Monat: März 2019

Maximize existing vision systems in quality assurance with Cognitive AI

Quality assurance matters to manufacturers. The reputation and bottom line of a company can be adversely affected if defective products are released. If a defect is not detected, and the flawed product is not removed early in the production process, the damage can run in the hundreds of dollars per unit. To mitigate this, many manufacturers install cameras to monitor their products as they move along the production line. But the data may not always be useful. For example, cameras alone often struggle with identifying defects at high volume of images moving at high speed. Now, a solution provider has developed a way to integrate such existing systems into quality assurance management. Mariner, with its Spyglass solution, uses AI from Azure to achieve visibility over the entire line, and to prevent product defects before they become a problem.

Quality assurance expenses

Quality assurance (QA) management in manufacturing is time-consuming and expensive, but critical. The effects of poor quality are substantial, as they result in:

Re-work costs
Production inefficiencies
Wasted materials
Expensive and embarrassing recalls 

And worst of all, dissatisfied customers that demand returns. 

Multiple variables across multiple facilities

Too many variables make product defect analysis and prediction difficult. Manufacturers need to perform a root cause analysis across a manufacturing process that has complex variables. They want to determine which combinations of variables create high-quality products versus those that create inferior products. But to achieve this precision, the manufacturer needs to aggregate data across multiple systems to return a comprehensive view.

Legacy vision systems lack the precision of AI-based defect detection systems. Manufacturing processes can be incredibly complex, and older vision systems are often unable to consistently and accurately identify small flaws that may have a large impact on customer satisfaction. Also, false positives can bog down production schedules.

Additionally, the inability to aggregate data from multiple production lines or factories to determine the cause of variations in quality across multiple sites prevents a holistic view of operational efficiency.

Integrating legacy systems and AI on Azure

Spyglass Visual Inspection, powered by Microsoft Azure is an easily implemented, rapid time-to-value QA solution that can reduce costs associated with product defects and increase customer satisfaction. Manufacturers work with images from any vision system so companies who already have systems in place can leverage them for additional return-on-investment (ROI).

By using cameras and other devices already in use on the production floor, the solution takes a lean approach to implementing new and emerging technologies like IoT, Cognitive AI, and computer vision. This ensures that manufacturers control costs and achieve value at every stage of production.

The figure above outlines the architecture of the solution. Data from existing systems is placed at the front. Edge computing provides on-premises processing. The data moves to storage on Azure, where it is further processed. AI can then be applied, and the results viewed using Power BI for insights into the system.

Benefits

Spyglass Visual Inspection harnesses the power of AI, IoT, and machine vision. The result is that manufacturers minimize defects and reduce costs through advanced analytics. For the manufacturer, the benefits that matter are:

Rapid ROI: Easy implementation and ramp-up enables immediate process improvements and a rapid return on your investment.
Greater visibility: Predictive analytics and root cause analysis drive quality improvements across multiple lines or sites.
Leverages existing vision systems: Extracts more value from existing industrial cameras and devices by augmenting them with AI-driven real-time insights.

Azure services

Spyglass Visual Inspection is powered by Microsoft Azure. It leverages the following Azure services:

Microsoft Deep Learning Virtual Machine, A neural network extracts rich information from images to identify defects.
Azure IoT Edge ingests images from industrial cameras on the production line and runs cloud AI algorithms locally.
Azure IoT Hub receives images, meta data from images, and results from the defect detection analysis on the Edge.
Azure Stream Analytics enables users to create dashboards that offer deep insights into the types and causes of defects that are occurring across a massive number of variables.
Azure Data Lake Storage/Blob Storage stores the data. Because heterogeneous data from multiple streams can be stored, additional data types can be added to image-based analysis.
Azure SQL Database is used to store the business rules that define what a good or bad product is and what alerts should be generated in the analytics.
Azure Functions/Service Bus generates rules that trigger alerts so you can capture the most meaningful data for business users.
Power BI provides interactive dashboards that make data easy to access and understand, so users can make analytics-driven decisions.
Power Apps creates additional applications for manufacturers to act on the data and insights they have received.

Recommended next steps

Go to the marketplace listing for Spyglass and select Contact me.
Quelle: Azure

Microsoft Azure portal March 2019 update

This month’s updates include an improved “All services” view, Virtual Network Gateway overview updates, an improved DNS Zone and Load Balancer creation experience, Management Group integration into Activity Log, redesigned overview screens for certain services within Azure DB, an improved creation experience for Azure SQL Database, multiple changes to the Security Center, and more updates to Intune.

Sign in to the Azure portal now and see for yourself everything that’s new. Download the Azure mobile app to stay connected to your Azure resources anytime, anywhere.

