MACH Controls’ Managed UNS | Edge Deployment at ProveIt! 2025

January 27, 2025

MACH Controls is a Bronze Sponsor for ProveIt! Conference 2025.

What follows is the Functional Specification for MACH Controls’ demonstration at the upcoming ProveIt! Conference, taking place February 18 - 20, 2025 at the Westin Galleria Conference Center in Dallas, TX.

Tickets to the conference can be purchased here.

What is ProveIt!?

ProveIt! is an industry-focused conference where vendors showcase solutions by integrating their hardware and software into a simulated manufacturing environment. Vendors connect their technology to a virtual factory, solving real-world challenges and demonstrating the value of their offerings in front of a live audience.

What are the Goals for the Conference?

The conference aims to create a collaborative environment where vendors can “prove” their solutions in action. By connecting to a Unified Namespace (UNS) and addressing common manufacturing challenges, vendors will showcase practical, innovative approaches that improve manufacturing processes for companies of all sizes.

What is Our Virtual Factory?

The ProveIt! virtual factory is modeled after a real-life flexible packaging manufacturer, simulating the data and operations infrastructure. Vendors will interact with the factory using data from SQL, MQTT, and OPC sources. The factory is divided into operational areas (e.g., Press → Lamination → Slit → Bag) to provide a realistic manufacturing environment for solution development.

Vendor Information

• Company Name: MACH Controls LLC
• Primary Contact: Brian Pribe

?

OVERVIEW

Due to the increasing complexity of developing and managing a Unified Namespace (UNS) architecture, MACH Controls has identified a significant need for a comprehensive service designed to deploy and manage UNS and edge devices tailored for small to mid-sized manufacturers. These manufacturers often face resource limitations and lack the technical expertise to implement such advanced architectures efficiently. Our goal is to enable these manufacturers to adopt and benefit from this approach by offering a scalable, open source infrastructure with options for enterprise features and custom integration services. This will empower manufacturers to remain competitive by leveraging modern digital solutions without the prohibitive costs or technical barriers associated with traditional proprietary systems. ? The expected outcome of our demo is to equip attendees with the foundational knowledge and practical ability to start connecting their infrastructure to their own Unified Namespace (UNS). ?

Our primary target demographic includes small manufacturers with the following characteristics:

● Annual revenue between $1-5M ?

● Operating 5-20 machines ?

● Employing 5-20 staff members ?

The demo will showcase how to connect up to five assets using a single edge device and one cloud-based UNS instance. We will leverage the United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) as the default UNS solution, with Portainer for managing both UNS and edge devices. During the demo, we will demonstrate how to connect and collect data from various sources including MQTT, OPC-UA, and IO-LINK, integrating this data seamlessly into UMH. We will further illustrate how this data can be used to build reliable data pipelines, create structured data schemas, and develop comprehensive dashboards, all through the UMH toolset. The demo will focus on typical manufacturing KPIs like Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), highlighting how rapidly these solutions can be implemented and provide value. ?

Our solution will integrate a variety of third-party tools, many of which are included in UMH and from sponsors at ProveIt! These include, but are not limited to HiveMQ, Redpanda, Benthos-UMH, TimescaleDB, Node-RED, Grafana, Tailscale, and Portainer. While the exact hardware selection is yet to be determined, we are considering options such as Onlogic, SeedStudio, Edatech, PLCnext, groovEPIC, Wago, MicroLogix, S7-1200, IFM IO-Blocks, and a range of sensors. ?

DATA REQUIREMENTS

To ensure the success of our demo aimed at small manufacturers starting their journey with UNS, we will be focusing on showcasing existing use cases within the UNS and demonstrating how they can be implemented using the United Manufacturing Hub (UMH). One key example is demonstrating Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). ?

For this demo, the following data requirements are essential:

1. Access to Edge Data Streams: We need access to EDGE namespaces via MQTT and/or OPC-UA to pull real-time and historical data from connected machines and devices. This will enable us to simulate data flow and demonstrate data ingestion within the UMH platform. ?

