Speaker 1 0:00
Benson, you guys on the Opto side have been on manufacturing hub. You guys have been all over the internet. But if someone is here watching prove it coverage and may not know who Opto 22 is, can you give the audience a little bit of an overview of who Opto 22 is and what you're here to prove please?
Speaker 2 0:17
Yeah, sure. So I'll start with the first part about who Opto is, we are a manufacturer of industrial automation hardware and software. We've been doing it for 50 years. The company was founded by the CO inventor of the solid state relay, and I was 50 years ago. And all the progression we've made over the years has culminated in what we're offering here at the conference today. And we're talking about, of course, our groove platform. That's groov epic and groov Rio, and that's essentially the path we've taken. We're still primarily hardware and the software that runs on that hardware to make it easy to use and, of course, solve automation problems. And then we also have a rich ecosystem of technology partners we work with. Many of them are who are here today at Pruvit. And yeah, what are we trying to prove? Right?
Speaker 1 1:02
Or, I suppose, what did you prove? Because you had the first prove it session.
Speaker 2 1:06
It was, I was the first one. I had to break the ice, and following rocker Walker Reynolds wasn't very easy to do. No pressure. But yeah, so what we, we try to do is, if you have an understanding of the background of prove it, the idea was that they were going to put together a virtual factory, and this virtual factory essentially makes some Dorito bags and Frito Lay bags and whatnot. But this virtual factory has this interface to it, something that's referred to as the UNs, and there's that three letter acronym is being thrown all over the place at this conference. For those who don't know what that is. It's the unified name space, this notion of a real time snapshot of all of the variables within a business. And a lot of that, of course, comes from the operational side, or what we call OT and that's where we live. We live at the edge. Our basic premise is that we know how to take things from the physical world and convert that into a digital format that software can do something interesting with. So a lot of our products are based on input, output systems, IO modules, if you will, certainly controllers to perform real time PLC based control. But the most important thing are two things. Number one, how do we democratize that data. The problem we have today in a lot of the existing legacy equipment is that data gets trapped, whether it's in a PLC or some other type of system, and it's hard to extract. The second one is, and this has become an paramount importance lately, is cyber security. How do we protect those ot systems? Because we're hearing it all over the news, right? People are cracking into factories, are cracking into utility systems. And whether it's malware or just bringing systems down, you have to protect those systems, and you have to do it at a plant floor level. So that's our two primary things we're bringing here is, hey, let's get the data where it needs to be, so that fantastic software can do something interesting with that. That could be visualization, that could be analyzing the data. Could be simple storing the data or historizing that data. And that's not the business that we're in. We're in about we're all about aggregating that data, putting it in a format people understand other software applications can understand, if I
Speaker 3 3:19
can ask you, maybe to expand a little bit more on the architecture side, right? So you've mentioned, obviously you are the farmer solution, but ultimately, you have other partners that can live on the controller. Maybe, what do those layers look like? How would you get that data out of the UNs? Can you transform the data on the controllers that go into the cloud? What was the architecture? Yeah,
Speaker 2 3:37
indeed, our platform is designed. Let me take a step back for just a moment. Back in the 80s, we're the first ones to show it with a personal computer at an industrial trade show, because we were very big into the notion of PC based control, and this is largely in a market that was literally owned by PLCs, modicum PLCs and so on. And so we've always had this engineering philosophy of using widely available CPUs, memory, true, compute power at an OT level, and by virtue of that, we've always said that means that whenever we build something today, we want to make sure that it's open, extendable. You can do a lot of things that you might do with a PC, but let's be honest, nobody's going to really put a PC the way we know it on a plant floor, as much as they used to. Now it's all about embedded controllers and stuff with wide operating temperature ranges, agency approvals, things like that. So that's been our focus. And as a result, these new groove Epic Systems, I say that are new. They're been around for a while, are all built on industrial hardware that we develop ourselves. Our products are actually made in the USA. I think you guys have been there to the plant in Temecula, California. So we build everything, and it means we're very vertically integrated. We do the design, we do the chip layer, we do it all. And then, because that is essentially like a PC platform, it. Is Linux based. So our systems are based on what's called the Yocto build of Linux. That gives us the opportunity to partner with others who can bring their own piece of the value chain and run it at the edge. For example, we have a long partnership with inductive automation, and we worked with them very early to develop the ignition Edge product, this notion of being able to take a version of ignition and run it down on the edge, and so that takes us a long way towards providing ways to normalize the data, to historize the data, to visualize the data, and also provide a lot of connectivity options to capture even more data than just the IO signals or control signals that we're involved with. But the real push is, how do we take some of that capability and get it as close to the edge as possible where the source of truth lies? And by the way, you do that is available CPU, available memory, and put it in an industrial enclosure, not really enclosure, but in an industrial package that can live right where that source of data is yet still democratize it and also protect it from authorized access and so on.
