Data is the fuel of your organization

Transcript

Stan Miller:  Hello everyone and welcome to ROK Studios.  I’m Stan Miller, I’m the PR and Analyst Relations Manager for Rockwell Automation, in the EMEA Region.  And I’m joined by Jason Minto.  He is the Global Vice President of Sales for CoreTigo, Industrial Wireless Solutions.  Jason, great to see you.

Jason Minto:  Hi.  Nice to meet you, Stan. Great to be with you today.

Stan Miller:  Right.  So, our topic today, we’re going to be talking about how data can be the fuel of an industrial organization.  So, let’s get right to it.  Help us to understand how data can help fuel a manufacturing operation’s decision-making?

Jason Minto:  Data is the core of any industrial solution.  And it’s a starting point to get to where you need to go.  If you think about – let’s take an analogy, if digital transformation, if, as we talk about IIOT, is the overall journey which we’re going on, we can think about data as the core fuel.  And that’s really important because if, without data, you have no direction or no orientation where you’re actually going to end up, if you don’t know how much fuel you’ve got.  So, this forms a very, very strong basis, and getting that right data, not all the data, right data, in the right timing, with the right frequency, is key to helping manufacturers succeed here.  Okay.

Stan Miller:  That’s really interesting.  So, let’s get a better understanding of how wireless – specifically, how a wireless environment can contribute to improving the overall quality of a manufacturer’s data?

Jason Minto:  So, today, if you take a look at the standard manufacturing facility, one of the biggest challenges across all facilities today is really, there’s a multiple of machines of all generations, 20, 30 years, even 40 years, which I’ve seen in some manufacturing facilities.  And one of the biggest challenges is being able to get the right data from these machines, and the challenge is, some of these machines sometimes have no network, sometimes they have old networks, and it makes it a core challenge just to be able to get the access to the information.  So, the simplicity of bringing a wireless technology, an industrial wireless solution, which you can get real time data and be able to connect a variety of sensors for condition monitoring across the machines, adding additional sensors for different operations can really bring a huge value in a simple way.  So, you have the flexibility, the speed of deployment is fast.  We’ve seen this across many manufacturers today as we’re working together, as you know, and this has already brought huge operational benefits to these companies without lots of time of laying cables and getting acceptances to get things moving  on the shop floor. Okay.

Stan Miller:  You’ve touched on it, but let’s dig just slightly deeper in how wireless can help make faster decisions, more accurate decisions.

Jason Minto:  So when we’re looking at wireless, we’re not speaking about any wireless, we’re speaking about IO-Link wireless protocol.  This has been designed specifically for industrial applications.  It’s different than if you take a look at Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and so forth, which are originally coming from the IT space.  IO-Link wireless is really designed to reach the performances needed for the industrial environment, taking into consideration also the reduction of impact from other systems, which are running in a typical manufacturing facility.  Okay.

Stan Miller:  That’s great context.  So, we take a look at how if data is the fuel for manufacturers, from your perspective, how do Rockwell and CoreTigo collaborate to help manufacturers optimize that opportunity?

Jason Minto:  So, we work together – I’ll give some examples today.  We’re working together on many applications where the customers are at a level of yes, they can come down to the machine level, get data from the PLCs and so on and so forth.  But in the cases, and there’s many, where the infrastructure’s not there or the manufacturing operations owner or plant manager’s afraid to even touch the PLC data.  They can use this alternative solution of bringing wireless solutions, bringing this up to an edge device and,in an educated way, and then from there, bringing this up to the FactoryTalk innovations, or PLEX and so forth, and this brings a really, really complete solution for all of our combined customers, Stan.  

Stan Miller:  Thanks for that, Jason.

Jason Minto:  Yeah.

Stan Miller:  It’s always a pleasure to see you.  Thank you for joining us in the studio.

Jason Minto:  Yeah.  Pleasure is all mine, and I’m sure we’re going to do a lot more applications together.

Stan Miller:  Absolutely.

Jason Minto:  Thank you.

Stan Miller:  And thank you for watching.  If you’d like to learn more about Rockwell Automation and CoreTigo, visit www.rockwellautomation.com.