Intel’s Malaysian facility pilot site for IoT pact with Mitsubishi Electric

• Companies to collaborate to create IoT-driven next-gen factory automation systems
• Pilot programme at Malaysian manufacturing demonstrating the benefits

INTEL Corp and Mitsubishi Electric Corp have announced a new collaboration to develop next-generation factory automation (FA) systems with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and a pilot programme at Intel’s backend manufacturing facility in Malaysia.

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The pilot demonstrates the benefits of IoT in a factory setting with a focus on delivering productivity enhancement through innovative functions, such as predictive failure, Intel said in a statement.
 
The pilot combined Intel’s expertise developing solutions for IoT and Mitsubishi Electric’s ‘e-F@ctory’ automation capabilities. Intel said it realised savings of US$9 million over the course of the pilot.
 
“The data mining and analytics pilots done in Malaysia have demonstrated great value and benefits for Intel manufacturing using Intel-based IoT products and technology,” said Robin Martin (pic), vice president and general manager of Intel’s Assembly and Test Group.
 
“Through this collaboration and pilot with Mitsubishi Electric, we will bring the know-how, assets and technology of both companies to develop next-generation factory automation systems with predictive analytic capabilities.
 
“This will allow other companies to reap the benefits of the Internet of Things for factory operations,” he added.
 
The pilot

As an initial collaboration, Intel and Mitsubishi Electric implemented the IoT and big data solution at Intel’s backend manufacturing facility in Malaysia.
 
Using an Intel Atom processor-based IoT gateway called the C Controller from Mitsubishi Electric’s iQ-Platform, Intel was able to securely gather and aggregate data for the analytics server.
 
Data was then processed using Revolution R Enterprise software from Revolution Analytics, an analytics software solution that uses the open source R statistics language, which was hosted on Cloudera Enterprise.
 
The solution has improved equipment component uptime, increased yield and productivity by minimising misclassification of good units as bad, enabled predictive maintenance, and reduced component failures, Intel claimed.
 
Initial results include savings of US$9 million through cost avoidance and improved decision making, the company added.
 
“The collaboration between Mitsubishi Electric and Intel on this IoT project has enabled field data from semiconductor manufacturing lines to be collected and analysed to improve operational performance, yet also contribute energy savings for a more sustainable society,” said Masayuki Yamamoto, group senior vice president, Factory Automation Systems, Mitsubishi Electric.
 
“We believe that other manufacturers can benefit from this joint Intel-Mitsubishi Electric solution, which combines big data analysis, optimised data capture and processing, to deliver improved performance and optimised maintenance,” he added.
 
The commercialisation date for the product is 2015, and the companies will show a live demonstration of the solution in Intel’s booth at the IoT Japan 2014 tradeshow, which will be held Oct 15-17 at Tokyo Big Sight in Japan.
 
To download a white paper on the pilot programme, click here.
 
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