“The real-world, practical advancement of the Internet of Things is taking center stage,” said Matt Jennings, regional president of the Americas for Bosch Software Innovations. Speakers and sessions at Bosch’s event were “centered on the impact that industries and businesses are already feeling as a result of digital strategies and the disruptive nature of IoT, and the innovation opportunities presented by that disruption,” said Jennings.
While attendees from the aerospace, automotive, energy, and water/waste water sectors were relatively abundant at the event, representatives from the Consumer Packaged Goods space were less numerous. One attendee from a large food company who was on hand said that this was rather predictable. “As we saw with robotics and other advanced integrated manufacturing technologies, the early adopters of IoT are emerging first in autos and aerospace,” he noted. “Later it begins to appeal to CPG companies.” According to John E. Gaddum, Business Development Corporate Accounts at Bosch-Rexroth, CPG companies are keenly interested. As he put it to me during a coffee break, “The question they all seem to be asking is where do we start.”
Among the more intriguing presentations at the conference was one in which John Perkins, VP Global Systems of WestRock, described how a Model-Based Engineering approach has been embraced when it comes to designing and producing WestRock packaging machinery that puts beverage containers into paperboard multipacks. Since adopting this concept, the amount of time required to design, build, and ship a multipacking machine has been reduced substantially. Gone is a process that was sequential in nature, where mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering all worked in silos. In its place is a coordinated collaboration where mechanical, electrical, and software engineering all feed into a Modelica simulation program so that, in essence, a machine gets built virtually before anyone starts bending any metal. According to Scott Hibbard, Vice President of Technology at Bosch Rexroth, with this approach when you put a machine through its initial run sequences, if something goes wrong “you’re crashing pixels instead of metal.” Also making key contributions in WestRock’s Model-Based Engineering initiative were CATIA from Dassault Systemes together with Dassault's 3D EXPERIENCE platform and the Open Core Engineering concepts emanating out of Bosch Rexroth. In his ConnectedWorld presentation, WestRock’s Perkins was joined by co-presenters Dassault and Bosch Rexroth.
