Avik Ghosh, Senior Product Manager on the AWS Industrial IoT team, has published a seminal technical blog post explaining how industrial IoT (IIoT) technologies can revolutionize high-tech manufacturing. In this blog, he outlined how the Project Kuiper team turned to AWS IoT SiteWise, a managed service that helps collect, organize, and monitor industrial equipment data at scale. By leveraging IoT SiteWise’s capabilities, the Project Kuiper team was able to gain real-time visibility into their manufacturing operations, leading to substantial improvements in efficiency and cost savings.
Challenges in Visibility and Optimization
As the engineering team at Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low-Earth orbit satellite broadband network, scaled up production of high-tech components for their broadband satellites, they faced a critical challenge – gaining real-time visibility into their complex computer numerical control (CNC) machining process. Ghosh worked closely with the Project Kuiper team to implement a solution that would help them optimize their manufacturing operations.
Ghosh noted in his blog that prior to implementing the IoT SiteWise solution, the Project Kuiper team faced challenges in collecting and analyzing the data from their CNC machines used to fabricate satellite components. The team relied on these advanced CNC machines to produce intricate parts and components for their broadband satellites, including antenna reflectors, mounting brackets, and mechanical housings. These components required complex geometries and tight tolerances, making it critical to maintain consistent quality and optimize the manufacturing operations.
“It was crucial for us to collect and analyze manufacturing data in near real-time, as it enabled us to make rapid adjustments to the process and minimize machine downtime, defects, and waste,” Ghosh emphasized in the blog.
Harnessing the Power of AWS IoT SiteWise
To address these challenges, Ghosh and the Project Kuiper team implemented a solution that leveraged multiple AWS services, with AWS IoT SiteWise at its core. Ghosh explained in his blog that the AWS IoT SiteWise Edge software securely collected manufacturing data from the CNC machines and selectively forwarded the equipment data to AWS IoT SiteWise in the cloud.
AWS IoT SiteWise then created a virtual representation of the physical assets, such as the CNC machines, and organized the data in a hierarchical structure to provide context and easier interpretation. Ghosh noted that this contextualized data enabled the Project Kuiper team to “quickly search, locate, and analyze relevant information, empowering engineers, operators, and managers to make data-driven decisions.”
Achieving Transformative Gains
The implementation of the AWS IoT SiteWise-based solution has been a game-changer for Project Kuiper’s satellite manufacturing operations. The team has witnessed significant improvements in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), reduced unplanned downtime, and improved asset utilization.
As Ghosh highlighted in the blog, “By leveraging IoT SiteWise’s multi-tiered storage and data lifecycle management capabilities, we were able to optimize costs and ensure fast query performance for real-time monitoring and analysis, even as our manufacturing operations grew and data volumes increased.”
“As an engineering leader, I’m thrilled with the value our teams have gained from implementing AWS IoT SiteWise for near real-time manufacturing analytics,” said Paul Palcisco, Director of Production at Kuiper Production Operations, as quoted in the blog post. “The intuitive cloud dashboards assessing effectiveness, quality, output, and downtime rates have empowered data-driven decision-making across our facility.”
Ghosh’s innovative approach and technical expertise have been crucial in enabling Project Kuiper to detect and address quality issues in near real-time, leading to a reduction in scrap and rework, and substantial cost savings. Furthermore, the insights gained from historical data analysis have allowed the team to identify production bottlenecks and implement targeted process improvements, resulting in overall throughput improvements.
“We’re really excited to be part of Project Kuiper, and proud of the operational efficiency gains the team has achieved by adopting AWS IoT SiteWise, specifically for monitoring KPIs in near real-time across their assets,” said Michael MacKenzie, General Manager of Industrial IoT and Edge at AWS, as mentioned in the blog post. “With dynamic data collection and dashboards calculating operational equipment effectiveness (OEE), defect rates, cycle times, and overall throughput efficiency, Project Kuiper has gained greater visibility into their bottlenecks and how to resolve them.”
