Composable architecture for manufacturing: Industry 4.0 or red herring?
A modular swappable approach to infrastructure sounds good, but for manufacturers practical applications are still limited
Composable architecture is a term that was coined by Gartner a couple of years back. It describes the mix-and-match combination of 'packaged business capabilities' (PCBs) in contrast to the end-to-end approach built around one or two vendors.
It's a methodology that's prevailed in software development, where loosely coupled microservices are often favoured over the monolithic strategy of yore. Advantages include the ability to fix individual modules without having to take down the whole system, the ability to parcel off work to small DevOps teams, and a much better fit with agile practices and continuous integration, where improvements are delivered in bite-sized chunks.
Extended to the wider business, its proponents see composable architecture (or composable business) as a way of dialling in agility, avoiding becoming beholden to a handful of large vendors, and generally being better suited to a fast changing environment. Its use, they say, can even extend to sectors like manufacturing, which tends to be dependent on long-lived operational technology supported by large ERP systems.
The end of that road lies the flexible platform-independent, Industry 4.0 "smart factory". Or does it?
Replace or retrofit?
Interestingly, one of the inspirations for DevOps in was Toyota's Production System, so could the wheel turn full circle, back to manufacturing? A true composable smart factory would seem to be some way off, but manufacturers are taking steps in that direction to avoid downtime and cut costs, according to Eric Helmer, CTO of service provider Rimini Street, which provides support for enterprise software.
"A lot of the machines and things they have are legacy, and it's a maintenance nightmare, because every time they do maintenance the system is down and that hurts productivity."
Shifting to a modular arrangement can make maintenance easier, allowing individual elements to be repaired, modified or upgraded without having to take the whole system down.
A related decision is how long to keep operational technology (OT) and related systems, which may be uniquely configured to their use case, running as requirements change. "Do you replace the systems or do you retrofit? There are lots of questions around that," Helmer said, speaking to Computing from a manufacturing event.
These questions often arise from a need to extract data for analytics or compliance purposes, and to make the machines themselves more efficient.
"You can't do that without measuring," commented Helmer. "None of the legacy systems talk to one other, so you may need to add communications devices. Also, many of them lack monitoring capabilities or use incompatible data formats. Manufacturers are struggling with that."
In the ideal "smart factory", based on composable architecture, everything would be integrated, speak the same language, use open formats, be extensible and modular. That's a steep path from where most are now, but there are steps on the way, one of which is a change of mindset.
"The composable strategy is a defence mechanism in a world of uncertainty," said Helmer.
"Manufacturers have to prepare for the worst and be agile enough to make quick changes. So if something changes that affects one part of the business, you can replace or change just that part without it affecting the whole thing. Like changing a wheel rather than replacing the whole car."
This extends to employees and vendor choices too. The composable strategy posits teams that can be moved around as needed, and swappable solutions that can be replaced in the full expectation that the manufacturer will need to pivot in response to changing market conditions.
This, of course, is anathema to the suppliers of large enterprise systems, whose business model is to embed and extend their own ecosystems.
"You don't have to follow the vendor's roadmap, follow your own," advised Helmer. "Make sure that you do the ROI analysis and compare that investment with a composable model."
Agility versus manageability
More flexibility always sounds good, but the composable model comes with its own headaches, said Roy Illsley, Chief Analyst, IT Operations at Omdia. For one, there's a tradeoff between agility and manageability: "The more granular the options the more complex they are to manage."
While a composable strategy might be suitable for certain aspects of a manufacturer's business, the production facilities aren't particularly amenable to such an approach, he added.
"Manufacturing is less composable because it has built its infrastructure to support its production facilities, these have to operate at maximum efficiency, which means they perform long production runs, and hence have less variation."
Capital investment in plant means that the sector is naturally slow to change, and from the OT side the more outlandish visions of a composable flexible, smart factory are "a bit of a red herring," Illsley believes. "The idea a car factory can change to build something else like washing machines is nonsense".
Which is not to say that increased agility is not a valid goal, but for manufacturing it's more about being able to build to order, and produce new models and variants more quickly than to change direction, he said.
Like many terms beloved of marketers and analysts, composable architecture encompasses a mix of the old and new, the accepted and the unlikely. It is definitionally vague and suggests copying practices from one area to another where they may or may not be a good fit; it also lacks standards, use cases and best practice, which will slow adoption in a risk-averse sector, but it may also be something they are doing already in many areas.
Many manufacturers, seeking to protect their businesses from shocks like the pandemic and supply chain disruptions, will be headed in that direction anyway, diversifying suppliers and ensuring they have a contingency.
See also: The art of flexible procurement
Richard Richison, Director, IT Infrastructure and Operations at biotech firm Repligen told Computing that he hadn't heard of the term. While, he favours a modular, best-of-breed, swappable approach with much of the tech he uses, that doesn't extend to the ERP or the OT.
"On the IT side we're very flexible and nimble. If we wanted to replace our hyperconverged infrastructure, that wouldn't be an issue. When it comes to the OT it's a bit more delicate. The PLCs [programmable logic controllers] and the HMIs [human-machine interfaces] that are controlling the equipment in the manufacturing floor can't be simply be replaced because they are validated systems," he said. "We're handcuffed to that technology."