Charlie Sheridan, technical director of industry solutions for manufacturing at Google Cloud, adds, “Manufacturing Connect provides data interoperability for all devices—regardless of type or brand—by generating a standardized JSON payload format for all data streams. In addition, Manufacturing Connect and Manufacturing Data Engine (the Google technology that provides for the common data model) share a common metadata model that supports integrated data contextualization at the edge and in the cloud.”
Sheridan points out that Manufacturing Connect can be used across the discrete and process manufacturing verticals, such as automotive, aviation, electronics, semiconductors, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, plastics, food and beverage, and packaging and processing.
Describing how end users can apply Manufacturing Connect, Sheridan says, “Once data is centralized and harmonized by the Manufacturing Data Engine and Manufacturing Connect, it can then be used to create custom dashboards to visualize key data—from factory KPIs (key performance indicators) such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), to individual machine sensor data, allowing them to uncover new insights and opportunities throughout the factory. These insights can then be shared across the enterprise and with partners.”
Two specific types of applications noted by Sheridan are:
- Machine-level anomaly detection via Manufacturing Connects’ use of Google Cloud’s Time Series Insights, which analyzes real-time machine and sensor data such as noise, vibration, or temperature.
- Predictive maintenance to reduce downtime and maintenance cost. Manufacturers can use ML (machine learing) models and high-accuracy AI optimizations that are “deployable in weeks,” says Sheridan.
