Soracom, Inc., a global provider of advanced Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, today announced that Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. has chosen Soracom to add cellular connectivity to MELCloud, a next-generation, cloud-based remote management system for Mitsubishi Electric air conditioning, heating, and heat recovery/ventilation products.

Demand for climate control systems that can maintain comfort while conserving energy is growing in Europe, driven both by recent increases in energy costs and by accelerating decarbonization efforts that go beyond the EU Emissions Trading System to include the introduction of a new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and new approaches to carbon pricing. In particular, demand for heat pump water heating continues to grow rapidly, as users seek an effective and energy-efficient alternative to existing combustion boilers.

MELCloud offers a wide range of new capabilities designed to help optimize the performance and efficiency of Mitsubishi Electric air conditioning, heating, and heat recovery/ventilation systems. The MELCloud interface allows for remote operation of air conditioning and heating systems from a PC, tablet, or smartphone, in real time or programmatically with seasonal or weekly timers. Operating data, including detailed system status, energy consumption, temperature, airflow and more, is transmitted to the cloud for analysis and system optimization, with detailed logs and error notifications available.

MELCloud is now available throughout Europe, with nearly 1 million units already registered to the service at the end of 2023. The addition of Soracom cellular connectivity supports seamless performance where dedicated Wi-Fi may not be available, reliable, or accessible, such as multi-unit residential locations like condominiums, apartments, and municipal public housing sites.

Soracom was selected for this project based on extensive evaluation of its coverage in Europe, reliable access to networks with multi-carrier coverage, and powerful connectivity management platform. Worldwide, the Soracom IoT SIM now offers multi-carrier cellular connectivity in more than 180 countries and regions, across over 390 mobile operator networks.

“Soracom’s cloud-native connectivity was designed to support visionary enterprises like Mitsubishi Electric Europe as they deploy at scale,” said Takashi Serizawa, Head of Europe Region for Soracom. “The MELCloud initiative shows how IoT technology and cloud computing are already advancing Europe’s ambitious environmental goals.”

“MELCloud defines the state of the art for cloud-based control of air conditioning and heating systems,” said Donald Daw, Vice LES President for Mitsubishi Electric Europe.

“Adding Soracom’s reliable multi-carrier cellular connectivity gives MELCloud customers across Europe the power to optimize both comfort and energy efficiency at any time, from anywhere.”

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Mitsubishi Motors Selects Aeris Mobility Platform for its MITSUBISHI CONNECT™ IoT Service.

Aeris, today announced availability of its Aeris® Mobility Platform (AMP), a state-of-the-art cloud and micro-services-based IoT platform that provides the critical building blocks that enable the Internet of Things for enterprises and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Leveraging significant experience and investment over the last decade, Aeris has developed AMP to meet the unique needs of enterprises and OEMs who are moving from unconnected products to connected services. AMP specifically addresses the requirements of the burgeoning Internet of “Moving” Things market segment with a robust service creation environment and a full suite of pre-built business services, including data analytics and monetization. By leveraging AMP, enterprises and OEMs can deliver a cloud-agnostic and flexible, globally connected program with market-leading services and unparalleled time-to-market.

Automotive OEMs are a key focus area for AMP, and the platform offers a full suite of connected vehicle services that include safety and security, remote vehicle, driver behavior, vehicle health, and other services, including firmware over-the-air update capabilities. The architecture is built around micro-services, which enable a highly-customizable approach to each OEM’s specific requirements, giving them the ability to manage their program globally on a single platform while preserving the ability to deploy solutions that differ based on region, brand or model. Aeris’ end-to-end IoT capabilities provide OEMs with a one-stop shop for all of their wireless and application requirements.

AMP offers three key advantages over legacy competitor approaches:

• Service flexibility and velocity. AMP splits device and service-facing components, enabling the fast and flexible introduction of new services – as fast as developing a new smartphone application. The state-of-the-art vehicle platform architecture provides the ability to change rules, such as access, in a dynamic way, thereby making new innovations in the market, such as car sharing and shared mobility models, easier to implement and more secure.

• Operational efficiency. AMP’s capsule architecture addresses a key requirement of every automotive OEM: regional flexibility. AMP allows deployment of a global program across a multitude of public and private clouds in a manner that maximizes operational efficiency while maintaining local flexibility and autonomy, while ensuring compliance with local regulations.

• Customer experience. Connected vehicle programs historically have fallen short of customer expectations in service response times. AMP addresses these issues head-on with a service delivery architecture that optimizes an end-to-end system from wireless connection to telematics applications, while simultaneously addressing key concerns around hardware power management.

Aeris Enables MITSUBISHI CONNECT™

AMP is powering the MITSUBISHI CONNECT vehicle program, which debuted in the all-new 2018 Eclipse Cross CUV. MITSUBISHI CONNECT provides owners with an intuitive and convenient driving experience, offering key functionality in safety, security and remote vehicle services that can be accessed in multiple ways: inside the vehicle, through the MY MITSUBISHI CONNECT mobile application or through the Mitsubishi vehicle owners’ portal. Additionally, MITSUBISHI CONNECT can be paired with the Google Assistant on eligible Android phones, iPhones and Google Home™.

Mitsubishi Motors selected Aeris after a comprehensive sourcing process due to Aeris’ ability to deliver a broad range of telematics services, including mobile applications, call center services and wireless connectivity.

MITSUBISHI CONNECT launched in the U.S. market in February and will be launching in Europe in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Aeris Japan, a joint venture between SoftBank Corporation and Aeris, provided in-country sales, marketing and technical resources to drive the successful development and launch of the MITSUBISHI CONNECT program.

