Understand the Value of a Flexible, Software-Defined Infrastructure
In manufacturing, software-defined infrastructure refers to the replacement of fixed-function operational technology (OT) appliances on the plant floor with a converged platform for information technology(IT) and OT workloads that’s based on flexible, general-purpose compute. This new unified infrastructure exists as a centralized pool of resources, enabled by virtualization technologies, and can be managed from a centralized interface. Crucially, the capabilities of numerous different appliances can be consolidated on a single plant-floor server or industrial PC to help reduce management overhead, lower the equipment footprint, and simplify operations.
Manufacturing leaders and technologists know that the amazing upsides of SDI—including increased productivity and enhanced safety—come with sizable challenges to their organization. Moving away from fixed-function devices to embrace a single, abstracted platform for your plant-floor technologies poses challenges that can impact your uptime, security, efficiency, and overall bottom line.
At Intel, we’ve worked alongside our partners in the manufacturing industry for decades to bring IT and OT together on a single platform, unleash the power of our customers’ manufacturing data, and transform their operations. We actively collaborate with major industrial equipment manufacturers, including ABB, Siemens, and Schneider Electric, to enable solutions used in factories across the globe. Combined with our expert partner ecosystem, we’re committed to helping manufacturers like you realize amazing business outcomes through SDI and enabling next-generation manufacturing technologies such as AI.
Consider the Benefits of SDI Over a Fixed-Function Approach
While the fixed-function approach to factory technology has been a mainstay for many years, the ongoing demands of the manufacturing industry have led to an overwhelming amount of single-use pieces of equipment on plant floors. This appliance creep phenomenon drives up costs through complexity, bogs down staff, and introduces training and support concerns.
Consolidating proprietary appliances onto flexible COTS servers lowers the number of devices your team is responsible for, simplifies the training and support required across your environment, and reduces the number of field calls required via centralized remote management.
Additionally, the SDI approach to your plant-floor infrastructure introduces a range of other benefits, including:
- Deeper insights. With all your critical equipment connected to the software-defined platform, you can more easily see detailed information about your operations in real time to enhance your decision-making and optimize business results. Simplified connectivity to cloud and data center resources helps facilitate data sharing and analytics.
- More uptime. Organizations can reduce unplanned production outages via deeper performance insights and automated failover capabilities for vital workloads and systems.
- Lower costs. Streamlined management, improved staff productivity, and increased uptime help reduce expenses for your business.
- More attractive to top talent. Today’s engineers, solution builders, and developers are looking to innovate using the IT-centric and, in many cases, cloud-native tools they’re most familiar with. Converting your operations to a software-defined IT/OT platform opens the door to these advanced capabilities and more—including AI—that will appeal to forward-thinking technologists.
Plan Your Initiative
Several initial planning steps are key to achieving a successful transition to a software-defined infrastructure.
Choose Your Partners
To accelerate their SDI initiative, many manufacturing organizations will opt to work with IT and OT solution providers, as well as a variety of system integrators, software vendors, and equipment manufacturers. Integrating and ensuring interoperability for the various parts of your software-defined infrastructure stack is critical to ensuring a seamless, smooth initiative.
You’ll want to take care to select partners with expertise and experience in the industrial sector and deep connections with other vendors in the field to help solidify your solution stack. At Intel, we work with a broad partner ecosystem—from service providers and system integrators to virtualization and data analytics software vendors—that enables us to supply comprehensive solutions to industrial organizations, all enabled by the power of our hardware.
As you research partners for your SDI efforts, you can use the Intel® Partner Showcase to check out our diverse team of partners in the industrial space.
Additionally, we’ve worked with manufacturing and industry leaders to assemble a robust coalition focused on enabling customer success with converged IT/OT infrastructure, including Wachter, Insight, Kepware, and Dell. This partnership provides a general model for the various partners your initiative may require:
- An OT solution integrator (Wachter)
- An IT solution integrator (Insight)
- A centralized data management and data connectivity provider (Kepware)
- A hardware platform provider (Dell)
- A technology/silicon platform and strategic adviser (Intel)
Identify Target Workloads and Use Cases
As an initial discovery exercise for SDI, organizations may choose to conduct a pilot program that targets a smaller selection of workloads within a contained process. This enables IT and OT operational teams to grow their expertise and learn how they can maximize the benefits of the new technology. For example, food and beverage manufacturers may look to deploy SDI across their packaging processes, or an automotive manufacturer may use quality inspection processes as an initial deployment area. Of course, some organizations may prefer to pursue a more comprehensive evolution of their technology strategy.