Speaker 3 6:05
Ben, so maybe as a follow up, and I'd be curious if you're able to share some numbers, as far as talking with your customers, how many of them are using maybe the opt out with just the control team application, versus having that understanding the behavior. The reason why I ask is because we're not a conference that is looking to showcase and promote more data usage, and at least my conversations are such that there's still a lot of leaps on pre there's still a lot of need to automate. It's low on beat on the lower luck, the interest, the more data and showing will speak fully. So I'm curious me, what do your conversations at the customers look like? As far as the
Speaker 2 6:41
and actually, that's how we developed our content for this event. We, you know, talking to customers. How are they using these products, and what problems are they trying to solve? And it does come down into really two different camps. The first one is something that we're all familiar with, and that's the notion of brownfield assets. These are assets that are dark assets. Nobody knows what's going on. They probably have their own proprietary control systems. They probably are blocked off in some way. And in the case of today's event, what I decided to show was the utility systems for the virtual factory getting clean, reliable power and dry, compressed air to those machines, because if those machines don't have power and air, guess what, they don't make anything. So that first part of the focus was Brownfield, that notion of being able to connect to an existing asset, extract its data from it, and then exposing it or democratizing to other applications. The other side of that was we took a greenfield or new projects approach. And this is important, because what we found from our customers, and one of the things that we think we provide uniquely to the market, is the notion of being able to have a system that can do control and IO and HMI and data modeling and democratization of that data in a single, manageable, essentially container, not a container that I'll get to that, but in a package that allows them to quickly, easily get that stuff going and to be able to manage it at scale. Because today, the problem that we hear our customers talking about all the time is, yes, you could do this today with the products that are on the market, but largely what it means is you're grabbing a bunch of different components and having to stitch them together so you've got your control, then you've got your OPC server, and then you've got your HMI, and then maybe there's a gateway or a firewall before it gets onto upper level systems, whether it's on prem or in the cloud. What if we could collapse all of those different technologies into a single, manageable device. I sometimes use this, and I think I may have on your podcast previously, the flip phone versus smartphone analogy. We all love flip phones because they're really good at two things, making a phone call and sending an occasional text, and your traditional PLC is very good at control and IO signal handling. But once you start to get beyond that, and you want to do more things, and you start adding more components to make it happen, that's where things get complex. They get brittle. They're very difficult to manage, and they're largely unsecure. Getting back to that analogy, think about your smartphone today. It still makes a phone call, it still can certainly send a text, but do you carry a camera around with you much anymore, or a music player, or a video camera, or all the other things that now we rely on a single device to be able to tackle all these types of problems that we need to solve, whether it's staying in touch with our kids or seeing what's latest on the news or or watch a manufacturing hub podcast or listen to one, Right? So that's the idea is, how can we simplify that tech stack? And that's essentially what we've been able to do. Because on a Linux based platform, we've got a whole bunch of capabilities. Or at the end of the day, we're still at the heart of this thing, a PLC real time Linux extensions to make sure that is number, just like a phone, it's got to make a phone call. All. But what you can start doing around that to be able to again, democratize data, protect things, provide some local visualization. That's essentially what we did, both for brownfield and for Greenfield applications. I love that.
