3.0’, to become highly autonomous and flexible.
Wolfgang Dorst is head of Industry 4.0 for Bitkom, the German trade association for the IT sector, which has played an integral role in the development of the Industry 4.0 strategy. “In manufacturing, the machine tool would be able to describe its own abilities and status, and the materials would also be smart,” he says. “So the material could decide which machines to go to in the most efficient order, and specify its own configuration.”
Early examples include the use of augmented reality on the production line to mentally assist workers; and ‘social machines’ networked both to other machines and to workers, and able to communicate their status and analysis of big data to increase productivity, flexibility and quality.
Industry 4.0 is seen as crucial in Germany because manufacturing plays such a large role in its economy, contributing around 26% of GDP and employing around a million people. David Vasak, manufacturing expert at PA Consulting Group, heads an international team that is helping companies to introduce Industry 4.0 ideas and technologies. “Many companies are aware of Industry 4.0, and the bigger firms have groups dedicated to it,” he says. “But it is a challenge for the smaller companies. Around 30% of companies do not know about Industry 4.0, but 80% of the remainder consider it important and around 50% have already started actions related to it.
“We will see it first in industries that deliver a great variety of individualised products in high volumes, such as automotive, some consumer products and pharmaceutical sectors.”