Manufacturing Enters the Next Information Age

Picture a shop floor where supervisors and employees walk around with all sorts of real-time sales, production, engineering, quality, and maintenance information on their wireless iPads. They analyze all sorts of problems on any given machine tool by clicking on that icon. They are able to learn and apply the latest diagnostic techniques on their equipment by connecting to sources from anywhere in the world. Think of how efficient that plant supply chain could become, the delivery and shipment of materials, the processing of bills and orders, the reductions in errors, and the application of best practices for cost controls. The capacity for improvement is endless.

Now consider the future wealth inside this concept for a moment. Metalworking is not that far away from a tomorrow where all of those thousands of sensors inside and outside the job shop communicate globally under one protocol (which resides in the cloud). Imagine, if you can, a single set of software rules that cleanly connects sales, design, engineering, purchasing, production, maintenance, quality, safety, distribution and other functions as nodes on the Internet, regardless of physical location.

Think about the levels of automation yet to come between all of those functions as their processes overlap, change and expand. Entire plants could evolve into nodes on the Internet as metalworking supply chains compete for business across the planet, using new depths of information that is managed through those nodes. The opportunities to improve competitive advantage seem limitless.

And here’s the big plus: With MTConnect and cloud computing already working together, there are zero technical issues to overcome for all of this to become a reality. That’s right. None.

“The major barriers that are left are not technical, they are cultural,” adds Woods. “Metalworking moves very slowly compared to the IT industry. At the MTConnect.org website, for example, we have a number of software companies listed that have either embraced cloud computing with MTConnect or are in the process of doing so. The firms that are doing both MTConnect and cloud computing today are forward-looking visionaries that realize how information technologies are game changers. Why would a shop owner want to purchase a bunch of hardware that depreciates in 36 months and is obsolete in just 48 months when they can literally pay as they go for sometimes pennies per hour for a server in the cloud?”

SOME CONCERNS
Three immediate issues come to mind: What about security? Privacy? Reliability? Any job shop or contract manufacturer that is seriously considering cloud computing as a business practice must exercise due diligence to satisfy these three concerns.

To address security issues faced by both the cloud provider and the shop, the provider being selected must be able to ensure that their infrastructure is secure – that data cannot be accessed by unauthorized users or simply lost – and that the shop’s data and applications are protected. The metalworker must investigate and have confidence that this provider has taken the proper security measures to protect their information.

According to Forrester Research (Cambridge, MA), an independent technology consulting firm, to be considered protected, “data from one customer must be properly segregated from that of another; it must be stored securely when “at rest” and it must be able to move securely from one location to another. Cloud providers must have systems in place to prevent data leaks or access by third parties. Proper separation of duties should ensure that auditing and/or monitoring cannot be defeated, even by privileged users at the cloud provider. Every enterprise must have its own identity management system to control access to information and computing resources. Cloud providers must either integrate the customer’s identity management system into their own infrastructure, using federation or technology, or provide an identity management solution of their own.”

Metalworkers should also check the physical and personnel security of their providers. “Providers must ensure that physical machines are adequately secure and that access to these machines, as well as all relevant customer data, is not only restricted, but that access is documented,” explains Forrester. “Cloud providers must assure customers that they will have regular and predictable access to their data and applications. They must also ensure that applications available as a service via the cloud are secure by implementing testing and acceptance procedures for outsourced or packaged application code. This requires application security measures, such as application-level firewalls, to be in place in the production environment.”

Regarding privacy, “Providers must ensure that all critical data (such as credit card numbers, for example) are masked and that only authorized users have access to data in its entirety,” warns Forrester. “Moreover, digital identities and credentials must be protected, as should any data that the provider collects or produces about customer activity in the cloud.”

As you might expect, there are numerous regulations relating to privacy and the storage and use of data. “These include the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, among others,” notes Forrester. “Many of these regulations require regular reporting and audit trails. Cloud providers must enable their customers to comply appropriately with these regulations.” In addition to the requirements to which the customers are subject, the data centers maintained by cloud providers may also be subject to compliance requirements.

Finally, in terms of reliability, “Cloud providers must have business continuity and data recovery plans in place to ensure that service can be maintained in case of a disaster or an emergency and that any data lost will be recovered. These plans should be shared with and reviewed by their customers,” states Forrester. “In addition to producing logs and audit trails, cloud providers must work with their customers to ensure that these logs and audit trails are properly secured, maintained for as long as the customer requires, and are accessible for the purposes of forensic investigation.

Forrester also recommends that shops negotiate terms around liability with their cloud provider, “stipulating how incidents involving data loss or compromise will be resolved; intellectual property; and end-of-service, when data and applications are ultimately returned to the customer.”

SILVER LINING
At the end of the day, after you cut through all of the noise about cloud computing, what is the bottom line? The practical benefits of cloud computing far outweigh its concerns:

“Any shop can achieve greater operating efficiencies when all of its workers on the floor can access Microsoft Office on the Web,” states Craig Hodges, the general manager of the U.S. Manufacturing and Resources Group for Microsoft (Redmond, WA). “With cloud computing, it saves more money by not having to install and maintain Office on every single computer. It also doesn’t invest a lot of money in software that workers only use parts of, because it now only pays for the amount of software being used, just like electricity.”

With cloud computing, the shop has no more huge investments in server rooms, computer/software maintenance, licenses, etc. because its technology scales as its need grows, then shrinks as its need shrinks. “If the plant hires 50 more workers for a new product line, there is no reason to purchase any additional servers,” adds Hodges. “And to top it off, the organization can store data more securely in the cloud than it could in the plant. Company personnel in different offices, plants, and geographies can still videoconference, send instant messages and make phone calls, all through their computers. Remote workers can access the important data from the road and at home, achieving much greater efficiencies than otherwise.”

These are the promises, the silver lining of the Next Information Age. Put your head in the cloud.