Ep. 1 - Unlocking Industrial IoT with WERMA’s WeASSIST

Getting Started with Industrial IoT?

In this kickoff episode, Brandon Ellis and Beth Elliott break down the latest in industrial automation, featuring WERMA’s WeASSIST. Learn how elliTek’s solutions-based approach and this plug-and-play tech make it easy to get started with Industrial IoT, Andon systems, and real-time monitoring.

They also cover key topics like mesh networking, cybersecurity, and how to make sense of process vs. product data - all with the goal of improving manufacturing efficiency.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to elliTek’s Automation Know-How
• 2:00 Understanding elliTek’s Solutions-Based Approach
• 5:50 Introducing WERMA's WeASSIST Technology
• 8:30 Exploring the Functionality of Stack Lights
• 11:46 The Importance of Mesh Networking in Automation
• 14:30 Cybersecurity Considerations in IoT
• 18:38 Differentiating Process Data from Product Data
• 20:56 Leveraging WeASSIST for Enhanced Manufacturing Insights
• 24:00 Dashboard Capabilities and User Experience
• 26:53 Integrating Outputs and Automation Control
• 29:20 Conclusion and Future Directions

Transcript

Brandon:

Hello everybody and welcome to elliTek's Automation Know-How. In case you're new to the program, I'm Brandon Ellis. I'm your host and also the owner of elliTek Hey, if you like what you hear today, give us a follow, subscribe, and leave us a five-star rating and review. Now that we've got the marketing out of the way, I just want to say thanks for tuning in. So let's get started. 

Hey guys and welcome to elliTek's Automation Know-How. I'm here with Beth, the marketing manager, Elliott.

Beth:

Hey Brandon, it's good to be back in the studio. That's right. It's been a while. 

Brandon:

Yes. It has been a little bit of a while. So, let's jump straight to our topic for today. Again,  Automation Know-How, that's going to be, that's a little different than what we were doing on our last podcast, Brandon. The last one, Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To..., certainly those episodes are still available.  The videos, the ones, the ones that were video based video podcasts are still on our YouTube channel and on our website, that's www.elliTek.com, e-l-l-i-t-e-k.com, and certainly try to check those out. You know, it's honestly interesting to me how much I still reference in conversations with customers and vendors some of those topics.

Beth:

Yeah. Yeah. The, especially the four reasons to automate, Brandon's Brandology.

Brandon:

There are those things that come up. So, it's certainly a good resource. I encourage all of our listeners, whether you're new to this show, this podcast, or just you're familiar with elliTek or new to elliTek altogether. So, elliTek is and has been for quite some time an industrial automation wholesale reseller distributor. We are considered a high-tech distributor for automation products and services and so we have various lines that we represent and so Automation Know-How the premise is not that we just sell this stuff.

Beth:

We want to show you the benefits and why you would want to consider it.

Brandon:

Yeah, that's right. So, what separates elliTek? Just really quickly, we have a very, very much come from an engineering background. And so, when we say we are a solutions-based sales organization, we really mean it. That means that we can put together the items are between our applications engineers, our field sales engineers, we can put the together the items to create a solution. And we can do that within a single manufacturer's products.

But we can also introduce products that are complementary. Yes. And bring those together. Robots are certainly an example of that. So, robots certainly can provide a service, but you can't do much with a robot if you don't have a gripper. If you don't have a tool changer, if you don't have a vision system or sensors, safety, those kinds of things. So, that's what we do.

Beth:

Yeah.

Brandon:

That's what we realize and that's what we know and we know it because we've done it.

Beth:

Yes, we've been down that road.

Brandon:

It sounds like another commercial for another company. So, we don't want to get copyright infringement there. But that's it. That is what separates us. So, we're not just a distribution company. We certainly have inventory on the shelf. We certainly want to sell you goods and services, but we want you to partner with us in terms of a solutions-based engineering-based sales organization. So, in doing so Automation Know-How.

What are we knowing how to do today?

