The Arms Race Between Cybercriminals and Cybersecurity

The number of devices connected to the internet is expected to reach 50 billion worldwide by the end of 20301, posing dangerous risks to people, businesses, and critical systems. To illustrate the divide between cyberattacks on these devices and business preparedness, Sectigo, a leading provider of automated digital identity management and web security solutions, today released its Evolution of IoT Attacks study.

The study report and associated infographic chronicle the progression, variety, and growing sophistication of many of the most infamous vulnerabilities and attacks on connected devices, as well as the emerging defenses used by organizations to fight them.

Sectigo has categorized IoT attacks into three eras: 

The Era of Exploration
Beginning in 2005, cybercriminals started to explore the potential to cause lasting damage to critical infrastructure, and even life. Security defenses at the time were rudimentary, with organizations unaware of the value the IoT could have for hostile actors.

The Era of Exploitation
Spanning 2011-2018, cybercriminals actively exploited the lucrative and damaging potential of attacking the IoT, thus expanding attacks to more targets with increased severity. However, they found organizations more prepared to withstand the onslaught. White hat hackers exposed potential IoT vulnerabilities to help shore up defenses before attacks occurred in the wild. Meanwhile, as organizations fortified their defenses, cybercriminals found more ways to monetize their attacks through crypto mining, ad-click fraud, ransomware, and spam email campaigns.

The Era of Protection
By 2019, enterprises and other organizations had become increasingly capable of countering these attacks. Just recently, governments have begun enacting regulations to protect IoT assets, and businesses and manufacturers are heeding the warnings. In fact, according to the recent 451 Research Enterprise IoT Budgets and Outlook report, organizations are investing more than half of their IoT budgets, 51%, to implement security controls in devices, using security frameworks and unified solutions with strong technologies that work together to provide multiple layers of protection.

“As we move into this decade, protecting the vast Internet of Things has never been more critical for our safety and business continuity,” said Alan Grau, VP of IoT/Embedded Solutions at Sectigo. “Cybercriminals are retooling and honing their techniques to keep striking at vulnerable targets. Yes, businesses and governments are making laudable efforts to protect all things connected, but we are only at the beginning of the Era of Protection and should assume that these efforts will be met by hackers doubling down on their efforts.”

IoT security must start on the factory floor with manufacturers and continue throughout the device’s lifecycle. Power grids, highways, data security, and more depend on organizations adopting ever- evolving, cutting-edge security technologies in order to withstand attacks.

#PAuto #IoT @SectigoHQ

It all began with the War of the Currents…

Today, people greatly appreciate having electrical energy available at the flip of a switch, seemingly at any time and for any occasion. But where does electricity actually come from? The answer most people would give you is: “from the wall socket, of course”. So does this automatically settle the question of security of supply? More on this later.

If we compare the history of electric current with the 75 years of the history of Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG, it is easy to see how they were interlinked at certain times in the course of their development. Why is that?

It all began with the War of the Currents – an economic dispute about a technical standard

It was around 1890 when the so-called War of the Currents started in the USA. At that time, the question was whether the direct current favoured by Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) or the alternating current promoted by Nicola Tesla (1856-1943) and financially supported by George Westinghouse (1846-1914), was the more suitable technology for supplying the United States of America with electrical energy over large areas and constructing power grids. Because of Westinghouse’s market dominance at that time compared to Edison General Electric (called General Electric from 1890 on), it soon became clear that the alternating voltage invented by Nicola Tesla was rapidly gaining the upper hand. This was not least because its approximately 25% lower transmission losses weighed unquestionably in its favour. Soon afterward, came the breakthrough for alternating voltage as the means of transmitting electrical energy using. Initially, the main target application was electric lighting, which to be spurred on by the invention of the incandescent lamp by Edison. The reasons for this were logical. Westinghouse was initially a lighting manufacturing company and wanted to secure as great a market share as possible.

As developments continued, it is no surprise that already by 1891, in Germany for example, the first long-distance transmission of electrical energy was put into operation, over a distance of more than 170 km from Lauffen am Neckar to Frankfurt am Main. It was a technological breakthrough using three-phase current technology. However, this has by no means been the end of the story for direct current. Not least because of digitalization, electromobility, decentralized energy supplies, etc., DC voltage has experienced a full-blown renaissance and now is treated almost as a brand-new topic.

The Camille Bauer story.
The foundation of the Camille Bauer company dates back to 1900, immediately after the War of the Currents just described, at a time when electricity was rapidly gaining in importance. At the turn of the century, the Camille Bauer company, named after its founder Camille Bauer-Judlin, began importing measuring instruments for the trendy new phenomenon called “electricity” into Switzerland for sale to the local market. Some years later, in 1906, Dr. Siegfried Guggenheimer (1875 – 1938), formerly a research scientist for Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845 – 1923) and who in 1901, became the first winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, founded what was a start-up company in Nuremberg, Germany, trading under his own name. The company was engaged in the production and sale of electrical measuring instruments. However, due to pressure from the Nazis because Dr. Guggenheimer was of Jewish descent, he had to rename the company in 1933, creating Metrawatt AG.

