HighByte + Ignition: Two powerful solutions in your modern data architecture
I am often asked why a company needs HighByte Intelligence Hub if they already have Ignition. Adding another software solution adds cost, requires training and maintenance, and can introduce latency and failure points into the system. The quick answer: Ignition and HighByte Intelligence Hub were designed to solve very different problems for manufacturing. When paired, they provide a robust approach to industrial data access and management to meet manufacturing’s evolving digital needs.
HighByte was founded with the goal of making industrial data more usable, secure, and agile and integrations more maintainable and scalable. Manufacturers are using industrial data across more departments to solve more problems than they have in the past. These efforts require the use of cloud platforms, enterprise data platforms, IIoT platforms, additional systems and sensors in and around the factory, and even edge AI/ML solutions—all of which must have bi-directional interactions with operational data systems, SCADA, MES, and ERP. The Intelligence Hub enables greater interactions between these systems, not to replace existing platforms but to enhance their capabilities and agility while improving the resilience and speed of the ecosystem.
Ignition is a market-leading application platform designed for industrial data. It can function as both a SCADA and an IIoT platform, and it offers a broad range of application-building capabilities that enable on-site use cases, quick and easy device connectivity, and the ability to adapt apps to unique plant requirements.
SCADA and IIoT solutions like Ignition play a key role in enabling industrial data storage, visualization, and analysis. By contrast, Industrial DataOps solutions like the Intelligence Hub enable data integration across complex systems and enterprise network architectures in a scalable, agile, and managed platform designed for domain experts to configure and maintain. Together, these two technologies enable a robust data architecture.
That said, not all Ignition users need DataOps solutions today. Some companies are still networking and deploying their limited automation equipment and only need a local visualization application for the single area, line, or work cell. For these purposes, Ignition provides an excellent, vertically integrated device driver to Application Platform solution for OT users. However, as companies transition from Industry 3.0 to 4.0, DataOps has proven to be the ideal method for maturing digitally, enabling sophisticated architectures and new use cases at scale.
As companies evaluate and plan their application architecture, I advise people to think first about the high-level problems they are trying to solve, the persona solving the problem, the systems they are going to use, the scale and scope of the initiative, and finally, the network and security constraints they must deal with.
Companies focused on digital transformation and Industry 4.0 are often:
- Building a unified namespace (UNS) with telemetry data and data from MES, QMS, CMMS, and ERP systems to provide a single access point for highly contextualized industrial data.
- Using the cloud as the platform for non-OT personas to access and consolidate data from multiple factories into a single data lake or data warehouse.
- Accessing non-telemetry factory floor data, including test equipment, machine skid systems, CMM, and cameras, which need to be integrated with the telemetry data and made accessible.
- Working to tightly integrate operational systems for high quality, stable data flows.
- Moving files or data from the cloud and providing them to the machine or operational systems.
These use cases require a more sophisticated approach to system integration and data movement with a focus on data orchestration, quality, observability, and governance. As an Industrial DataOps platform, HighByte Intelligence Hub was designed to meet these requirements. The Intelligence Hub operates in conjunction with Ignition to deliver consistent, secure data where, when, and how it is needed.
In the examples below, I’ll focus on how HighByte Intelligence Hub can help extend the value of Ignition to areas of the enterprise that have historically been difficult to supply with properly contextualized operations data.
Architectures powered by the Intelligence Hub + Ignition
Unified namespace
The UNS architecture is being widely adopted in the OT domain to democratize data access and accelerate digital transformation. A UNS requires data from many systems, such as Ignition telemetry data, MES, ERP, Quality, Asset data, and more. HighByte Intelligence Hub can integrate with all these systems, collect the required data, standardize, normalize, and govern this data, and then publish it into the UNS as needed. By consolidating the data flows to the UNS in the Intelligence Hub, Ignition can acquire and structure only the process control data it uses, ensuring its primary function as a SCADA is not complicated by an overload of data it does not use. Alternatively, if Ignition is deployed as an IIoT platform, Intelligence Hub can provide a governed UNS, spanning telemetry data and beyond, for Ignition to consume and build applications upon with greater ease and scale.
Delivering data to the cloud
Many IT departments leverage the cloud as a platform to deliver applications to non-OT personas and provide multi-site aggregations and visibility. Providing data to personas outside of OT, like Maintenance, Quality, R&D, and Sustainability, requires contextualization, data resolution, and integration from multiple source systems for each use case. This data must be contextualized and curated by the OT team, as they are the domain experts of the source systems. Using HighByte Intelligence Hub with Ignition telemetry data and data from other systems, the OT team can easily curate and deliver data to the cloud with no-code or low-code configuration.
The Intelligence Hub can perform complex, multi-step data integrations to create a standardized, governed data set. The structure of the data sent to the cloud can be standardized and governed across sites to provide uniformity and organization when landing in cloud platforms. This data can be delivered directly to multiple services in AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and third-party solutions such as Snowflake. With the Intelligence Hub, data can be streamed, packaged for a time, or made accessible via a REST API for ad-hoc data access. Using the Intelligence Hub ensures high-quality data, provides data pipeline observability, and governs the data.
Utilizing non-telemetry data from the factory floor
There are many systems and equipment on the factory floor that create reports or files. These might include test or inspection equipment that write files to report results or have their own database, cameras or audio sensors, or CMM systems that create point cloud files. How these files are treated varies widely based on the use case. Some must be contextualized according to the process, part being produced, or end destination; others must be read and interpreted into data and then delivered to the target system. In all cases, movement and contextualization must be automated. File management can be easily performed with the Intelligence Hub, utilizing context from Ignition while also notifying Ignition once files are securely delivered.
Multi-system integration
Every industrial system has its own unique namespace and integration requirements. MES, ERP, and CMMS systems typically integrate via their database or REST API. Historians store telemetry data and can provide current values or historical data sets, actual values, interpolated values, or accumulated calculations. Current telemetry data from Ignition is critical for many users, but it often must be contextualized with data from other systems. Each integration requires curated requests and publishes. Some may require data from another system entirely to drive requests, while others may require multiple requests to construct a payload and additional transformations to meet the needs of the target system. HighByte Intelligence Hub provides the ability to connect to the required systems, make intelligent requests, and then standardize and contextualize the data.
Cloud-to-edge
Though the bulk of data moves edge-to-cloud, many design patterns are cloud-to-edge, such as providing SAP order information to machine operators or delivering analytic predictions to operators through the Ignition dashboard. Or, one might pull CAD or G-Code files from the PLM system and deliver them to the production machine to define the production constraints. Movement of data or files from cloud services and applications to Ignition or machines can be easily achieved through the Intelligence Hub.
Wrap Up
Combining the data movement, contextualization, and standardization capabilities with Ignition’s application platform capabilities to make use of industrial data creates a powerful combination for manufacturing and industrial companies. These systems work in tandem to form the backbone of a robust industrial data architecture, from the factory floor to the cloud.
Quality engineers can receive snapshots of entire lines in single payloads rather than managing custom-tagged data across multiple payloads. Cloud ML applications that require specific data with specific contextualization from across multiple sites can receive modeled payloads, freeing data scientists from manually piecing together the proper dataset. Business users can access the exact data they require without routinely requesting it from engineers. All these use cases and more can be accomplished by pairing these two powerful platforms.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. If you are already running Ignition, you can see why leading industrials use Ignition and the Intelligence Hub together by testing the Intelligence Hub in your own environment through our free trial program. Choose between the 2-hour trial, which you can reset once your trial time expires, or the 30-day trial, which includes a HighByte team member to guide you through your evaluation. In both options, you will have access to the latest release and all available product resources.