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Using Oracle Cloud, New FA-IT Open Platform Enables Rapid Collection, Analysis, and Utilization of Production Site Data.

Oracle today announced its collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to develop an Internet of Things (IoT) platform for smart manufacturing.

With Oracle Cloud, Mitsubishi Electric developed its new FA-IT Open Platform for factory automation. Using edge computing between devices and business applications, the new platform enables the rapid collection, analysis, and utilization of data at production site.

With organizations rapidly adopting Industry 4.0, manufacturers are increasingly seeking to optimize their total manufacturing processes by using IoT to collect data from all equipment in factories for visualization and analysis. Developing such IoT systems from scratch is an enormous task requiring that data be collected and modeled from a wide variety of production equipment, including existing equipment, for analytical purposes.

With FA-IT Open Platform, vendors can create manufacturing applications for operation on the platform, including connecting the platform to industrial networks to collect data from diverse devices and production equipment. The cloud-connected platform can be used to link manufacturing sites with cloud vendors’ own cloud-supported manufacturing-optimization services for supply chains, administration of multiple factories worldwide, and other applications.

FA-IT Open Platform leverages Oracle Database Cloud, Oracle Java Cloud, Oracle BI Cloud, Oracle IoT Cloud, Oracle IoT Production Monitoring Cloud, Oracle SOA Cloud, and Oracle Infrastructure as a Service. Information received in real time from machine tools and production terminals is received by Oracle IoT Cloud, enabling efficient real time processing with the extensible infrastructure. Mitsubishi Electric utilizes machine learning of Oracle Database Cloud, the reporting function of Oracle BI Cloud, and the cost-effective Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the analysis of accumulated Big Data, contributing to further development of solutions in the factory automation area for customers and to smart manufacturing industry.

“Mitsubishi Electric develops advanced technologies and products for rapidly emerging factory automation,” said Toshiya Takahashi, corporate executive group senior vice president, factory automation system, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. “Our e-F@ctory concept for integrated automation reduces the total cost of developing, producing and maintaining products. Mitsubishi Electric’s new FA-IT Open Platform is based on edge computing to accelerate IoT utilization for smart manufacturing.”

“By adding Oracle Cloud services to this platform, we believe that it will be possible to visualize factories and build an application development environment. In order to provide the platform to customers early, we will also work with partner companies, including IT companies, to develop applications utilizing the platform.”

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Pilot Program Demonstrates the Benefits of End-to-End Internet of Things Connectivity in Industrial Settings.

News highlights:
++ Intel and Mitsubishi Electric are working together to advance factory automation (FA) systems utilizing end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and big data analytics.
++ The companies collaborated on a pilot at Intel’s manufacturing facility in Malaysia, demonstrating the benefits of IoT. The pilot resulted in improved equipment uptime, increased yield and productivity, the ability to conduct predictive maintenance and reduced component failures.
++ As a result of the pilot, Intel realized US$9 million in savings through cost avoidance and improved decision making.
++ The companies are targeting product availability in 2015.

Intel Corporation and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation today announced a new collaboration to develop next-generation factory automation (FA) systems with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and a pilot program at Intel’s backend manufacturing facility in Malaysia.

The pilot demonstrates the benefits of IoT in a factory setting with a focus on delivering productivity enhancement through innovative functions, such as predictive failure, by combining Intel’s expertise developing solutions for IoT and Mitsubishi Electric’s “e-F@ctory” automation capabilities. Intel realized a savings of US$9 million over the course of the pilot.

IoT and Big Data in Action

As an initial collaboration, Intel and Mitsubishi Electric implemented the IoT and big data solution at Intel’s backend manufacturing facility in Malaysia. Using an Intel® Atom processor-based IoT gateway called the C Controller from Mitsubishi Electric’s iQ-Platform, Intel was able to securely gather and aggregate data for the analytics server. Data was then processed using Revolution R Enterprise* software from Revolution Analytics*, an analytics software solution that uses the open source R statistics language, which was hosted on Cloudera Enterprise*, the foundation of an enterprise data hub.

The solution has improved equipment component uptime, increased yield and productivity by minimizing misclassification of good units as bad, enabled predictive maintenance, and reduced component failures. Initial results include a savings of US$9 million through cost avoidance and improved decision making.

“The data mining and analytics pilots done in Malaysia have demonstrated great value and benefits for Intel manufacturing using Intel-based IoT products and technology,” said Robin Martin, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Assembly and Test Group.

“Through this collaboration and pilot with Mitsubishi Electric, we will bring the know-how, assets and technology of both companies to develop next-generation factory automation systems with predictive analytic capabilities. This will allow other companies to reap the benefits of the Internet of Things for factory operations.”

“The collaboration between Mitsubishi Electric and Intel on this IoT project has enabled field data from semiconductor manufacturing lines to be collected and analyzed to improve operational performance, yet also contribute energy savings for a more sustainable society,” said Masayuki Yamamoto, group senior vice president, Factory Automation Systems, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

“We believe that other manufacturers can benefit from this joint Intel-Mitsubishi Electric solution, which combines big data analysis, optimized data capture and processing to deliver improved performance and optimized maintenance.”

The commercialization date for the product is 2015, and the companies will show a live demonstration of the solution in Intel’s booth at the IoT Japan 2014 tradeshow, which will be held October 15-17 at Tokyo Big Sight in Japan.

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