How to successfully implement digitalization

To succeed in digitalization, you need to start by addressing four questions from both a business and technical perspective: What are the critical challenges in production that can enhance profitability? What information is required to meet these challenges? How can you efficiently access the necessary process information? And how can this data be transformed into decision support and feedback for production?

Once you have answers to these questions, the next step is to identify the area where digitalization can initially have the most significant impact. There are numerous opportunities for improvement, so it's essential to begin by identifying your most critical challenge. Is it data security, energy, preventive maintenance, OEE, or something else?

Efficiency is a combination of several different challenges. Therefore, the key to successful digitalisation is to have a clear goal. A good strategy is to initially focus on the most evident benefits and then expand the project step by step.

For this reason, it's beneficial to build on a modular digital platform that is both flexible and scalable, allowing you to quickly generate value, and then scale up gradually.

Start by Measuring on a Single Machine

In the first step, we recommend starting with a single machine or the area where you believe there is the greatest potential to identify opportunities for improving production efficiency. By easily connecting individual signals and using ready-made applications for HMI and PLC, which can be loaded via SD cards, you can immediately monitor and take action. This can relate to machine status, production outcomes, reasons for stoppages, or OEE. It can be done on a daily, hourly, shift-based, or order basis, both in real-time and historically through built-in logging. The solution is entirely configured through the intuitive operator interface. The same interface is also used by the operator during operation to input the reasons for stoppages, which serve as the basis for consolidated tracking.

Analyse Data from Multiple Machines

Adding several more machines and obtaining consolidated production tracking for an entire production unit is as simple as the initial standalone installation. The central data collection relies on a standardised data structure where each machine has unique data collected, which is processed, filtered, analysed, and supplemented with the information necessary for your production. The necessary connections to databases and business systems are also part of this solution.

Decision Support in Real-Time

Efficient production depends on ensuring that the right person receives the right decision support at the right time. With our solution, basic templates to display consolidated production data are provided. This quickly gives an overview of how your entire operation is performing, both in real-time and historically. Of course, these presentation views can be adjusted based on the data to be presented, the recipient, and the platform on which the information will be displayed.

Access to process data
Digital Platform
Integration with IT Systems
Visualisation
Data security

Efficient Data Access from Both New and Existing Production Equipment

To obtain the right decision support, efficient data exchange is crucial. In this context, efficiency means secure data exchange that occurs frequently enough to collect relevant data and deliver it in a timely manner for informed decision-making. Our solution is based on high-quality standard products for industrial automation.

Both compact and modular control systems can serve as digital access points for data collection, allowing both machine control and data collection to be managed by a single system. With our solution, data can also be accessed from existing systems using the most common protocols and fieldbuses in the market.

The collected data is formatted and prepared in a way that individual machines can easily be connected to additional machines and scaled up to consolidated information for a production line, facility, or production unit. This approach simplifies data access from both new and existing production equipment.

Existing Automation

In an existing machine control system, you can achieve a comprehensive solution without impacting the functionality of the existing control. The simplest way is to use a few digital input signals to an access point to obtain information about the machine's status, which is then evaluated. Of course, you can also utilise communication via fieldbuses to monitor machine status, including factors like stoppages, quality, and utilisation.

New Automation

In a new machine where new automation is to be installed, you have more flexibility. Our industrial automation products, such as HMI, PLC, Servos, variable frequency drives, and Robots, provide integrated operational information, automatically adding value and offering a deeper understanding of how a machine is performing.

Digital Platform - A Flexible, Scalable Platform for Today and Tomorrow

The choice of a platform to fully harness the benefits of digitalisation requires careful evaluation. Questions you should consider include:

What are the overall goals?
Which facilities need to be integrated?
Who needs access to the information?
How should the information be formatted?

You also need to think about which systems should be connected for data exchange, what analyses need to be performed, and how to ensure data security. The answer to these challenges is the ICONICS Suite.

A Digital Platform: Locally and in the Cloud

ICONICS is a modern digitalization platform that is modular, making it completely scalable. It can be run locally on-site, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution. The core of ICONICS Suite is designed to analyse large amounts of historical and real-time data. With our platform, you can easily connect to the most common databases on the market, facilitating data exchange with various types of business systems. Data can also be extracted from files and web applications via web services. It can be cloud-based for enhanced data collection and system monitoring. Furthermore, it can be monitored and controlled via web browsers and mobile applications from anywhere.

Deliver to the Right Recipient at the Right Time

In today's highly optimised and time-sensitive production environment, it's crucial that information reaches the right recipient at the right time. With our solution, you can distribute information in real-time to web clients, as well as native apps on mobile devices like smartphones and smartwatches. With ICONICS Suite, you can also create traditional paper reports, which are valuable for documentation and ensuring traceability.

Real-Time Insights

ICONICS delivers real-time visualisation, mobility, analytics, and connectivity to provide a contextualised view for manufacturing, industrial automation, and smart building customers. The platform supports all industrial standard protocols for connections, making it incredibly easy to integrate all types of devices, equipment, and systems. You can visualise your results clearly on any device as the platform adapts to web browsers, smartphones, and various wearables. It's easy to quickly identify the cause of a condition because the information is always in the right context. ICONICS asset-based navigation and tree structure hierarchy with digital twins make comparisons and context-aware insights easy to achieve. The platform also provides useful tools to utilise data, allowing you to smoothly enhance the company's operational productivity and quality through interactive analysis. Industry applications include OEE, SPC, energy, and fault detection to provide insights from "edge to cloud."

Rapid Data Collection

ICONICS features high-speed data collection of critical data through a "historian" that can log data at a rate of over 100,000 tags per second and work with data sources across the entire enterprise. The historian supports storage and forwarding technology, allowing data retrieval and consolidation from all open databases.

