N1005 IBM Research: Internet-of-Things

Watson: What the IoT has Been Waiting For

<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/413/19687798544_128b7c7998_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/413/19687798544_128b7c7998_m.jpg" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Editor's note<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;">:</span> This article is by <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=zurich-cur">Dr. Alessandro Curioni</a>, Vice President, Europe, and Director, IBM Research - Zurich</span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“How much does Watson cost?”</span><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I often get asked this question whenever I give a lecture or speak with clients about cognitive computing.</span><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">My response is always the same<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;">:</span> “What is the price of not knowing?” And depending on who I am speaking to, the context could be not knowing when the next devastating storm will arrive, what the next maintenance failure on an aircraft will be, or even what’s going to be the next fashion trend.</span><br /><a name="more"></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Right now, we don’t know a lot. Petabytes of data are being created every second<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;"> of</span> every day, in large part by the <a href="http://www.ibm.com/IoT">Internet of Things</a> (IoT). Yet, 90<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;"> percent</span> of it, which is often referred to as <i>data on the edge</i>, is never captured, analyzed or acted upon — it essentially can’<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;">t</span> be read by computers. For example, only 1 percent of the data collected from an oil rig with 30,000 sensors is examined for anomalies. To me that translates into a lost opportunity, or worse a pending disaster.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Today, I’m in Munich, Germany, where IBM is changing all of this as we bet big on a future IoT powered by IBM Watson and cognitive computing. Munich is where this new business unit will be headquartered, bringing together 1,000 IBM developers, consultants, designers and researchers — representing IBM’s largest investment in Europe in more than two decades. </span><span style="font-family: "ms gothic"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "MS Gothic";"> </span><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As the vice president for Research in Europe and director of IBM’s lab in Zurich, I’ll be supporting this new unit globally to drive IoT research across all 12 of our global labs.</span><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Of course we aren’t starting from scratch. In March 2015, we announced a $3B commitment to IoT. <span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;">M</span>ore recently we announced plans to acquire the Weather Company’s IT assets<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;">. It</span> includes a remarkable three billion weather forecast reference points, and a cloud platform supporting 26 billion inquiries per day, mostly from mobile apps. Combined with the dozens of Watson APIs available on IBM’s Watson IoT Cloud, this platform will bring the promise of IoT to both small businesses and large enterprises alike.</span><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span> <br /><a href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5718/23177762070_72c8e2eb97.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5718/23177762070_72c8e2eb97.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In China, our <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/48255.wss">Green Horizon Project</a> is using sensor data and analytics to generate high-resolution 1km-by-1km pollution forecasts 72 hours in advance<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;">. It can also make </span>pollution trend predictions up to 10 days into the future to warn citizens and to help officials take action. Similar projects are taking place in <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/48415.wss">South Africa</a>and <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/48416.wss">India</a>as well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Back home in Switzerland, my colleagues in Zurich are working with IBM researchers in Dublin to bring the IoT to automobiles. Cars make excellent sensor platforms since they have strong batteries and are idle 95<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;"> percent</span> of the day. The sensors can be used to find available parking spaces or perhaps even more critically, they can detect gas leaks in a city's<span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif;"> </span>infrastructure. </span><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br />So, what is the price of using cognitive computing and IoT to predict a gas leak before it can do any harm? Priceless.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "helvneue light for ibm" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /><i>Follow Alessandro on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/Ale_Curioni">@Ale_Curioni</a></i></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblogger.g%3FblogID%3D3821464279005499761%23editor%2Ftarget%3Dpost%3BpostID%3D5362970009364900284%3BonPublishedMenu%3Dallposts%3BonClosedMenu%3Dallposts%3BpostNum%3D0%3Bsrc%3Dlink&media=https%3A%2F%2Fc2.staticflickr.com%2F6%2F5718%2F23177762070_72c8e2eb97.jpg&xm=h&xv=sa1.37.01&xuid=tYDKQnV6ndWa&description=" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url(data:image/png; border: none; cursor: pointer; display: none; height: 20px; left: 359px; opacity: 0.85; position: absolute; top: 1236px; width: 40px; z-index: 8675309;"></a><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblogger.g%3FblogID%3D3821464279005499761%23editor%2Ftarget%3Dpost%3BpostID%3D5362970009364900284%3BonPublishedMenu%3Dallposts%3BonClosedMenu%3Dallposts%3BpostNum%3D0%3Bsrc%3Dlink&media=https%3A%2F%2Fc2.staticflickr.com%2F6%2F5718%2F23177762070_72c8e2eb97.jpg&xm=h&xv=sa1.37.01&xuid=tYDKQnV6ndWa&description=" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url(data:image/png; border: none; cursor: pointer; display: none; height: 20px; left: 359px; opacity: 0.85; position: absolute; top: 1236px; width: 40px; z-index: 8675309;"></a>

