Outcomes, Insights and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds: MQM Testbed
Beijing. It was not until few months later
when the testbed team went to the field that
they realized their initial plan to improve the
welding process was not possible. As
mentioned earlier, they came back to the IIC
to seek a member with the expertise to
assist them in the welding station. During a
quarterly testbed update, the MQM Testbed
team announced the challenge they were
facing and called for assistance. Olympus has
expertise in welding equipment. They
recommended the testbed team use
thermal imaging - an infrared camera on the
welding section. The testbed team went
back to the lab to try this recommendation.
They later found it was not feasible to
integrate this infrared camera with the
existing robots.
are plentiful opportunities for members to
jump in to offer guidance and possibly
resources to contribute to help moving these
testbeds and real-world implementations
forward.
These recommendations from Olympus and
FujiFilm triggered the testbed team to
rethink the design and decide where to
focus. They helped the team discover that
the quality control process was insufficient,
thus zeroing in on the element which
became the basis for their final solution. All
that was needed on the analytics side were
some modifications to support the new
quality control process.
IIoT projects typically involve adoption of a
wide range of technologies and practical
knowledge from different industries. The
brick wall felt by some in a project may not
be as hard to overcome for others who have
been there and learned from past
experiences. Furthermore, although the
initial solution offered may not always fit the
needs, the support and interests from fellow
IIC members can sometimes – as is true for
the MQM Testbed – help trigger a different
approach, a regrouping and pointing the
project in a better direction. The IIC
quarterly meetings are a great opportunity
to proactively connect with people and
expand a project’s resource pool.
Another IIC member, FujiFilm, offered a
suggestion based upon X-ray film. The
testbed team considered the X-ray film idea
and weighed the solution which required
significantly reconfiguring the welding
robots and the solution is designed for post
processing so it was not a right fit.
Although these recommendations were
eventually not incorporated into the testbed
design, they showed a great value of the IIC
which offers innovators a network of experts
with abundant knowledge and technologies
in the IoT space. Within this network, there
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