Powerful Analysis for Fresh Insights

The platform's analytics programs transform large amounts of real-time data (e.g., data from manufacturing or facility operations) into actionable information. Analyses can be used to address common challenges in Business Intelligence (BI). For example, both expert systems and machine learning can be applied to Big Data. This provides visualisation and reporting solutions for energy optimisation, fault detection and diagnosis, as well as predictive maintenance, SPC quality control, and equipment efficiency. ICONICS offers a set of analysis solutions that leverage these technologies and deliver immediate benefits for all applications.

Reliable and Robust Solution

The platform is designed to seamlessly handle internal communication for redundancy, load balancing, and scalability across the entire enterprise. This makes it suitable for large, distributed, or mission-critical applications. It is fully redundant, not only at the higher levels but also at the module level (e.g., for data connection, history, alarms, and client level).

Bridging information from across your organisation

To make digitalization work, a bridge between various types of digital information is needed. Our platform provides the latest technology for data bridging and workflows, enabling you to seamlessly connect information from automations, IoT, and IT systems. You can exchange information with various forms of business systems through direct database connections, file handling, and via cloud services. Data can also be extracted from files and web applications through web services. Thanks to the graphical user interface, you can quickly implement tasks for data orchestration and information dissemination without needing any programming knowledge.

No Programming Required

Our digitalization platform features a fully configurable workflow engine. It can be integrated with all common databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. It can also integrate with almost any real-time or archived manufacturing or business data service. You get a clear and concise overview with a centralised workspace where you only need to point and click. You can configure data sources and develop workflows. You can even expedite programming by importing XML, CSV, or XLSX-defined sources. This allows users to focus on their tasks rather than creating and maintaining code. However, for those who want, it's possible to create custom activities implemented as .NET assemblies.

Connect Everything to a Single System

Workflows make it possible to connect to assets using de facto standards like OPC UA, BACnet, RESTful APIs, MQTT, AMQP, SparkPlug B, SNMP, EtherNet/IP, Modbus, and relational databases through OLE DB and ODBC. Data is filtered, calculated, and combined to create a valuable dataset that can then be shared with any of the relevant data sources or stakeholders.

Automate Triggers for Various Conditions

Workflows are executed based on conditions within a device, asset, or process. This can include:

An OPC UA alarm signalling an abnormal level in a storage tank
A digital state of an IoT devices
Specific times of the day
Weather conditions
Scheduled availability of resources

Workflows are visually represented and can range from a simple "IF/THEN" scenario to a more complex cycle of conditional decisions. Processing a dataset from a JSON source and writing a value to an OPC UA destination can be as straightforward as placing two activities within the workflow.

Make data visible and gain control wherever you are

A crucial advantage of digitalization is ensuring that the right information reaches the right person at the right time. This, in turn, requires that information is easy to overview and accessible wherever you are. With our platform, you can access and interact with relevant data in real-time through various types of clients—ranging from web browsers and apps to smartwatches and stationary information kiosks. Moreover, you can utilise email, SMS, text-to-speech, and voice calls to notify or alert users who subscribe to an application.

Works on All Devices and Screens

For data to be meaningful and useful, it also needs to be visual, intuitive, and comprehensive, regardless of the device it is displayed on. Therefore, our digital platform ICONICs has a responsive design, providing an optimal display regardless of device and form factor. The size and layout of graphs adjust based on the device's aspect ratio and screen resolution, allowing content to automatically adapt to different platforms, from desktop computers and web browsers to mobile devices and large TV screens.

Better and Faster Decision-Making with Visualisation

Through configurable and self-guided KPI dashboards, employees can quickly and easily oversee and understand the operational entirety in real-time. You can design the dashboard to suit your needs, drag and drop data, configure widgets, and use split-screens. Preconfigured gauges, data points, trends, alarms, and grids are available for swift data visualisation. ICONICS provides an enhanced overview of all machines and processes in the factory, enabling informed decision-making about your manufacturing. Production is visualised through graphs, trends, and other real-time metrics, giving a comprehensive and up-to-date overview. Built-in quality reporting allows employees to quickly assess SPC data for quality and other production parameters that affect product quality.Built-in GIS Mapping and Notifications

Built-in GIS Mapping and Notifications

You can create a geographical overview to monitor multiple locations while retaining the ability to pinpoint and delve into specific assets. By integrating with Bing Maps, Google Maps, or Esri, it's possible to incorporate additional GIS mapping features and data layers.

Security at Every Stage

Our products and solutions for digitalization have been installed in numerous facilities with extremely high security requirements. With our platform, companies can operate their industrial, manufacturing, and mission-critical facilities using the latest security technologies and protocols, as well as operational best practices. ICONICS employs OPC UA, the most widely used interoperability standard for secure, reliable, and platform-independent data exchange from sensors to cloud applications. Additionally, encryption ensures that data security is maintained at the highest standard.

Reliable for the Most Critical Applications

Public infrastructure, including governmental and military applications, demands the highest possible level of security. Our digital platform provides highly advanced security features that ensure data at high levels remains protected, yet readily accessible to those who need it. ICONICS supports all requirements you may have, regardless of data sensitivity or facility scale. You can manage user roles through a centralised user interface. Role-based access ensures that specified assets, modules, or screens can only be viewed by defined users or clients.

Providing the Highest Level of Security

We employ encryption, certificate authentication, user and system-encrypted passwords, and obfuscation to provide the highest level of security required for today's systems. Our ICONICS platform uses a multi-phase development lifecycle that includes unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and performance testing. Security testing is performed per feature for new functionality, including security stress testing and controls.

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