Four technological segments.

In 1919, a man by the name of Paul Gossen entered the picture. He was so dissatisfied with his employment with Dr. Guggenheimer that he founded his own company in Erlangen, near Nuremberg, and for decades the two rivals were continuously in fierce competition with one another. In 1944, towards the end of the Second World War, Camille Bauer could see that its importing business had virtually come to a standstill. All the factories of its suppliers, which were mainly in Germany (for example Hartmann & Braun, Voigt & Haeffner, Lahmeyer, etc.), had been converted to supplying materials for the war. At this point, a decision had to be made quickly. Camille Bauer’s original trading company located in Basel (CH), undertook a courageous transformation. In order to survive, it turned itself into a manufacturing company. In a first step, the recently formed manufacturing company Matter, Patocchi & Co. AG in Wohlen (CH) was taken over, in order to be get the business up and running quickly with the necessary operating resources at their disposal. Thus the Swiss manufacturing base in Wohlen in the canton of Aargau was born.

The story does not end there. In 1979, Camille Bauer was taken over by Röchling a family-owned company in Mannheim, Germany. At that time, Röchling wanted to quit the iron and steel business and enter the field of I&C technology. Later, in 1993, Gossen in Erlangen and Metrawatt in Nuremberg were reunited in a single company, after Röchling became owner of the Gossen holding company as a result of the acquisition of the Bergmann Group from Siemens in 1989, and Metrawatt was acquired from ABB in 1992. At the same time, Camille Bauer’s German sales operation in Frankfurt-Dreieich also became a part of the company. Today the companies operate globally and successfully under the umbrella brand of GMC-I (Gossen Metrawatt Camille-Bauer-Instruments).

A new era.
The physics of electric current have not changed over the course of time. However, business conditions have changed drastically, especially over the last 5-10 years. Catch phrases such as electricity free market, collective self-consumption, renewable energy sources, PV, wind power, climate targets, reduction of CO2 emissions, e-mobility, battery storage, Tesla, smart meters, digitalization, cyber security, network quality, etc. are all areas of interest for both people and companies. And last but not least, with today’s protest demonstrations, climate change has become a political issue. We will have to see what results from this. At the very least, the catch phrases mentioned above are perfect for developing scenarios for electricity supply security. And it really is the case that the traditional electricity infrastructure, which is often as old as Camille Bauer Metrawatt itself, was not designed for the new types of energy behaviour, either those on the consumer side or the decentralised feed-in side. As a result, it is ever more important to have increasing numbers of intelligent systems which need to work from basic data obtained from precise measurements in order to avoid outages, blackouts and resulting damage.

The overall diversity of these new clusters of topics has prompted Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG to once more face the challenges with courage and above all to do so in an innovative and productive way. In this spirit, Camille Bauer Metrawatt AG develops, produces and distributes its product range globally in 4 technological segments.

These are:
(1) Measurement & Display,
(2) Power Quality,
(3) Control & Monitoring,
(4) Software, Systems and Solutions.

Through its expert staff, modern tools and external partners Camille Bauer Metrawatt is able, for example, to analyse power quality and detect power quality problems. In addition, the Camille Bauer Metrawatt Academy, recently founded in 2019, puts its focus on knowledge transfer by experienced lecturers, with the latest and most important topics as its main priority. Furthermore, we keep in very close contact with customers, authorities, associations, specialist committees, educational institutions, practice-oriented experts and the scientific community in order to continually provide the requisite solutions to the market and interested parties.

#Camille_Bauer_Metrawatt #PAuto @irishpwrprocess

Smart manufacturing standards.

A major international standards program on smart manufacturing will receive end-user input from the International Society of Automation (ISA), the developer of widely used international consensus standards in key areas of industrial automation, including cybersecurity, safety and enterprise-control integration.

In early November (2018), the International Electrotechnical Commission held the first meeting of a new IEC systems committee on smart manufacturing in Frankfurt (D). An IEC systems committee is intended to set high-level interfaces and functional requirements that span multiple work areas across the IEC and its partner, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), to achieve a coordinated standards development plan.

The definition of smart manufacturing to be used by new IEC systems committee is:

Manufacturing that improves its performance aspects with integrated and intelligent use of processes and resources in cyber, physical and human spheres to create and deliver products and services, which also collaborates with other domains within an enterprise’s value chain. (Performance aspects can include agility, efficiency, safety, security, sustainability or other indicators. Enterprise domains, in addition to manufacturing, can include engineering, logistics, marketing, procurement, sales or other domains.)

