Machine Lifetime Value to BOM Ratio

The six metrics that matter for Hardware-as-a-Service businesses. Autonomously driving the line. Simplifying digital solutions to drive OT.

David Rogers

Jul 24, 2022

Assembly Line

Capturing this week's trending industry 4.0 and emerging industrial technology media

ROS: How Well Does it Address Manufacturers’ Needs?

Date: July 19, 2022
Author: Louis Pavlakos
Topics: Industrial Robot
Organizations: Omnirobotic

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

Using ROS, developers can build the three main components of a robot: the actuators, sensors, and control systems. These components are then unified with ROS tools, namely topics and messages. The messages are used to plan the robot’s movement and, using a digital twin, developers can ensure that their code works without having to actually test it on a real robot.

Omnirobotic’s AutonomyOS™ is a middleware meant to simplify and widen how robots are being used. While they both aim to achieve similar results, AutonomyOS™ flips the script by removing the need to code – something that still drives ROS. AutonomyOS™ can be primarily used by High-Mix manufacturers for a variety of different applications like paint spray processes, welding, and sanding. What is “High-Mix” Manufacturing? It is generally defined as any manufacturer or production that processes more than 100 different SKUs in batches fewer than 1000 each year – basically, a lot more variation than mass manufacturing.

Lanky Daleks: A Fascinating Factory Visit to BotsAndUs

Building Industrial Digital Twins on AWS Using MQTT Sparkplug

Date: July 20, 2022
Author: Kudzai Manditereza
Topics: MQTT, Digital Twin
Organizations: HiveMQ, AWS

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

Even better, a Sparkplug solution is built around an event-based and publish-subscribe architectural model that uses Report-By-Exception for communication. Meaning that your Digital Twin instances get updated with information only when a change in the dynamic properties is detected. Firstly, this saves computational and network resources such as CPU, memory, power and bandwidth. Secondly, this results in a highly responsive system whereby anomalies picked up by the analytics system can be adjusted in real-time.

Further, due to the underlying MQTT infrastructure, a Sparkplug based Digital Twin solution can scale to support millions of physical assets, which means that you can keep adding more assets with no disruptions. What’s more, MQTT Sparkplug’s definition of an MQTT Session State Management ensures that your Digital twin Solution is always aware of the status of all your physical assets at any given time.

Tackling Problems of Significance in Physical Industries

Date: July 14, 2022
Author: Seth Winterroth
Organizations: Eclipse Ventures

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

The Eclipse team has partnered with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and put out a report, The State of HaaS, detailing critical metrics specific to companies in the physical industries space. In aggregate, we reported data from over 400+ surveyed startups that are active commercially, mapping out the steps necessary to create a strong foundation upon which physical industry companies can build successful businesses.

The foundation for building a successful business in physical world industries begins with an end-to-end evaluation of your systems, operations, contracts, lead time efficiency, sales cadence, and overall reliability. Keeping these metrics in mind early when building an industrial tech company will help you lay a strong foundation from which the business can scale efficiently. For example, does the system you’ve built have reasonable ROI? Does your operating margin improve as you deploy in greater volume, or do deployment costs scale linearly with revenue? How efficient are your procurement processes and vendor lead times? Have you built the infrastructure that enables efficient remote diagnostics and customer support? These are just some questions to ask when building a compelling, agile business that can bring value to the physical industry space.

Developing AI Predictive Maintenance Models

BMWs to Drive Themselves During Production

Date: July 21, 2022
Author: Graham Hope
Vertical: Automotive

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

BMW Group project manager Sascha Andree explained: “Automated driving within the plant is fundamentally different from autonomous driving for customers. It doesn’t use sensors in the vehicle. In fact, the car itself is more or less blind and the sensors for maneuvering them are integrated along the route through the plant.”

Initially, the vehicles will only move through the assembly area and then to a parking area, ready for their onward journey by train or truck. But in reality, it is possible to use the tech as soon as the cars are capable of driving independently in the production process.