2. Database Access: Access to the underlying database and its schema is necessary for understanding and contextualizing data within the UMH solution. This will allow us to align the demo use cases with real-world scenarios, making them more relatable and impactful for attendees. ?

3. Expansion of Edge Nodes: To demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of the system, we would like to add additional EDGE nodes to the virtual factory setup. This will highlight the various methods and technologies that can be used to connect physical devices to the cloud-based UNS and visualize their data. ?

These data sources will be integral to showcasing how manufacturers can leverage UMH to collect, process, and analyze data effectively, emphasizing seamless integration and ease of use.

INTEGRATION

Our demo will highlight the integration and configuration processes within the United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) Management console, focusing on how data can be ingested, processed, and contextualized for small manufacturers. The key integration points are as follows: ?

1. Connection to Data Sources: Directly within the UMH Management console, we will establish connections to an MQTT broker and/or OPC-UA endpoints. This connection will facilitate real-time and historical data flow from various edge devices into the UMH environment, ensuring a comprehensive data intake process. ?

2. Data Processing and Consumption: We will define and configure a processor to consume targeted namespaces, with a particular emphasis on data streams from “Edge" devices. This processor will handle the transformation of raw data into a standardized format, enabling consistent and structured data processing.

3. Data Historization: Transformed data streams will be historized in TimescaleDB, a powerful time-series database. This step ensures that collected data is stored efficiently for long-term analysis and retrieval, making it ideal for historical data review and performance analysis. ?

4. Database Connection and Data Contextualization: We will establish connections to the factory database and utilize the existing data schema to add context to incoming data streams. This integration enables the enhancement of data with relevant attributes and metadata, supporting deeper analysis. Additional pivot points will be established for the historized data, based on the available information in the database tables, allowing for enriched queries and visualizations. ?

These integration points will demonstrate how manufacturers can connect and manage data from diverse sources, transform it for meaningful use, and leverage that data for continuous improvement in areas like OEE.

FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS

1. Connection and Data Ingestion:

• Ability to establish a connection to an MQTT broker for real-time data ingestion. ?
• Ability to connect to OPC-UA endpoints for gathering data from industrial devices.
• Support for configuring multiple data sources simultaneously for diversified data input.

?

2. Data Processing and Transformation:

• Define and set up processors to consume data from targeted namespaces (with a focus on “Edge” data). ?
• Transform raw data streams into a standardized schema suitable for further processing and analysis. ?
• Implement error-handling and data validation processes to ensure data integrity during transformation. ?

3. Data Historization:

• Store processed and standardized data into TimescaleDB for time-series analysis and historical record-keeping. ?
• Support for defining data retention policies and optimizing data storage for efficient retrieval.

?

4. Database Integration and Contextualization:

• Establish and maintain a connection with the database for real-time and historical data access. ?
• Use database schema information to add context and additional metadata to incoming data streams. ?
• Implement logic to create additional pivot points within the historized data to facilitate more complex queries.

5. Data Visualization and Reporting:

• Integrate with visualization tools like Grafana to create dashboards for data display. ?
• Build sample dashboards showcasing key metrics such as OEE ?
• Ensure dashboards can display real-time data and historical trends in a user-friendly manner. ?
• The dashboards should include multiple level views for different purposes in the business.
• Summarized “site” and “area” overviews as well as line level details focused on process efficiency focused information.

6. Edge Device Management:

• Ability to add, monitor, and manage instances within the solution environment. ?
• Support for configuring different types of edge devices, including PLCs, sensors, and IoT gateways. ?
• Ensure data collection from edge devices can be deployed, and modified directly through the UMH interface. ?

7. Scalability and Expandability:

• Support adding more edge nodes to demonstrate scalability in connecting additional devices.
• Maintain performance consistency when scaling the number of connected devices and data sources. ?

8. Real-time Data Monitoring:

• Provide a real-time data monitoring interface for observing the flow of data from ingestion to storage. ?
• Ensure the monitoring tool highlights data throughput, latency, and any transformation processes occurring.