Editor's note : This article is by Dr. Alessandro Curioni , Vice President, Europe, and Director, IBM Research - Zurich “How much does ...

Better roads are paved with big data analytics

10:00 PM N1000 0

<i><span style="font-weight: normal;">by Aisha Walcott, mobile engineer at IBM Research-Africa</span></i><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieZpaY0IEOeUnZnHNtu06wt5LkPSdWesipD3sRiOTjO8XT5ZPl-v7HO62lCZiZbXzTKBBPorLPvIUqwawOfmYN5oVcALFN355YH2i0g1Fj_ti6hPsqkKeRreKWSpeNkthx0aEIC4PQQt27/s1600/aishawalcott.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieZpaY0IEOeUnZnHNtu06wt5LkPSdWesipD3sRiOTjO8XT5ZPl-v7HO62lCZiZbXzTKBBPorLPvIUqwawOfmYN5oVcALFN355YH2i0g1Fj_ti6hPsqkKeRreKWSpeNkthx0aEIC4PQQt27/s320/aishawalcott.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Evans Ondieki, Executive Committee Member,<br />Nairobi City County (L) with Aisha (R)</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Arriving at IBM Research - Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, I knew this was going to be my dream job. As a research scientist, you see the continent of Africa as a huge breeding ground for innovation, and an opportunity to make a tangible impact. As most residents and visitors to Nairobi would say, the bustle of the city paired with a flourishing tech and innovation scene provides an experience unmatched.</span><br /><a name="more"></a><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Unfortunately, those same residents and visitors are severely impacted by a tense traffic issue that challenges the city's infrastructure. In fact, the Nairobi government estimates that traffic jams and roadway problems result in a loss of more than $500,000 USD every day, when measuring lost productivity, fuel consumption, accidents and fatalities and emergency response.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My role at the Research lab in Nairobi focuses on mobility: environment, water, roadways, and the overall city ecosystem. In a meeting this month with the </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Executive Committee Member, Nairobi City County Evans Ondieki, my team learned that, in parallel to the imminent traffic issue, the city's waste management system was operating inefficiently: Nairobi's 3 million citizens generate 2,200 tons of waste each day, but less than half is collected. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/09S5J-asEXs" width="500"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In fact, the city's waste management truck fleet was increased by 300 percent to accommodate the overwhelming amount of waste generated across the city and countryside, but the current systems are hand-written and riddled with inconsistencies like equipment failures, manual reporting that takes a day to process, and traffic jams that slow the pace of collection so much that many locations are missed. At a pace and volume that was too much for the county's fleet to manage, our team, along with colleagues from IBM Research-Ireland and IBM Watson, signed on to help.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh78LKnJtrXFTN9hN6pRn5gfYtunoNGsbJDkgnRFRL3f8h6bOntSxxUj2i29UupwI22JaP_FAmELkGD6mMxgizIwZTSB5Lx9rwMUgu0u1ktems_uUGX_kESTZiyzAQQGRnzofUyHlxHt24/s1600/tierrabills.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh78LKnJtrXFTN9hN6pRn5gfYtunoNGsbJDkgnRFRL3f8h6bOntSxxUj2i29UupwI22JaP_FAmELkGD6mMxgizIwZTSB5Lx9rwMUgu0u1ktems_uUGX_kESTZiyzAQQGRnzofUyHlxHt24/s1600/tierrabills.