Beth:

Oh, this is a really new one and a good one because it's a WERMA that we just signed on with, and we've talked with Peter came down and gave us a talk on their WeASSIST.

Brandon:

That's right. So, Peter and, of course, Todd Hodges is a regional person, and Todd certainly is well-versed in this as well. So, WeASSIST is a product sold by WERMA. Now WERMA is a European, German company, and in Germany, W is pronounced like we in the United States pronounce it with a V sound. And so

Beth:

Yes. It is. WERMA.

Brandon:

W-E-R-M-A, WERMA. And so WERMA has been around for quite some time. Yeah, they've been around for some time. They are European. And of course, they are certainly very much present in the United States. They're known for their stack light assemblies.

And so multi-segment, multi-color stack lights. And so, we're going to talk a bit about that. But they have taken their stack light technology to a new level. Now the other thing, if you're familiar with elliTek and certainly if you're familiar with myself and Beth Elliott, it might come from the fact that we have been involved in the industrial IoT space for over a decade.

Beth:

You have.

Brandon:

And so, IoT, IoT. The way that I… the reason I'm so excited about this WeASSIST product is for many it brings about an entry point into industrial IoT that that you might not have once had, and I mean that in terms of budget, in terms of simplicity, in terms of just go live, you know, go, launch, launch time reduction. And so, we talk about, we're going to talk about how that happens and why. So that said, we've got a little video here, and this is a promotional video. I'm to be talking through just a little bit. Go ahead and start that video for us. That is a WERMA promotional video. So yes, this is a WERMA video. And, what I wanted to do before we start the video is just kind of show you what comes in the box. What are the basic things that you're gonna need? Now, we're gonna be talking about what these things are, but the thing on the very much left is the AC power adapter. 

Beth:

You gotta have power.

Brandon:

Then we have our communications box, and you'll see that it's got an antenna on the top. That's what that is, an antenna. And then you have the box itself. The next thing is another box, but then we're getting to the little black around cylindrical thing, and that is the transmitter. So go ahead and click play on this thing, and we'll kind of watch this go. What this does is you take the box, you saw him take the box, and I'll send the communications box, and just in the setup, just because people ask what's involved. So, there's an app.

Scan the QR in the back of that, and it begins setting the system up. So, there you see the hardware is mounted there at the top. The second thing is the transmitter. That is a stack light, multi-segment stack light. Can you pause on that? So, back it up just a smidge. Yeah, just a smidge. There you go. So can see he's putting the black cylindrical thing at the bottom of a stack light. So, this integrates with a WERMA stack light set. And just so you know, if you are in your plant using Siemens brands of stack lights, WERMA is compatible with them. So, you could actually, if you have a machine with a Siemens, we're a Siemens distributor, but a Siemens brand of stack light, you can actually in the same series, of course, you can, and you can, just like he's putting that on there, he's pushing and twisting to lock it on, you could actually take the stack light off, push and twist, put this on, and stick it back on and you're done. 

Beth:

Nice. 

Brandon:

So, and of course, if you have WERMA stack lights on your machines, you've already got that capability as well. If you don't, you can certainly, you know, we can work with you to get you the hardware to change out your stack light. But the important thing is you get that transmitter installed on that bottom segment of your Stacklight. So, go ahead and click start, So, why is that important? And, you can see him putting it on there. And you can see the different light sections. That little box, hit pause on that back that up, that little box is also sold by WERMA. And so, what that is is it's got multi. It's got multi push buttons on it.

In manufacturing, the most basic version of Andon is a stack light. It's just an indication light. For those of us who've been around a little while, we probably remember a department store called Kmart. 

Beth:

Yep. 

Brandon:

Did you ever remember the blue light special? How did you know where the special was?

Beth:

Because it was the blue light flashing.

Brandon:

They had a siren a pole on a siren right and it would just spin and you go looking for that light so someone said there's a blue light special and you all eyes were up and you're peering over the rows of stuff just trying to figure out where the blue light was right so that is an Andon. And so, it would bring attention, it calls attention, so this little box works in combination with your stack light, so you can see in this indication. They've got a white, a blue, and a green segment. Now there's another button. That's not being used on the top, but by pressing the button, it changes, just simply changes the light, so it's not a machine changing the status of the stack light, it's a person.

