Data exchange at the field level

Siemens is intro­duc­ing a dig­i­tal­iza­tion plat­form to the mar­ket in the form of Indus­tri­al Edge: This extends automa­tion devices by pro­vid­ing data pro­cess­ing at machine lev­el and by bring­ing high­ly devel­oped analy­sis tech­nol­o­gy and the intel­li­gence of Edge Com­put­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­ing area in a secure way. Indus­tri­al Edge offers users the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing a range of descrip­tive, diag­nos­tic, pre­dic­tive and pre­scrip­tive ana­lyt­i­cal appli­ca­tions. This allows cloud con­nec­tiv­i­ty (data to cloud) to be used in com­bi­na­tion with Edge Apps from Siemens, third par­ty providers or end users them­selves in an inte­grat­ed hard­ware and soft­ware ecosys­tem (Edge App to Device) for automa­tion components.
With Indus­tri­al Edge, the com­pa­ny is offer­ing users the chance to close the gap between clas­sic, local data pro­cess­ing and cloud-based data pro­cess­ing to suit indi­vid­ual require­ments. Edge Com­put­ing allows large vol­umes of data to be processed local­ly. To this end, the com­pa­ny is releas­ing a broad spec­trum of appli­ca­tions to users, includ­ing data pro­cess­ing, data visu­al­iza­tion via web­servers, data trans­fer to the cloud or IT infra­struc­tures, and quick inno­va­tion cycles in the devel­op­ment of apps. There is also an addi­tion­al reduc­tion in mem­o­ry and trans­fer costs as large vol­umes of data are pre­processed and only the rel­e­vant data is final­ly trans­ferred to a cloud or IT infra­struc­ture. Indus­tri­al Edge sup­ports cloud trans­fer pro­to­cols for Mind­Sphere, Siemens’ own open, cloud-based oper­at­ing sys­tem. In the future, it will also sup­port Mes­sage Queu­ing Teleme­try Trans­port (MQTT), mak­ing data trans­fer safe, secure and effective.

Edge Management, Edge Devices and Edge Apps

Indus­tri­al Edge includes Edge Man­age­ment, Edge Devices and Edge Apps. The Edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem pro­vides cen­tral con­trol of all con­nect­ed Edge Devices as well as con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing. Users can use the Edge Man­age­ment Sys­tem to install soft­ware appli­ca­tions (Edge Apps) onto the required Edge Devices from the Edge App store in the back­end sys­tem, e.g., Mind­Sphere. Edge Devices are equipped with an Edge run­time soft­ware which guar­an­tees the con­nec­tiv­i­ty for both data cap­ture from the con­nect­ed automa­tion ele­ment and for Edge Man­age­ment: It also has a dri­ver tool­box for access to device func­tions. The Edge run­time soft­ware also pro­vides a secure app envi­ron­ment for exe­cut­ing func­tions on Edge Devices. Edge Apps for Indus­tri­al Edge are avail­able from the com­pa­ny as well as third-par­ty providers. In addi­tion, it will also be pos­si­ble for users to devel­op their own Edge Apps tai­lored to indi­vid­ual requirements.