Hitachi along with Mitsubishi Electric and Intel K.K. (Japan), have received approval for Factory Automation Platform as a Service (FA PaaS) Testbed in the field of next-generation factories at the Industrial Internet Consortium(IIC).
By Belal Khan
The goal of this testbed is to test open IoT platforms that seamlessly integrate Factory Automation (FA) in the front lines of manufacturing and Information Technologies (IT) that support management and operation, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric and Intel. Hitachi will incorporate the results of these tests into the IoT platform “Lumada”, and create new solutions along with customers and partners.
Hitachi is in charge of IT related products (IoT data processing platforms, IoT head end systems etc), software which connects each devices in this testbed, and system integration of the testbed. Mitsubishi Electric is in charge of FA environment and Intel is in charge of IoT gateways, and supportive coordination with IIC.
Under collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric and Intel, Hitachi will complete tests of secure connections between FA environment and service platform layer, as well as tests of the effectiveness of testbed functions and the flow of operational data from the perspective of the front lines of manufacturing, by June 2017.
After that, it will conduct “use case” tests with IIC member companies and customers.
In recent years, amid increasingly intense global competition in the manufacturing industry, there has been a growing demand for more rapid product development and market introduction, quality improvements and shorter lead times in order to quickly respond to the rapidly changing market environments and management environments through the introduction of new technologies and collaborations between companies.
In addition, the advantage of IoT platform tested in this testbed is that it can accelerate application development for next-generation factory by making available of integrated environment between FA environment and service platform layer.
