Why digital solutions are needed in manufacturing

For more than 75 years, family-run company Lenze, headquartered in Germany, has been developing and manufacturing hardware and software solutions for the successful automation of machines. Anne Konermann, Nupano Product Management Automation Systems at Lenze, takes a look into the future and outlines how to add value with IT.

"Software and hardware have not been inseparable for some time. Software is much more subject to change compared to hardware. We therefore strongly believe that the key to success lies in exploiting the innovation potential of information technology at the machine and plant level. In the future, machine differentiation will be achieved primarily in the software area. This will be possible by offering digital services related to machines that become as valuable as the machine itself. Why everything is shifting more and more toward software-based solutions? It is due to demographic changes, digitalization and decarbonization. These challenges of tomorrow cannot be answered solely with yesterday's solution strategies, which have produced machines with speed and precision driven by Operational Technology innovations. The answer lies largely in digital services that complement these machines, because again, this is where companies can differentiate themselves from the competition."

IT and OT

What this means for the manufacturing industry? "In a few years, machines will not merely run quickly and sustainably; they will come with all kinds of IT services (apps). These assistance systems provide ease of operation, apply algorithms to increase energy efficiency, can monitor machine status, and so on. They offer machine operators many benefits as their machines will be even more productive while increasing availability."

"Software is disrupting all industries, including the manufacturing industry," Konermann continues. "The big challenge is the deployment of IT at the machine and plant level. But IT is not made for serial machines, nor can complex software applications be developed on OT Tools. At the same time, innovating means adding software services to secure and increase the revenue stream from hardware. So how can OT and IT be brought together? At Lenze, we asked ourselves how IT software leads to new opportunities for us and our customers. We decided to work on a solution to bridge the gap between the OT and IT worlds. Always with the goal of leveraging the full potential of both technology worlds so that it enables us and our customers to easily implement machine-level digital business models."

Three concerns

Three concerns were important in the development of Lenze's solution: easy access, integration and maintenance. "The basis of easy access is working with open standards. IT services with easy access help the user to increase productivity and sustainability or enable the user to continuously innovate. Working with an open standard is therefore necessary. In addition, easy integration is necessary. The key to any integration is the ability to work in parallel with multiple people or teams on a machine." Finally, easy maintenance is important. "In the manufacturing industry, you are dealing with an even growing installed base. Maintenance of software means updates. Companies need the ability to keep innovating. In doing so, they also need to be able to keep the entire installed base up-to-date without losing track."

New automation platform

Taking into account the above factors, Lenze developed the open automation platform Nupano. "We bridge from OT to IT with Nupano, leading to easy implementation of digital business models. It is a platform with simple operation where we use open IT architectures and technologies. As a result, prior knowledge of information technology is not required. It is an accessible tool for machine builders to integrate their own or third-party apps, link them to peripherals and keep them up-to-date throughout the lifecycle. Nupano thus simplifies the implementation of digital services at the machine and plant level and enables machine builders to produce machines with which they can differentiate themselves from their competitors thanks to software."