Innovative Features Driving Transformation
The success of Project Kuiper’s implementation of AWS IoT SiteWise can be attributed to several key innovations introduced by Ghosh and his team. These include:
The AWS IoT SiteWise Query API, which revolutionizes how industrial customers can efficiently query and retrieve asset data using a powerful SQL-like language. This empowers users across various roles to access the precise information needed for real-time decision-making and analysis.
The introduction of an AWS IoT SiteWise warm storage tier, a cost-effective and scalable solution for storing and accessing historical time-series data. By intelligently tiering data, this innovation optimizes storage costs while ensuring rapid retrieval of critical information, unlocking new possibilities for advanced analytics and data-driven insights.
The automated calculation of 15-minute aggregated asset property values within AWS IoT SiteWise, which enables real-time intelligence and allows organizations to detect patterns, identify anomalies, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented speed and accuracy.
The launch of three new batch data retrieval APIs – BatchGetAssetPropertyValue, BatchGetAssetPropertyValueHistory, and BatchGetAssetPropertyAggregates – which empower developers to extract valuable insights with unprecedented speed and precision for advanced analytics and predictive maintenance.
These innovations, as detailed in Ghosh’s blog post, have set new industry standards and empowered organizations like Project Kuiper to harness the full potential of their industrial data, gaining a competitive edge in their respective markets. Importantly, the architecture behind these solutions is designed to be rinse and repeatable, enabling American manufacturers to readily adopt these transformative capabilities.
In the context of recent American manufacturing-focused executive orders, Ghosh’s work on AWS IoT SiteWise has positioned this technology as a critical enabler for driving efficiency, quality, and innovation across US-based industrial operations. American companies are rapidly embracing this architecture to optimize their production processes and maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.
AWS Recognized as a Leader in Industrial IoT Platforms
The success of Avik Ghosh and the AWS IoT team’s innovations, including AWS IoT SiteWise and other industrial IoT services, have been recognized by industry analysts. In a recent report, Gartner named AWS as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global Industrial IoT Platforms.
According to the blog post, Gartner’s placement of AWS as a Leader “reflects our breadth and depth of industrial capabilities on which AWS Partners and customers can build applications to drive improvements in performance, productivity, and efficiency.” This recognition is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire AWS IoT team, including Ghosh’s contributions.
The blog highlights how AWS has innovated over the last five years to help industrial customers and partners unlock siloed data from equipment, machines, and legacy systems, facilitating digital transformation through IoT connectivity, edge computing, big data, and advanced analytics.
“We’re honored to be recognized by Gartner and believe it’s due to the progress we’ve made in this space,” said Michael MacKenzie, General Manager for AWS Industrial IoT & Edge. “We’re fortunate to be working with the leading automation providers, industrial systems integrators, independent software vendors, and industrial customers who help us solve these common edge-to-cloud industrial data management problems every day.”
AWS for Industrial customers and partners such as Siemens, Volkswagen Group, Carrier, TC Energy, Bosch, BP, GE, Toyota, Invista, and John Deere, are using AWS to gain access to a secure, reliable, and scalable industrial data foundation that has transformed their operations.
Transforming the Aerospace Industry
The success of Project Kuiper’s implementation of AWS IoT SiteWise demonstrates the transformative potential of smart manufacturing technologies in the aerospace industry. As Amazon continues to push the boundaries of satellite technology, innovative solutions like IoT SiteWise will play a crucial role in optimizing their production processes and delivering high-quality products.
“We’re really excited to be part of Project Kuiper, and proud of the operational efficiency gains the team has achieved by adopting AWS IoT SiteWise,” said MacKenzie, as quoted in the blog post. “With dynamic data collection and dashboards calculating key performance indicators, Project Kuiper has gained greater visibility into their bottlenecks and how to resolve them.”
For the Project Kuiper team, the journey to optimize satellite manufacturing has been a testament to the power of data-driven decision-making and the transformative impact of industrial IoT technologies. As the aerospace industry continues to evolve, solutions like AWS IoT SiteWise will undoubtedly play a central role in driving innovation, improving quality, and enhancing operational efficiency for years to come.