Regardless of the approach your organization decides to take, moving to SDI unlocks the amazing potential for innovation. For inspiration regarding what can be done with your operation, view our library of manufacturing success stories, which includes case studies about Audi factory automation and other examples from leading manufacturers.
As you get started, you should also be sure to learn about the Red Hat open source industrial automation solution—built on Intel-based technologies—that allows your organization to roll out software-defined capabilities at the edge on a proven, stable platform.
We’ve also built a software-centric automation solution in partnership with Schneider Electric and Red Hat that can be used as part of your SDI strategy to help enable innovation and efficiency while retaining stability, enhancing security, and improving flexibility.
Understand Your Hardware Requirements
From enabling virtualized programmable logic controllers (vPLCs) to providing real-time data to stakeholders through your business, IT hardware plays an essential role in the SDI-enabled factory of the future.
Of course, to maximize your cost efficiency, you’ll want to find the right balance of cost and performance for your new edge environments.
Our portfolio provides a wide variety of compute and networking options that can help fit your various needs on the plant floor, in the data center, or in the cloud and includes two critical technologies that are essential for enabling IT/OT convergence and software-defined infrastructure:
- Intel® Time-Coordinated Computing: An integrated feature in Intel® processors for the industrial edge/IoT that enables devices and applications to meet the hard real-time requirements essential in manufacturing environments.
- Time-Sensitive Networking: An IEEE standard for Ethernet networks that can deliver ultrareliable low latency performance and traffic scheduling, supported by a variety of Intel® technologies.
Additionally, the harsh environmental conditions of many factories present significant challenges to IT equipment. Heat, vibration, dust, and other factors can quickly compromise gear not up to the task. That’s why we offer a range of edge solutions built to withstand these challenging environments, including ruggedized design and enhanced tolerance against extreme temperatures.
In general, as you seek to consolidate workloads and enable SDI in your organization, we recommend you explore Intel® product options such as:
- 13th Gen Core Mobile Processors with Integrated TCC+TSN, supporting Extended Temperature & Industrial Use condition. This is best suited for harsh environments.
- 14th Gen Core Desktop Processors with Integrated TCC+TSN & Embedded Use. This is best suited for small Industrial Edge servers.
- Intel Ethernet Controller I226-IT, supporting TSN with extended temperature and Industrial Use condition.
Understand Your Data Security Options
Another critical aspect of your SDI initiative to consider is data security. Intel® technologies provide deep-rooted security capabilities that can help you deploy comprehensive protection on your factory floor, in the data center, and in the cloud. As you consider security requirements for your SDI implementation and your overall Industry 4.0 strategy, be sure to consider Intel® offerings such as:
- Intel® Software Guard Extensions: Take advantage of the cloud while staying in control of your data in use by protecting it via unique application isolation, encryption, and attestation capabilities.
- Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (Intel® TDX): Narrow the potential attack surface and increase data and application protection and confidentiality in the data center or cloud with hardware-level isolation within a virtual machine (VM).
- FIDO Device Onboard protocol: Simply and securely onboard your IOT devices to any cloud or on-premises management platform without the need for human intervention, using this open protocol that leverages public key cryptography.
Consider Software and Development Needs
The various software components of your SDI deployment are just as critical as the hardware elements. Virtualization layers, management capabilities, and various software-defined services—including those critical to your production workflow—must work together to facilitate the business results you’re looking for.
Depending on the requirements of your organization, you may also need to develop software to support your SDI initiatives. To help you do this, Intel provides several purpose-built tools and resources:
- Intel® Edge Controls for Industrial: Create smart factory solutions by transforming industrial control systems. This software reference platform has compatible hardware that integrates real-time compute, connectivity, and IT-like virtualization and management.
- Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit: Optimize models trained for industrial applications such as machine vision. This comprehensive toolkit allows you to build, optimize, and run high-performance inference with a write-once, deploy-anywhere efficiency.
- Intel® Edge Insights for Industrial: Build powerful analytics and machine learning models to generate actionable predictive insights at the edge.
- Reference implementations and code samples for industrial automation.
Set the Stage for Innovation with SDI
For many organizations, SDI represents an initial step in a longer journey to fully intelligent, automated, AI-enhanced operations that promise new levels of flexibility, efficiency, and productivity.
As your organization pursues both essential IT/OT convergence and advanced smart manufacturing capabilities, we and our partner ecosystem are ready to help simplify your success and accelerate your results with flexible, open, and scalable solutions. We look forward to working together to make your digital transformation a reality.