Major supplier and government organizations from across the globe were well represented at the Frankfurt meeting, but participation from end users in industrial processing and manufacturing was noticeably low. However, ISA’s long-standing focus in its consensus industry standards on end-user performance, safety, and security, will be important in filling that void, as evident already in widely used IEC standards that are based on original ISA standards: 

• ISA-99/IEC 62443: Industrial Automation & Control Systems Security
• ISA-95/IEC 62264: Enterprise-Control System Integration
• ISA-88/IEC 61512: Batch Control
• ISA-84/IEC 61511: Functional Safety
• ISA-18 IEC 62682: Management of Alarms
• ISA-100/IEC 62734: Wireless Systems for Automation 

ISA’s participation will be facilitated through an IEC organizational liaison by which ISA standards and technical reports, both published and in development, can be directly circulated and reviewed within the systems committee as appropriate.

“The liaison status will enable ISA to participate more efficiently than would the traditional country-based structure of the IEC,” points out Charley Robinson, ISA’s Director of Standards, who attended the Frankfurt meeting. “This is important and appropriate because ISA’s standards development committees are open to experts from any country.”

In fact, experts from more than 40 countries participate in ISA standards—many on the committees that developed the original work for the widely used IEC standards noted above.

@ISA_Interchange #PAuto @IECStandards @isostandards

Motors that let you know when it’s time for a service.

Simone Wendler, food and beverage segment manager for ABB’s motors and generators business, explains what to expect from a new generation of wireless motor sensor that offers powerful data collection and analytics in a small package.

Nearly all of the motor technology that we still use today was invented over a period of seventy years from 1820–1890, with the first commutated DC electric motor invented by British scientist William Sturgeon in 1833. Clearly, production processes — and the resultant demands on equipment — have changed since then and there is a lot that modern businesses can do to keep pace with the latest technology. 

William Sturgeon – 1783 – 1850

It is estimated that electric motors (pdf) account for 45 per cent of global electricity demand. That’s not surprising when you consider that they’re used to drive everything from pumps and fans to compressors in industries as varied as industrial, commercial, agricultural and transport. The problem is that increasingly complex food and beverage segments place a demand on motors to run continuously for long periods of time. This can lead to premature failure of the motor if it is not monitored closely.

In situations like this, carrying out traditional motor condition monitoring is an expensive and time consuming process. For most businesses that use low voltage motors, it’s often cheaper to simply run the motor until it fails and then replace it with another one. The consequence is that plants face unexpected downtime, lost production and possible secondary damage to other equipment. However, this approach can lead to spoilage of perishable food and drink items when the motor fails, forcing factory staff to spend precious time cleaning and preparing equipment to return it to operation.

The rise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) combined with a greater focus on energy efficiency, means that businesses no longer need to run motors until they fail. Instead, new technology opens up opportunities to make a drastic improvement to operations. With IIoT devices, businesses can make use of better big-data analytics and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication to improve energy efficiency and diagnose faults ahead of time. IIoT devices enable enhanced condition monitoring, allowing maintenance engineers to remotely monitor and collect operational trend data to minimize unexpected downtime.

Although this is great for future smart factories, it’s not feasible for plant managers to replace an entire fleet of analog motors today. Although modern, three-phase induction motors are much more efficient, smaller and lighter than motors from 120 years ago, the basic concept has not changed much. This creates a barrier for businesses that want to adopt smart technology but simply don’t have the resources to overhaul entire systems.

To address this problem, ABB has developed the ABB Ability^TM Smart Sensor for low voltage motors. The smart sensor can be retrofitted to many types of existing low voltage motors in minutes. It attaches to the motor frame without wires and uses Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate operational data to a smartphone app, desktop PC or even in encrypted form to the cloud for advanced analytics.

The sensor collects data including: various types of vibration, bearing health, cooling efficiency, airgap eccentricity, rotor winding health, skin temperature, energy consumption, loading, operating hours, number of starts and RPM speed.

The result is that the motor lets the operator know when it’s time for a service. Advanced analytics from the cloud can also provide advice on the status and health of the entire fleet. Data collected by ABB shows that the smart sensor can help users reduce motor downtime by up to 70 per cent, extend the lifetime by as much as 30 per cent and lower energy use by up to 10 per cent, a clear indicator that predictive, rather than reactive, maintenance increases reliability.

So, while we’ve come a long way since the days of William Sturgeon and the first commercial motor, plant managers looking to take the next steps should look closely at smart sensing and condition monitoring to truly embrace the age of IIoT.

