Factory IoT Saves Intel $9 Million 50
jfruh writes Want a good way to sell someone a new technology? Prove to them that you believe in it enough to use it yourself. Intel has been trying to get customers to buy into the concept of the "Internet of Things," in which tiny distributed networked sensors would improve manufacturing processes. To prove its point, they implemented such a system in one of their Malaysian factories, and claimed $9 million in savings.
THAT IS NOT AN IoT CASE! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a LANoT.
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Also, not new. I've visited several factories over the last 15 years. The systems on the production lines were all connected over ethernet running TCP/IP. Granted, 15 years ago, sensors and other small devices would be in clusters, each cluster connected to a (large) shoebox sized controller, but over time, as the networked controllers got smaller and less expensive, there were more controllers with fewer devices connected to each.
I suspect the plant Intel "installed" IoT into was just in need of a major up
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now they connected all those sensors to the internet [they've got the IP addresses to do it].
next, they may consider adding a router and/or firewall between the network these systems. or maybe a vpn. and then install virus scanners onto each one of the sensors.
I only need three things in my Internet (Score:5, Funny)
And that's a theme park, with blackjack and hookers.
Saves Intel 9 million? (Score:1)
Was your rant against grocery stores leading to something or...?
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And yet, armed to the teeth with this wisdom, you went to Ralph's and spent $40.
The Internet of Things, aka (Score:5, Insightful)
the next giant leap in ubiquitous mass surveillance.
I just can't wait for all the devices that surround me to snitch on me and report all my life habits to their corporate or state masters 24/7...
Re:The Internet of Things, aka (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's just a toilet seat that reports when somebody's on it. Everybody poops! There's nothing to worry about!
Until you realize that it's able to find usage patterns, and your insurance rates go up because they think you may be getting colon cancer.
Everything's connected, and I don't want every facet of my life being reported to some corporate overlord.
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It's just a toilet seat that reports when somebody's on it. Everybody poops! There's nothing to worry about!
Just think about the other side of the coin, now your crapper can serve as your alabi when the police ask "Where were you last night at 10:00 p.m.?
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You would be correct if it weren't for the name of Intel. And I don't mean the name as such, I mean Intel as in Intel-rubbing-the-back-of-the-NSA.
You owe Rosco P. Coltrane an apology for your red herring.
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And to add insult to injury, we are supposed to pay the people spying on us by buying their products.
Investment? (Score:3)
Re:Investment? (Score:5, Informative)
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As an IRS agent, that sounds an awful lot like imputed income. Please don't leave the country, we'll be in touch.
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In this thread, anonymous coward left his sense of humor at home, and posts.. let's step back and watch the hilarity!
umm. details? (Score:3)
Could someone who actually knows something about what they did write the fucking article please? I have no idea what was improved using this technique by reading these sentences which are the only concrete part of the entire story linked.
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>Could someone who actually knows something about what they did write the fucking article please?
Yes. Hence the A.C.
Real time SPC. It's actually pretty cool.
Understand that the Malaysian factories are predominantly test and assembly. The chips are made in the US.
The real differentiation is the installation. Just scatter them around the machines and meshy wireless protocols get the data home. Manually hooking scada crap up to scada networks would be a nightmare and then they'd get hacked like the Iranians
Internet of Stupidity (Score:3)
This story has pretty much nothing to do with the "Internet of Things" they are trying to sell us.
I seriously doubt that any of the WiFi sensors in Intel's machinery required an account with a third party company which then collected data on how Intel used their machines.
We already have an Internet of Things. It's called, "things".
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This story has pretty much nothing to do with the "Internet of Things" they are trying to sell us.
Right. It's ordinary industrial automation. It's also strange that Intel would have CPU testers that weren't networked and reporting to some machine aggregating statistics and looking for process variance. It's pretty much routine in factories today to network the machines. That's been going on since the 1980s.
The Mitsubishi C Controller mentioned is just a CPU board packaged as a Mitsubishi Electric industrial automation module [meau.com] for convenient mounting in industrial automation cabinets. "It includes two
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The more precise term is Industrial Internet [wikipedia.org] which is considered a subset of the Internet of Things. It is considered a subset because the same types of technologies are being used.
The Internet of Things doesn't require third-parties, but such third-parties are often helpful if they provide useful services.
I tried saved my company some money... (Score:1)
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Was that supervisor one of the people that got laid off?
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Re: I tried saved my company some money... (Score:2)
There's no justice in this world.
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uh huh... (Score:3)
I've been through these sales pitches before.
Ok Intel, how much did it COST to install?
Did you factor in that you sent in all of your Intel experts for free? And that you'll charge me $200 per hour just to ask them what kind of outlet to plug this into?
What was the volume of that plant? Is it producing $10million in product? Or $300 million? Scale matters.
$9 million in savings in a large production plants is shit. They have single machines that cost more than that. To take a gamble on a large change like this, the savings need to be insane. Cut my costs in half and it might be worth the risk. Saving $9 million when my costs average $300 million and, yes... that's nice... but its not worth the risk of new tech.
Re:uh huh... (Score:4, Insightful)
$9 million in savings in a large production plants is shit. They have single machines that cost more than that. To take a gamble on a large change like this, the savings need to be insane. Cut my costs in half and it might be worth the risk. Saving $9 million when my costs average $300 million and, yes... that's nice... but its not worth the risk of new tech.
Actually $9million is $9million regardless how how you cut the pie. Just because a business turns over several orders of magnitude more means they should stop factoring in potential savings as *small* as $9million?
I ask you, what is a gamble? How are you gambling when you monitor your equipment? What is the risk when it goes wrong? Back to potential $9million outages? Oh calamity!
The only reason people are up in arms about this is because someone used the phrase "Internet of Things". If this article was started with "Lean Six Sigma", "Kaizen", or "a Continuous Improvement Project" no one would bat an eye. I am a reliability engineer and creating this type of monitoring is my day to day activities. Sometimes they pay off really well, sometimes they produce no benefit and we wasted a few $100k, but all of a sudden when someone says it's an "Internet of Things" project rather than project everybody shouts about risk?
Get a grip. Oh and I work for a plant that turns over approximately $4bn in product annually, yet if I could save $9m I guarantee there would be prizes, parades, and all sorts of untold honours directed my way. Never under-estimate how hard it is to squeeze the last bit of financial efficiency out of a place.
how much data do they send to marketers? (Score:2)
isn't that why you deploy IoT?
Wrong name (Score:2)
But expecting honesty from the largest tech company is like expecting the DOJ to prosecute bankers.