Speaker 1 10:14
I guess I want to talk a bit more about the tech stack, right? So Benson, most of my early experience with the groove platform was we've got legacy PLCs. The PLCs are working. We're not going to go touch those PLCs. We'll go put a groove epic, or a groove Rio, somewhere above it. We'll go collect the information from there, and then we'll go do all of the things that you just said, right? It allows us to make it more secure. It gives us more of the edge processing. It gives us all of those applications on the edge, or the edge above the edge, if you will. However, we would like to go say that I want to know is that still, when we're talking about uns, Are you still seeing lots of groups like, I imagine lots of brownfield groups are using it in that application, they are. Is that where you seeing most of the applications? Or, if not, I'd love to know more about some of the other applications you're
Speaker 2 11:01
seeing. No for the most part, we're still what we believe the world's best IO company. All of our IO modules are guaranteed for life, so people count on us for reliability, mission critical and made in the USA, but you still need to do so much more, and when you're trying to accomplish that again, with pieces and parts, it becomes pretty challenging. But to your point, we have had customers who take our, say, groove epic processor with no IO and use that. And then you might be saying, hang on, now, it's like an IPC. You could make a pretty good argument for that. In fact, Arlen Nipper himself is stated publicly, if you're one on IPC, you got to use a groove epic. I don't necessarily I love Arlen, and I'd love it for but we're not an IPC company. We provide a lot of different capabilities, and IPCs are great, but they're another thing that you got to manage. And in many cases, IPCs tend to cross into the next domain, the IT domain. Now you're dealing with operating system upgrades. You're making sure that you're configuring that system to do all the tasks you want it to do. So what we've tried to do with the groove epic and groov Rio platform is make that management easy. Really focused very deeply on an OT type person, but at the same time, and this is important, we'll give them the OT tooling so they can get their jobs done quickly from an OT perspective, but that device has got to be a first class citizen on an IT network too. How many times have any of your listeners called their IT department said, Hey, I need a static IP for this gizmo I'm going to put on your network. You know what you've done when you ask for that? You've shifted the responsibility for that device on their network to them, and they hate that, and that's why they a lot of people know t call it the Department of no and that's for a good reason. Part of what we tried to do is make sure that while we have all this easy ot tooling on these devices to do all the tasks we're talking about here, they have to be first class citizens on the IT network and get those kind of approvals that if I want to put this thing on the network, it knows how to manage it. They know where it is. They know it has a proper search. It has a firewall. All that stuff is built in. It does get used as an IPC. But, yeah, I
Speaker 3 13:14
do want to re emphasize that, speaking of that, it ot conflict on the cyber security side, my experience, and I would assume yours as well, has been that on the OT side, cyber security is a lot less on machine. But despite some of the issues we've seen recently, I still feel that a lot of the engineers are not as concerned as they probably should. So I agreed, and I personally had conversations at the VP level, on the IT side, who are pushing to bolster up cyber security, but usually it's either we put some firewalls or we're upgrading Windows 98 machines. That's the reality of many facilities. But sure is, how would you sell some of the features, maybe, of the Opto as cybersecurity capable device, or something that is a little bit goes beyond and some of the other Yeah.
Speaker 2 13:58
And so it starts with making sure that the technologies that are employed on this so called black box that T guys are like, Hey, we use these all the time, is making sure that we're embedding the technologies that make them again, that first class system on the IT side. And that's the key thing. And then the next part is, Okay, how's an OT guy going to be able to manage this? And we make the tools easy for them to do that. And you know, back to your question, if there's an executive or someone saying, Well, how do we find the right devices that kind of blend those two technologies together? You might first go to an IPC, which is great. Just know that you're going to need to manage that device. We just try to make it where it lands in both camps and tries. You can't please all people, but you can do a lot of things that makes it a lot easier for both sides to actually be seen from the same sheet of music. That's part of the problem we have, is that it's a language barrier. OT has a different set of requirements than it, but we have to work together if we're going to move forward.
