Accelerating manufacturing workloads with the AWS Well-Architected Modern Industrial Data Lens

As manufacturing organizations continue their digital transformation journeys, deriving maximum value from industrial data has become increasingly critical. To help manufacturers architect reliable, secure, and modern industrial data fabrics and accelerate their digital transformations, AWS introduces the new AWS Well-Architected Modern Industrial Data Lens. The AWS Well-Architected Modern Industrial Data Lens provides architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective regulated Manufacturing services workloads on AWS, driving cost savings by right-sizing and establishing governance models around consumption and monitoring of AWS resources.

The lens builds upon the foundational AWS Well-Architected Framework, providing specialized guidance for the unique challenges faced by today’s manufacturers. It covers five key scenarios:

1. Establishing a modern industrial data architecture (MIDA) foundation
2. Implementing industrial data catalogs for improved data discovery
3. Creating data mesh architectures for scalable and organized data sharing
4. Building digital threads with knowledge graphs for end-to-end visibility
5. Deploying computer vision systems for automated quality inspection

What is the Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens

The AWS Well-Architected Modern Industrial Data Lens is a whitepaper that describes the AWS Well-Architected Framework Lens on modern industrial data technology. It provides guidance to help customers apply the well-architected best practices in the design, delivery, and maintenance of AWS environments for manufacturing workloads. The AWS Well-Architected Modern Industrial Data Lens focuses on the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, providing best practices tuned for manufacturing data workloads, as follows:

• Operational Excellence: Enabling reliable, observable, and continuously improving industrial data infrastructure.
• Security: Protecting information, systems, and assets through risk assessment and mitigation.
• Reliability: Ensuring consistent data availability, processing, and recoverability across hybrid environments.
• Performance Efficiency: Optimizing computational resources to meet manufacturing performance requirements.
• Cost Optimization: Applying cloud economics to drive efficient resource utilization and cost management.
• Sustainability: Addressing the long-term environmental, economic, and societal impact of manufacturing operations.

The purpose of the Lens is to help manufacturing organizations accelerate their digital transformation initiatives while maintaining operational excellence, security, and cost optimization.

Design Principles, Scenarios and Best Practices for Industrial Data

The Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens includes design principles for modern industrial architecture (MIDA), specific reference architectures for common operational scenarios, and best practices across the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

The design principles for MIDA address the unique challenges of industrial environments while enabling digital transformation initiatives. These principles provide a comprehensive framework for managing manufacturing data across the enterprise, helping organizations bridge the gap between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) systems while ensuring data quality, accessibility, and security. The six core design principles include:

1. Systematically contextualize data
2. Enable data democratization
3. Implement strategic data modeling
4. Establish unified industrial communication
5. Implement comprehensive data lifecycle management
6. Enable advanced analytics and insights

We provide specific reference architectures for five key scenarios, including establishing a foundational data fabric, building an industrial data catalog, designing an industrial data mesh, building digital threads for product traceability, and implementing AI-powered automated quality inspection. These reference architectures provide implementation blueprints to help accelerate your deployment. Compare your existing architecture against these recommended patterns to identify improvement opportunities and gaps aligned with AWS Well-Architected best practices.

Building an industrial data catalog on AWS involves stitching together data ingestion, storage, cataloging, and governance in a seamless way. The Lens includes best practices across the six pillars of the Well-Architected Framework to help you successfully implement this in practice. This catalog will feed AI/ML models, drive live digital twin visualizations, and power analytical dashboards that enable operational visibility and autonomous operations.

By incorporating the design principles, reference architectures, and best practices outlined in the Lens, manufacturing organizations can build modern data fabrics that support critical operational functions, maintain compliance, and drive continuous improvement – all while minimizing environmental footprint and maximizing return on investment.

Who should use the Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens

When designing the Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens we considered the key challenges and needs of technology leaders in manufacturing, including Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), industrial automation engineers and architects, manufacturing IT teams, system integrators, operations technology professionals, and anyone involved in designing and operating manufacturing systems on AWS.

Next steps and support

The Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens will help you make sure your industrial data workloads are architected to achieve your required or desired levels of operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.

If you require support on the implementation or need assessment of your manufacturing data workloads, please contact your AWS Solutions Architect or Account Representative.

The AWS Solution Architecture and Manufacturing GTM communities created the Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens. These contributions encompass diverse perspectives, expertise, backgrounds, and experiences, with the intent of offering a valuable tool for all manufacturing and industrial organizations.

To learn more about how to apply the well-architected best practices in the design, delivery, and maintenance of AWS environments, refer to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, or use the AWS Well-Architected Tool to assess your manufacturing workloads.