Our Industrial Life

“The Victorian Internet”—The world’s first global communication network Nov 01, 2024

The telegraph system went from speculative theory to a global telecommunications network connecting continents via undersea cables in just 35 years.

Dark matter and ghost particles—industrial data helps uncover the secrets of the universe Aug 30, 2024

SNOLAB is the deepest clean lab in the world. It searches for the most elusive building blocks of our universe: neutrinos and dark matter. The Nobel Prize website describes its experiments as like searching for a particular grain of sand in the Sahara—and it relies on industrial data to do it.

AI: A sustainability friend or environmental foe? Jul 02, 2024

AI has been helping industries decarbonize for years by making their equipment more energy efficient and helping power grid operators incorporate more renewable energy sources. But, manufacturing, training and running the computers that power AI also produces a lot of carbon emissions. So, which is it? Is AI increasing or decreasing our industrial carbon footprint?

Green ammonia is decarbonizing food production Apr 30, 2024

Half the world relies on synthetic ammonia fertilizer to grow its food. But traditional ways of making ammonia produce about 2% of global CO2 emissions. On this episode, we speak to Dr. Zhenyu Zhang about how he’s decarbonizing the processes and making green ammonia.

Bridging the skills gap with connected workers Feb 28, 2024

A whole generation of industrial workers is about to retire, taking extensive knowledge and skills with them. How can companies attract new high-quality workers and quickly give them the skills previous generations took years to develop? New information technologies, called connected-worker solutions, are helping new workers get up to speed faster than ever before—and making their jobs more safe and attractive as well.

Industrial data will matter more than ever in the wake of COP28 Dec 30, 2023

Industrial companies will need to change how they think about and interact with data if we’re going to meet the ambitious COP28 targets. We discuss cloud, AI, and the importance of data-sharing in facilitating collaboration.

How to turn connected workers into proactive workers Nov 30, 2023

Learn what solutions HENN connector group is using to connect its workers to real-time industrial data, digital systems, and each other, helping them work faster, safer, and more proactively.

The future of the power grid: The challenge of DERs Sep 19, 2023

In the final episode of our series, “The Future of the Power Grid,” we talk to three industry experts about how grid operators are incorporating distributed energy resources (DERs)—like rooftop solar—in ways that maintain the integrity of the grid and don’t undermine their potential for sustainable power generation.

The future of the power grid: Aging infrastructure Jul 18, 2023

How do you put more power on an already strained and aging power grid? Our guests today say industrial software—and the data analysis it makes possible—is helping the grid increase capacity and accommodate sustainable power sources as we decarbonize.

The second episode of our three-part series, “The Future of the Power Grid.”

The future of the power grid: Re-engineering for renewables Feb 21, 2023

In this episode, three experts discuss how technologies like smart grids, DERs and advanced industrial software can help us get renewable power where and when it’s most needed.

Listen to the first episode in our series, “The Future of the Power Grid.”

How digitization is decarbonizing industry Sep 07, 2022

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens talks with Lisa Wee, the Vice President of Sustainability at AVEVA about how AVEVA is helping its customers meet their sustainability goals while reducing its own carbon footprint in the process.

Why should businesses care about COP26? Feb 24, 2022

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens talks with Lisa Wee, the Vice President of Sustainability at AVEVA and Ruchi Shah, a Sustainability Manager at AVEVA, about the significance of COP26, the importance of combining diplomacy with commitments from the business community, and strategies businesses can adopt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

What can real-time data do in an emergency? Oct 01, 2021

How would it feel if you could know exactly what was going on with your water and power in the middle of a storm? What about during a catastrophe? Can real-time industrial data really help make both companies and communities stronger?

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens speaks with AVEVA Pre-Sales Engineer Dan Lopez about his family’s harrowing experiences during the Polar Vortex that hit Texas in February of 2021. Dan shares how his at-home PI System gave his family insight into the storm’s impact and in doing so, helped them help others. Whether on a small scale or scaled for industrial use, Dan explains, real-time data is the backbone of resilient communities.

Smart water for a changing environment Jun 26, 2021

In this episode, host Rebecca Ahrens talks with Gary Wong, the Global Water Industry Lead and Expert for AVEVA , about some of the most pressing challenges facing the water industry. They discuss how data and technology can help utilities survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world.

