Digital platform as a foundation for products and services

Integrating industrial processes, machines and devices even more in depth with intelligent software is an on-going effort in companies. With extensive experience in computer technology, Martti Mäntylä, a professor at Aalto University School of Science in Finland, knows his way around at the cross-section of ICT and industry. In his view machine intelligence shouldn’t just be added value, but the basis for product and service development.

At the moment sensors and data analysis are often an afterthought to improve efficiency and safety issues in existing products. But should the process of product development be thought over, so that data would have a fundamental role in it from the start? The industrial internet specialist Professor Martti Mäntylä sees this to be an appealing direction.

“Currently we usually have industrial products and devices, where ICT provides added value for the process, but more often solutions appear, where ICT has been the basis for building an industrial machine. The direction is definitely towards not applying intelligence to machines, but applying machines to intelligence. In this case a particular solution would be designed from the start with keeping a wider context or system in mind, so that data could be gathered, and connected with other data, analysed, and used to improve the operation of the whole system”, Mäntylä predicts.

There is also a different way to remodel businesses with ICT. Mäntylä highlights one success story, where a data analysis service component is built around an existing product, and designed to appeal to a critical need in the customer’s end.

“There is a case concerning a company in the welding system business. The company started providing better service to its customers by gathering and processing data from welding seams for certification purposes, an operation, which is mandatory but difficult for the client to do on their own. In addition the company is offering its service to customers, even if they are buying their welding systems from someone else. The customer’s crucial problem is solved, while also providing added value to the product itself.”

This type of service model is currently in the mind of several companies. Mäntylä wonders for example, if instead of selling a diesel engine for a power plant, the same company could take charge for operating the whole plant. This way the customer would buy in fact capacity for electricity production, not just a production tool.

“Remote operation is another direction, which could be based on ICT. Some industrial project might be in a tricky location, in the middle of desert for example. It might be difficult to get highly trained professionals to operate this type of system on site. Doing it remotely becomes appealing in this case. Offshore services can also be done with remote control. Why would you need personnel on a ship, when it’s at sea, other than at the harbour ends? This way the capacity of the ship could be used more efficiently for the primary function, which is shipping cargo. This may sound like science fiction, but the leading ship engine producer Rolls Royce has in fact published a concept for unmanned ships. To me it appears that the obstacles for realizing it are not so much in technology, but in regulation and business issues, such as the reaction of insurance companies.”

Early on, computer systems had their humble beginnings in close relations with industry from military systems to manufacturing. After the turn of the millennium ICT has taken accelerated steps forward bringing data and information to users worldwide in increased speeds and quantities.

“From an ICT point of view it is clear that there has been an evolution towards platforms, which has made technology more easily available, flexible, simpler, and cheaper. What was once thought of as rocket science, has somewhat transformed into something else”, Mäntylä argues and goes forward with discussing the current trends in ICT solutions.

“If there is interest to develop sensor technology, microprocessors or such, open source tools are available, and also widely in use. There is a complete ecosystem of specialists working on this field constantly. This phenomenon explains a major part of the contemporary start-up boom, much different from the dotcom boom ten years ago.”

It can be argued that the strength of the current ICT activity compared to the one before, is that it is founded on a much more concrete base of commodities and technologies. They are as Mäntylä views, also more easily accessible and smoother to operate.

Big data does not lead to a crowded bandwidth

Big data is estimated to generate increased amounts of traffic on the information highways. Mäntylä states that we shouldn’t be too worried about rising data transfer levels.

“There is already tons of data moving through the system, video streams accumulating the biggest quantities of data, with 4K video crowding the bandwidth. All things considered, sensory data is pretty compact. There are scenarios about world having a trillion sensors in the near future, which I deem is realistic, around a hundred per person.”

On the other hand, the question of latency should be addressed in the future, especially in industry related processes. For example a moving, remote controlled machine should have latency inside one millisecond, so that the proper operation of the control loop can be guaranteed. Mäntylä indicates that solutions are already in the pipeline.

“Next generation web technologies should solve these issues. 5G technology, which is currently under development, is partially designed to widen the applicability of new software solutions into industrial processes. Being a thousand times more powerful than the current solutions, it has the capacity to bring the industrial internet to the mainstream with increased bandwidth and decreased latency”, Mäntylä promises.

Martti Mäntylä works as Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Aalto University School of Science

Image credit: Tom Tom/Shutterstock.com