- Selling IIoT for OEMs, take zero. (claps)
Alright so this is actually, this question here
is a very common question that I get
from hardware and software manufacturers.
OEMs, original equipment manufacturers.
What is an OEM?
For the people who watch our channel
who know what OEMs are but there are also people who don't.
So an OEM is a person who makes a turnkey piece
of equipment or a turnkey piece of software.
So it is a product, they make turnkey products
that are RTD, ready to deploy for end users.
So an example of an OEM would be a company called Comexi.
They're a Spanish printing press manufacturer
so they sell you the printing press, big huge
multimillion dollar press, you install it in your facility,
they send out a technician, they run it off
and that machine, that original equipment manufacturer
has given you one turnkey piece of equipment
that handles a single operation inside your business.
Most plants have lots of lots of machines
and each of those machines were built
by an original equipment manufacturer.
We also have software OEMs.
It's not equipment manufacturers but we have
software OEMs who develop turnkey solutions
like ERP systems, MES systems and SKATA systems.
What we want to do is we want to talk about
what is the value proposition for OEMs
and why should they adopt industry 4.0 principles
when they build their equipment.
The answer to that is actually pretty simple.
Number one, the cost is low.
An OEM is going to ship a piece of equipment IIoT ready.
All we care about in the community
is that OEMs are using hardware and software
that supports IIoT protocols.
Things like DMP3, MQTT, etc., etc.
LWM2M etc.
The cost is low.
I mean if I'm an OEM and I'm selecting
a PLC manufacturer to handle the automation
for my piece of equipment that I'm gonna sell
to lots of different people, I have a choice.
I can choose to use PLCs don't support IIoT protocols.
And we care about when we talk about IIoT ready,
we also mean open architecture.
That is, just because you're using MQTT doesn't mean
that you're open.
Just because you support the MQTT protocol
doesn't mean you're open.
If I write my own custom payload.
If I write my own custom payload right here
in my MQTT transmission, when I'm publishing my topic
payload, if I create my own custom payload
that means that my broker's got to be able
to decipher the way that this data is structured
then that's not open.
That would be proprietary.
So this is a perfect example of Siemens and Alan Bradley.
They're not the only two, many manufacturers
have there own custom protocols
that they client and the server speak the same language
but they are not common languages in the open space.
What we care is that OEMs are shipping equipment
are IIoT ready using open architecture.
The value proposition number one is the cost is low.
If I choose a PLC that is IIoT ready,
it doesn't cost me any more than if I pick
a PLC that isn't IIoT ready.
It doesn't support IIoT.
So for example, we had Siemens in the office here
earlier this week and we pitched to Siemens
who is a OEM hardware manufacturer,
and we pitched to Siemens the value of IIoT.
They are further down the road than Alan Bradley
and Rockwell Automation is.
Siemens is supporting open IIoT protocols like MQTT.
They have a MQTT function block that you
can drop into an S7 1200, 1500 and it publishes open.
We just found that out this week.
We just got an example of it.
One of our engineers downloaded that function block.
We're testing it over there on our test bench right now.
That's spark plug b but open MQTT.
I like to call that flat MQTT.
Siemens PLCs starting with the S7 1200 line
which starts at like $400 and goes all the way up
to the big dogs, up to the 1500 up to the big dogs
supports open architecture.
They also have an edge of network PC
that is similar to the opto 22 groov epic
which we got a chance to see this week as well.
Siemens provides.
Which is an edge PC, PLC, HMI all rolled into one
and it runs Windows 10 IOT all in one unit.
And we're going to have one of those
in our office and we're going to test them here
in another month or so.
Anyway, I want to get back to the value
proposition for OEMs.
We were making the value proposition to Siemens this week
as why they should support IIoT.
They should ship their equipment IIoT ready.
So number one, the answer is the cost is low.
Number two, it's high value but it's value add.
You don't have to have IIoT be the core
of your platform.
You need to support IIoT so that your hardware
or your solution can scale with your customer's business.
That's number two.
And number three, you get to ship it
with the IIoT ready sticker.
That just looks pretty.
So you're gonna be able to ship your equipment
with the IIoT sticker on it.
And what that means is, is that all of the engaging
cutting edge engineers, developers, purchasing agents,
directors of technology for the end users
who are looking for IIoT and don't really understand
what it is, they get to see your sticker
and know that you're part of the ecosystem.
You're not against the ecosystem.
You're going to be able to order these IIoT ready stickers
from 4.0 Solutions.