Beth:

Okay. 

Brandon:

And why that's important? You're working, you're there, you're the operator, you're working at the machine, and you realize I'm putting, you know, a part A and a part B to build this assembly and you look down and you say I'm I've run out of part A's, I need more part A's. You hit a button, and that tells someone to bring, can you please bring me some more part A's?

Beth:

Nice, very nice.

Brandon:

That's how Andon systems work on a very basic level. So that's what that box is, and it's built in with the system. You can get that built in with the system from WERMA. It's very easy to do. Not a lot of wiring. You don't have to build stuff. It's all put together. So go ahead and click play. So, you can see when he pushes the button, the lights change. Now, this is kind of videography. Boom.

Beth:

Magic!

Brandon:

So, what he was showing there was, if you want to pause that and go backwards, what he was showing is he's taking that stack light. So, we got stack lights on the machine. That's perfect vantage point. You see stack lights with the machines across the top. The stack lights are there, and they have multi things. You see him looking at his tablet there. So, this is where WeASSIST comes into play. Fall off the video and give me the mesh overdrive graphic.

So, this is a mesh, I said overdrive, overview. You kind of look at this, and so you can see you've got a dashboard in the front. Of course, this is showing some of the different stack lights there on the front little desk. But in the background, what I want you to see is the red tags that say WeASSIST. And that's looking down the line and stack lights. WeASSIST, WeASSIST, WeASSIST, WeASSIST. What that really means is black cylindrical thing is installed at each one of those and they are communicating wirelessly. So, it's a line of sight RF, that's radio frequency communication. This is not going across your IT network. It's not an IT wireless network. It's not anything that you can get in the parking lot and hook up to. It is a secure radio frequency line of sight. That means you have to be able to see from the box to this box, that you have to be able to see. That's called line of sight and it's doing RF technology, and this is called a mesh network because you can see way off in the real, real far back there's a little small tag that says WeASSIST. It's a far, far way away. How are we able… we can barely see it. How are we able to communicate with it? So, mesh technology is what they use, that means the box which is up here with… yeah, the box which is up here on the counter, it can communicate to the first one.

Beth:

My bad.

Brandon:

First one communicates to the second one, the second one to the third one, and they all communicate together through each other to find their way back to that little box that had the antenna on it. nice. We call that a mesh. That means that just because I can't see the box with the antenna, I can see something else. Can you see it? And that says, no, I can't see it, but I can see somebody else that sees it. And it's intelligently meshing back to get the information back. So, let's go ahead and drop that and go to the hardware overview.

Beth:

That's so smart.

Brandon:

Okay. So, this is what we've been talking about. There's the little on, the left going left to right. There's the little box with the antenna on it.

There's the stack light with the little black cylindrical transmitter at the bottom. And then we have dashboards. And that's what that little video was getting ready to show with some very high-tech videography, rolling it across the tablet. And then boom, you see a stack light on the tablet, on the dashboard. So, the dashboard is configured, drag and drop. There's no programming. You don't have to be an XML or a HTML developer. It's just drag and drop. You can create your dashboard. The dashboard is cloud hosted by WERMA.

Beth:

Okay. 

Brandon:

And it's through, I think they go through Azure. So, it's an Azure-hosted cloud. It's not just somebody's cloud somewhere. It does have, you know, some brand awareness and security that goes with that. So that's the environment that a user, in our case, one of our customers would have access to, and they can build these dashboards. And we're going to drop back to the video and look a little bit at that. But, essentially here's what you're going to have a little box.

Beth:

Okay.

