What is ThingWorx IIoT?
Mingo Manufacturing Analytics vs. ThingWorx IIoT, what’s the difference?
ThingWorx is an IIoT platform so, essentially, it’s a piece of software that is used to build Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions on top of it.
NOTE: If you want to learn more about IoT in manufacturing, check out: “How useful is IoT in manufacturing?” and “Should manufacturers ignore IoT and Industry 4.0?”
With ThingWorx, you get basic components to build what you need on the floor, but the key difference between that and Mingo is that you’ll have to build it yourself.
Of course, manufacturers can build anything on top of the ThingWorx platform, think unique additions specific to the needs of your business that you can’t buy in other software. The options are essentially endless, but with freedom of endless flexibility comes more development and maintenance work. Building the specific components to accommodate the data points you need is not an easy task.
For example, maybe you want to monitor the temperature of a fridge in a break room to ensure no one gets sick. Or you want to measure the power consumption of the lights in the plant to reduce energy costs. Maybe, you want to measure the number of people walking in and out of a door to track the number of people in a building. Or, you need to measure the utilization on the forklifts to track how often they’re being used. In all of these cases, very specific, precise data points are tracked. ThingWorx may be a good solution for those particular use cases.
But, what we’ve found is that most manufacturers want to track the same data points. For those who need to monitor the data points that 90% of manufacturers need, a purpose-built manufacturing analytics platform will likely be more beneficial.
ThingWorx gives you the platform to build complex, very specific solutions. Yes, you can build anything on top of that platform, but that additional autonomy often creates more headaches than not. The key difference is that Mingo is purpose-built to deliver visibility and certain manufacturing-specific metrics that give manufacturers the ability to make data-driven decisions and deliver on time.
Mingo vs. ThingWorx IIoT
The reason why you would want to buy something like Mingo versus building is that so much of it is already finished. It’s an out-of-the-box solution for you and your needs. You don’t have to build an operator screen, dashboards, OEE calculation, shift scheduling, or build the ability to import and track against the schedule.
Note: You can learn more about build vs. buy software benefits here.
With ThingWorx, someone is going to have to devote a lot of development work in creating a platform that incorporates the metrics you need to track and works specifically for you.
ThingWorx claims they have a library of templates to use to get you started – OEE template, asset management – basically starter packs to use as a starting point. While these are designed to help you get started, the reality is that those packs are very simplistic. They don’t fit the needs of most folks and require a ton of customization. This brings us back to the point that you’ll need a person or team dedicated to developing the platform to fit your needs.
The other big drawback and difference between the two platforms are that ThingWorx is generally not cloud-hosted. So what does that mean for you, exactly?
Well, you’ll have to run the platform yourself. You’ll need the infrastructure and databases to be able to run it and a team in place to fix any problems if something goes wrong. This adds a lot of soft costs that manufacturers typically overlook.
Basically, you’ll save money, time, and resources with Mingo vs. a general IIoT platform.
How Will Mingo Provide More Benefit?
In the first week of buying Mingo, you’ll start getting valuable information. Comparatively, in the first week of using ThingWorx, you will spend your time customizing, designing, and installing software on servers. When that is completed, you can start building out all of your data requirements. With ThingWorx, the entire process could take months, and even then, you may have to continue development to start getting the data you need to be successful.
“Why does it matter when I start getting actionable data as long as I’m getting?”, you think to yourself.
Well, there’s no immediate value gained. Meaning you’ll need to wait weeks, but more likely months, or even a year, before you see gains. That’s essentially money being spent for no benefit.
You’ll also need to determine the metrics you want your employees to see, how they will be displayed in the system, and determine how users interact with the system. This all has to be built and specified, by you, another time-consuming and costly task. While the upfront costs may look really low on these types of platforms, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Once you start adding in the costs of the additional work (and time itself), whether it’s done by you or your team internally, or by a consultant, the costs can grow by 5x. It requires significant time and money to build something, even rudimentary, that compares to the capabilities of Mingo.
Lay the Groundwork with Mingo
Beyond the software itself and the costs associated, there are noticeable differences in the two organizations. With Mingo, we help you figure out how to get all of your machines connected. We’ll guide you through the process of choosing the right hardware to connect your machines, and we’ll help you implement the software.
It’s not a buy, and you’re left alone, kind of process. We want you to succeed so we’ll be there every step of the way.
We’ll ask the key questions, “How will you collect the data? Will you need sensors or are we connecting to the PLCs? What data is important?”
All of these questions can be hard to tackle if you don’t know where to look, and it’s hard to decipher the differences between manufacturing software. But with Mingo, we give manufacturers the visibility they need into the floor with key metrics. Our goal is to help you do the groundwork so before you know it, you’ll be getting meaningful insights into the floor, no costly or time-consuming efforts needed.