@ABBgroupnews #PAuto #IIoT

Secure remote access in manufacturing.

Jonathan Wilkins, marketing director of obsolete industrial parts supplier EU Automation, discusses secure remote access and the challenges it presents.

Whether you’re working from home, picking up e-mails on the go or away on business, it’s usually possible to remotely access you company’s network. Though easy to implement in many enterprises, complexity and security present hefty barriers to many industrial businesses. 

Industry 4.0 provides an opportunity for manufacturers to obtain detailed insights on production. Based on data from connected devices, plant managers can spot inefficiencies, reduce costs and minimise downtime. To do this effectively, it is useful to be able to access data and information remotely. However, this can present challenges in keeping operations secure.

Secure remote access is defined as the ability of an organisation’s users to access its non-public computing resources from locations other than the organisation’s facilities. It offers many benefits such as enabling the monitoring of multiple plants without travel or even staffing being necessary. As well as monitoring, maintenance or troubleshooting is possible from afar. According to data collected from experienced support engineers, an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of machine problems require a simple fix, such a software upgrade or minor parameter changes – which can be done remotely.

Remote access reduces the cost and time needed for maintenance and troubleshooting and can reduce downtime. For example, by using predictive analytics, component failures can be predicted in advance and a replacement part ordered from a reliable supplier, such as EU Automation. This streamlines the process for the maintenance technician, flagging an error instantly, even if they are not on site.

The challenges of remote access
There are still significant challenges to remote access of industrial control systems, including security, connectivity and complexity. Traditional remote-access includes virtual private networking (VPN) and remote desktop connection (RDC). These technologies are complex, expensive and lack the flexibility and intelligence manufacturers require.

Additional complexity added by traditional technologies can increase security vulnerabilities. Industrial control systems were not typically designed to be connected, and using a VPN connects the system to the IT network, increasing the attack surface. It also means if a hacker can access one point of the system, it can access it all. This was the case in attacks on the Ukrainian power grid and the US chain, Target.

To overcome these issues, manufacturers require a secure, flexible and scalable approach to managing machines remotely. One option that can achieve this is cloud-based access, which uses a remote gateway, a cloud server and a client software to flexibly access equipment from a remote location. In this way, legacy equipment can be connected to the cloud, so that it can be managed and analysed in real-time.

Most manufacturers find that the benefits of remote access can offer outweigh the investment and operational risks. To counteract them, businesses should put together a security approach to mitigate the additional risks remote access introduces. This often involves incorporating layers of security so that if one section is breached, the entire control system is not vulnerable.

When implementing remote access into an industrial control system, manufacturers must weigh up all available options. It’s crucial to ensure your system is as secure as possible to keep systems safe when accessed remotely, whether the user is working from home, on the go, or away on business.

@euautomation #PAuto #Industrie4

The world of virtual commissioning.

Robert Glass, global food and beverage communications manager at ABB explores the concept of virtual commissioning and how system testing can benefit the food industry.

In 1895, pioneer of astronautic theory, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, developed the concept of the space elevator, a transportation system that would allow vehicles to travel along a cable from the Earth’s surface directly into space. While early incarnations have proven unsuccessful, scientists are still virtually testing new concepts.

Industry 4.0 continues to open up new opportunities across food and beverage manufacturing. In particular, these technologies help improve manufacturing flexibility and the speed and cost at which manufacturers are able to adapt their production to new product variations. Virtual commissioning is one of these key technologies.

What is virtual commissioning?
Virtual commissioning is the creation of a digital replica of a physical manufacturing environment. For example, a robotic picking and packing cell can be modeled on a computer, along with its automation control systems, which include robotic control systems, PLCs, variable speed drives, motors, and even safety products. This “virtual” model of the robot cell can be modified according to the new process requirements and product specifications. Once the model is programmed, every step of that cell’s operation can be tested and verified in the virtual world. If there are changes that are needed in the process automation or robot movement, these can be made on the same computer, allowing the robot to be reprogrammed, orchanges made to the variable speed drives and PLC programming. The ABB Ability™ RobotStudio is one tool that enables this type of virtual commissioning.

Once reprogrammed, the system is tested again and if it passes, it’s ready for physical deployment. This is where the real benefits become tangible. By using virtual commissioning to program and test ahead of time, less process downtime is required and manufacturers can reduce the changeover risks.

Automation programming and software errors in a system can be incredibly difficult and costly to rectify, particularly if they are found later on in the production process. Research by Austrian software testing frim Tricentis, estimated that software bugs, glitches and security failures cost businesses across the world $1.1 trillion.

To achieve the full potential of virtual commissioning, the simulation must be integrated across the entire plant process, including both the planning and engineering phase. Known as simulation-based engineering, this step is integral for the installation of reliable systems. The use of simulations in a plant is not a new concept, in fact virtual commissioning has been researched for more than a decade.