Speaker 1 14:56
Absolutely, I would agree with that. Benson, as we were talking about what has been. Successful with you guys, especially when we talk about the Pruvit community, it seems like the groove line might have come out, I don't know, five years before it was really needed in the market, especially when you were talking about cybersecurity. For me, I feel like Opto was one of the first groups hardware or software, really, who was very cybersecurity, first cyber security conscious. I feel like most of the rest of the world in the vendor space has caught up a little bit to that point, maybe not as far as you guys are. Can you tell us a little bit about the journey? Have you just continued to find more and more people who resonate with a similar message that you guys have said? Because cyber security has become more important because edge computing, whether it's an IPC or a non IPC at the edge, becomes more important. Has that just continued to gain in popularity and demand? Yeah,
Speaker 2 15:48
no question. It all comes down to what problems you're solving, right? And so today's problems are different than yesterday's problems. Let's go back a little bit in history. We've always been trying to you mentioned we were a little ahead, and we're a lot ahead, however you want to put it, we've always been that way. In 1996 we sat down with three other companies in Microsoft because we wanted to figure out a way, how do we get this ot data out of these ot systems into IT applications. In this particular case, we were trying to get it into a Windows platform. So we developed something called Olay for process control, which we all know now is OPC, and that was way ahead of its time. And then just two years later, we came out with an Ethernet IO product, pure TCPIP. And when we launched that product, everybody in the market told us we were out of our minds. They said, We don't know what you guys are smoking down there in California, but there's no chance that Ethernet will ever make to the plant floor. And indeed, look what happened. Clearly. Were we pressing it in some degree? No, we just knew TCPIP was going to win the protocol wars. So we went all in, and we're doing the same kind of thing now. We're making sure that people are aware of the issues with not protecting your system, and how easy it can be to do that without a bunch of bolt on stuff. How do you make it innate? How do you make it cyber? Cyber security? But you have to be able to do that with and still be able to share the data. This is so critical, and I think we've discussed this before, but it's worth mentioning again. There's a concept in it called server and client, and those terms aren't used quite as much in OT, but in it, it's a big deal. Why? Because you have to protect a server. Because what does the server do? It listens. It listens to request. Some client connects to a server and asks it for data. That's a server. So all the IT guys are trying to protect servers. But guess what that PLC down on the plant floor, it's a server. I ask it for something, and it responds back. Now what if I'm not, you know, authorized to ask it for something that becomes a problem. So the idea is like, how can we start turning some of these devices in OT, into more clients, so they're collecting a lot of data, and then they're a client to a server. And that's a big part of this conference, is the use of technologies like MQTT. And the reason why is because MQTT allows me to be a client on the plant floor and produce my data that's consumed by others, and that means I'm going outbound from the device and not allowing traffic to come back in. I'm blocking that access. And that's what ot needs today. They need to be able to protect those systems down there for a whole bunch of reasons. Yes, you can put in VLANs, you can put in firewalls, you can do all of that stuff available and readily available on the market today. It's just a little more complicated. Why not built it? Build it right in and protect people out of the box. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 18:48
I do want to let our listeners know, Benson, you've been on I remember two early conversations that we had with you. There may have been or may there may or may not have been, another conversation that I'm not thinking of, off the top of my head, Vlad, because he does all the notes Well, 100% go put the earlier Benson conversations in. We had early within the first, I think, 50 episodes of manufacturing hub. We had you on doing a history, yeah, and you did a history of industrial automation. And you laid in a whole lot of super interesting success stories, like we've talked about here. But also some directions that Opto went and invested time and effort in that didn't win the protocol wars, or didn't win that particular thing. And for me, that was really interesting. And I love the fact that Opto pictures itself and positions itself as that forward looking company, knowing that we're going to have a bunch of major successes, but by being on the bleeding edge, we're also going to run into things that might not ever find that adoption, or might find that adoption much later. Now we're not have an example of that. Oh, okay, I was going to ask you have an example of that. But I'm also interested to know what you guys think that the next five or 10. Years is going to look like, yeah, so if you can share, or what parts of that are open and public ish to share? Yeah, that's
Speaker 2 20:06