Here’s the list of March updates to the Azure portal:

Shell

Improved “All services” view

IaaS

Virtual network gateway overview updates
New full-screen DNS zone and Load Balancer create blades

Management experiences

Management Group integration into Activity Log

SQL

Redesigned overview blade for Azure Database for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB services
Improved creation experience for Azure SQL Database

Azure Security Center

Secure score added as a dashboard KPI
New regulatory compliance dashboard
Updated security policies
Updated security recommendations

Other

Updates to Microsoft Intune

Shell

Improved “All services” view

We have improved the “All services” view, the view that shows all available services and resources in Azure:

The entire screen’s real estate is now utilized to show more services.
A category index has been added at the left to help navigate the Azure offering.

IaaS

Virtual network gateway overview updates

We've made significant updates to the overview page for virtual network gateways. We've added shortcut tiles in the center of the page to make it easier to find troubleshooting tools, and we've added a tile that brings up documentation so you can quickly learn more about your resource. We've also added metric charts so you can see at a glance what the tunnel ingress and egress are for your gateway.

Go to any virtual network gateway resource to try out the changes.

Improved creation experience for DNS Zones and Load Balancer

We are continuing our efforts to bring improved and consistent instance creation experiences for our top-level resources. As part of that effort, we’ve just updated DNS Zones and Load Balancer. This updated flow eliminates horizontal scrolling during the creation workflow and follows the same UI patterns that we use in other popular services like Virtual Machine, Storage, Cosmos DB, and Azure Kubernetes Service, resulting in easier to learn and better customer experiences.

Bring up either the DNS zone or Load Balancer resource in the Azure portal
Select Add to launch the new create experience

Management experiences

Management Group integration into Activity Log

Azure Management Groups provide a level of scope above subscriptions and is being adopted across the Azure Portal.  Users had been asking to view Management Groups events in the Activity Log, and now, integration of Management Group events and filtering into the Activity Logs allows users to audit their Management Groups.  An authorized user of a Management Group can go to the Activity Log and see all actions that have happened on a Management Group such as create, edit, delete, and parent change. In addition, you can now audit Policy Assignments on Management Groups.

If you have access to Management Groups in your current tenant, simply navigate to the Activity Log.
Select what Management Group you want to filter by using the first pill on the left.

SQL

Redesigned overview blades for Azure Database for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB services

We have redesigned the overview blade for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB, which provides an at-a-glance understanding of the status of your server. It is also aligned with the overview design of Azure SQL Database, Elastic Pools, Managed Instance, and Data Warehouse. In the overview, you can now see the resource usage over the last hour, common tasks, features available, and whether the features have been configured. Clicking on any of these tiles in the overview takes you to the full details and settings.

Select All Services
Search and select either Azure Database for MySQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Azure Database for MariaDB
Select any server from the list
Observe the overview blade

Improved creation experience for Azure SQL Database

We are continuing our efforts to bring improved and consistent creation experiences for our top-level resources. As part of that effort, we’ve just updated the SQL database create workflow. This updated flow eliminates horizontal scrolling during the creation workflow and follows the same UI patterns that we use in other popular services like VM, Storage, Cosmos DB and AKS, resulting in easier to learn and better customer experiences.

Azure Security Center

Secure score as a dashboard KPI

Secure score is now the main compliance KPI in the Azure Security Center dashboard, replacing the previous percentage-based compliance metric.

New regulatory compliance dashboard

The new Azure Security Center regulatory compliance dashboard helps streamline the process for meeting regulatory compliance requirements by providing insights into your compliance posture. The information provided is based on continuous assessments of your Azure environment.

Updated security policies

We are updating Azure Security Center policies to use Azure Policy. You will be migrated automatically, no action is required by you. For more information see our documentation, “Working with security policies.”

Updated security recommendations

Azure App Service security recommendations have been improved to provide greater accuracy and environment compatibility. For more information see out documentation, “Protecting your machines and applications in Azure Security Center.”

Other

Updates to Microsoft Intune

The Microsoft Intune team has made updates to Microsoft Intune. You can find them on the What's new in Microsoft Intune page.

Did you know?

We now have several new videos in the recently launched Azure portal “how to” video series!  This weekly series highlights specific aspects of the portal so you can be more efficient and productive while deploying your cloud workloads from the portal. Recent videos include a demonstration of how to create, share, and use dashboards, how to manage virtual machines while on the go using the Azure mobile app, and how to configure a virtual machine with the Azure portal. Keep checking in to our playlist on YouTube for a new video each week.

Next steps

The Azure portal’s large team of engineers always wants to hear from you, so please keep providing us with your feedback in the comments section below or on Twitter @AzurePortal.