?

9. Configuration Management:

• Allow users to configure connections, processors, and pipelines directly from the UMH Management console. ?
• Provide configuration access to tools within UMH for solving problems like Node-Red and Grafana. ?

10. Hardware Integration:

• Support multiple types of hardware such as Industrial PCs, Micro Computers, PLCs and sensors. ?
• Ensure the demo setup can adapt to various hardware configurations for future flexibility.

?

TESTING CHECKLIST

1. Configuration Management

• Save, load, and modify configurations without disruption. ?
• Simulate recovery from configuration errors. ?

2. Edge Device Management

• Verify adding, monitoring, and managing edge devices. ?
• Simulate device failures to test system resilience.

?

3. Data Connection & Ingestion

• Test connections to MQTT and OPC-UA for real-time data ingestion. ?
• Observe data streams and verify data consistency. ?

4. Database Integration

• Test database connections and schema access for contextualization. ?
• Ensure pivot points function correctly for advanced queries. ?

5. Data Processing & Transformation

• Validate processors for namespace consumption and schema transformation. ?
• Test with edge cases for data accuracy and error handling. ?

6. Data Historization & Retrieval

• Verify storage and retrieval of data in TimescaleDB. ?
• Check data retention policies and query performance. ?

7. Real-Time Monitoring

• Verify real-time data flow. ?
• Test alerting mechanisms for data anomalies. ?

8. Performance & Scalability

• Test with increased data sources and monitor resource usage. ?
• Ensure system stability under high load. ?

9. Visualization & Dashboards

• Create and validate dashboards for real-time and historical data. ?
• Test visualization components and data refresh rates. ?

10. User Access Control

• Test user access control to UMH toolsets and configuration. ?
• Simulate unauthorized access attempts for security validation. ?

11. User Experience

• Confirm that workflows and navigation in the UMH console are intuitive. ?
• Gather feedback from test users on usability.

?

TIMELINE & MILESTONES

Below is our timeline and milestones:

• Week 1: Analyze data from endpoints and define core features. ?
• Week 2: Infrastructure setup, initial connection configuration and testing. ?
• Week 3-4: Core features, Data Flow configuration, and database development ?
• Week 5-6: Core features, Visualizations ?
• Week 7-8: Review Core Features, Define and Develop Additional features ?
• Week 9-10: Development for Additional Features ?
• Week 11-14: Finalize and testing ?

PRESENTATION

At our booth, attendees will have the opportunity to:

• See Real-Time Device Connectivity: Experience how easy it is to connect to industrial devices through the United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) interface. ?
• Explore Data Flow Customization: Watch a live demonstration of setting up data flow components to build custom schemas for specific use cases. ?
• View Real-Time Dashboards: Witness data being collected and displayed in real-time dashboards, showcasing immediate insights into operational metrics. ?

Key Points of Our Solution:

• Fast Implementation: Our solution can connect to multiple machines and begin collecting data in under a day. ?
• Affordable for Starters: Designed with small manufacturers in mind, the pricing structure ensures that it’s accessible:
• One edge device (connecting up to 5 assets): $1,200-$1,600 ?
• One cloud instance of UMH: $60-$110/month ?

Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): For one year, the TCO is estimated at just $2000-$3000, making it highly competitive and budget-friendly for small operations. ?

Ease of Use: The solution is designed to be managed by 1-2 existing IT/engineering staff without the need for additional hires. ?

Scalability for Growth: As your manufacturing operation evolves and gains deeper insights, our solution is ready to scale. Expand with additional compute resources, integrate enterprise-grade features, and access custom integration services to meet the demands of a growing business.

At MACH Controls, we would like to thank you for accepting our participation for the first ProveIt! Conference. We look forward to working with you to drive much needed change in our industry.

MACH Controls looks forward to demonstrating how Managed UNS | Edge Deployment can empower smaller manufacturers to leverage modern Industry 4.0 technologies—quickly, affordably, and with minimal overhead—at ProveIt! Conference 2025. We’ll see you in Dallas!