Drive Operational Improvements with EasyEdge2Web on AWS IoT SiteWise

Manufacturers striving to create lean and efficient operations often turn to AWS IoT SiteWise to store and manage their industrial data. AWS IoT SiteWise is purpose-built to handle complex asset models and time-series data, and it is highly secure and scalable, supporting deployments from small plants to large, multi-site operations. In addition to industrial cloud data services, digital factory teams need an edge solution to acquire plant data and transmit it to the cloud, as well as a cloud application tier that uses data stored in AWS IoT SiteWise to compute and visualize critical operating metrics. Historically, identifying, configuring, and using the required components for a smart factory solution has been complex and time-consuming. To make successful progress, manufacturers need an integrated solution that leverages the power of AWS IoT SiteWise while significantly reducing deployment costs and complexities.

In this blog, we discuss how AWS Partners Domatica and Edge2Web created EasyEdge2Web, a single, end-to-end offering. This solution enables manufacturers of all sizes to quickly and cost-effectively implement a comprehensive smart factory solution using AWS IoT SiteWise for industrial data services. We provide an overview of the solution, review the steps needed to acquire and configure EasyEdge and Factory Insights to work with your AWS IoT SiteWise instance, and explain how this end-to-end digital manufacturing solution can enhance your operations.

Solution Architecture

Figure 1. EasyEdge2Web Solution Diagram

Solution overview

To quote Henry Ford, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.” This is especially relevant in discrete manufacturing, where efficient and effective execution are the foundations on which market leaders thrive. Although discrete manufacturers prioritize a variety of metrics based on the nature of their products and markets, three core Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are common to all factory operations:

• Availability: Are our machines and related assets available when needed? What is our downtime profile by asset, line, site? What are the root causes of downtime?
• Quality: Are we producing consistently good products? Which are our best and worst performing assets for the products we manufacture?
• Performance: How are our factory assets performing relative to their design speed? What causes poor performance? Do we have excess capacity that can be tapped to grow the business?

A critical component needed to address these KPIs is a robust solution for plant data acquisition and edge computing tailored to the unique needs of discrete manufacturing. This solution needs to seamlessly integrate with a wide array of factory devices and protocols, enabling real-time data acquisition from the shop floor. By processing and enriching data at the edge, only the most relevant, highest quality data is transmitted to central systems, significantly reducing latency and bandwidth usage while enhancing data accuracy. This edge-driven approach not only accelerates the deployment of smart factory solutions but also empowers manufacturers with actionable insights where they often need them most—at the edge.

Figure 2:  EasyEdge2Web Edge Orchestrator

With data flowing from the plant to the edge to the cloud, manufacturers also need solution components that compute and visualize critical operating metrics. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a manufacturing best practice that quantifies important KPIs and provides a data-driven foundation for continuous measurement and improvement. OEE and related metrics enable insights that help manufacturers reduce unplanned downtime, improve product quality, and optimize operating performance.

Figure 3: EasyEdge2Web Operational OEE dashboard

AWS IoT SiteWise stores and manages the data needed to compute OEE and other manufacturing metrics, thereby accelerating the deployment of OEE applications. Manufacturers aiming to implement smart factory applications on AWS IoT SiteWise must address three core requirements:

• Modeling physical assets (i.e., creating digital twins) in AWS IoT SiteWise, associating asset instances with those models, and managing asset model metadata.
• Acquiring time-series “tag” data from various factory devices and protocols, enriching it as required, and transmitting it to AWS IoT SiteWise at scale.
• Computing and visualizing performance KPIs using context-enriched data stored in AWS IoT SiteWise.

Previously, manufacturers and systems integrators had to integrate disparate solutions to address the requirements identified above. EasyEdge2Web addresses all of the above requirements, enabling manufacturers to quickly and cost-effectively implement a comprehensive smart factory solution using AWS IoT SiteWise for industrial data services.

EasyEdge2Web Components

As shown in Figure 1, EasyEdge2Web solution consists of:

1. AWS IoT SiteWise: An AWS service that collects, stores, organizes, and monitors industrial data at scale to help you make data-driven decisions.
2. EasyEdge from Domatica: A no-code solution for factory data collection, conditioning, and transmission to AWS IoT SiteWise. EasyEdge runs at the edge, acquiring data from various devices and protocols. To learn more, visit the blog: AWS IoT SiteWise adds support for 10 new industrial protocols with Domatica EasyEdge integration
3. Factory Insights from Edge2Web: A SaaS application that contextualizes AWS IoT SiteWise data, computes manufacturing metrics like OEE, and visualizes KPIs with dashboards. It includes Asset Apps for modeling and managing asset metadata.To learn more, visit the blog: Driving Manufacturing Improvements with Edge2Web Factory Insights and AWS IoT SiteWise. EasyEdge2Web aims to significantly reduce the time and complexity of implementing smart factory solutions on AWS IoT SiteWise.

