Electricity + Control April 2019

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION + SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

asset parameters through increased connectivity. The future of condition monitoring will focus on ana- lysing newly available data to understand random machine failure and prevent unexpected downtime. Performance, scalability, visibility and insights MindSphere offers an end-to-end solution from con- nectivity to analytics, including various industry spe- cific applications and solutions to address condition monitoring. Its solutions are designed to remove much of the effort, time and expense of building so- phisticated features and capabilities into machines, such as turnkey analytics and fleet manager tools that come as standard with MindSphere. In-house information technology teams and developers do not need to program IoT solutions from scratch as the features and capabilities included in Mind- Sphere can be extended to meet company needs. The platform that MindSphere provides offers: • On-demand IT infrastructure that is always up-to-date and highly secure with virtually limitless scale and trouble-free maintenance, patches, updates, security and other owner- ship responsibilities. • Capital expense savings plus savings in time, effort and skills to acquire, deploy, commission and maintain needed hardware. • Flexible pay-as-you-go cost models using con- sumption-based pricing help to avoid upfront capital costs of hardware and align costs with usage − a model that can be passed on to cus- tomers as a benefit and competitive differenti- ator. • Cost-effective access to PaaS functions – such as high-performance computing – and to ‘soft- ware-as-a-service’ (SaaS) applications, such as

advanced data analytics built on MindSphere. The open standards and interfaces of Mind- Sphere give customers the flexibility to gather data and match solutions with their customers’ infrastructure, whether the equipment was manufactured by Siemens or third parties. • World-class partner ecosystem to match solu- tions with customers’ requirements. Mind- Sphere has established an extensive network of world-class partnerships with broad domain ex- pertise and the IT capabilities to provide a robust offering of IoT solutions and flexible services. Start now The trend towards digitalisation of the world’s industrial plant facilities is already in motion and companies must get started to remain profitable and competitive. Operators can connect, collect and analyse data from aging and leading infra- structures to monitor machines in a centralised location. As the current operational costs of out- dated machinery mount in terms of more frequent maintenance requirements, repairs, onsite re- placements and hard-to-find spare parts, so many of the engineering and maintenance people who possess the relevant know-how are retiring. With MindSphere and IoT data, customers can begin digital transformations to: • Deliver operational transparency with condi- tion monitoring across products, plants, sys- tems and machines. • Optimise asset usage to ensure maximum up- time and availability. • Increase maintenance efficiencies by imple- menting predictive maintenance practices. • Drive cost-effective, flexible and scalable solu- tions with no operational interruption as busi- ness needs grow. • Leverage data availability and centralised KPIs, for greater operational insight and accountability. Thanks to the global reach of the cloud, manu- facturers of all sizes can capitalise on IoT data to open doors to markets they could not previously afford to consider, including international ones. MindSphere is supported by Siemens’ domain ex- pertise, sales and professional services as well as a world-class global partner ecosystem.

Acknowledgements to Siemens for this article: www.siemens.com/mindsphere

8 Electricity + Control

APRIL 2019