Elisa
'Digitizing Factories' with Smart IoT Solution
Kari Terho, VP
By adopting technologies like IoT, factories are moving towards a future that would be free of all the above-stated concerns, and will assure a streamlined and smart production process. With a similar vision, Finland-based Elisa—a telecommunication company—brings a Smart Factory Management solution. The company also offers its clientele with a range of communication and IoT services. Elisa works with the vision of ‘digitizing factories’, an idea the company has consistently focused its efforts on. A manufacturing unit commonly has machinery from different brands such as Fuji, Siemens, and so on, and also has different production lines. With a lot happening in the production cycle that employs various technologies, machinery, and equipment, it becomes challenging for the plant managers to recognize the loopholes affecting the production.
An ecosystem that has everything controlled and monitored in a single system is what the company seeks to offer
As every machine works separately producing independent data that has to be analyzed separately, it turns out to be a lengthy and time-consuming process. Elisa’s smart factory management solution simplifies this process by obtaining data from various machines, analyzing it, and optimizing it to find a problem. It even performs the predictive maintenance and predictive failure detection. The company also creates a single user interface so the factory will not need to have a separate monitor room in the future to scrutinize the devices used in the plant.
Elisa adopts a 3D model, which allows the user to access data through a virtual factory web user interface through any device. It enables the managers to get full control and access to all the data in the factory as and when required. Elisa’s smart factory solution is built on PTC Thingworx Enterprise Innovation platform, which empowers it to monitor and manage the production process. “We have been delivering these solutions for four years now, as a PTC Thingworx partner. We have been developing productized solutions for effectively connecting and analyzing data from various data sources using different tools like Kepware,” elaborates Terho. The company has developed a three-step process for factories to digitize their operations. The first step is to connect and understand the data, the next step is to visualize it to create all the definitions of KPIs, user stories, 3D models, 3D views, and the last step is to act on the data. This lean process then delivers the outcome, providing the test results in nine weeks. This process takes normally months to complete, however, Elisa does it in weeks with an assurance of improved quality.
Elisa’s IoT smart factory solution has also been selected to participate in the European 4.0 Transformation Center project in Germany.
As a part of the plan, the company is assisting three factories, one of which is e.GO Mobile AG with focus on production of their electric cars. Elisa has been selected to provide tools for production optimization and visualization with their IoT smart factory solution.
e.GO Mobile’s electric cars factory has a multi-stage production process which is carried out in discrete steps, and the end product has significant quality variations. “What we do in there is we have set the analytics goals, so the subject matter expert sees the first stages as critical in setting the highest possible product quality and all stages mainly need the quality level that is reached in practice,” Terho adds. The company does it by creating a virtual datalake so data sources of all process stages are connected to a virtual factory model, and traceability is established for connecting process measurement data to individual products and data APIs are created for descriptive analytics. Elisa then learns the patterns to verify expert views related to the first stage being critical for the highest possible quality level. In the third step, the company forecasts quality outcomes and optimizes the system, in the fourth stage. Elisa, based on this process then establishes the best operational practices for the factory. This process ensures significant improvement in actual quality metrics and allows the user to be connected to all available data sources to analyze product quality metrics.
“The whole concept of being creative is virtual factory smart 3D smart factory management, which is really on edge at the moment and that added to AI and AR will lead us ahead,” says Terho. The company is serving already customers like Procter & Gamble, Danfoss, and aims to serve other large players like Nestle, Unilever, and of the likes that have hundreds of factories to manage and not just one. Elisa aims to help such companies create a service operation center, which provides real-time access to data and understandability of the performance of each factory. An ecosystem that has everything controlled and monitored in a single system is what the company seeks to offer.
e.GO Mobile’s electric cars factory has a multi-stage production process which is carried out in discrete steps, and the end product has significant quality variations. “What we do in there is we have set the analytics goals, so the subject matter expert sees the first stages as critical in setting the highest possible product quality and all stages mainly need the quality level that is reached in practice,” Terho adds. The company does it by creating a virtual datalake so data sources of all process stages are connected to a virtual factory model, and traceability is established for connecting process measurement data to individual products and data APIs are created for descriptive analytics. Elisa then learns the patterns to verify expert views related to the first stage being critical for the highest possible quality level. In the third step, the company forecasts quality outcomes and optimizes the system, in the fourth stage. Elisa, based on this process then establishes the best operational practices for the factory. This process ensures significant improvement in actual quality metrics and allows the user to be connected to all available data sources to analyze product quality metrics.