The benefits
The implementation of virtual commissioning brings with it a number of benefits. The ‘try before you buy’ concept allows plant managers to model and test the behavior of a line before making any physical changes. This saves time as the user can program the system’s automation while testing and fixing errors. The use of a digital model can also reduce risk when changing or adding processes.

One company which has seen significant improvements in production since investing in virtual commissioning is Comau, a supplier of automotive body and powertrain manufacturing and assembly technologies. Comau’s head of engineering and automation systems, Franceso Matergia, said: “We were able to reprogram 200 robots in just three days using virtual commissioning as opposed to roughly 10 weekends had the work been done on the factory floor.”

Just as you wouldn’t build a space elevator without meticulous planning and years of small scale prototyping, it’s very cost and time beneficial to build and test in a virtual environment where you can find the bugs and discover the unforeseen challenges and mitigate them without added downtime or loss of production. It’s much better to discover that bug while on the ground versus at 100,000 feet midway between the surface of the earth and that penthouse in space.

@ABBgroupnews #PAuto @StoneJunctionPR

Challenges facing energy industry sector.

Leaders from Britain’s  energy industry attended Copa Data’s  zenon Energy Day 2018 at the Thames Valley Microsoft centre. The event, which was held on in April 2018, welcomed industry experts and energy suppliers to address the current challenges the sector is facing — renewable generation, substation automation, IoT and cyber security.

A welcome speech from the British MD od Copa Data , Martyn Williams, started a day encompassed a series of talks from industry experts. Speakers included Ian Banham, IoT Technical Sales Lead UK for Microsoft, Chris Dormer of systems integrator, Capula and Jürgen Resch, Copa Data Energy Industry Manager.

Preparing for renewables
Only 24 per cent of Britain’s electricity comes from renewable sources — a relatively low figure compared to some European countries.  However, the percentage is growing. In 2000, Britain’s renewable capacity was 3,000 MW, and rose eleven-fold by the end of 2016 to 33,000 MW.

To prepare for the impending challenges for this market, Jürgen Resch’s presentation discussed how software can alleviate some of the common questions associated with renewable energy generation, including the growing demand for energy storage.
“Energy storage is often used in combination with renewables because renewable energy is volatile and fluctuating,” explained Resch. “In Korea, the government is pumping $5 billion dollars into energy storage systems. In fact, every new building that is built in Korea gets an energy storage battery fitted into the basement.”

BMW’s battery storage farm in Leipzig (D) was also presented as an example. The facility, which uses COPA-DATA’s zenon as the main control centre system, uses 700 high-capacity used battery packs from BMW i3s and could also provide storage capacity for local wind energy generation.

Moving onto specific issued related to wind generation, Resch discussed the potential challenge of reporting in a sector reliant on unpredictable energy sources.
“Reports are particularly important in the wind power industry,” he said. “Typically, owners of wind farms are investors and they want to see profits. Using software, like zenon Analyzer, operators can generate operational reports.

“These reports range from a basic table with the wind speeds, output of a turbine and its associated profit, or a more sophisticated report with an indication of the turbines performance against specific key performance indicators (KPIs).”

Best practice for substation automation
Following the morning’s keynote speeches on renewable energy, Chris Dormer of Capula, presented the audience with a real-life case study. The speech discussed how smart automation helped to address significant issues related to the critical assets of the National Grid’s substations, where Capula was contracted to refurbish the existing substation control system at New Cross.

“Like a lot of companies that have developed, grown and acquired assets over the years, energy providers tend to end up with a mass mixture of different types of technology, legacy equipment and various ways to handling data,” explained Dormer. “For projects like this, the first key evaluation factor is choosing control software with legacy communication. We need to ensure the software can talk to both old legacy equipment in substations as well as modern protocol communications, whilst also ensuring it was scalable and compliant.

“The National Grid will make large investments into IEC 61850 compatible equipment, therefore for this project, we needed an IEC 61850 solution. Any system we put in, we want to support it for the next 25 years. Everyone is talking about digital substations right now, but there are not that many of them out there. That said, we need to prepare and be ready.”

The case study, which was a collaborative project with COPA-DATA, was recognised at the UK Energy Innovation Awards 2017, where it was awarded the Best Innovation Contributing to Quality and Reliability of Electricity Supply.

“Our collaboration with COPA-DATA allows us to address modern energy challenges,” explained Mark Hardy, Managing Director of Capula upon winning the award last year. “It helps drive through the best value for energy customers.”

Cyber security – benefit or burden?
“Raise your hand if you consider cyber security to be a benefit?” Mark Clemens, Technical Product Manager at Copa Data asked the audience during his keynote speech on cyber security. “Now, raise your hand if you consider it to be a burden?”