A hi-tech factory supports circular mushroom production

Date: July 22, 2022
Author: Matthew Hempstead
Topics: Circular Economy
Vertical: Food

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

To grow mushrooms you need a ‘substrate’ – the base material colonised by the fungi’s mycelium from which the edible mushroom flowers. But sourcing substrates is a thorn in the side of commercial exotic mushroom growers, with supply chain issues dogging the market. This is where Belgian startup Eclo comes in. Normally, mushroom substrates are made from a wood base, grains, water, and mycelium. Eclo, by contrast, has found a way to replace the grains with organic waste from breweries and industrial bakeries. Not only is this a good use of recycled material that reduces the demand for virgin grain – the novel substrate is also high-yield, benefitting growers’ bottom lines.

Huge Parts and Massive Machining Centers at Baker Industries

Capital Expenditure

Tracking this week's major mergers, partnerships, and funding events in manufacturing and supply chain

Phaidra Uses AI to Boost Industrial Profitability and Reduce Emissions

Date: July 15, 2022
Topics: Funding Event

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

Phaidra, a pioneer of using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve efficiency, stability, and sustainability in the industrial sector, has closed $25M in Series A funding, the company announced today. The funding will allow Phaidra to accelerate deployment of its technology in mission-critical industries, from data centers and refineries to pharmaceutical plants and steel mills.

‘At DeepMind, my co-founders and I saw first-hand how deep reinforcement learning was creating breakthroughs in multiple real-world applications. We started Phaidra to bring the benefits of this technology beyond the tech companies to the industrial sector,’ said Jim Gao, CEO of Phaidra. ‘Robert’s company-building expertise and the Series A raise will go a long way towards achieving our mission of radical resource efficiency.’

Arch Systems secures $15M in new funding led by Two Bear Capital

Date: July 15, 2022

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

Arch® Systems today announced $15M in new funding led by Two Bear Capital and joined by new and existing investors including seed lead investor Uncork Capital.

Arch, founded by Stanford engineering PhDs, provides leading electronics and discrete manufacturers with an advanced analytics platform for factory-wide and multi-factory operations. On the manufacturing floor, the technology provides best-in-class operational guidance to improve productivity, quality, and maintenance. Across multiple factories, Arch automates global KPI alignment and delivers enterprises tools to drive data-driven action management both at in-house and contracted factories to maximize overall manufacturing performance.

About the new financing, the Arch CEO said, “This new funding will accelerate our go-to-market motion both in our core area, electronics manufacturing, and in the adjacent area of high-tech manufacturing including defense and medical manufacturing. Two Bear Capital brings incredible expertise and insight into company building in the deep tech and networking space as well as our domain manufacturing markets. This is a rare and exceptional combination of expertise. We are excited to be partnering with them on this next phase.”

JAKA Robotics raises $150M for collaborative robots

Date: July 21, 2022
Author: Brianna Wessling

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

JAKA Robotics has raised $150 million in Series D funding. This follows a $50 million Series C funding round earlier in 2021. JAKA plans to use the Series D funding to further support globalization of the company and the research and development of its collaborative robot (cobot) arm.

AM Ventures closes venture capital fund with focus on industrial 3D printing

Date: July 19, 2022

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

AM Ventures, one of the global leaders in venture capital for additive manufacturing (AM), has announced the final closing of its oversubscribed venture capital fund focused on industrial 3D printing, closing at 100 million EUR hard cap.

Nano Dimension continues expansion with 12.12% stake in Stratasys

Date: July 19, 2022
Organizations: Nano Dimension, Stratasys

Tweet | Pocket | Instapaper

Investment in additive manufacturing continues as Nano Dimension has acquired a 12.12% stake in fellow 3D printer manufacturer Stratasys.

The strategic investment was certainly an unexpected one as Stratasys is one of the most seasoned veterans in industrial 3D printing. The companies may both be based in Israel, but their market segments couldn’t be more different: Nano Dimension specializes in Additively Manufactured Electronics (AME) while Stratasys operates almost exclusively in the polymer space with proprietary technologies like FDM and PolyJet.

Exponential Industry

Discussion about this post