Challenges and Solutions
With the emergence of Industry 4.0, the benefits of the IoT technologies are being exploited by Manufacturing industries to connect and control infrastructure. However, integration has become more difficult to handle. It has also become a capability that drives huge costs. When Industry extend business globally, adds new applications and more computing paradigms, e.g. B2B growth, cloud adaptation (SaaS), social, mobile, and IoT/IIoT, just to name a few. The old integration standards are not fit for purpose anymore. So the challenge is how can you connect all of these existing legacy plant, manufacturing tools and infrastructure to enable these rich insights and control.
The Ghostnodes integration platform is fully distributed and also has proven capabilities as the key component in high frequency data collection and aggregation. It also ensures that logic can be pushed back out to an operating node (e.g. edge computing). This is typical for IoT/IIoT integration scenarios.
By providing a lightweight agent which can be deployed at the edge and interface with manufacturing tools (CNC Machines), sensors or device manufacturers API to enable legacy machines to become “smart and connected”.
The Ghostnodes solution also provides a customisable rules based engine that enables the nodes to act on processed data. The Ghost Nodes platform will also have an integration with the Siemens Polarion Platform.
FED4SAE- Support
The support from FED4SAE can be summarized in three categories:
- Hardware: Intel has provided relevant insights in large hardware corporations strategies for smart manufacturing and their positioning in the smart manufacturing value chain.
- Documented Industry Standards: KTH and Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) has supported with specifications for OSLC standards for large-scale and easily maintainable integrations in heterogeneous environments.
- Business Development and Networking: Bluemorpho and KTH has connected Ghostnodes with companies and start-ups across Europe for highly valuable collaborations.
Impact/What’s next
Being part of the FED4SAE project have supported the company and enabled GhostLabs to develop its business in a number of different ways:
- The Ghost Nodes software platform is now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
- New business relationships have been established or strengthen with a number of major international clients within the domain of smart-manufacturing, transportation and Healthcare. To name a few; SANDVIK Coromant, SODEXO and TransDev.
- GhostLabs have developed a robust business model and business plan allowing for strategic discussions with potential partners and investors.
- GhostLabs have expanded its pan-European network significantly thanks to outreach activities organised by the project.