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BTEC tests CESMII's Smart Manufacturing platform
Published April 23, 2020
BTEC's Bioprocess Engineering team recently created a use-case scenario with CESMII partner Avid Solutions to test and demonstrate CESMII's SMIP (Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform). BTEC utilities, process equipment and control systems provided an opportune foundation for the project, focused around simulating failure on a critical system, the reverse-osmosis supply and recirculation skid.
This demonstration project was part of an initial collaboration between NC State and CESMII, the national institute on Smart Manufacturing. The collaboration involved the use, by several units on campus, of Smart Manufacturing tools from CESMII and its partners and led to the establishment of CESMII’s Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) at NC State, announced April 21.
The BTEC project, which began earlier this year, provided a manufacturing-like environment that facilitated testing and demonstration of CESMII's core work, the SMIP. BTEC’s hardware and software environment and process data served as the basis for the project. According to Ben Lyons, BTEC’s manager of Bioprocess Engineering, CESMII's platform made it easy to quickly connect various software components in the cloud, allowing integration of data streams that normally wouldn't communicate with each other. “We were able to use an edge-connected IoT (Internet of Things) device to monitor a critical pump in BTEC's basement and send that data to the SMIP in the cloud.” Data from BTEC's distributed control system was also sent to the SMIP; that enabled engineers to trigger a cascade of events using various third-party applications provided by CESMII partners, including Savigent and ThinkIQ.
BTEC’s demonstration project is a prime example of the type of innovation that the newly announced Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) is intended to achieve. The purpose of the SMIC is to link manufacturers, industrial technology vendors, systems integrators and equipment providers with academia, demonstrating and driving research and innovation that scales to all of U.S. manufacturing. Dr. Yuan-Shin Lee, professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, leads NC State’s SMIC and commented, “With this partnership, the NC State SMIC will develop a world-class Smart Manufacturing demonstration facility through partnerships with industry and regional and national laboratories for sustainable workforce development and educational training.”
CESMII is one of 14 national Manufacturing USA institutes sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Each institute in the network has a specialized focus to improve manufacturing competitiveness in the US, and CESMII’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of Smart Manufacturing through sensing, control, modeling, analytics and platform technologies. CESMII, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, has over $140 million in committed public/private investment through a consortium of partners from across industry, academia and non-profit organizations.