City of Riverside PUD on quantifying ROI and digital transformation in the water industry Jun 22, 2021

The City of Riverside Public Utilities Department has embraced digital transformation by making better use of sensor-based data. Because they work closely with their board of public utilities on expenditures they track the value they are getting from their efforts. In this episode, we talk to the people who have grown the return on investment (ROI) they get from their work on the PI System from $672,000 per year in 2019 to $1,300,000 per year today. We discuss how they track ROI, how they improved adoption of the use of their Operational Data Management System (ODMS), what they did to improve water operations, how they use it in their market operations system for trading energy, and what value they found in putting their sensor-based data on their ArcGIS map displays.
Guests: Jennifer Tavaglione, Principal Project Manager

Brando Crozier - Administrative Analyst

Marc Smith - Utilities Principal Analyst

Ed Cortez - Principal Electrical Engineer

Robin Glenney - Water Quality Manager

Carey Tilden - Utilities Senior Resource Analyst

Wes Wisniewski - Utilities Senior Resource Analyst

Ivan Velasco - Power Scheduler/Trader

Co-Host: Gary Wong, Water Industry Principal, AVEVA

Your digital transformation is only as good as your data: tips on avoiding ‘shiny object syndrome.’ Jun 02, 2021

Guests: Allen Turner, Advanced Analytics Team Lead, International Paper
Co-host: Mariana Sandin, Industry Principal, AVEVA.
Industry: Paper and Forest Products
Business Impact: Process Productivity
In this episode of Radio PI, co-hosts Nick D’Orazio and Mariana Sandin speak with Allen Turner of International Paper (IP) about the unique challenges of digital transformation in a legacy industry like pulp and paper. Mr. Turner, as part of International Paper’s global technology team, is working on an initiative called “mill of the future,” which focuses on cost savings and optimization across International Paper’s mills. Mr. Turner lays out the importance of establishing foundational data quality—or “cleaning up the messy basement” of old data tags and stale data tags—in order to ensure a successful digital transformation project.

How White House Utility District uses IIoT to improve operations in water and wastewater May 17, 2021

Guests: Pat Harrell, District Engineer, Josh Gregory, Water Loss Analyst, and Kim Klotter, Wastewater Coordinator.
Co-host: Gary Wong, Industry Principal, AVEVA.
Industry: Water
Business Impact: Process Productivity
The White House Utility District (WHUD) is the largest water utility in Tennessee by geography, serving consumers and businesses just north of Nashville. Since it started making better use of its sensor-based data using state-of-the-art IIoT (industrial internet of things) technologies in 2016, its infrastructure leakage index (ILI) decreased from 1.49 to 0.76. In this episode we talk about pressure management, leaks, and I&I with those who made the changes to improve their operation.
Water Loss Analyst Josh Gregory explains how they view their sensor-based data on ArcGIS map displays, how they divide their service area into district measured areas (DMAs), and how calculations of the water flows within each DMA allows them to focus on the important locations to improve leak detection. District Engineer Pat Harrell describes using advanced pressure management to determine the causes of leaks and what changes this allows them to make to how their operate their equipment. Wastewater Coordinator Kim Klotter describes how more easily accessible flowmeter data and calculations allows her to better hone in on locations of inflow and infiltration (I&I).
Co-hosting this episode is Gary Wong, industry principal for water at AVEVA.

Innovative use of "golden batch" optimization in discrete manufacturing at Weber Metals Apr 28, 2021

Guests: David Mitchell, Automation Engineer, Weber Metals.
Sean Upson, Systems Engineer, AVEVA.
Industry: Discrete Manufacturing.
Business Impact: Centralized data infrastructure.
David Mitchell is an automation engineer at Weber Metals, a major supplier of aluminum and titanium forgings to the aerospace industry. Among the thousands of things Weber manages with sensor-based data is a 60,000 ton forging press that is the world’s largest private investment in aerospace metal forging. When Weber installed the PI System it was to consolidate various silos of sensor-based data into a single source to improve situational awareness. Over time Mitchell found more valuable uses for the data. For example by comparing each forging to other forgings in a production campaign operators now have a "golden batch" profile that helps them improve the quality of each forging. Integration with their MES (manufacturing execution system) further improves their ability to meet production targets by having all pertinent information in a common data infrastructure. Improved visualization tools allow Weber to identify more easily anomalies and thus detect and troubleshoot more effectively quality, compliance, and maintenance issues.

