PTC/ USER Community Networking

Reduced sensor and communication costs makes it easier than ever to monitor devices in your operation or at customer sites. Advances in Machine Learning and Anomaly Detection make your monitoring more valuable – learning normal device patterns automatically for every sensor and detecting anomalies in real time. Find out how to get the most out of real-time anomaly detection using ThingWatcher, an upcoming ThingWorx Analytics product. This session covered how anomaly detection works, when to best use it and how to install and operate ThingWatcher as part of your IoT solution.

Developing software for IoT comes with its own set of challenges. Security, privacy, and unified standards are a few key issues.  In addition, each IoT product is comprised of at least three separate application components: the software embedded in the device, the backend service, and the mobile application for the end user’s controls. Each component is developed by a different team, using different technologies and practices, and deployed to a different stack/target – this makes the integration of these separate pipelines and the coordination of software updates for IoT is more problematic. How do you coordinate the diverse moving parts that must come together when developing an IoT product or updating each of its components? At this session, the presenter  addressed some of the challenges and shared some tips and best practices used by IoT developers to streamline and accelerate their product design, development, test and manufacturing.

Milton Keynes is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK and a great economic success story.However, the challenge of supporting sustainable growth without exceeding the capacity of the infrastructure is a major one. MK:Smart is a large collaborative initiative to leverage IoT and innovative solutions to support economic growth in Milton Keynes. Central to the project is the creation of a state-of-the-art ‘MK Data Hub’ which supports the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data relevant to city systems from a variety of data sources. These include data about energy and water consumption, transport data, data acquired through satellite technology, sensor networks, social and economic datasets, and crowd-sourced data from social media or specialized apps. The MK Data Hub enables a data-centric approach to open innovation and provides a platform that can be used to create and deliver apps and services to address the challenges of an expanding city. The MK Data Hub not only e

Quick! What are the chief security challenges involving IoT? Good chance your answer is something like “broad and diverse attack surface” or “potential for damage.” Good answers but one under evaluated area is the lack of humans as part of the solution. Explore some of the new challenges with IoT and potential mitigations associated with device lifespan, scale, ownership and trust. The presenter leveraged his broad experience in IoT security distilling the critical challenges and lessons learned for existing and next generation IoT implementations. This session helped attendees be more effective at evaluating IoT solutions from a security perspective. Points covered include:: • Lifespan: While most IT assets have five-years or less, how do we deal with devices that are deployed for a decade or more? How do we apply patches and policy to a diverse set of devices? Can devices apply new encryption algorithms or key lengths?  • Scale: Any solution that involves “admin approval” fails

STERIS Corporation, a global $3.35B company servicing the healthcare, life sciences and other industries, has multiple lines of business, including the manufacture and servicing of capital medical sterilization equipment installed in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and research laboratories. STERIS has embarked on an IoT project, using PTC’s ThingWorx platform, to send cycle and alarm information back to a central office, and to dispatch field service technicians to proactively service equipment. The presenters discussed: - Advanced implementation of the ThingWorx platform - How IoT enables product innovation - Real-time analysis of collected data - How Big Data and analytics allows you to extract value from IoT - Value of deploying an IoT solution within their business

As companies look to leverage the immense benefits of smart, connected products and the IoT, Security of the IoT cloud has become a topic of significant interest. The challenges surrounding securing connected devices in the cloud are not something that can be taken lightly. This session presented a framework with specific guidelines for thinking about IoT security in the cloud.  By following the guidelines presented in this session, organizations gained a head start in planning the security for their IoT initiative.

The introduction of PTC's Agile product development offering is a game-changer for manufacturers of complex and smart, connected products. It has also expanded the vision and value of PTC’s  existing Requirements and Validation, Model-Based Systems Engineering, and Global Software Development solutions.  By attending this attendees heard about PTC’s newest transformational product, learn about significant investments in other parts of our ALM portfolio, and explored the PTC roadmap for transforming software and systems engineering for manufacturers.

The recently released ThingWorx Android SDK offers new opportunities for developers to build compelling applications as well as contribute data back to the ThingWorx platform collected from the Mobile World. Attendees saw a demonstration on how this SDK can be used in conjunction with Android Studio to rapidly bring your mobile IoT solutions to life.

Augmented Reality is hot! But how ready is your organization to take advantage of these new capabilities? How do they fit in the larger transition to the smart, connected world?  In this session the presenter explored five essential steps that a company should consider when beginning their journey towards Augmented Reality: Determining the audience for the augmented reality experience, Determining which type of AR experience (on the maturity model) to create, Developing a storyboard for the AR experience and AR design considerations, Determining the appropriate date that needs gathered, Developing a Mock-Up.

Many companies have invested in capabilities for remote service. Adding connectivity to products in the field creates numerous opportunities to improve and create new customer services. But how long will this remain a competitive advantage? How quickly will embedded connectivity and remote service become standard operating procedure for all of your competitors? Companies investing today in remote service need to explore the next steps beyond connectivity. This session focused on four potential next steps for smart, connected service and the broader future of IoT solutions for competitive advantage:  1. Product as a Service: Challenges and requirements for transforming and developing new business models 2. Deep Enterprise Automation:  Benefits of end-to-end process automation and how smart, connected product can help 3. Big Data Analytics and Data as a Currency: Possibilities, implications, and problems to solve 4. Application Economy – Opportunities, challenges, and next step

ThingWorx Utilities provides customers with critical capabilities for managing smart, connected products and systems.   This session shared a view of how business analysts and line-of-business operating users can easily get value from ThingWorx device management features to manage and optimize the performance of connected products.   As predefined components, developers can readily customize and extend this functionality as part of their internet of Things (IoT) applications.   ThingWorx Utilities provide value in three areas: 1) offers the ability to provision, remotely monitor and manage the software on connected devices. 2) provides an environment for non-developers to create, edit, and manage IoT business processes. 3) includes a standard integration framework for creating and implementing pre-built and reusable connectors and to quickly integrate existing business systems with Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

This session introduced Agile Systems Engineering with the PTC Model-based Systems Engineering Solution, including the new PTC Integrity Modeler 8.3.   A real world automotive example was used to demonstrate these ground breaking Agile capabilities for cross-discipline system architectures, simulation for stakeholders, connectivity to product data, and modular system design for parallel scrum teams and product line variability.