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">IBM Research-Africa's Tierra Bills working with Nairobi city officials.</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We applied our expertise in big data, analytics and mobile technology to design a first-of-a-kind solution to tackle these problems. Using an unconventional approach, we developed a pilot program in which the benefit was two-fold: by mounting smart devices to the city's waste management trucks, we could, for the first time, collect important data about the fleet, trucks and drivers, while also tracking problems on the roadways.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We became immersed in the work, driving our own cars, sensor devices in-hand, up and down the streets of Nairobi's South Ward C to test and learn how the data was being collected - comparing the readings to what was actually happening in real time. Once we fine-tuned the smart devices, the sensor were installed onto 10 trucks, or as we call them, our "data-collecting ants," gathering and transmitting data, via Safaricom's mobile network, about the truck's location, altitude, speed, acceleration, orientation, vibration levels, among other readings.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia_kuJsElYI7mcz7Q3K0li2y-EpmB4igHV25JTEvbmYtgCjtLjK7Oksqlh56OLl72Ky9FtSNA85GFPW-cHuJQJqLl3H7rhLW3-y03gJScyR6kkqIQuNPlDJ1_jicrh2ss9IF30bepFrW7j/s1600/trucksensor_ibmers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia_kuJsElYI7mcz7Q3K0li2y-EpmB4igHV25JTEvbmYtgCjtLjK7Oksqlh56OLl72Ky9FtSNA85GFPW-cHuJQJqLl3H7rhLW3-y03gJScyR6kkqIQuNPlDJ1_jicrh2ss9IF30bepFrW7j/s1600/trucksensor_ibmers.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">IBM Research-Africa engineers Reginald Bryant (L) and Peter Maina (R)<br />installing sensor on a Nairobi Waste Management truck</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The application sends data in near real-time to our backend where it's processed, then relevant information is sent to a tablet or mobile device that the fleet supervisor can monitor. It provides analytics-based indicators and alerts to improve performance of the entire fleet, as well as maintenance of individual vehicles; assist the supervisory team on driver and truck tracking; and provide information about the storage depots and facilities within the city. The insights will help the city design a more efficient system for picking up waste, so that, for example, areas that are less frequently attended to can be serviced, ultimately helping to improve the ensuing issues of poor sanitation and theft.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the bigger picture, road blockages, accidents, detours, even unmarked speed bumps and hazardous potholes, could be reported back to city officials for tracking and response. Besides the improvements to waste management, the ultimate goal is to condition Nairobi's streets and related urban infrastructure more efficiently. We hope that the overall economic and social impact of this work will be realized by all residents of Nairobi, and that our solution can scale to surrounding cities, regions and, foundationally, across industries.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Read more about the Silicon Savannah on the <a href="http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2015/07/silicon-savannah.html" target="_blank">Smarter Planet</a>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>