Kellogg's improves quality with sensor-based data Apr 14, 2021

Guests: Emelio Anglés, Information Technology Engineer, Kellogg Company
Ted Combs, Industry Principal for Food, Beverage, and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), AVEVA
Industry: Food and Beverage
Business Impact: Process productivity, IT/OT collaboration
Information technology engineer Emelio Anglés of Kellogg Company is part of the Smart Factory project to digitalize all of Kellogg's manufacturing plants. He describes the different stages of this multi-year project to move from siloed PLCs using 5 different protocols to a single source of all data using a single protocol. Among the benefits he describes are a 50% reduction in mean time between failure on packing lines, a reduction of energy use over 15 years, and shortening production meetings from 45 minutes to as little as 15 minutes. Kellogg's can compare the efficiency of cereal plants from around the world using a single source of data.

Digitization of sensor-based data to reach Cement 4.0 Mar 23, 2021

Guests: Berkan Fidan, Performance and Process Director, Oyak Cement
Martin Provencher, Mining Metals and Materials Industry Principal, AVEVA
Industry: Mining, Metals, and Materials
Business Impact: Safety, environmental quality.
Berkan Fidan describes a team approach to improving cement operations with sensor-based data. He started a 2016 digitalization project at Oyak Cement in Turkey, which leads Europe in cement production. As the performance and process director of his nation's largest cement producer he was trying to address the realities of cement production: enormous energy and heat costs and a product that sells for less than bottled water. He created a team consisting of production personnel from 7 cement plants and 3 grinding plants around the world and implemented a data collection and visualization system they referred to as Cement 4.0. Fidan reports his team did 90% of the work themselves. Among their accomplishments are 1) creating digital twins of their plants in Analysis Framework where they used a template of a kiln ID fan they created themselves to enforce common benchmarks and visualizations across their entire organization, 2) defining conditions for email notifications to local and corporate stakeholders of cement rotary kiln stoppage, and 3) creating event frames definitions to track and analyze mean time between failure.

By engaging local production personnel who found the system easy to use and popular, the system has seen organization-wide adoption and he attributes a clear improvement in KW per ton to the cultural change that has resulted.
A transcript of this interview is at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1330366/8199235.

A hosted cloud solution for remote monitoring of indoor air quality. Mar 09, 2021

Guests: Michael Orcutt, Vice President of Sales and Engineering, CosaTron
Richard Klein, Senior Product Marketing Manager, OSIsoft
Daniel Noonen, Partner Solution Architect
Industry: Facilities
Business Impact: Safety, environmental quality.
A manufacturer of advanced air purification systems can now monitor and provide analysis of indoor air quality remotely. In our latest podcast listen to Michael Orcutt of CosaTron describe a project with OSIsoft that uses only OSIsoft Cloud Services (OCS) to view, analyze and store on the cloud indoor air quality data. He is joined by the OSIsoft engineer who did the work, Daniel Noonen, and OSIsoft marketing manager and OCS specialist Richard Klein.

A discussion of energy management in facilities using sensor-based data Feb 23, 2021

Guest: Brian Hobby, Technical Lead (IT and Engineering)
Organization: Griffith University
Industry: facilities.
Business Impact: energy management.
"If it's an edge case, and things need to talk to each other, that's where I sit" said Brian Hobby in our latest Radio PI podcast. With OSIsoft's facilities industry principal Scott Smith he talked about their data architecture, using sensor-based data to save energy, approaches to measuring occupancy, network security, and many other topics. He describes how they bring data from three generations of Schneider Electric equipment in their BMS (Building Management System) into their PI System and their current use and future plans for that data. He shows live demos of more than a dozen dashboards currently being used and describes the value they gain from each because of the improved visibility.
Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. See https://pages.osisoft.com/DC-CORP-2020-Q4-Radio-PI-Podcast.html to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

How sensor data brings about org change in exploration and production Feb 11, 2021

Guest: Glen Milne, Production Systems Manager
Organization: Spirit Energy
Industry: oil & gas
Business Impact: digital transformation
Glen Milne, Production Systems Manager at Spirit Energy, talked with us about the value of defining specific goals in your use of sensor-based data. He describes several examples of using an 80/20 approach to deliver minimum viable products to operations and gain buy in. Since the project start in 2017, the changes to how they are using their sensor-based data have increased production, standardized data visualizations across their organization, and given operators more warning time for critical events.
Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. See https://pages.osisoft.com/DC-CORP-2020-Q4-Radio-PI-Podcast.html to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Maximizing performance of craft beer production at Deschutes Brewery Jan 21, 2021

Guest: Kyle Kotaich, Senior Data Analyst
Organization: Deschutes Brewery
Industry: food and beverage
Business Impact: machine learning
Kyle Kotaich is a senior data analyst at Deschutes Brewery, a family-owned independent craft brewery in Oregon. In this episode he describes how he is using sensor-based data and machine learning to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and improve the fermentation process of craft beers.
Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. See https://pages.osisoft.com/DC-CORP-2020-Q4-Radio-PI-Podcast.html to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

