Last month, AVEVA hosted its third and most ambitious virtual customer conference. It included presentations from industry experts on topics such as IIoT, cloud, AI, and digital twin, in addition to technical sessions, interactive expo demos, and live networking. Overall, it was a tremendously successful event, showcasing how leading intelligent software solutions are reshaping engineering, operations, and performance.

Now the entire conference is available for viewing on-demand (even if you have yet to register!) With three days worth of content and 100+ industry panels, portfolio roadmaps, and product technology sessions, it can be difficult to know which recordings are worth revisiting. That’s why we asked a few of our experts here at ATR to rate and review a few of their favorite AVEVA World Digital sessions:

Digitize Lean Practices with AVEVA Discrete Lean Management | Wen Jian Lee, Portfolio Product Manager

Our rating: 85/100

AVEVA Product Manager Wen Jian Lee and his product team continue to deliver with their latest take on a classic topic in the discrete manufacturing universe. In this presentation, Lee pushes the boundaries of what can be accomplished by casting aside traditional paper-based, lean management systems, and takes the audience into a connected world of automated data collection, reporting, and display. Since it’s time on the market, critics in the appliance, automotive component, fabricated metal, plastics, and textile industries have given the AVEVA Discrete Lean Management solution glowing reviews. Utilizing an out-of-the-box solution with AVEVA Edge Technology, AVEVA DLM is an easy to use, powerful software solution to help the automation audience, everyone from operators to plant managers, understand the efficiency of their operations. Lee’s presentation, which is roughly 45 minutes long, guides us through multiple stages of automation and lean practices with an effective goal of improving a plant’s OEE.

His session begins with the backstory of why DLM is such a popular and powerful tool to utilize. Powered by AVEVA Edge, the product looks to displace and replace traditional methods of paper-based data collection and work order management. Utilizing over 250 built-in drivers, including an OPC UA server the Discrete Lean Management system can connect to any device on the plant floor. The use of HTML5 technology allows for a unique ability to display key production statistics, where traditional And-on screens are typically located. Lee shows us that the new way to utilize And-on screens is not only to show operator/ line performance but to also alert and notify operators and stakeholders of ongoing issues and to create an escalation path for the alarms. With an unlimited screen and tag system, Discrete Lean management really shows its scalability by allowing a plant to grow and also, to make their operators as aware of production performance as possible by using a built-in SMTP server to send out email and text notifications.

In the second part of the presentation, the product manager does a fantastic job of demonstrating the value of performance data collection by showing the audience some of the KPI’s which can be calculated. The ability to analyze from operator to machine to process to line to plant-based performance metrics with ease is a key feature. Again, using out of the box solutions displaying these statistics is easy to do with preconfigured templates to show managers metrics like OEE, OLE (Overall Labor Efficiency), MTBF, MTTR, and multiple production quality statistics like good part/ waste production.

As the presentation moves on, a newer topic of thought is introduced to the audience, in the form of work order management and instruction. Discrete Lean Management features the ability to save a central repository of documents to help operators and maintenance workers troubleshoot issues occurring on the line and uses a FTP file exchange system to connect to ERP systems for work order instruction and auditing. While not an unfamiliar plot topic with AVEVA, the product manager could have discussed how a new AVEVA Teamwork system could interact with the Discrete Lean Management solution (as ATR discusses in another review). Leaving the ending open for interpretation, Lee lets the audience explore where he might take the sequel and grow his Discrete Lean Management story. He lets the audience know that an Integration with AVEVA Insight looks to be a logical next step in using a cloud Historian to display a wider range of dashboards, performance statistics, and the ever popular, Asset Performance Management module. Also, he looks to expand his audience by integrating a material handling component to DLM.

Lee does an excellent job explaining the benefits of adopting AVEVA’s DLM solution. We’ve seen it with our customers here at ATR, like a global electronic component manufacturer in Lexington, Kentucky who noticed a 10% uptick in productivity and 70% faster response time to line issues. I give Discrete Lean Management a glowing review and one to Lee’s presentation as well.

— Eric Niehauser, Technical Sales

Getting the Most out of AVEVA Insight: Tips, Tricks, and What’s New | Darren Fraser, Product Director & Brendan Joyce, Product Manager

Our rating: 75/100

This presentation was a great update on new features available in InSight, which is obviously a huge investment area for AVEVA. It was only about 25 minutes long, plus questions, but gave a good overview for users who might just be getting started with InSight and also those of us who want to know more about its new capabilities like Guided Analytics and Asset Library.

Darren Fraser, the Operational Cloud Product Director at AVEVA, hosts this presentation. Following the intro music (is that the theme to Stanger Things?), Darren gives a broad introduction to InSight, then gets right into new product feature demo about 5 minutes in.

The first demo that Darren shows is how to take your ArchestA graphics (now rebranded as Industrial Graphics) and input those into an InSight web dashboard. This is really nice because you can take advantage of the graphics you have already created in InTouch and export them to InSight. This includes things like tanks with color changes based on value, etc. Darren goes through the integration between WindowMaker and InSight and how to create dashboards using the Industrial (ArchestrA) graphics.

Following this demo, Darren and Brendan Joyce describe the new features that have been added to InSight over the past year.  This includes an asset management module, data analysis improvements, historical alarms, and mobile enhancements. A lot of people are interested in how AVEVA is implementing AI technology for industrial automation users, so Darren starts explaining the AI features available in InSight at around the 13-minute mark. There are four different analytics segments available to cover a variety of user needs. The easy-to-follow demo shows you how to create anomaly detection for specific tags and assets within InSight.

Overall, I think there are a lot of great new features available in InSight and it is clear that AVEVA will continue to improve upon and enhance this area of its portfolio in the future. It is an excellent product and, in my opinion, a worthwhile investment.

— Kyle Murray, Sales and Marketing

How AVEVA Teamwork Utilizes Video and Collaboration to Reinforce Knowledge and Skills | Liz Spencer, TSC & Alvaro Martinez, Product Manager

Our rating: 100/100

AVEVA’s Liz Spencer and Alvaro Martinez give an excellent introduction to the new Teamwork solution in this presentation. They provide a “day-in-the-life” example of how an operator or supervisor would use Teamwork on the plant floor.

Teamwork is a cloud service that allows users within your organization to share information in a social media-like format to help break down silos of information and communication within the plant. Its goal is to connect workers with the tools they need to solve problems quickly, document solutions, and manage issues and skills. Teamwork helps drive continuous improvement by sharing images and videos to document problems, standardizing solutions, and making easily repeatable work instructions available to everyone who uses the system. The good news is that you can phase in the system for quick time to value, as it is a cloud service that requires no on-site infrastructure.

Overall, Teamwork seems like a promising new addition to the AVEVA portfolio. If you’re curious to learn more, I highly recommend watching the AVEVA World Digital presentation for a complete demo.

— Mark Naegel, Technical Sales

You can register to watch these sessions, as well as the rest of the AVEVA World Digital Conference, on-demand until the end of the month here. If you have any questions about the event or AVEVA’s software solutions, please feel free to contact us. We would love to help!