KEY INSIGHTS

German steel manufacturer Salzgitter Flachstahl is the fi rst company to adopt the Netillion technology and has now connected all of its fi eld devices to the cloud. The company is currently identifying the data necessary to begin engaging in predictive maintenance.

We held workshops consisting of people with similar functions that included warmup exercises to ensure all stakeholders used common terms and understood the scope and systems in question. The workshops also enabled participants to imagine their day-to-day interactions with the control system, allowing them to frame their needs.

Schneider Electric is asking all stakeholders across industry to embrace the concept of “universal automation”—pushing for wider development of plug-andproduce automation software components based on the IEC 61499 standard.

The pandemic has kicked many digital transformation journeys into high gear. We saw a little bit of a pause as the outbreak was hitting the U.S. and other parts of the world, but now we’ve only seen acceleration, especially in certain industries such as food and beverage.

By decoupling hardware and software, [the technology] lowers the time and overall setup costs, cutting the number of engineering hours spent on project installation, commissioning, and testing by up to 85%.