Don’t forget to sign in the Azure portal and download the Azure mobile app today to see everything that’s new. See you next month!
Quelle: Azure

IoT in Action: Thriving partner ecosystem key to transformation

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an ongoing journey. Three years ago, when I entered this business, the world of IoT was in its infancy. Traditional industry technology adopters understood the importance of innovation and implemented isolated solutions to address discrete business issues such as inventory management, loss prevention, logistics management, and other such processes that could be automated.

Digital transformation requires that these solutions be connected so that the data can be collected and analyzed more effectively across systems to drive exponential improvements in operations, profitability, and customer and employee loyalty. The advent of sensors and analytics at the edge plus advancements in cloud platforms and data analytics is enabling this. Systems and services are now connected to provide more holistic solutions that deliver value through operational or profitability improvements and in many cases, through new revenue streams.

The creation of these solutions typically requires an ecosystem of partners. This is where Microsoft provides a distinct advantage, through our partner-plus-platform-approach, that is driving change in IoT technology adoption. Microsoft has committed $5 billion in IoT-focused investments to grow and support our partner ecosystem–specifically through unrelenting R&D innovation in critical areas, like security, new development tools and intelligent services, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies. Our goal is to create trusted, connected solutions that improve business and customer experiences as well as the daily lives of people all over the world.

Transformation is about reducing complexity and developing new ways of doing business

We have some excellent examples of partners who have developed business applications that leverage advanced analytics to deliver intelligent action executed on the Microsoft platform.

The retail industry is not new to technology. However, with the advancement of digital technology, customer expectations have evolved rapidly, which is impacting nearly every aspect of how retailers operate, including how they engage customers and handle their products. There is a growing need to increase connectivity across solutions, such as digital signage, interactive kiosks, smart PoS systems, and omni-channel and other key systems, that typically consist of a range of platforms and applications from multiple vendors.

The meldCX platform, powered by Microsoft Azure, makes it simpler and more cost-effective for retailers to develop, deploy, and manage the applications and IoT solutions for these connected devices. meldCX, a partner headquartered in Australia with operations in key global markets including USA, EU, and Asia, provides a single, integrated, and powerful dashboard that enables real-time data analysis as well as device and application control, empowering the retailer to focus on the job of delivering the best customer experience. Leveraging the meldCX solution, retailers and retail suppliers can improve the customer experience, significantly reduce loss prevention challenges, and enable unstaffed retail stores to become a reality.

Importance of the partner ecosystem

Microsoft is committed to the success of our partners, and this is manifested in several ways. First, we continue to build, support, and engage our rich ecosystem of partners, which connects partners with complementary capabilities to accelerate solution development and delivery for customers. Partners are connected to opportunities that they may not have otherwise been part of.

Second, we have established a core group of solution aggregator partners that have the resources, expertise, and service offerings needed to deliver holistic, end-to-end solutions for customers, thereby simplifying the procurement process.

Third, we have built a set of solution accelerators. These first-party, open-source, and preconfigured solutions are based on a common framework and address specific IoT use cases (horizontal and vertical-based). Partners can leverage these accelerators as a starting point to fast-track solution development and speed time to market. Accelerators also help them to minimize risk, reduce development costs, and focus on unique value differentiation.

Microsoft partners are also creating third-party, open-source solution accelerators, building platforms that can be used by other partners and customers to speed their solution development and time to value. WillowTwin™ epitomizes this approach.

Based on the Azure Digital Twin platform, Willow is empowering people and organizations to connect with the built world in a whole new way. Willow has created a solution that brings together data from multiple sources, including static, historical, IOT devices, and live operating data, to create actionable insights designed to transform the operation and experience of smart buildings and infrastructure networks.

Developers and owners can now make decisions around how their company is addressing energy efficiency, spatial utilization, occupant experience, and the regulatory compliance of buildings and infrastructure networks. WillowTwin goes beyond connecting and managing IoT devices. The data, managed in an open protocol software platform, is capable of modelling the relationship and interactions between people, places, and devices. The WillowTwin solution has been implemented across a range of customers including Thyssenkrupp Elevator division to optimize building usage and management.

Together with our partners, Microsoft delivers solutions that genuinely transform our customers' business.

Achieving successful transformation

Real business model transformation must be a planned outcome. Directly addressing operational efficiencies or the bottom line is not enough. In a world where people are always connected, expectations have shifted. We expect a value/information exchange, and organizations must be prepared to rise to those expectations. Organizations that reimagine their approach and transform the way their employees, customers, and constituents interact with and use their services have the highest chance of success in the digital transformation race. IoT is a great place to start.

To learn more, register for Microsoft IoT in Action event in Sydney on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. This global in-person event provides a forum for partners and customers to meet and share their experiences and to hear first-hand from Microsoft how we are delivering digital transformation solutions. I hope to meet you there. Please also visit our event series website for an upcoming event in a city near you.
Quelle: Azure