With very high turnaround times and slim margins for error, the tightly-run ships that are industrial operations have benefitted from transformation — especially at the edge.

Industrial automation giant ABB Ltd. has seen considerable success in helping customers manage and operationalize edge-generated data.

“The edge is where all of the data from the industrial plants that we automate is located,” said Bernhard Eschermann (pictured), chief technology officer of process automation at ABB. “Typically, the automation system that we develop and provide to our customers deals with all of these tons of data that are produced in millisecond cycle times for operational needs. The edge is actually the point where we get the data securely from the automation system to bring it together with IT data.”

Eschermann spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Paul Gillin and Rob Strechay at Red Hat Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed industrial value areas being unlocked at the edge. (* Disclosure below.)

Improving yield while reducing resource wastage

By operating data infrastructures at the edge, industrial plants reap benefits such as improved productivity and yield, reduced energy consumption and optimized maintenance schedules, among other things, according to Eschermann.

ABB’s offering, called Edgenius, has been created using Red Hat underpinnings to help operators optimize their plant or the whole enterprise. Edgenius links cloud and control environments for a flexible and fast analysis of data near its origination point.

“The edge solution that we provide, number one, securely and safely extracts data from the automation system because you don’t want to operate, you don’t want to create a disturbance to the real-time deterministic operation that the automation system has,” Eschermann explained. “If you’ve got the data from the automation system, then you can visualize it, you can extract certain types of data, you can summarize the data, and run applications either directly on the edge, in the cloud or on-premise platform to do something useful with it.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit:

(* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE