In the October issue of Design Solutions, Lenze introduced NUPANO, its open automation platform. To find out more about this innovative solution for machine builders, Rachael Morling interviewed Werner Paulin and Annekatrin Konermann.
For machine builders, having a competitive edge is essential today, and producing machinery that is fast, precise and easily controlled is key. However, in order for the machine to be at its full potential, intelligence needs to be built in. In fact digitisation is key now for the manufacturing industry – it is a solution that offers vast opportunities. But, in order to take full advantage of this, Information Technology (IT) and Operation Technology (OT) need to be used in conjunction with one another.
As Werner Paulin explained: “Currently machines are automated with PLC systems. However, Real-Time is all about precision – and that means the competitive advantage of the machine is currently determined by its ability to follow processes very precisely to be faster than the competition. It’s all about speed, precision and control.”
He continued: “It is important to increase performance while reducing waste. There are many possibilities, but it all adds up to the fact that you need to add IT software into it: Artificial Intelligence, very complex mathematical algorithms, image processing, and so on. But there are two important things from this: Firstly, machine builders want to do it close to the machine as they don’t want to send all the data to the Cloud and back – it is expensive and from a security point of view not always permitted when the machine is running in the factory. The other thing is that you can’t really do this with the current PLC systems because these technologies are not available. So the truth is it should not be in the Cloud it should be close to the machine.”
And this is where NUPANO comes in, by simplifying the implementation of digital business models at machine level while at the same time making the complexity of software more manageable.
But what actually does NUPANO consist of? Annekatrin Konermann explained: “Basically it consists of three parts – in the Cloud you will find an app inventory where the apps are managed. Very important when it comes to NUPANO is that the machine builder will never lose the ownership of the app as this is very valuable and you can imagine new revenue streams coming from information technology in a machine. And then you have the machine inventory, and this is where you can map apps on a digital twin of the machine.”
New opportunities
According to the company, NUPANO creates new opportunities for machine builders to maintain and increase the value of their machines.
“NUPANO is a software as a service (SaaS),” explained Paulin. “We are currently focusing on customers who are already using Lenze components – or willing to use them – but the platform itself is independent and we want to provide our customers with the opportunity to try it. So for instance a customer may say ‘I already have a machine and I have ideas how I can improve the machine with IT services, new digital services based on modern technologies and so on’, then he gets access to the platform via a subscription. Then comes another step – now it’s all about developing this IT service to analyse the machine data”.
“In our point of view, and what our customers often confirm, is that machine builders have the process know-how but they don’t know how to create data or AI. So there is a co-creation happening between their OT guys, the machine builder experts and process experts. NUPANO helps IT meet OT in a personal way,” Paulin added.
Konermann continued: “Basically what NUPANO does is bridging both worlds. It is bridging the IT and OT worlds without impacting one another, so the machine can still do what it should – being fast, being precise and so on.”
NUPANO is described as an open automation platform. Paulin said: “NUPANO is open because many things are ‘open’ today, but there are a lot of dimensions to ‘open’. It means open in communication, open in whatever direction. For us, it means open to IT software, and to be opening the world for machine builders to modern information technology. And we are not doing this with a proprietary system. We are based on IT standards so everything is literally as open as it can be.”
“The NUPANO open automation platform is open because it is not another proprietary system,” confirmed Konermann.
“I would say we are the first company to fully support the process from the machine builder point of view,” explained Paulin. “Machine builders have considerations, but they are not IT people. They also want to create a competitive advantage for their machine but not with just something you can buy on the market. For example, we have machine builders who produce 1000 machines per year. Now after one year
you then have 1000 machines that need to be maintained, and IT in its pure form does not do that. We also want to make it easy for integrators to integrate their own information technology.”
The connected world
The world today is connected, with machine builders shipping their solutions across the world. “Every machine builder is exposed to a global market and that’s why they have to differentiate themselves from a process point of view. The software gives another possibility to differentiate; and our economy is driven by people who need to differentiate,” explained Paulin.
So why should a machine builder consider adopting NUPANO? “In one sentence, NUPANO allows our customers, the machine builders, to integrate their own digital services into their machines in an easy way,” said Paulin.
Konermann concluded: “We strongly believe that if the machine builder doesn’t take that opportunity the software houses of our time will – so they have to act, and NUPANO is a very clever and simple way to do that. You do not need any IT skills, so it’s very easy!”
