Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1347119
April/May/June 2021 I 7 Delivering Data in the Age of Digitalization Businesses run on data. This data can take the form of sales leads that come from business development, marketing, and sales, which turn into pipeline data to provide visibility to future bookings and profitability. In the information age, this data primarily came from human inputs. More and more, this data is being auto- mated through inputs created at the source, whether those inputs are from order entry systems on order bookings or from operations teams that identify when an order has shipped and is ready for billing. In the digitalization age, business-critical data will be collected automatically and flow seamlessly to wherever it is needed (e.g., enterprise resource planning [ERP] systems, manu- facturing execution systems [MES], logistics systems). A new physical layer technology, called single-pair Ethernet (SPE), is now standardized through IEEE, IEC, and TIA to form a foundation for this next stage of digitalization. The way data is captured today often requires engineering intervention and human inputs. A task that is conceptually as simple as capturing a new piece of data from a system can be quite complex. In some cases, the data is already available and merely requires an engineer to reprogram a gateway to move the data (e.g., from the MES system to the ERP system). Often, the data requires some level of reprogramming and validation of an existing operation. Engineering teams faced with this task begin by defining what is needed from the customer. This task is especially important because of the skilled personnel needed to capture the data; they need to get it right the first time. Next, they need to wait for a system shutdown window or shut down the operation so they can access the system. Once they can shut down the system, they can access the programmable logic controller (PLC) and reprogram it to capture the required data. Sometimes, this also requires updating input/output (IO) or implementing new sensor inputs so that new data can be captured. These updates must be thoroughly tested and validated to ensure that the changes to the system have not created ill effects to the original operation. COVER ARTICLE By Mike Vermeer