Clemens’ question provided interesting results. Numerous attendees kept their hands raised for both questions, giving an insight into the perception of cyber security for those operating in the energy industry — a necessary evil.

“A cyber-attack on our current infrastructure could be easy to execute,” continued Clemens. “95 per cent of communication protocols in automation systems don’t provide any security features. For those that do provide security, the mechanisms are often simply bolted-on.”

Clemens continued to explain how substation design can strengthen the security of these sites. He suggested that, despite living in the era of IoT, energy companies should limit the communication between devices to only those that are necessary. The first step he suggested was to establish a list of assets, including any temporary assets like vendor connections and portable devices.

“There are lots of entry points into a substation, not only through the firewall but through vendors and suppliers too. This doesn’t have to be intentional but could be the result of a mistake. For example, if an engineer is working in the substation and believe they are testing in simulation mode, but they are not, it could cause detrimental problems.”

Collaborating with Microsoft
The address of Microsoft’s UK IoT Technical Sales Lead, Ian Banham focused on the potential of cloud usage for energy companies. When asking attendees who had already invested in cloud usage, or planned on doing so, the audience proved to be a 50:50 split of cloud enthusiasts and sceptics.

“IoT is nothing new,” stated Ian Banham, IoT Technical Sales Lead at Microsoft. “There’s plenty of kit that does IoT that is over 20 years old, it just wasn’t called IoT then. That said, there’s not a great deal of value in simply gathering data, you’ve got to do something with that data to realise the value from it.

“The change in IoT is the way the technology has developed. That’s why we are encouraging our customers to work with companies like COPA-DATA. They have done the hard work for you because they have been through the process before.”

He explained how Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, could be integrated with COPA-DATA’s automation software, zenon. In fact, COPA-DATA’s partnership with Microsoft is award-winning, COPA-DATA having won Microsoft Partner of the Year in the IoT category in 2017.

• • See also Gold Standard in the Cloud! (Feb 2018)

@copadata #PAuto @Azure #Cloud #IoT

On the road with IoT.

How the field service management sector is being changed by IoT

George Walker, managing director Novotek, explains how the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing field service. As more companies move to a predictive model of equipment maintenance, they are looking for ways to use connected devices to improve field service.

Before internet-connected devices were the norm, it was common for facilities managers and in-house maintenance staff to spend time on the phone with suppliers booking in a suitable time for repairs to be carried out. It might have taken hours, if not days, for an engineer to come out to the site — leading to potential downtime in the interim.

When the technician came to the site, they may have found that they didn’t have the right tools, the right parts, or even the specific knowledge to carry out the service needed. This would mean the same technician would have to go back, or a second technician would need to come out to complete the service.

Although this model has been the norm for many years, it is no longer feasible in a modern environment. Factors such as first-time fix rates, mean time to repair and overall efficiency are driving businesses to closely monitor resource allocation and the time spent on maintenance.

Field service management has traditionally been responsible for activities such as locating fleet vehicles, scheduling maintenance work-orders and dispatching personnel. However, the advent of the IoT means that much of this model is shifting to real-time, predictive maintenance and those companies that adapt their businesses will benefit the most from the resulting competitive advantage.

The number of connected IoT devices is set to surge in the next few years, going from 27 billion in 2017 to an estimated 125 billion in 2030, according to analysis firm IHS Markit. Sensors can not only help engineers to remotely diagnose problems in many instances, they can also help to remotely repair or prevent further damage to equipment.

However, hardware sensors are just the start. Better software will help businesses to truly realise the potential of IoT in field service management. Modern field servicing software needs to go beyond the basics and offer better wider integration with the company’s inventory, billing and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

This is why we’ve partnered with the leading vendor in the industry to help our customers achieve better results. Novotek is the sole distributor of GE’s ServiceMax field servicing software in Britain and Ireland. ServiceMax creates solutions for the people who install, maintain and repair machines across dozens of industries, as the leading provider of complete end-to-end mobile and cloud-based technology.

The results speak for themselves. In a recent survey of ServiceMax customers in March 2018, technicians and engineers were 19 per cent more productive, service costs went down by 9 per cent and service revenue increased by 10 per cent. In addition to this, customers saw contract renewals increase by 11 per cent, mean time-to-repair decrease 13 per cent and equipment uptime improve by 9 per cent — leading to customers being 11 per cent more satisfied. Overall, compliance incidents dropped by 13 per cent.

By sending the right technician to the right job, at the right time, you avoid situations where some technicians are overloaded, while others have white space in their schedules. Using an app that works across devices, technicians can request jobs from anywhere. Each service level agreement (SLA) is easily managed and field service reports are easily produced.

