PTC LiveWorx 2019: Touring the Show Floor and Beyond
At the PTC LiveWorx 2019 event in Boston, we were on site to capture the show floor exhibits, keynote addresses and breakout sessions. Here’s what we saw.
June 14, 2019
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Additive manufacturing represents one of the most promising digital transformation opportunities, according to PTC CEO Jim Heppelmann, “A whole factory can be reduced down to this single machine,” Heppelmann said. “Digital designs are following the digital thread, making their way into a printer like this EOS printer that we have here in our factory.”
Deloitte Digital demonstrated its smart factories capabilities with an augmented reality experience. The company’s show floor space was entirely devoted to by a giant floor mat that represented the floor of a rubber duckie factory. Using supplied tablets, attendees could walk through the virtual factory and tap into its smart factory capabilities, viewing stats on equipment effectiveness, uptime and more.
PTC customer Trillium Brewing demonstrated process manufacturing tech, explaining how the PTC ThingWorx and FactoryTalk software, along with Microsoft Azure Stack, controls the brewing process. The miniature brewery featured a simmering pot of wort, the infusion of barley and hops that would eventually become beer. An IoT-enabled heat exchanger enables the remote control of brew parameters. The demonstration relied on the use of programmable logic controllers, edge computers, pumps, temperature controllers, pressure monitors and equipment status monitors.
Oshkosh Defense’s JTLV was on the show floor at LiveWorx to demonstrate collaboration between PTC and Oshkosh around augmented reality and industrial IoT, highlighting their benefits for those who will be tasked with maintaining this equipment in the future. IoT enables sensor monitoring and AR visualization to help ease maintenance and management of these defense vehicles.
This 6215R John Deere tractor features a host of sensors, including support for radar, GPS and automatic tractor control. John Deere has been a longtime customer of PTC; in fact, PTC cites the tractor maker as its first customer, signing on in 1988.
The Polaris RZR “side-by-side” off-road vehicle was tapped for an augmented reality-based racing video game at the conference. When a user controlled the steering wheel, connected sensors and actuators within the vehicle moved and shook it, putting the user in the heart of the action. The demonstration integrated integrating PTC’s Creo, Windchill, ThingWorx, Vuforia and Arbortext.
French boat builder Groupe Beneteau showed how they used PLM and CAD to create a digital thread – a communication framework used in the manufacturing process, in which data flows from one step to another — for the development of their customized yachts. IoT is one component of a digital thread, along with PLM, CAD, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. A digital thread is targeted at managing product complexities and customization and increase productivity in a manufacturing setting.
On Wednesday afternoon, the last keynote of the day was presented by NFL CIO Michelle McKenna-Doyle. She laid out four key trends that she said are changing the way teams work together: location independence; new ways of measuring employees in real time; a new level of intense, large-scale collaboration; and microservices, which she said are a key mechanism that enable enterprises to collaborate. McKenna-Doyle pointed to the NFL’s distributed data centers that manage NFL games’ activities and communications remotely. The organization centralized its replay system a few years ago in its New York City office and can instantly review any play happening at one of the 31 stadiums that are part of the organization, with game officials able to communicate with the centralized replay center. She also discussed how the NFL is measuring athlete performance, such as speed and acceleration, through the use of sensors placed on the athletes’ shoulder pads. The NFL is rolling out additional sensors that will gather more information about players’ performance, as well as their health and safety.
Digital technologies tend to improve at an exponential rate, said XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis in a keynote address, illustrating his point with this slide showing the distribution of digital and analog photos taken annually.
At LiveWorx, Nutanix was talking up its new edge computing cloud service, dubbed Xi IoT. The service aims to eliminate complexity, accelerate the speed of deployment and help developers focus on the business logic that drives IoT applications and services. The company said the platform delivers local compute processing, machine inference and data services that facilitate real-time processing at the edge. Xi IoT Dat Pipelines can then move analyzed data to a customer’s public or private cloud for greater insight.
FogHorn Systems bills itself as an edge intelligence software developer, and the company was on hand to explain how its Lightning Edge Intelligence product aims to improve yield, reduce scrap and provide real-time conditional analytics to OT personnel for defect detection.
IoT World Today staff members Brian Buntz and Sue Troy had VIP access to the Wednesday evening MIX@6 afterparty and had a quick meet and greet with Game of Thrones cast members Richard Madden (Robb Stark) and Alfie Allen (Theon Greyjoy).
PTC’s relaxation lounge featured a pingpong table, vintage video game kiosks, comfy chairs and desk space, while on the other side of the show floor a giant relaxation pod provided some cover for those looking for a nap. In the middle of the exhibition space was a “tech shop” selling earbuds, charging cables, water bottles and PTC gear. Interspersed around the show floor were convenient little huts with a desk and seating for two, computer screens and outlets for charging.
PTC’s relaxation lounge featured a pingpong table, vintage video game kiosks, comfy chairs and desk space, while on the other side of the show floor a giant relaxation pod provided some cover for those looking for a nap. In the middle of the exhibition space was a “tech shop” selling earbuds, charging cables, water bottles and PTC gear. Interspersed around the show floor were convenient little huts with a desk and seating for two, computer screens and outlets for charging.
By Sue Troy and Brian Buntz
BOSTON – The PTC LiveWorx 2019 event took place this week, bringing together the company’s customers from around the globe, along with its technology partners and channel partners. The event was held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, a mammoth structure in the city’s Seaport District, just a few minutes’ walk from PTC’s new headquarters there. We spent time on the show floor, at the keynote addresses and in breakout sessions. Here are the highlights.
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