Securing the Modern Industrial Datasphere

Cloud systems enable manufacturers to jump steps ahead in the technology curve, requiring new systems and cyber strategies. Distributed operating models seek to modernize production capacity.

Mar 12, 2023

Shop Talk

Capturing this week's zeitgeist

From “Ohio Train Spill – It’s time to rethink the way we produce, store, and ship chemicals in this world”

Over 50 million metric tons of VCM and PVC are produced worldwide each year. VCM is often converted into a PVC resin, which is then sold and shipped to customers to produce the PVC pipe or other final PVC product. Sometimes though, the VCM is sold and shipped as-is and the customer converts VCM to PVC themselves. VCM is a known carcinogen and mutagen, which causes reproductive damage. It severely irritates the skin, eyes, nose, throat, and lungs and should be handled with “extreme caution” according to the EPA. As a society we have to ask ourselves, “if it’s possible to ship a safe PVC resin around the world instead of a hazardous VCM chemical, shouldn’t we be doing that all the time?”
Solugen is working hard towards a better way to bring chemistry to life for future generations, with the help of biology. By combining the best of these two fundamental scientific fields, society can unlock a safer and more sustainable way to produce and deliver important chemical building blocks. Cell-free enzymatic pathways can be engineered for high yield and precision in a single reaction complex, allowing for smaller-scale manufacturing with lower capital requirements.
This can enable a decentralized distribution model that minimizes risk and carbon emissions required for transportation. “Farm-to-table” is an emerging trend for the food industry that we can look to for inspiration, where the food tastes better because it is fresher, more sustainable for the planet, and more humane for all living things. Today, it generally costs more to produce, but a dedicated focus on innovation will drive it to cost parity. Chemicals and materials can also follow this operating model.

From “How founders are reacting to Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse”

With Silicon Valley Bank now being shut down, startup founders who have been unable to access their accounts are getting increasingly nervous about the status of their capital. Top concerns include making payroll and staying afloat as a business.

Assembly Line

This week's most influential Industry 4.0 media

🔏🦾 Anatomy of Robots: Cybersecurity in the Modern Factory

📅 Date: March 6, 2023
🔖 Topics: Industrial Robot, Cybersecurity
🏢 Organizations: TXOne Networks

In highly networked modern factories and complex robots’ operating modes, attackers have the opportunity to use more diverse methods to carry out cyberattacks on robots, particularly in the case of manufacturers who do not take product cybersecurity issues seriously. This complacency creates opportunities for attackers that break into a factory to easily compromise these devices. When robots are successfully attacked, in addition to directly causing the factory to halt the manufacture of products, this tampering will also affect the safety of people’s lives due to the nature of close cooperation between co-bots and humans. With this in mind, using past and current robotics cybersecurity literature and research as reference, we will analyze the following potential attack scenarios for robots.

Palantir’s Shannon Clark on Overcoming Cultural (and Emotional) Challenges of AI Adoption

🏢 Organizations: Palantir

🔏 How Secure Is Your Digital Additive Manufacturing Data?

📅 Date: March 6, 2023
✍️ Author: Carolyn Schwaar
🔖 Topics: Additive Manufacturing, Cybersecurity
🏢 Organizations: Materialise, EOS

Although additive manufacturing doesn’t inherently bring with it any extreme risks, it can be the first time a manufacturer is faced with digital processes and establishing secure IT systems. “We work with companies all the time that have a traditional manufacturing line where plans are still on paper, and the data is stored on a local hard drive,” says Hayes. “Implementing additive allows that company to jump steps ahead in the technology curve, and all of a sudden, they can have digitally connected systems and cloud networks.” Securing those networks is up to individual organizations, notes Hayes. “The security of any data inside of that EOS machine is as safe or as vulnerable as that organization’s overall IT security.”

Bosch Rexroth Predictive Analytics at TSR Recycling GmbH

🏢 Organizations: Bosch Rexroth

🗜️ How to Monitor Material Levels in Tanks to Improve Supply Chain Management

📅 Date: March 6, 2023
✍️ Author: Jeff Shepard
🏢 Organizations: Digi-Key Electronics

Sensing and measuring the amount of solid, fluid, or granulated materials stored in tanks has become increasingly important due to supply chain challenges and the need to monitor inventory levels and control manufacturing processes closely. Depending on the application, level sensors can be required to be food-safe, withstand high pressures, temperatures, or vibrations, be used in corrosive environments with high resistance to acids and bases, and have a high degree of electrical and thermal isolation to ensure safe operation.

While it’s possible to design level sensors, it’s a complex task fraught with risk. The process begins with matching the measurement technology, such as capacitive, magnetic, ultrasonic, or optical sensing, with the application. The next step is selecting the housing, components, and other materials to support the operating environment. It’s also often necessary to gain safety and regulatory approvals and ensure that the design achieves the required ingress protection (IP) rating. Instead, designers can turn to pre-engineered level sensing solutions that ensure accurate and reliable measurements and speed time to market.

TOSHULIN is using Generative Design to Transform CNC Machine Design

🏢 Organizations: Autodesk

The impact of new technologies on automation and digitalization system architectures

📅 Date: March 10, 2023
✍️ Author: Mario Torre
🔖 Topics: Industrial Control System

Regardless of the advances in telecom and computing technologies, automation architectures have not changed much. While many components have advanced, their underlying architectures have largely remained the same. New system architectures for automation should be adopted that better fit with new industry operational and business challenges.

