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Industry 4.0 in practice: TRUMPF brings IoT to manufacturing

Industry 4.0 in practice: TRUMPF brings IoT to manufacturing

TRUMPF leveraged the IoT and improved efficiency, real-time data insights, and enhanced control.

As a global leader in laser-cutting technology TRUMPF is committed to precision in all that it does. It harnessed the power of data, the IoT and AWS technology to build a groundbreaking real-time manufacturing ecosystem. With just-in-time management now part of business as usual, it is bringing a dynamic Industry 4.0 strategy to life.

An engineer wearing safety glasses operates advanced machinery in a manufacturing facility, highlighting the integration of IoT technology. — An image of an engineer in a modern manufacturing environment, using advanced machinery with IoT integration. This visual represents the transformation of manufacturing through smart technologies, showcasing GFT's role in enabling Industry 4.0 and the future of intelligent manufacturing systems.

Maximising efficiency

With a strategic serverless AWS manufacturing platform

Remote management

All Edge devices are managed remotely

Rapid development

Built a solution from scratch in just 18 months

Client

TRUMPF

The TRUMPF Group is a global leader in the manufacture and provision of laser cutting technologies and has partnered with GFT since 2017. In an industry defined by precision, the company is committed to Industry 4.0 as a core element of its competitive business strategy.

Challenge

Implement a real-time manufacturing ecosystem

TRUMPF embraces data as a factor of production and a key element of business process improvement. Having the right data is also crucial to make just-in-time management part of business as usual. But in a connected world, data must be sourced, combined and collated from multiple internal and external sources and choreographed in real time. In practice, just-in-time management must be aligned with the Internet of Things (IoT) to facilitate a real-time manufacturing ecosystem that accommodates continual change.

To bring its real-time vision to life, TRUMPF required some bespoke technology. Certain products need an industrial PC (IPC) acting as a flexible Edge Device. This is installed on the customer’s premises and connects all the relevant hardware and software. These IPCs must be updated regularly to the latest version of their operating system and product software. TRUMPF wanted to implement a solution to manage and monitor the IPCs remotely once they are installed at the customer’s premises. It asked GFT for help.

Engagement

A strategic solution based on continuous development and testing

GFT surveyed the technical landscape and proposed a bespoke system that would be built from the ground up. Once operational the solution would empower TRUMPF to send an IPC to a customer then manage and update a Linux-based operating system remotely. GFT proposed other key technologies including Docker and a range of AWS tools to manage the solution.

As an established strategic TRUMPF partner, GFT harnessed its nearshore delivery hub to design, build and implement a customised version of Ubuntu Server operating system using Agile methods and continuous delivery. The project delivered a tailored solution founded on AWS. In practice TRUMPF has a real-time ecosystem that can:

Automate the set-up of all cloud IoT Edge devices
Customise individual IoT Edge devices to meet individual requirements
Monitor, maintain and upgrade IoT Edge devices remotely
Maintain a continuous delivery pipeline for all exposed APIs

The new platform offers TRUMPF a centralised device configuration management solution based on AWS OpsWorks. As well as empowering TRUMPF to manage the software remotely, the solution offers continual monitoring on dashboards using AWS CloudWatch, Telegraf and Grafana.

Benefit

A step-change improvement in efficiency and control

The success of the project signals a new era of automation and control. With a holistic real-time view of its business workflows, TRUMPF can focus on writing its own software products, free from the worry of running and managing operating systems. The new platform also offers sustainable business benefits:

Business processes can be built and shaped using accurate real-time data
As a serverless cloud solution it can be scaled quickly with no interruption to business as usual
Pay-as-you-go pricing means costs are always aligned to use
New features can be deployed quickly on premises and cloud, delivering more value in less time
Product developers can create virtual instances, based on AWS Service Catalog and EC2 to streamline software development without relying on physical hardware.

The solution, which was built from scratch in 18 month. The platform is an important step to develop an operational device management standard within TRUMPF.

Technical details

Amazon EC2
VM Import/Export – Import VM machines into AMI images.
Amazon EC2 Spot – Ephemeral GitLab Runners for CI jobs.
AWS Service Catalog – Versioned IaC templates ( CloudFormation) to allow developer run virtual instances.
AWS CloudFormation – IaC service to create the TntBox AWS infrastructure.
Amazon S3 – Store TnTBox backups and logs.
AWS OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise – AWS managed Puppet Enterprise instance .
AWS CodePipeline – CI/CD to deploy Puppet code into Puppet Enterprise and other CI task.
Amazon CloudWatch – Store TnTBox metrics to be visualized in Grafana.
AWS Fargate – Elastic Container Service used to deploy the TntTBox Management Console and run certain asynchronous task.
Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda – Backend for the TntTBox Management Console
Amazon Cognito – As Single Sign On solution for the TntTBox applications, federated with Trumpf IDP.
Amazon RDS – Database service for PostgreSQL is used to store TntTBox master data (Inventory of machines, customers, etc)
Amazon Route 53 – Provide DNS routing to the TntTBox applications.

GitLab – Git Repository and CI system.
Azure Devops - Git Repository and CI system (GitLab alternative for some products)
Jfrog Artifactory – Binary repository / Docker registry / APT mirror.