that's safe. I won't say anything. I hopefully will get me in trouble. But we see, let's talk about that example really quick. We thought that there was going to be a real opportunity to share data more easily over cellular. Yeah. We have just recently put together a project in the early 2000s where we put 10,000 cell towers, monitoring cell towers, back to what's called a NOC, a network operations center. And we're like, oh, this is going to change everything. So we partnered with Nokia at the time, which was the largest handset manufacturer in the world, prior to Apple, kind of taking over, or Blackberry rim. And we thought this is going to change everything. We'll put Nokia radios essentially on IO and control systems, and the market wasn't ready. There was a whole bunch of reasons why it didn't work. We swung for the fences and we struck out. And that's okay. That's how we learn and move forward. But we always say, Okay, what's the next big thing for us? Today, it does come down to a couple of things. One of the things we just announced at this show is we're now adding containers to our groove epic and groov Rio system. So the reason why that's important is because it allows the proliferation of the right software tool for the right job at the edge, so you can choose what you want to do there, and we're protecting that, sandboxing it, but still putting on a platform that allows you to protect those systems but still democratize their data. So we think that's a pretty big deal. We're also seeing the availability of more compute power, more RAM and so on. And so we're very intrigued by and been working with some interesting applications that start to do some of that analysis to, I hate to use these terms, because they're so overused. Ai, ml, mostly, more on the ML side. How can we pre process this data to it and cleanse it and normalize it to a high degree at the edge, and reduce the latency between that and the system that can use this information? So that's a big step for us as well. So it's a lot of it is more processing power, more capabilities, and potentially even smaller packages. But and then another focus is trying to identify certain areas where manufacturers need some help. So we've, for example, we partnered with the state of Indiana and their economic economic development for it to put together a package for manufacturers, and it's great. The state says, Hey, we're going to give our manufacturers, small and medium sized manufacturers, dollars to get started with smart manufacturing in industry four. Oh, but here's the problem, every manufacturer is different. They all make something different. They make it a different way. They but what's the one common denominator that all manufacturers have to deal with one thing. They only know power Exactly. They all use power. So that's something we've been focused on a lot lately, is being able to get power information out of large loads, understand their health, understand how much energy they're using, so that we can strike out quick wins. And that's what the state of Indiana did they put together a starter kit that included Opto and some inductive automation software funded that gave it to these manufacturers so they could start their journey by digital transformation journey, but start with something that was very common now, could you go out and buy a bespoke Energy Monitoring System and do this? Yeah, sure. What next? How do you scale that? Yes, you don't you pivot, you do something. We're saying that there's a way to do this to be able to start off with something we can all get our arms around, save some costs, notch up some wins, and then use that same system, scale it up to start communicating with other parts in the plant. And that's what we're showing here at Pruvit. And you guys know me, I'd rather I don't want to tell people, I want to show them, and this is the right venue for that, absolutely.
Speaker 1 23:45
So we had Becca on Becca Gillespie, we had her on manufacturing hub. I think it was in within the first month that she had taken over as director of that program. And I think you and she did an ICC presentation. We did, yes, and so I think you and she did an ICC presentation. I'm very excited to go find some time later this year to get her back on 18 months into the journey. Sure, what does it look like? What sort of insights have you been able to find? Because I think her going and capturing the hundreds, or however, many of small and medium manufacturers actually being able to collect the data. I think that would be very interesting to look at to see what sort of insights she's gotten. And do they follow the lines of the large manufacturers that typically do have energy collection and energy programs,
Speaker 2 24:32
but those large corporations have teams of people they can throw at it, and their focus has been on small and medium sized manufacturers, and a lot of times, they may not have an IT department, and even much less an OT department, but they need to take those first steps. And so I think she's done a terrific job in putting this program together because she did something else which was unique. This isn't just about technology, whether it's from Opto or from inductive, it's about getting the right people in. In place, and so her program was able to create funding for system integrators and for training. In other words, she looked at the whole picture. This is not just a technology problem. This is a people problem too, and a processes problem. So how do we combine those? I thought she had a lot of foresight in putting that kind of the program together. So I was
Speaker 3 25:20
going to ask you about those roadblocks, because I think again, in our space, there's just not enough conversations about not just, we're all excited about tech right. Numbers move around. But ultimately, it is a challenge to bring this to a fantastic work and doesn't have the right. I want to see team in place the right, maybe knowledge set in place to support and build and I guess maybe to bring this, once again back to you, is, what are some of these roadblocks? Is it because they're lacking teams, because they're lacking commitment? Is it because the few seas are maybe not giving or like, what are some of the conversations you're having where they are presenting some interesting world blocks?