Figure 4. EasyEdge2Web – Smart Factory solution

EasyEdge2Web delivers data from the factory to the AWS IoT SiteWise service. It then gives shop floor users instant visibility into machine and process performance. EasyEdge2Web also includes Edge2Web Power Tools, no-code tools that enable users with no programming skills to rapidly create multi-level, multi-dimensional computations and data visualizations for users at all levels of the operation.

Unlike other solutions that require vendor-provided hardware and large-scale implementation projects, EasyEdge2Web is a software-only solution that is easy to deploy, configure, and operate. Edge2Web and Domatica, the provider of EasyEdge2Web, offer a no-cost EasyEdge2Web Readiness Planner. This tool assists in identifying existing devices and factory protocols that you can leverage immediately with EasyEdge2Web.

Solution Benefits

EasyEdge2Web provides an end-to-end digital manufacturing solution based on the AWS IoT SiteWise service. The solution can be implemented in a fraction of the time and cost compared to traditional manufacturing execution systems (MES) and manufacturing operations management (MOM) applications. It delivers critical KPIs to plant operators, supervisors, and managers in an instantly understandable and actionable form. Key benefits include:

• Seamless integration with various protocols and devices, eliminating data silos and enabling smooth data flow. This ensures comprehensive connectivity across diverse systems, enhancing overall operational efficiency and reducing total cost of ownership.
• Enables data normalization at the edge, minimizing latency and boosting data processing efficiency. Automated updates and robust security features ensure reliable and timely data management, maintaining data integrity and operational effectiveness.
• Computes and visualizes popular KPIs, such as OEE, Overall Operations Effectiveness (OOE), Total Effective Equipment Performance (TEEP), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). Improves machine availability, product quality, and operational performance.
• Reduces time-to-deployment from months to weeks.
• Leverages AWS IoT SiteWise for plant data acquisition and storage, combining advanced application functionality with an open, democratized IoT data platform.
• Infinitely extendable using built-in no-code tools and optional low-code tools. Can be integrated with advanced analytics, machine learning, generative AI (GenAI), and other AWS services.

Getting Started

EasyEdge2Web is available on AWS Marketplace with a contract + consumption pricing model. It includes entitlements for Factory Insights users and EasyEdge data transmission (tags), and is charged up-front.

EasyEdge Set-up

EasyEdge is composed of two primary components: EasyEdge Studio and EasyEdge Node.

• EasyEdge Studio: This is a no-code development environment that allows users to design, configure, and manage IoT solutions. It simplifies the creation of custom data workflows and edge computing applications, making it accessible even for non-programmers.
• EasyEdge Node: This component operates on the edge devices, handling data collection, processing, and communication with the cloud or other systems. It ensures that the IoT solutions built in EasyEdge Studio are executed efficiently on the edge.

Setting up EasyEdge involves installing it on the AWS IoT SiteWise Edge gateway and configuring assets through EasyEdge Studio. For the detailed steps, visit AWS IoT SiteWise adds support for 10 new industrial protocols with Domatica EasyEdge integration blog.

Factory Insights Set-up

Configuring Factory Insights involves associating assets with models, contextualizing data streams, and defining KP computations. For the detailed steps, visit Driving Manufacturing Improvements with Edge2Web Factory Insights and AWS IoT SiteWise blog.

EasyEdge2Web can be extended with Edge2Web Director for programmable integration with AWS Analytics and Gen AI services.

Conclusion

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and related KPIs are crucial for improving machine availability, product quality, and manufacturing performance. EasyEdge2Web combines Domatica’s EasyEdge with Edge2Web’s Factory Insights to offer manufacturers a streamlined way to implement a complete smart factory solution using AWS IoT SiteWise.

• EasyEdge2Web runs at the factory edge to acquire and process data from a wide range of factory devices and protocols, then deliver these data securely to AWS IoT SiteWise at scale.
• EasyEdge2Web includes powerful smart factory computations and visualizations powered by AWS IoT SiteWise. It is highly-configurable, compressing the time to implementation at a single site or across multiple sites and regions.
• EasyEdge2Web includes advanced no-code tools at the edge and in the AWS Cloud that enable users with no programming skills to extend core solution functionality for advanced smart factory use cases.

To learn more about EasyEdge2Web and how it can benefit your organization, visit EasyEdge2Web listing on the AWS Marketplace or contact Domatica and Edge2Web. Additionally, you can access our hands-on workshop “Ingest data from Siemens S7 PLC to SiteWise using Domatica EasyEdge connector” to understand how the EasyEdge connector seamlessly works with AWS IoT SiteWise to ingesting data from Siemens S7 PLC.