A Smarter Factory Floor with MongoDB Atlas and Google Cloud's Manufacturing Data Engine

Bruce Sandell and Venkatesh Shanbhag
April 9, 2024 | Updated: May 13, 2024
#genAI

The manufacturing industry is undergoing a transformative shift from traditional to digital, propelled by data-driven insights, intelligent automation, and artificial intelligence. Traditional methods of data collection and analysis are no longer sufficient to keep pace with the demands of today's competitive landscape. This is precisely where Google Cloud’s Manufacturing Data Engine (MDE) and MongoDB Atlas come into play, offering a powerful combination for optimizing your factory floor.

Unlock the power of your factory data

MDE is positioned to transform the factory floor with the power of cloud-driven insights. MDE simplifies communication with your factory floor, regardless of the diverse protocols your machines might use. It effortlessly connects legacy equipment with modern systems, ensuring a comprehensive data stream. MDE doesn't just collect data, it transforms it. By intelligently processing and contextualizing the information, you gain a clearer picture of your production processes in real-time with a historical pretext. It offers pre-built analytics and AI tools directly addressing common manufacturing pain points. This means you can start finding solutions faster, whether it's identifying bottlenecks, reducing downtime, or optimizing resource utilization. Conveniently, it also offers great support for integrations that can further enhance the potential of the data (e.g. additional data sinks).

The MongoDB Atlas developer data platform enhances MDE by providing scalability and flexibility through automated scaling to adapt to evolving data requirements. This makes it particularly suitable for dynamic manufacturing environments. MongoDB’s document model can handle diverse data types and structures effortlessly while being incredibly flexible because of its native JSON format. This allows for enriching MDE data with other relevant data, such as supply chain logistics, for a deeper understanding of the factory business. You can gain immediate insights into your operations through real-time analytics, enabling informed decision-making based on up-to-date data. While MDE offers a robust solution for collecting, contextualizing, and managing industrial data, leveraging it alongside MongoDB Atlas offers tremendous advantages

Inside the MDE integration

Google Cloud’s Manufacturing Data Engine (MDE) acts as a central hub for your factory data. It not only processes and enriches the data with context, but also offers flexible storage options like BigQuery and Cloud Storage. Now, customers already using MongoDB Atlas can skip the hassle of application re-integration and make this data readily accessible for applications. Through this joint solution developed by Google Cloud and MongoDB, you can seamlessly move the processed streaming data from MDE to MongoDB Atlas using Dataflow jobs. MDE publishes the data via a Pub/Sub subscription, which is then picked up by a custom Dataflow job built by MongoDB. This job transforms the data into the desired format and writes it to your MongoDB Atlas cluster. Google Cloud’s MDE and MongoDB Atlas utilize compatible data structures, simplifying data integration through a shared semantic configuration. Once the data resides in MongoDB Atlas, your existing applications can access it seamlessly without any code modifications, saving you time and effort. The flexibility of MDE, combined with the scalability and ease of use of MongoDB Atlas, makes this a powerful and versatile solution for various data-driven use cases such as predictive maintenance and quality control, while still providing factory ownership of the data. Instructions on how to set up the dataflow job are available in the MongoDB github repository.

Conclusion

If you want to level up your manufacturing data analytics, pairing MDE with MongoDB Atlas provides a proven, easy-to-implement solution. It's easy to get started with MDE and MongoDB Atlas.

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Unleashing Developer Potential–and Managing Costs–with MongoDB Atlas

In today's business landscape, where unpredictability has become the norm, engineering leaders have to balance the dual challenges of managing uncertainty while optimizing IT costs. Indeed, the 2024 MarginPLUS Deloitte survey—which draws on insights from over 300 business leaders—emphasizes a collective pivot towards growth initiatives and cost transformations amidst the fluctuating global economic climate. MongoDB Atlas: A developer's ally for cost-effective productivity Executives across industries want to cut costs without impacting innovation; based on the Deloitte survey , 83% of companies are looking to change how they run their business margin improvement efforts. This is where MongoDB Atlas , the most advanced cloud database service on the market, comes in. An integrated suite of data services that simplify how developers build with data, MongoDB Atlas helps teams enhance their productivity without compromising on cost efficiency by offering visibility and control over spending—balancing developer freedom with data governance and cost management. This helps organizations escape the modernization hamster wheel—or the vicious cycle of continuously updating technology without making real progress, and draining resources while failing to deliver meaningful improvements. Put another way, MongoDB gives teams more time to innovate, instead of just maintaining the status quo. Outlined below are the built-in features of MongoDB Atlas, which enable customers to get the most out of their data while also focusing on budget optimization. Strategic features for cost optimization with MongoDB Atlas Right-sizing your cluster Use MongoDB Atlas’s Cluster Sizing Guide or auto-scalability to match your cluster with your workload, optimizing resource use with options for every requirement, including Low CPU options for lighter workloads. Pausing clusters and global distribution Save costs by pausing your cluster , and securely storing data for up to 30 days with auto-resume. Furthermore, Global Clusters improve performance across regions while maintaining cost efficiency and compliance. Index and storage management Enhance performance and reduce costs with MongoDB Atlas’s Performance Advisor , which provides tailored index and schema optimizations for better query execution and potential reductions in cluster size. Strategic data management Reduce storage expenses using Online Archive for infrequently accessed data and TTL indexes for efficient Time Series data management, ensuring only essential data is stored. Securely backup data before deletion with mongodump. Enhanced spend management Use spend analysis, billing alerts , and usage insights via the Billing Cost Explorer for detailed financial management and optimization. Resource tagging and customizable dashboards provide in-depth financial reporting and visual expense tracking, supporting effective budgeting and cost optimization. Additionally, Opt for serverless instances to adjust to your workload's scale, offering a pay-for-what-you-use model that eliminates overprovisioning concerns. Transforming uncertainty into advancement MongoDB Atlas equips IT decision-makers and developers with the features and tools to balance developer productivity with strategic cost management, transforming economic uncertainty into a platform for strategic advancement. MongoDB Atlas is more than a database management solution; it’s a strategic partner in optimizing your IT spending, ensuring that your organization remains agile, efficient, and cost-effective in the face of change. Need expert assistance in taking control of your MongoDB Atlas costs? MongoDB’s Professional Services team can provide a deep-dive assessment of your environment to build a tailored optimization plan—and to help you execute. Reach out to learn how we can support your cost optimization goals! If you haven't yet set up your free cluster on MongoDB Atlas , now is a great time to do so. You have all the instructions in this DevCenter article .