Speaker 2 25:54
Yeah, a lot of it, let's be honest. Whatever you decide to do, you're going to have to find a budget for it, right? And that means you're talking to somebody probably higher up in the chain. And then what's the very next question? Oh, you need this much money. What's the ROI? So those kind of things are real. Let's there's no way to sugar coat it. And so that's why we always continue to say, is, let's find a problem you're dealing with, and let's solve that at a small scale, and then we can branch out from there. We did the same thing at Opto, but we were looking, we're a California manufacturer, our electricity bill was through the roof. So what did we do? We focused first on, how can we start saving money and energy? And I don't mean to be coming back to energy a lot, but it's just a classic example, where if you can notch out a win, save some dollars, that may give you a little juice to go for the next thing and the next thing and next thing. But to your question about, what are those roadblocks, it's a lot of old thinking. The notion of Digital Strategy is still nest that's still relatively new, and I wouldn't say it's necessarily made its way all up to the upper echelons. Now there are some companies here. One of them is our customer. I can't mention his name. I can't even mention the industry is in but I'll tell you this, he came up with some really brilliant ideas about how to collect a lot of data from their machines, and thankfully chose Opto to help them do that. But ultimately, what happened is he showed that to his CEO, and his CEO is like, what do you need? You have an open checkbook. Let's go make this happen because, not because it was cool, not because it gave him new dashboards or anything. You know why? Because he has to compete with Chinese competitors, and he has with this digital transformation project that they're well involved in. They have what they believe as a distinct and strategic competitive advantage against their competitors because of the way that they've digitally transformed their business to be more efficient, more operationally ready, and to build new products at more scale. And so sometimes it does need to come from the CEO, because they set the tone. But you know, the roadblocks exist, and we know them, or just, I just watched a really cool talk with Emma Roloff, who talked about this idea about making sure people are involved in the process, that stuff is super critical. So every organization is going to be different. Everyone they have a different way approach this. It's just, how do you put enough arrows in your quiver to tackle all those roadblocks? And we're hoping that we can provide some of that, and certainly with our partners, help to notch some of those things off. And case studies, of course, helped. But getting back to case studies, I couldn't even mention all the companies that are using our products, because they believe the same way. We don't want to give up what's making it work for us, because our competitors will do it. But nonetheless, case studies always really help customers understand and see the vision of what can occur if you line everything up right and get those approvals and start again. Start knocking off wins. Start small, scale up, fail often.
Speaker 1 28:53
I love it. Benson, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us for the back towards the end, users and viewers at home, if they have one of the like 4000 takeaways we've talked about Opto so far, what is the one major takeaway that you want them to bring from Opto, from Pruvit,
Speaker 2 29:08
from Opto, is just that we're there to help we're here to help people solve problems, and if it's tying to old brownfield asset equipment, getting that data in so that we can start Understanding how to operate more efficiently, save costs, and sometimes it's just you wouldn't be you'd be surprised. If you start to expose some data, people will see that and say, Hey, I know what I can do with that and help improve processes. And that's the biggest thing. All of our support is free. All of our application assistance is free. All of our pricing is on our website. We're just here to help. And if you've got an idea and you're looking to get started on a project and you do want to start small, give us a shout. Let us see if we can help you with your application. If not, we'll steer you somewhere with somebody who can.
Speaker 1 29:51
Benson, that is fantastic. Thank you so much as always, for joining us. We look forward to seeing more of more of the Opto solutions here. I do want to say. Eight for our viewers at home, some of these, if you're not at the conference, some of the Pruvit sessions, such as the Opto will be available online. I don't know what the timeline of that is going to look like online. I think if you're the if you're part of the mastermind, that'll come out quicker. I think the rest of them will come out at some point, probably over the course of the next couple of months. If it is before this video goes live, we'll go ahead and link Benson and the Optos Pruvit session. If not, we'll go ahead and link the Pruvit website, and I'm sure eventually it will come out. But we do want to thank you all for continuing to watch the manufacturing hub coverage here at Pruvit. Stay tuned. We'll have more coverage of these sessions, of these conversations, like the one we've got here with Benson, and then beyond that, tune in watch Vlad Knight, one o'clock east coast or No, four o'clock East Coast time, one o'clock California, Pacific.