Brandon:

The stack light and remember multiple stack lights, remember the WeASSIST going down the line each one with that black cylindrical part and that black part is talking via RF back to this box from that point. So that's the wireless side. It's radio frequency. I just emphasize that because if you're on the IT side, it is not getting on your IT, wireless IT network, or having to create a... It's not an access point, wireless access point. It is specifically an RF communications to that stack light and to the mesh of the other things. On the other side of the box though there is a RJ45 plug connection point and at that point IT, your IT department in-house would need to be involved to provide a secure connection out to the World Wide Web so as to give it the ability to connect with the WERMA cloud.

And again, your cloud is your cloud, you can't see other people's dashboards, it's your stuff, it's your subscription. It is subscription-based, but it is secure in that regard. If there's not a way for the IT group to do that, IT can authorize and IT should authorize a cellular connection or something like that, where you do a cellular gateway through a SIM card, and that gives you direct connection to the outside world, but I do want to emphasize this. Whether it's coming through your IT, an IT port that they've given you access to, or whether they've author, IT has authorized you to do a cellular or SIM based, or even satellite-based connection to the world wide web, if a hacker, a bad actor were to gain access to that,

The most they can do, should be able to do, is to come in and hit that little box with the little wireless tag on it. And that's it.

Beth:

Okay. They can't go anywhere else?

Brandon:

There's nothing else on the network to go to. Again, now if you've plugged it in on a network with a lot of other things and the from an IT standpoint, you know, once it where it's plugged into to get out, everything else is able to get out, then sure you expose yourself, but general basic IT, cybersecurity standards, you're going to have at least a firewall in place, right? And so, you would only share the port that's going to that box typically or something, but you would isolate the box on that network.

And certainly, if it's going through a cellular connection or a SAT connection, if someone found their way into that, they're only getting to that box. It is not, I'll emphasize again, a wireless access point from an IT standpoint. It is only capable of talking to those little black cylindrical boxes or cylinders to monitor the status of that stack light.

That's it. So, at the very least, if you got hacked, you might not be able to see your dashboard. It should not in any way, shape, or form mess with your machine.

Beth:

Okay. Good to know, good to know.

Brandon:

That's the other thing in IoT, you know as well as I do, we have products actually we invented and manufacture that can talk directly to the controllers on the machines. We do that in a very, very, very secure and specific way to keep to exceed the cybersecurity requirements of most every manufacturer on the planet, but there is some cost to that and there is some setup things of that nature, but we're talking directly to the controller.

That's different than what we're talking about here. A lot of times folks will say all I need to know is the status of the machine.

Beth:

If it's on or off.

Brandon:

On or off, running, down, you know. If it's down for, you know, if it's starved for material, remember the operator can say I need more parts. At that point we could possibly… you might could surmise that that machine is not running. But it's not running because of starvation from parts, not because of a maintenance situation. It's not down. It's waiting. 

Beth:

Oh, so can you tell the difference between the two?

Brandon:

If you have a light that comes on when you're waiting and a light that comes on when you're down. So you have different color lights to mean different things. 

Beth:

Okay.

Brandon:

And so… and let me also, because, hey, we're talking IoT and you know how I love IoT.  There's two types of data in a factory. There's process data and product data. Product data is usually traceability of a part. We're monitoring it going through the process down the line, whatever.  You know, all the pieces come together, create this product. It gets some kind of a RFID or barcode or something that identifies it uniquely, and then we can follow it all the way down, we can create a birth certificate for it that's product data. Process data has to do with the machine a machine that that those products are running through, right? So usually, that's your most common need is KPIs associated with process data process being process data being OEE, OA, so acronyms. Overall Equipment Efficiency and Overall Availability, you know, uptime, downtime, those kinds of things, you know, fault conditions, those kinds of things. That's process data. You know, it starts all kinds of conversations. So just because your machine has a fault, a maintenance event, some kind of a fault does not necessarily produce a defective part or product. So, we separate those two process to product.

The WERMA solution is 100% process data.

And so that's what we're doing. We're monitoring the machine states, and then through the dashboard, it's very easy to create, know, okay, this is a state. Then you can say, okay, when the red light comes on, we're going to mark that as the machine is down. We're going to define it as that. You can then add a counter to that. That's for how long? How many times has it gone down?