“The whole concept of being creative is virtual factory smart 3D smart factory management, which is really on edge at the moment and that added to AI and AR will lead us ahead,” says Terho. The company is serving already customers like Procter & Gamble, Danfoss, and aims to serve other large players like Nestle, Unilever, and of the likes that have hundreds of factories to manage and not just one. Elisa aims to help such companies create a service operation center, which provides real-time access to data and understandability of the performance of each factory. An ecosystem that has everything controlled and monitored in a single system is what the company seeks to offer.
Elisa News
Elisa et Wind River mettent en place le premier centre de donnees Edge entierement automatise pour un service commercial, en mesure de reduire les heures de travail du personnel dans une proportion pouvant aller jusqua 90 %
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The deployment of this state-of-the-art edge data center site represents a significant achievement for strengthening Elisa's position as a leading digital service provider in operations automation. It demonstrates the company's commitment to adopting next-generation technologies to unleash the potential of edge computing across various industries, including telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing.
"We are delighted to continue our successful collaboration with Wind River and to commercially launch the first fully automated edge data center. Ongoing development in automation is key to our future success. Paired with Wind River's distributed cloud capabilities, we can further enhance customer satisfaction by reducing deployment time and improving process quality. This solidifies Elisa's position as a top digital service provider in automation and edge deployments," says Markus Kinnunen, Vice President of Elisa's cloud services.
"As a pioneer in the 5G landscape, powering the majority of global 5G vRAN/O-RAN deployments for operators, our Wind River Studio capabilities address the complex challenge faced by service providers in deploying and managing physically distributed, low-latency cloud-native infrastructure," says Avijit Sinha, Chief Product Officer at Wind River. "Elisa is an innovator, and with their recent milestone, they contribute to advancing the industry."
This success is the result of collaboration between industry leaders. Wind River Studio provides a fully cloud-native, open-source based architecture, utilizing Kubernetes and containers, for developing, deploying, operating, and maintaining distributed edge networks at scale. Elisa's UPF application for the core of 5G enhances network performance, ensuring efficient and reliable data transmission and processing at the edge. Leveraging Wind River Studio Conductor's advanced features, the deployment process becomes entirely automated, enabling rapid and efficient provisioning of edge data center resources.
The main benefits can be categorized into three areas: preparation time, deployment time, and process quality:
● Preparation Time: Significant savings were achieved in configuration and environment preparation. The team was able to conduct hundreds of tests and scripts before going live, within the same timeframe it would take to manually perform a much smaller number of tests in the traditional model.
● Deployment Time: The overall operator's commissioning time, measured in working hours, for the deployment of the edge data center site, from preparation and configuration to complete installation and testing, is reduced by 90% compared to manually executing these tasks. Furthermore, overall deployment time is reduced by approximately 50% through automation.
● Process Quality: Automation also brings additional benefits: multiple tasks can now be executed in parallel with minimal chances of human errors, reducing commissioning time and enhancing network quality.
The successful implementation of this flagship project paves the way for Elisa's future advancements in edge computing. It sets a precedent for seamless integration of Studio Cloud Platform, critical applications, and automation technologies, empowering industries to accelerate digital transformation and unlock new possibilities.
The collaborative efforts involved in this achievement highlight Elisa's and their technology partner Wind River's commitment to driving innovation and pushing the boundaries of possibilities in the world of edge computing. Elisa continues to position itself as a leader in cutting-edge technologies, fostering economic growth, and societal benefits.