What was science fiction a mere five years ago is now reality. A machine on a customer site can send an alert to the service team warning them of an imminent failure and potential downtime. Technicians can then be proactively dispatched to site with the right parts to carry out urgent repairs and mitigate costly downtime.

IoT has already drastically changed other sectors of the industrial landscape and is now making waves in the field service management sector. Whether you’re a utility business, a healthcare provider or even a telecoms business, it’s about time you looked at how IoT will change field servicing for you.

@Novotek #PAuto #IIoT @StoneJunctionPR

Celebrating Northern Europe’s Automation Engineers Engineering.

NIDays welcomed hundreds of delegates from across Northern Europe to the historic Sandown Park Racecourse in England in November 2017, for its annual conference and exhibition. Each event was designed to educate and inspire the engineering community. Delegates to NIDays were given exclusive access to innovative technologies and could explore NI’s latest software, in a full day of keynote speeches, technical presentations and hands-on sessions.

Northern European Engineering Impact Awards
The night before, some of Northern Europe’s best engineers attended the prestigious Engineering Impact Awards.  The well-respected Engineering Impact Awards celebrated the most innovative engineering applications based on NI hardware and software.

Coventry University’s Dr Bo Tan won ‘Application of the Year’ for his system that combines passive WiFi sensing hardware and machine learning algorithms to monitor the health, activity and well-being of patients within nursing homes, allowing staff to improve their levels of efficiency and care.

Other winners include:

Advanced Manufacturing: Paving the Way for Industry 4.0 with Smart, Reconfigurable Manufacturing Machines

Biomedical: Combining Passive WiFi Sensing and Machine Learning Systems to Monitor Health, Activity and Well-Being within Nursing Homes

Education: Teaching Electronics to the Next Generation of Engineers using VirtualBench

Innovative Research: Unlocking Fusion Energy – Our Path to a Sustainable Future

Test and Validation: Saab Elevates Testing of the World’s Most Cost-Effective Fighter Plane

Wireless Communication: Using the LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite to Increase Spectral Efficiency for Wireless Communication

“The Northern European EIA’s were incredible this year. The breadth of applications showed what our products can do in the hands of world-class scientists and engineers!” says Dave Wilson, Vice President – Product Marketing for Software, Academia and Customer Education.

NIDays
Professors, researchers and design engineers were amongst the audience of the morning keynote ‘Testing and Deploying the Next Generation of Technology’ hosted by NI VP Dave Wilson. In this session, NI experts explained how the NI platform is accelerating innovation in applications ranging from transportation safety to the IoT.

During the afternoon keynote, Stuart Dawson, Chief Technology Officer at the University of Sheffield’s (GB) Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) was welcomed to the stage to discuss how super-trends like Industry 4.0, energy and the electrification of transportation are changing the way we live and work. Charlotte Nicolaou, Software Field Marketing Engineer, walked through how NI are continuing the LabVIEW legacy with the evolution of the world’s most productive and efficient engineering software, introducing LabVIEW NXG 2.0 and other new software releases including NI Package Manager.

Delegates had a chance to ‘dirty their hands!’

Delegates also had the opportunity to view application specific demonstrations that showcased the latest NI products and technology in the Expo Area, with plenty of NI engineers on hand to discuss their engineering challenges and technical questions. Participants also enjoyed an array of track sessions that included LabVIEW Power Programming and Test & RF Hands-On, giving users the opportunity to learn practical skills and network with specialists and peers.

Throughout the day, several guest presenters took to the stage including Jeff Morgan and Garret O’Donnell of Trinity College Dublin (IRL) and Niklas Krakau from Saab Aeronautics who discussed their incredible application enabling efficient testing of the world’s most cost-effective fighter plane, the Saab Gripen E.

Attentive Audience!

“NIDays allows us to highlight game-changing industry trends, whilst unveiling new, innovative technologies. However, it is the attendees, presenters, partners and exhibitors that provide the conference’s true highlights. What was my favourite part of the day? Learning how Coventry University is using WiFi signals to wirelessly monitor patient health through-walls? Meeting elite researchers and heads of industry during the dedicated networking sessions? Taking a tour of Cardiff University’s historic race car? Or sampling a ‘perfect pint’ of ale, courtesy of the robot bartender from Leeds University? NIDays was packed with inspiring moments and experiences that I will remember for a long, long time to come” says Richard Roberts, Senior Academic Technical Marketing Engineer.

12 exhibitors joined the lively atmosphere of the main exhibition hall, including Amfax, Austin Consultants and The Formula Student Silverstone 2017 winners, Cardiff Racing, who proudly displayed their history making Formula 1 car. Many more NI customers and partners filled the hall with their impressive applications, some of which won awards at the Engineering Impact Awards the previous evening.