Beth:

Okay.

Brandon:

Then you can add a timer to that. How long collectively has it gone down? So, if you look at a shift, this machine went down four times, and that resulted in 20 minutes of downtime. That is great information. Yes. Right? You can start doing all kinds of things with that as far as determining where do you need to start focusing your maintenance budgets and process and manpower, you know, it might be this thing goes down a hundred times, and that's where we're spending all of our time. But when you find out that it only being down a hundred times, a hundred times across the shift, it costs you three minutes. Whereas the one next to it was only down three times, and we never even pay attention to it because it only happens three times a shift.

Beth:

Yeah, that's a lot of difference.

Brandon:

But now you realize that cost you an hour, a cumulative hour of downtime. That's an expense. And so, you know, you can turn maintenance budgets around and refocus and say, well, you know, yeah, that thing's a pain because it keeps, it's the squeaky wheel. keeps happening, but it's costing us two minutes for the same dollars maintenance time, you know, from maintenance folks, I could get this guy, if I can get it down from being happening three times a day to one time a day, three times equals three hours, we can get down to one hour, that's a 66 % decrease of downtime, right? So huge, huge stuff. And so, how do we… we always have wanted this, know, manufacturing engineers, process engineers have all wanted this information.

The WeASSIST program gives you the ability to do that. You notice... you know, other than installing a stack light, which most your machines will already have stack lights

You aren't trying to talk to the CPU or the controller. You're not setting up an OPC connection or trying to do native drivers or trying to get RS485 connections or everything. It's wireless. So, that's what I love about this product - is now all of a sudden getting your plant to what we'll call a level one IoT capability is more than within the grasp.

Beth:

Yes, they've made it very simple to do and scalable.

Brandon:

Yeah, yep, that's right. So, let's go ahead and go to dashboard one. You have to click that wall. There you go, so we're getting to know our...

Beth:

Yeah, I'm getting there.

Brandon:

So, here's an example of a dashboard, and this is from the WERMA cloud. So, you can download an Overview of your of your plant and the machine layout and things of that nature and then you can see there's some different colors you know different nodes where they've they are different stack lights there that are showing up there And then on the right hand side you can you can look at that what I don't I can't see what these are I didn't make this dashboard but it's showing different types of indicators KPIs graphically ones in terms of time I don't know if that's showing a overall time or not but these are things that are built in these icons these dashboard things the circle graphs and then to the on the lower across the bottom we see three states of three processes. We see this, the real-time status of the stack lights, and then below it, you're starting to see some of those indicators. You know how long how many times has it been in the red state how many has it been in the yellow state the blue state those kind of things and again you can intelligently it doesn't just have to say blue you can say blue state means it was it was I don't know what it is on this dashboard but it could be starved for material, so waiting, right? Machines fine, don't need to call maintenance, you don't need to, you know, call the OEM, the manufacturer, and say your machine's got a problem, it's just nobody's putting parts in. A waiting status, the red, I've got a fault.  You know the green, I'm happy, and we're running along, we're making parts, and when you're making parts and manufacturing, you're making money. 

Beth:

There you go. 

Brandon:

And so, green’s for money, I guess. But so, you get to actually see these and so go ahead and kick down to dashboard number two. This is just another example of a dashboard, just some different things that you can see, real similar. We've got some bar charts. We've got the circular graph. We're seeing the overview of the plant on the left-hand side. And then we see the breakdowns of those primary projects or processes that whoever built this dashboard wanted to have in the forefront.

Beth:

Are you limited to the number of dashboards?

Brandon:

Nope. I mean, I guess sometimes more is just more. But, yeah. So hit the third one, the mobile overview. And so, this is a little bit more difficult to see, but you can see dashboards. It’s showing two dashboards there. The one off to the side is saying, I think what they're trying to get across to you is you can switch between more. You don't have to have a single dashboard. You can have multiple dashboards. You can navigate that. It is through a standard browser. And then on the mobile phone, you can see the same thing because it's through a standard browser, and so…

Beth:

Is it through their app or a browser?