In this session, the presenter discussed the benefits of predictive analytics versus traditional techniques, how it works, and what kind of skills and data are needed to build an IoT solution that leverages analytics.   IoT promises to produce huge volumes of streaming data from sensors but how can you get the most value from your data?  The data needs to be analyzed in real-time in order to be able to quickly respond to issues and maximize performance.

In this session, attendees heard from an Internet of Things subject matter expert on best practices and tools for building complete IoT solutions. The presenter shared recommendations for how to automate the creation of Things, tools for building extensions, best practices for team development, binding services, data, and events to assets through the ThingWorx edge components.

Vuforia™, the leading AR platform, supports smartphones, tablets and digital eyewear including VR viewers and optical see-through devices. In this session, David Beard provided a technical tutorial on how to build a Vuforia app for HoloLens.

What’s driving businesses to bring AR into the enterprise. Augmented Reality bridges the digital and physical worlds, allowing operators, technicians and consumers to experience products in a completely new way. This session addressed use-cases and the potential business value augmented reality can bring to your enterprise.

The architecture team plays a key role in minimizing cost and streamlining Verification and Validation (V&V) starting with the thought of, “What are the system building blocks?”. During the system architecture definition phase, a functional analysis is necessary to visualize the types of system functional capabilities required to perform the desired operational needs.  Identification of these functions can be derived from the system requirements or from determining the system’s information, material, and energy required for operations. An architecture team applies an Essential, Important, and Supporting (EIS) approach to “bin” the System functions and associated requirements using PTC Integrity Modeler ®. The EIS approach opened up a new verification method, “design-audit”, which was applied to system requirements to push normal rigor of verification to lower levels of architecture. In order for other programs to apply “design-audit”, a least resource intensive verification me

Learn about IoT best practices from the decades of experience that the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) industry can offer. This session addressed what the industry has learned about optimizing cyber security while gaining the improved energy efficiency and lower operational costs that building controls and automation can provide. The presenter outlined practical challenges associated with adopting connected devices/IoT technologies and provided specific steps that can be taken to help ensure a secure environment.

IoT like the web, mobile and other technology movements that came before, has some fundamental elements and patterns that are important to understand. Whether they are obvious or not, your IoT project will have applications, sensors, actuators, communication modules, data transformation and cloud-to-cloud integrations. The presenter discussed how to spot the patterns in your current and future projects by reviewing real use-cases and demonstrations. By attending this presentation attendees walked away with an appreciation for the breadth and depth of IoT as well as a firm grasp on what ThingWorx addresses and simplifies.

The IoT Value Roadmap is a guide to help organizations create value in a smart, connected world. Key IoT use cases from hundreds of customer interactions, are defined and linked to their business impact. This interactive session began with an overview of the IoT Value Roadmap, and then allowed participants to engage with IoT experts to discuss the top IoT use cases and how to navigate the IoT Value Roadmap for their own business.

Vuforia™, the leading augmented reality platform, supports smartphones, tablets and digital eyewear including VR viewers and optical see-through devices.   In this session, the presenter provided a technical overview of Vuforia in Unity, and also discuss developer workflows and best practices so attendees knew how to create mixed reality apps that seamlessly cross the boundary from AR to VR, connecting products to virtual experiences

Raytheon and ArcherGrey discussed the topic of being stuck and shared a framework on how to help you move your organization’s PLM environment from where it is today. The presenters discussed the various factors that can keep your organization from evolving such as strategy, funding, technology, personnel, the list goes on. In order to become unstuck, the presenters shared the need to leverage a framework that has flexibility to absorb unpredictable situations while moving toward the goal. Many companies have started their PLM journey by implementing the basics around CAD data Management, Parts, and/or BOM in some cases but it is not always clear how to define what is next and how to get it done. The presenters shared past examples of challenges they faced and the processes they used to overcome them.

Transforming your service organization can help your company increase its competitiveness and profitability. Attendees to this session learned about new tools and best practices for realizing your business value and how you measure up against your competitors. This session gave attendees the foundation to build the business case to take their service organization and company to new levels.

The use of the Digital Twin is set to disrupt the service industry. A new user experience and set of solutions for service lifecycle management from PTC will help you through this dramatic change. Attendees to this session learned about some of these new solution such as remote and predictive service.

Every day you’re reminded to improve service in order to drive more revenue and to exceed customers’ increasing expectations. You are lead to believe smart connected services has real potential to do this. However, with so many service use cases, new business models, and smart connected innovations, it can be overwhelming and challenging to pick your path. How do you focus and provide your team a direction in order to realize your vision?   In this interactive, 90-minute executive session, the presenter leveraged several resources within the room to define how to realize your vision by using guided tools by listening and sharing with peers, and experiencing smart connected services through a hands-on example.  At the end of 90 minutes attendees had:  - Compared their vision to the industry's: Understood how current and desired state compares with the larger smart connected services view - Designed a view of a smart connected services journey to share with employees- Prio