Google Cloud: Harness the flood of data in the production hall with less code tools

Google has announced two new services for its cloud portfolio. The Manufacturing Data Engine and Manufacturing Connect are for industrial use in the production hall. They should collect data from production and make it analysable.

Complete digitization of industrial production is mainly due to inadequate evaluation of machine data – at least according to Google blog post To announce two new devices.

Two factors are responsible for low data usage: lack of access to relevant operational data and lack of skills in using data science and AI tools among employees. Google now wants to close these gaps with manufacturing data engines and Connect. The new services follow a less-no-code approach and should be usable even by untrained personnel.

Manufacturing Data Engine – Data Engine Room

Manufacturing Data Engine is a cloud tool to process, contextualize and store production data. The platform is said to be able to collect “a wide range of data types” from “any type of machine” via a connection between the edge and the cloud.

The platform should normalize the collected data, enrich it with contextual information and store it in a “factory-optimized” data lakehouse. Data dashboards and analysis tools are also on board, including AI-based predictive maintenance tools to predict the maintenance of the machines used.

Manufacturing Connect – Low-code connection between edge and cloud

Manufacturing Connect is an edge platform for use in a factory context and was developed by Google in association with industrial IoT company Litmus Automation. It should be possible to connect to “almost all production systems” via a library that can handle over 250 machine protocols. The Edge platform acts as a link to the data engine and translates machine data for human users. Because it also supports containerized workloads, integrated analytics features can be evaluated on edge and thus on premises.

It is not yet known when the two IIoT production devices will be available. However, Google has announced that it intends to present it to the public for the first time at Hannover Messe 2022, from May 30 to June 2.

(JVO)