Staying Ahead of the Competition with Industrial IoT
Manufacturing - Americas
Business Overview
Business Focus
ManufacturingBased in the United States
125-year-old iconic American manufacturing company with 68 plants across the US.
Business Case
While no stranger to innovative manufacturing techniques, including leveraging sensors to feed the plants programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and with experts proficient in Docker containerization, they were experiencing Docker scale issues.
Container Platforms
Docker
Customer Objectives
Company Background
This manufacturer was an early adopter of Docker containerization technology. It is also no stranger to innovative manufacturing techniques having deployed manufacturing sensors to feed the plants programmable logic controllers (PLCs) long before the industrial sector started talking about the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Industry 4 applications.
Even though they had a technology expert proficient at Docker containerization– they were experiencing Docker scale issues. Docker was so complex to use that even the one Linux expert who was proficient at using the command line Docker coding, was losing the productivity battle. He and the data science team were charted with the development and deployment of applications needed to keep high-speed manufacturing plants running by creating fail safe capabilities designed to isolate a plant failure to one small section taking it offline, while the rest of plant continues to operate. Scale issues arose because the applications are deployed many times per day, as he and the team would iterate computer code changes to keep the transformation project moving forward.
And the data scientists who supported this project were not at all proficient utilizing Docker and it’s complicated command line execution requirements, putting the project time line at risk.
Addressing the challenge
The application associated with this project, is deployed up to 40 times per day as infrastructure and data scientist experts iterate changes to eliminate all high-risk situations in the control system.
With 21 plants, the ability to deploy the same application updates and containers to all of the cameras in each plant all at the same time is paramount.
All of our facilities are considered on premises with no connectivity to the public cloud and each application is ”air-gapped” for security.
Quotes from the Team
"We have had tons of sensors connected to programmable logic controllers (PLCs) for decades. We have essentially used Portainer to turn dumb cameras into a smart IoT device."
"Portainer lowers the barriers to entry for container for our entire group. There isn’t a lot of container expertise out there and we aren’t a high-tech company so you won’t find a lot of expertise in house. Portainer is a huge thing for us to scale, create repeatability and ease of use."
“Portainer makes the efficiency producing technology of containers available to all of us technicians and the data scientists.”
"If my CFO came to me and told me I couldn’t have Portainer, I would tell him. ‘I use the Portainer web hooks capability to repull and restart these containers. At the scale we are at, it would take 2 people, both getting bored using command line code all day long if I didn’t have Portainer."
"The best thing is Portainer is an “out of the box” solution. Easy to deploy – made for Docker."
"With Portainer we can update a plant with the push of a button. It's a continuous integration and deployment capability."
Technical Implications
With Portainer, we have been able to turn dumb cameras into a smart IoT devices.
Portainer delivers deployment and updates of container based applications in a plant with the push of a button.
Portainer enables team and device security controls to ensure data and applications remain secure.
With Portainer, we are able to automate the manual tasks, commands, and registry requirements without a significant learning curve.
The remote connectivity features in Portainer ensure all applications and devices remain secure across IT and OT networks.
With Portainer, we are able to push and pull our applications with ease. This team is building a new application that will be deployed up to 40 times a day.
