Digital transformation: double power

NTT Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cor­po­ra­tion (NTT Com) and Yoko­gawa Elec­tric Cor­po­ra­tion have con­trac­tu­al­ly agreed to devel­op and pro­vide a shared cloud ser­vice for oper­a­tional tech­nol­o­gy (OT). This ser­vice is intend­ed to dri­ve dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion (DX) in the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try by com­bin­ing the respec­tive strengths of Yoko­gawa and NTT Com in OT and IT.

The plan is to adapt pro­duc­tion con­trol sys­tems and man­u­fac­tur­ing con­trol sys­tems for use in cloud-based ser­vices and then devel­op them fur­ther by cre­at­ing a shared OT cloud service.

Background

Recent­ly, the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try has not only had to deal with ris­ing raw mate­r­i­al prices, sup­ply and demand fluc­tu­a­tions, and the devel­op­ment of high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts, but also has to respond quick­ly to changes in a diver­si­fy­ing busi­ness envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, man­u­fac­tur­ing plants and their con­trol sys­tems are built in on-premis­es envi­ron­ments where avail­abil­i­ty and robust­ness are para­mount to ensure trou­ble-free oper­a­tion. Thus, imme­di­ate sys­tem-relat­ed changes pose a major chal­lenge. These prob­lems can only be over­come by high­ly flex­i­ble sys­tem configuration.

Mov­ing sys­tems to the cloud has long been com­mon prac­tice in the IT sec­tor. The two com­pa­nies will apply this strat­e­gy to OT and deploy a shared OT cloud ser­vice to opti­mize man­u­fac­tur­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty and data utilization.

Adapting production control systems (PCS) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) for cloud services

Yoko­gawa already offers ser­vices such as Yoko­gawa Cloud that ana­lyze plant data in the cloud and stream­line main­te­nance oper­a­tions. Now, spe­cif­ic OT sys­tems are to be adapt­ed for use with NTT Com’s Smart Data Plat­form. This data plat­form pro­vides a one-stop solu­tion for all func­tions required to effec­tive­ly use enter­prise data and ensure a high­ly secure envi­ron­ment, and enables tasks such as sys­tem renew­al, func­tion expan­sion, and con­trol set­ting changes to be com­plet­ed quickly.

Develop and deploy a shared OT cloud service.

By adding OT IT orches­tra­tion capa­bil­i­ties to the cloud ser­vices for pro­duc­tion con­trol and man­u­fac­tur­ing exe­cu­tion sys­tems, the two com­pa­nies will devel­op and deploy a shared OT cloud ser­vice. This will not only enable rapid sys­tem upgrades and fea­ture enhance­ments as need­ed, but also seam­less data exchange between users and opti­miza­tion of over­all sup­ply chains at the manufacturer.

For exam­ple, by ana­lyz­ing data, man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­niques can be iden­ti­fied that can reduce car­bon diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions not only from indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies, but also across entire sup­ply chains.

Expanding the partner network

The two com­pa­nies are look­ing to attract more part­ners who can func­tion­al­ly extend the shared OT Cloud ser­vice to increase the num­ber of users. “This part­ner­ship lays the foun­da­tion for valu­able col­lab­o­ra­tion and enables the imple­men­ta­tion of the ‘sys­tem of sys­tems’ con­cept we are striv­ing for. We will pro­vide ser­vices that bring togeth­er the IT and OT of both com­pa­nies, allow­ing us to inte­grate numer­ous sys­tems and achieve over­all opti­miza­tion that con­tributes to solv­ing urgent social prob­lems.” Hitoshi Nara, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Yoko­gawa Elec­tric Corporation

“We will meet the strin­gent require­ments of cloud-based plant con­trol sys­tems in terms of real-time per­for­mance, avail­abil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty by lever­ag­ing our dis­trib­uted edge and cen­ter cloud sys­tems as well as our low-laten­cy net­works. Through col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two com­pa­nies, we will opti­mize the entire sup­ply chain in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and cre­ate an indus­tri­al mod­el that sup­ports the shift to a sus­tain­able society.”

- Toru Maruo­ka, Pres­i­dent and CEO

Future plans

Under this alliance, the two com­pa­nies will launch an exper­i­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2022 to demon­strate the migra­tion of pro­duc­tion con­trol and man­u­fac­tur­ing con­trol sys­tems to a cloud ser­vice. The plan is to launch the cloud ser­vice by the end of fis­cal 2022.