@NIukie #PAuto #TandM #NIDays @NIglobal

Interesting facts emerge from financial report.

E+H reports sales flat, but sees growth in Ireland, reports Processingtalk.info‘s  Nick Denbow from Basel.

This year, Endress+Hauser expanded the presentation of their annual financial results, inviting journalists from not only Germany and Switzerland, but including others from Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain. In all 70+ attendees heard Klaus Endress and Matthias Altendorf say that the consolidated Group sales fell slightly between 2015 and 2016, by 0.2%, achieving Euro2.1Bn. This fall was actually only because of currency fluctuations. “Currencies created a headwind for us last year,” said Altendorf. Working from the value of sales in local currencies, sales in total actually increased by 2.1%. Whilst the Group is family owned, their annual report is published and audited to the standards expected of any other international business.

CEO Matthias Altendorf emphasised that “When compared to overall industry growth, we held our own”. E+H performed well in Europe, but sales in America declined. Africa and the Middle East experienced solid growth, but in the Asia-Pacific region business stagnated.

Within Europe, the best performances for E+H came from Ireland, Italy and Finland. The best performing sectors in all countries were food & beverage, life sciences, and water & waste water. Overall business declined in oil & gas, chemicals and primary industries like metals. The power and energy industry sectors showed good performance outside Germany, where E+H also felt the effect of weak German exports and some internal restructuring. The oil & gas decline badly affected sales in USA, UK and Norway, although the UK sales centre gave a good performance by aligning efforts with other active market sectors.

Investment continues.

Production

E+H plans for investment and growth continue for the current year. Earlier in the week a new factory extension was opened in Reinach, where flow products are manufactured. (see Read-out Signpost – “Flowmeter output growth requires new facilities” – 5 May 2017).  The journalists were given a tour of the manufacturing facility in Maulberg (D), where a new extension to the production area is in operation, and a new NMi level measurement system calibration facility for radar based systems has just been completed. This is certified suitable for calibration of the Micropilot NMR81 radar system, working at 80GHz, which achieves a +/-0.5mm accuracy over a 30m range, for use in oil storage tanks and oil terminals. There are plans now to extend this calibration facility to allow such calibration out to 40metres, as well as to extend the factory yet further: 1912 people work at E+H Maulburg, and 5200 people in the Basel region, out of the total E+H staff of 13,000.

Analytical measurements
The biggest growth area in E+H is actually in the analytical instruments that use Raman spectroscopy to analyse liquid and gas streams on-line. The major industries now applying this technique are within the life sciences sector, where immediate analysis of input and both gaseous and liquid effluent streams enables much closer control of biochemical and fermentation processes. Indeed the 2017 issue of the E+H corporate magazine “Changes” features a major focus on new applications in the Life Sciences industries.

Other new analytical techniques are developed for monitoring water treatment processing, for example in the new Swiss plants which by law have to have a fourth stage of purification, to remove hormones, phosphorus and other drug residues. The strength of E+H here derives from their strategic decision a few years ago to invest in the process analytical area, particularly in the field of spectroscopy, acquiring Kaiser Optical, Analytik Jena and SpectraSensors. “Our analytics strategy has been validated by the market,” said Matthias Altendorf.

Bundling IIoT activities

Digitization

The acquisition of German SensAction AG in early 2017 also ties in with Strategy 2020+ which was rolled out last year. The company, headquartered in Coburg (D), manufactures innovative systems for measuring concentrations in liquids. Endress+Hauser is tackling the challenges of digitalization by bundling a number of activities. A new subsidiary in Freiburg in Breisgau,(D), is working exclusively on products, solutions and services related to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

The significance of digitalization can also be seen in the growing number of patent registrations. There were 273 first filings in 2016. The intellectual property rights portfolio thus boasts more than 7,000 active patents. R&D spending rose to 7.8 percent of sales. Endress+Hauser introduced 64 new products to the market. “We are investing in innovation for our customers,” underlined the CEO.

Trends in automation.
The focus for E+H sales and their customer base is broadly on automation engineers, so it was interesting to hear Matthias Altendorf comment that the statistics for industrial output show that the Britain has now dropped out of the top 10 countries in terms of automation business activity, whereas they had held a prominent position there some years ago.

The other aspect of interest was that there are distinct differences between countries, in terms of the sex of the engineers involved in the major projects served by E+H. In Germany they are mostly male, whereas the majority of engineers in Turkey are female. In South Korea and India there are high percentages of female engineers (and engineering journalists). Also, by industry, it is noticeable that in the biochemical and life science sectors the engineers are predominantly female.

 @Endress_Hauser #PAuto #IoT