big data ibm research - Africa Internet-of-Things Nairobi transportation Better roads are paved with big data analytics

by Aisha Walcott, mobile engineer at IBM Research-Africa Evans Ondieki, Executive Committee Member, Nairobi City County (L) with Aisha (R) A...

Collaborative Manufacturing as a Service in the Cloud

7:36 AM N1000 0

<br /> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyMH3PeGEMeEPzgpjnvl50D0Jve2prw4frGqXixDjUV8ctbWK5v-2WUSL5Ovax7kDqDTubbiKtSNkNsHCOXc_mcftHdaP2uiejoZvp9sXLLWzrw2YMXBM9NSJpnc6dhes7U0QkbakMKPc/s1600/DavidBreitgand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyMH3PeGEMeEPzgpjnvl50D0Jve2prw4frGqXixDjUV8ctbWK5v-2WUSL5Ovax7kDqDTubbiKtSNkNsHCOXc_mcftHdaP2uiejoZvp9sXLLWzrw2YMXBM9NSJpnc6dhes7U0QkbakMKPc/s1600/DavidBreitgand.jpg" width="168" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><span style="color: #2f2f2f; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Editor’s note: This article is by </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">David Breitgand</span></i><i><span style="color: #2f2f2f; font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, a team lead at IBM Research – Haifa</span></i><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the middle of Australian cotton harvest, each day of picking amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in operating costs. When a critical $900 water pump breaks down, this could mean a 20 percent loss of the crop due to dry <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr4Jpu8nPMI">spindles</a>. What options does the farmer have when the local dealership doesn't have any pumps in stock? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is where Software Defined Manufacturing (SDM) in the Cloud offers a simple, elegant solution. The dealership turns to the services of the cloud manufacturing community to identify an optimal manufacturer for the broken pump parts. The digital model is sent to the community member that can produce the custom part via 3D printing. The pump part is then produced to order and shipped to the farmer. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is just one example of how new platforms are combining digital manufacturing like 3D printing with cloud computing and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things">Internet of Things</a>(IoT). Although it may sound like a futuristic scenario, scientists at IBM Research in Haifa, Israel are already working </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to make this vision a reality</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our research, aimed at the B2B sector, combines digital manufacturing with the Internet of Things and cloud to bring about new benefits. The goal is to build a cloud based platform that will connect small and large factories in a cloud and offer tenants all the advantages of the entire infrastructure. Smart middleware will optimize where and when manufacturing should take place. Beyond that, control centers can automate the entire process to coordinate discrete manufacturing at optimum efficiency. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Using the system, member businesses will benefit from infinitely variable manufacturing resources programmed to work together. By connecting “smart factories” to the cloud, participants who formerly had access to only one 3D printing process will be able to automatically outsource to other members that use any of the other processes or materials available. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Made to order with 3D printing </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Small volume, “made to order” items that used to be prohibitively expensive are already within financial reach.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> A 2012 report <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/manufacturing/the_future_of_manufacturing">"Manufacturing the future: The next era of global growth and innovation"</a> by McKinsey & Company suggests that about 10 percent of all Western manufacturing enterprises will move from a "made-to-stock" to a "made-to-individual" model by 2020, with 3D printing playing the pivotal role in in this transition. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">About 25 basic technologies for additive manufacturing exist today, covering a wide range of materials and physical processes. Among the processes are extrusion, injection, lamination, laser sintering, electron beaming, and light processing. And the materials range from plastic, pure metals, and metal alloys to concrete. </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The variety of technologies and the speed at which they evolve make it impractical to have all of them in-house. Collaboration across enterprises in the cloud, where each enterprise has some technology expertise, makes its use much more efficient for all parties involved.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Say, for example, there is a small textile factory in Ireland, where the factory engineer wants to experiment to improve the efficiency of a legacy weaving machine. Normally, it would take weeks of modelling to create a prototype. But if the factory is a member of the SDM cloud-based community, CAD experts in India can provide prototypes for the trials and these can be manufactured on a local 3D printer within a week. Once the correct design is selected, the factory can use the same SDM cloud community to locate an appropriate tool grade steel printer in Europe, and have the parts produced and shipped within days – all at minimal cost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A new era for manufacturing </span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The new face of manufacturing is defined by a confluence of long-standing trends in manufacturing and information technologies, including: universal connectivity, cloud computing delivery models, smart digital manufacturing machines, and plant automation. Together these are bringing about a digital revolution in manufacturing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As network bandwidth becomes more accessible and affordable, manufacturing capabilities for machines, plants, and enterprises are interconnecting to form a global grid of manufacturing resources. These resources can be consumed "as a service" through their virtualized interfaces on the cloud.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the manufacturing machines themselves become smarter with technologies such as additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing), universal manufacturing facilities become feasible. Now that printers can switch between objects they produce almost instantaneously, the setup time due to retooling becomes very small in contrast to traditional production lines. This introduces agility and versatility that never before existed, allowing faster response to market demands. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: HE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In short, the new face of manufacturing is a globally interconnected grid of smart manufacturing machines and cloud based business processes. These software defined value networks can manufacture anything, anywhere, by sending a digital model for the object to the appropriate network member. And our system design architecture is nearing completion and we expect to have a prototype ready for live demonstration in the coming months.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: HE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span></div>

Collaborative Manufacturing as a Service in the Cloud

3D printing cloud David Breitgand IBM Research - Haifa Internet-of-Things SDM software defined manufacturing Collaborative Manufacturing as a Service in the Cloud

Editor’s note: This article is by David Breitgand , a team lead at IBM Research – Haifa In the middle of Australian cotton harvest, each d...