Brandon:

It's through a browser. 

Beth:

Okay, okay. But you use the app to set it up?

Brandon:

There is the WeASSIST app as well, and so the app lets you do a few extra things, but you know, sometimes with your phone. It's according to who owns the phone, I guess they might not want an app to access to the store, you can still get it through the browser. 

Beth:

Nice. 

Brandon:

So, with the exception of one thing, go ahead and hit kick us back on the video.

Beth:

Just a moment. We're getting there. When we get there.

Brandon:

Get to the video, click play on that. So now, he's there showing what he's doing with his with his tablet, you can kind of see some things. So, now he's building the dashboard, you can see him dragging and dropping the stack lights where they belong, he's looking out at the plant to say I want it to match my point of view here, and then here we get into the software.

We'll just let that run as you can kind of see now. Now you're in the office. So, management is able to watch this thing and see what's going on. So, they're monitoring. We're talking a bit about monitoring, right?  So, we monitor the data. Perfect. That's great. You also have the ability to inflict change. 

Beth:

Oh. 

Brandon:

So inside, it's according to the makeup of your stack line assembly. When you turn on a light, you're turning on an output. Usually that output is controlled by something else. It could be the machine controller if it's installed on the machine. It could be that little box with the buttons on it that we looked at the beginning, where the operator is pushing a button. But something is… some kind of input is causing an output to, you know, a contact to close, or a switch to turn on, so to speak, and the light comes on. And so, you have to have something. So, we call that an output. And so based upon an input, we set an output that changes, turns on a light, maybe it's a red light, a green light, whatever you can with the WeASSIST system, the wireless connection, the RF connection can say to the box turn on an output so you can now say okay I see what's going on, I see that if I'm maintenance, I see that you called for maintenance.

Beth:

Okay

Brandon:

I can hit a button on my mobile app that says turn on this light to let them know we have received your request and we're on our way. 

Beth:

Nice. 

Brandon:

So, you can communicate that way through and that's where the app really comes into play. You can if there's a system, say so you got a fault on a machine. Now this is getting up there where the Elon world is, right? Full automation. So the machines are running, and you see that there's an issue and you can monitor it you see okay I understand what's going on when this this slide comes on, we've got this type of a fault I'm going hit the button that turns on an output that does go back to the PLC and tells it to reset the fault and try again. These are examples, right? So, you're just turning on an output. What you tie the output to is totally up to you, but those kind of things can be done through the WeASSIST app. It is…

It is the kickoff, the Level A IoT platform. And now, you know.

Beth:

Very nice. Perfect. That's a great wrap-up.

Brandon:

So, we also know a bit more about our video editing, you know, on Industrial Automation -  It Doesn't Have To…, we didn't really do a lot of video stuff, at least not through the software. So, we just had sound effects and that kind of thing. So, we're growing up a little bit, aren't we? 

Beth:

Yep. 

Brandon:

And so, of course, Beth is a fantastic producer. I look forward to what we do going forward.

Beth:

Absolutely, and these are going to be quarterly. 

Brandon:

Quarterly, yeah. 

Beth:

And if you want to get more information on the WeASSIST, reach out to us at 865-409-1555 or fill out the contact form on our website www.elliTek.com.

Brandon:

Yep, that's it. For me, Brandon Ellis, the owner of elliTek, and Beth, the marketing manager of the century, Elliott, you all know how.

Beth:

We'll see you next time.

Hey y'all, thanks for checking out today's episode of elliTek's Automation Know-How. We hope you enjoyed it. If so, make sure you give us a rating that's pretty doggone high. We certainly would appreciate it. And don't forget about our website. That's elliTek.com. That's E-L-L-I-T-E-K dot com. You can fill out our contact form there. And if you want to email us, that email is info@elliTek.com. And if you still like to pick up the phone and talk to a real live person, give us a call, 865-409-1555

We would love to hear from you.