More lessons from the sensor-based data business Jan 05, 2021

Industry: general. Business Impact: process optimization. Here is a follow-up to our interview with Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy, founder and CEO of OSIsoft, on lessons learned from 40 years in the sensor-based data business. We asked him about the next 40 years and he told us nobody can predict that far out so he'd rather talk about the rules he has learned that will guarantee a good result. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #sensorbaseddata #realtimedata #processoptimization

MES integration with sensor-based data in life sciences Dec 22, 2020

Industry: life sciences. Business impact: process productivity. APC (Advanced Process Control) test lead Barry Higgins at Johnson & Johnson updates us on a presentation he gave in 2012 that has remained one of the most popular of our customer stories. He describes integration of their MES (Manufacturing Execution System) with their sensor-based data in the PI System, the resulting improvement in warehouse to manufacturing visibility, and the mountain of paperwork they eliminated. We are joined by OSIsoft life sciences industry principal Petter Moree.

Lessons from 40 years in the sensor-based data business Dec 08, 2020

Industry: general. Business Impact: process optimization. OSIsoft founder Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy describes the sensor-based data toolset every production engineer needs, what he’s done right and wrong in 40 years in the business, and the truth about his high school diploma. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #sensorbaseddata #realtimedata #processoptimization

What is an edge to cloud IIoT solution for remote asset monitoring using smart sensors? Aug 18, 2020

Industry: oil & gas. Business impact: edge analytics, remote monitoring. The rise of the Industrial IOT means low-cost sensors are in harsh, remote locations collecting data that is critical to an overall real-time data infrastructure. Mikhail Koloskov, Technology Manager, Digital Assets at IPCOS, and Chris Felts, Senior Strategic Product Manager at OSIsoft, describe OSIsoft’s Edge Data Store and the critical role is plays in remote asset monitoring. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #RemoteAssetMonitoring #RemoteMonitoring #Edge #IoT #IIoT #PISystem #data #OSIsoft

Using real-time data at a net zero facility Aug 05, 2020

Industry: food and beverage. Business impact: energy management, water management. How better use of real-time data gathered from disconnected systems allows for superior energy and water management at the Jess S. Jackson Winery on the UC Davis Campus. Dr. Roger Boulton, Professor Emeritus of Enology and of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Davis talks about the use of real-time data in the pursuit of operating a net zero emissions facility. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #PISystem #OSIsoft #Data #Emissions #Environment #IoT #IIoT

The challenge and value of using real-time data during the coronavirus pandemic Jul 28, 2020

Industry: food and beverage.
Business impact: process optimization, KPIs.
How Tereos, the world's second-largest sugar producer, is using real-time data to improve business resiliency amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, with project manager Fernando de Mello. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #COVID19 #coronavirus #realtimedata #data #IoT #IIoT #PISystem #OSIsoft

Real-time data visualization and alarms using a wide area network Jul 14, 2020

Industries: power generation, water. Business impact: process optimization. The value of real-time data in power station and water station management with regards to network reliability. How Norah Thompson, senior information officer, and Kieran Magann, senior SCADA and control system engineer at Power and Water Corporation in Darwin, Australia are using real-time data visualization to improve uptime. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #uptime #optimization #data #visualization #IoT #IIoT #PISystem #OSIsoft

Saving water and energy with real-time data Jun 30, 2020

Industry: facilities and infrastructure. Business impact: energy management, water management. David Trombly, engineering supervisor at University of California, Davis on saving water and energy with real-time data. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #energy #conservation #data #IoT #IIoT #Universities #PISystem #OSIsoft

Using real-time data at container terminal operator TraPac Jun 16, 2020

Industry: transportation. Business impact: sustainability, customer service. The critical role of unifying real-time data sources at TraPac, with Mark Jensen, Vice President of Asset Management. How data organization can improve customer service and sustainability. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #Data #sustainability #OSIsoft #PISystem #data #IoT #IIoT

How to use plant floor data to improve critical operations Jun 02, 2020

Industry: forest and paper products. Business impact: digital transformation. How Rank Group Ltd, a leading holding company for packaging companies, is improving operations with real-time plant floor data, with Larry Shutzberg, Executive Vice President, Information Technology. Visit us at https://www.osisoft.com/resource-library/ to search through thousands of use cases by customers in the world's largest process and production industries. #digitaltransformation #processoptimization #realtimedata #IoT #IIoT

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