Even when new automation systems are currently using updated technology, their architectures are too vertical. Field devices, connected through a telecom infrastructure to SCADA/DCS, then tied to a historian, then connected to applications and business intelligence systems, in a sort of a totem fashion, raise problems by having diverse user interfaces, many interfaces among layers and the use of multiple databases. New architectures must be flatter, with fewer database layers and less interfaces among levels. The entire system should be based on a unified digital platform that includes most of the functionality in fewer levels. This digital platform must also be flexible enough to leverage on existing instruments, automation devices, and systems as much as possible.

Automating Production of the F-35

🏢 Organizations: Lockheed Martin

Capital Expenditure

Weekly mergers, partnerships, and funding events across industrial value chains

SoftBank-Backed CloudMinds Weighs $500 Million Hong Kong IPO

📅 Date: March 6, 2023
✍️ Author: Pei Li

Artificial intelligence-powered robot developer CloudMinds Inc. is considering a Hong Kong initial public offering that could raise as much as $500 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The Shanghai-based firm is working with China International Capital Corp. and Haitong International Securities Group Ltd. on preparations for the share sale, the people said. A listing could take place as early as this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private.

Plus One Robotics Raises $50 Million in Funding, Led by Scale Venture Partners, to Capitalize on $128 Billion Market Opportunity

📅 Date: March 7, 2023
🔖 Topics: Funding Event
🏢 Organizations: Plus One Robotics, Scale Venture Partners, McRock Capital

Plus One Robotics, a provider of advanced AI vision software and solutions for robotic parcel handling, today announced that it has raised $50M in Series C funding. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners, with Partner Rory O’Driscoll joining the board of directors. Top Tier Capital Partners, Tyche Partners, ROBO Global Ventures, Translink, McRock, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital also participated in the round alongside existing investors, which brings the company’s total funding to date to nearly $100 million. Plus One’s technology helps to alleviate the persistent shortage of manual labor through robotic solutions, dramatically streamlining the parcel picking and depalletizing processes. Plus One deployments perform over one million parcel picks each day in production and currently hold an industry-leading metric of more than half a billion parcel picks globally. With these new funds, Plus One can further increase its capacity and rapidly scale deployment, as well as expand its sales and marketing efforts in North America and internationally.

Evove closes £5.7 million funding round to accelerate growth and scale-up of the next generation of filtration membranes

📅 Date: March 7, 2023
🏢 Organizations: Evove, At One Ventures, AM Ventures

UK technology business Evove has today announced the completion of a funding round of £5.7 million. Capital was injected by existing investors and two new international specialist investors from climate-tech and additive manufacturing venture funds, alongside continued support from existing investors. The round was led by At One Ventures, backers of high growth companies using disruptive deep tech to upend the unit economics of established and emerging industries while dramatically reducing their planetary footprint.

Nano Dimension Announces Formal Offer to Acquire Stratasys for $18.00 Per Share to Create Additive Manufacturing Industry Leader

📅 Date: March 9, 2023
🔖 Topics: Acquisition
🏢 Organizations: Nano Dimension, Stratasys

Nano Dimension Ltd. (Nasdaq: NNDM) (“Nano Dimension” or the “Company”), a leading supplier of Additively Manufactured Electronics (“AME”) and multi-dimensional polymer, metal & ceramic Additive Manufacturing (“AM”) 3D printers, today announced that it has made a formal, non-binding offer to acquire Stratasys Ltd. (Nasdaq: SSYS) (“Stratasys”) for $18.00 per share in cash (the “Proposed Transaction”). As expressed in Nano Dimension’s announcement on July 18, 2022, the Company views Stratasys as a strategic, complementary asset in the relatively mature polymer-based AM market segment. The Proposed Transaction would create a market leader with unparalleled portfolio of materials, software, and deep learning with a go-to-market strength in the form of sales channels. Nano Dimension’s management has held constructive, informal discussions with Stratasys regarding the offer and the merits of the combination.

A Deeper Look Into How SAP Datasphere Enables a Business Data Fabric

📅 Date: March 8, 2023
✍️ Author: Juergen Mueller
🔖 Topics: Partnership, Data Lakehouse
🏢 Organizations: SAP, Databricks, Collibra, Confluent, DataRobot

SAP announced the SAP Datasphere solution, the next generation of its data management portfolio, which gives customers easy access to business-ready data across the data landscape. SAP also introduced strategic partnerships with industry-leading data and AI companies – Collibra NV, Confluent Inc., Databricks Inc. and DataRobot Inc. – to enrich SAP Datasphere and allow organizations to create a unified data architecture that securely combines SAP software data and non-SAP data.

SAP Datasphere, and its open data ecosystem, is the technology foundation that enables a business data fabric. This is a data management architecture that simplifies the delivery of an integrated, semantically rich data layer over underlying data landscapes to provide seamless and scalable access to data without duplication. It’s not a rip-and-replace model, but is intended to connect, rather than solely move, data using data and metadata. A business data fabric equips any organization to deliver meaningful data to every data consumer — with business context and logic intact. As organizations require accurate data that is quickly available and described with business-friendly terms, this approach enables data professionals to permeate the clarity that business semantics provide throughout every use case.

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