Intel Corporation and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation today announced a new collaboration to develop next generation Factory Automation (FA) systems with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and a pilot program at Intel's backend manufacturing facility in Malaysia.
The pilot demonstrates the benefits of the IoT in a factory setting. The pilot system will focus on delivering productivity enhancement through innovative functions, such as predictive failure, by combining Intel's expertise developing solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Mitsubishi Electric's "e-F@ctory" automation capabilities. Intel realised savings of nine million dollars over the course of the pilot.
As an initial collaboration, Intel and Mitsubishi Electric implemented the IoT and big data solution at Intel's backend manufacturing facility in Malaysia. Using an Intel Atom processor-based IoT gateway called the C Controller from Mitsubishi Electric, part of their iQ Platform, Intel was able to securely gather and aggregate data for the analytics server. Data was then processed using Revolution R Enterprise software from Revolution Analytics, an analytics software solution that uses the open source R statistics language, which was hosted on Cloudera Enterprise, the foundation of an enterprise data hub.
The solution has improved equipment component uptime, increased yield and productivity by minimising misclassification of good units as bad, enabled predictive maintenance and reduced component failures. Initial results include savings of nine million dollars through cost avoidance and improved decision making.
"The data mining and analytics pilots done in Malaysia have demonstrated great value and benefits for Intel manufacturing using Intel based IoT products and technology," said Robin Martin, vice president and general manager of Intel's Assembly and Test Group. "Through this collaboration and pilot with Mitsubishi Electric*, we will bring the know-how, assets and technology of both companies to develop next generation Factory Automation systems with predictive analytic capabilities. This will allow other companies to reap the benefits of the Internet of Things for factory operations."
"The collaboration between Mitsubishi Electric and Intel on this IoT project has enabled field data from semiconductor manufacturing lines to be collected and analysed to improve operational performance, yet also contribute energy savings for a more sustainable society. We believe that other manufacturers can benefit from this joint Intel-Mitsubishi Electric solution which combines Big data analysis, optimised data capture and processing to deliver improved performance and optimised maintenance," said Masayuki Yamamoto, Group Senior Vice President, Factory Automation Systems, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.
The commercialisation date for the product is 2015 and to the companies will show a live demonstration of the solution in Intel's booth at the IoT Japan 2014 tradeshow, which will be held on October 15-17 at Tokyo Big Sight in Japan.
