Mike Hannah is the Market Development lead for the company’s Connected Enterprise initiative. His primary responsibilities involve market development and commercial program management initiative, which connects people and processes for better collaboration, faster problem solving and improved innovation.

Hannah originally joined Rockwell Automation in 1990 in Cleveland, Ohio in the company’s Motion Control Business Group as a product marketing engineer. He advanced into roles of increasing responsibility in product management, including leading the company’s Networking and Infrastructure product development group.
Hannah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Technology from The University of Akron, USA.

What is your interpretation of what IoT means?

In this Internet of Things (IoT) era, a nearly endless range of devices are being embedded with smart sensors that can communicate with one another within the existing Ethernet Internet infrastructure. In fact, many analysts have predicted that over 25 billion devices will be connected over the IoT by 2025.

This proliferation of smarter end points can enable organisations to better collaborate and understand complex processes to improve their operations. It is enabled by new technologies such as big-data analytics, cloud computing, virtualisation and mobility. All of these help to optimise business and operational processes and facilitate both internal and external collaboration − an approach often referred to as “Smart Manufacturing”.

Covering so many business and social activities in a title such as this must be difficult to describe? How is this done?

The intangible commodity is the ability to link people, processes and technology to solve real-world problems in real-time. The key for everyone is to better understand their company’s operational performance at the most granular level, to improve operations, produce more at higher quality levels, and in a more efficient manner.

LEAN manufacturing encompasses a lot of activity. Is this the way it is with IoT?

Yes, we tend to talk about the IoT having five major enabling technologies: Smart Things – more devices are connecting to our networks; Data Analytics – turning data into actionable information; Scalable Computing/Cloud – leveraging scalable computing, including off-premise resources; Mobility – creating a smarter and more productive workforce; and Security – everything must be secure.

Which countries do you believe are embracing the IoT at present?

We are pleased to see many world leaders and governments promoting initiatives to help accelerate and recognise the new era of the IoT and optimised smart manufacturing. Initiatives like Advanced Manufacturing Partnership 2.0 (U.S.), Industrie 4.0. (Germany), China Manufacturing 2025 (China), and Manufacturing Innovation 3.0 (South Korea), to name a few − we are sure to see this trend continue in other nations, as well.

How will the IoT improve, say, business processes?

The value at stake is fivefold:
1. Asset utilisation − reducing selling, general, and administrative expenses and cost of goods sold by improving business-process execution and capital efficiency
2. Employee productivity − creating labour efficiencies that result in fewer or more productive man-hours
3. Supply chain and logistics − eliminating waste and improving process efficiencies
4. Customer experience − increasing customer-lifetime value and growing market share by adding more customers
5. Innovation − increasing the return on R&D investments; minimising time to market; and generating additional revenue streams from new business models and opportunities

Rockwell Automation – deeply involved? Explain, please.

The opportunity reaches across multiple industries because a lot of the value comes from turning data, from “smart things,” into insightful information that gives decision makers across the entire enterprise new visibility into their operations, fresh opportunities to respond to market and business challenges, and additional prospects to innovate and drive out inefficiencies in their entire business processes. This is what Rockwell Automation calls the Connected Enterprise.

The Connected Enterprise is boosting the advantages of Smart, Safe, Sustainable Manufacturing and Industrial Operations. Customers benefit from faster time to market, lower total cost of ownership, improved asset utilisation, and enterprise-risk management.

Central to achieving the Connected Enterprise, or any of these smart manufacturing initiatives, is the need to converge information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT). We have aligned ourselves with other IT and OT market leaders, like Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and Panduit, as well as our entire PartnerNetwork, to continue to drive forward the Connected Enterprise vision, and allow us to solve real-world customer problems, which we could not solve on our own.

What specific products and services do you have which are beneficial for the IoT?

The Connected Enterprise is delivered through the Rockwell Automation Integrated Control and Information portfolio − including a network infrastructure based on a standard, open, single-network architecture − that helps facilitate secure interoperability with corporate networks and industrial applications, and enables a wealth of information that can be converted into contextualised working-data capital.

Ultimately, this data delivers insights to improve productivity, safety and sustainability, whilst creating new business opportunities − not only for brand owners, but also for OEMs and equipment builders.

What are some of the most pressing challenges ahead in terms of your Connected Enterprise vision and what is your strategy for resolving these challenges?

Central to achieving the Connected Enterprise is the need to converge IT and OT. In the past, these have been two independent architectures and systems, but they are now converging into a single, unified architecture, leveraging one common technology, Ethernet IP − the same network technology used on the Internet and the fundamental technology for the IoT.

However, there is a gap between OT and IT that needs to be addressed, both technically and culturally, which presents the challenge. Rockwell Automation and Cisco have been working together to bridge this gap. We have made tremendous progress in our joint efforts to bring a robust, IP-based network infrastructure to the plant floor, with a broad range of jointly developed products and services.

How important is security in the transition of becoming a Connected Enterprise?

Security is critical to any Connected Enterprise. One of the most important assets that organisations have is their own data. This data must be secure, and the control system (a major source of the data) can no longer be an isolated operation. Industrial organisations are recognising that a seamless flow of information created by connecting industrial-control systems to the enterprise is a path to significant operational improvements.

Unless companies make ongoing investments in securing industrial-control systems that help address people, process and technology-related risks, they may be exposed to unnecessary threats as they capitalise on the opportunities presented by the Connected Enterprise.

How ready are manufacturers around the world to pursue the Connected Enterprise? What has Rockwell Automation done to pursue its journey toward becoming a Connected Enterprise?

From a global perspective, most companies see the value of becoming a Connected Enterprise; they just are not sure how and where to start. As an example, according to an IndustryWeek survey, the top publication read by U.S. manufacturers, only 14 per cent of American operators have the connectivity they need to link their factory-floor information with their enterprise system.

As with any major technology change that offers excitement and opportunity, there are challenges. To help simplify these obstacles, Rockwell Automation has developed a five-stage Connected Enterprise Execution Model − which outlines the measures and best practices necessary to ensure effective change, in both technologies and organisational cultures, to pave the way toward harnessing company data in a secure fashion. Any company can join at any stage, depending on the phase of development most appropriate for its needs.

Leading by example, Rockwell Automation understood years ago that the convergence of the plant-floor OT and business-level IT would enable the data from a myriad of remote-device sensors, actuators, controllers and switches to connect people and processes across the enterprise and throughout the supply chain.

In addition, the company undertook facilitating a secure, standards-based Industrial EtherNet/IP network across the entire company, serving as a common unifying intelligent infrastructure that supports electronic-data exchange. In the end, the company became a truly Connected Enterprise, where contextualised information can be shared, where and when it is needed.

Once Rockwell Automation achieved its Connected Enterprise status, the company experienced measured growth and innovation breakthroughs − including lower inventory, increased on-time delivery, improved on-time-to-want, and overall better quality products and services. As a result, the company achieved annual productivity improvements of 4 to 5 per cent. Since, it has encouraged its suppliers, downstream OEMs and customers to collaborate as partners for mutual asset utilisation and optimised effectiveness.