April 8, 2024
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MongoDB and Partners: Building the AI Future, Together

If you’re like me, over the past year you’ve closely watched AI’s developments—and the world’s reactions to them. From infectious excitement about AI’s capabilities, to impatience with its cost and return on investment, every day has been filled with AI twists and turns. It’s been quite the roller coaster. During the ride, from time to time I’ve wondered where AI falls on the Gartner hype cycle, which gives "a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time." Have we hit the "peak of inflated expectations" only to fall into the "trough of disillusionment?" Or is the hype cycle an imperfect guide, as The Economist argues? The reality is that it takes time for any new technology—even transformative ones like AI—to take hold. And every advance, no matter how big, has had its detractors. A famous example is that of Picasso (!), who in 1968 said, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” (!!) For our part, MongoDB is convinced that AI is a once-in-a-generation technology that will enhance every future application—a belief that has been reinforced by the incredible work our partners have shared at MongoDB’s 2024 events. Speeding AI development MongoDB is committed to helping organizations of all sizes succeed with AI, and one way we’re doing that is by collaborating with the MongoDB partner ecosystem to create powerful, user-friendly AI development tools and solutions. For example, Fireworks.ai —which is a member of the MongoDB AI Applications Program ecosystem —created an inference solution that hosts gen AI models and supports containerized deployments. This tool makes it easier for developers to build and deploy powerful applications with a range of easy-to-use tools and customization options. They can choose to use state-of-the-art, open-source language, image, and multimodal foundation models off the shelf, or they can customize and fine-tune models to their needs. Jointly, Fireworks.ai and MongoDB provide a solution for developers who want to leverage highly curated and optimized open-source models and combine these with their organization’s own proprietary data—and to do so with unparalleled speed and security. “MongoDB is one of the most sophisticated database providers, and it’s very easy to use,” said Benny Chen , cofounder of Fireworks.ai. "We want developers to be able to use these tools, and we want to work with providers who enable and empower developers." Nomic , another MAAP ecosystem member, also enables developers with best-in-class solutions across the entire unstructured data workflow. Their Embed offering, available through the Nomic API , allows users to vectorize large-scale datasets for use in text, image, and multimodal retrieval applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), using only their web browser. The Nomic-MongoDB solution is a highly efficient, open-weight model that developers can use to visualize the unstructured datasets they store in MongoDB Atlas . These insights help users quickly discover trends and articulate data-driven value propositions. Nomic also supported the recently announced vector quantization in MongoDB Atlas Vector Search , which reduces vector sizes while preserving performance. Last—but hardly least!—there’s our new reference architecture with MAAP partners AWS and Anthropic. Announced at MongoDB.local London , the reference architecture supports building memory-enhanced AI agents, and is designed to streamline complex processes and develop smarter, more responsive applications. For more—including a link to the code on Github— check out the MongoDB Developer Center . Making AI work for anyone and everyone The companies MongoDB partners with aren’t just making gen AI easier for developers—they’re building tools for everyone. For example, Capgemini has invested $2 billion in gen AI and is training 100,000 of its employees in the technology. GenYoda, a solution that helps insurance professionals with their daily work, is a product of this investment. GenYoda leverages MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to analyze large amounts of customer data, like policy statements, premiums, claims history, and health information. Using GenYoda, insurance professionals can quickly analyze underwriters’ reports to make informed decisions, create longitudinal health summaries, and streamline customer interactions to improve contact center efficiency. GenYoda can ingest 100,000 documents in just a few hours and respond to users’ queries in two to three seconds—a metric on par with the most widely used gen AI models. And it produces results: in one example, by using Capgemini’s solution an insurer was able to increase productivity by 15%, add new reports 25% faster (thus speeding decision-making), and reduce the manual effort of searching PDFs, increasing efficiency by 10%. Building the future of AI together So, what’s next? Honestly, I’m as curious as you are. But I’m also incredibly excited. At MongoDB, we’re active participants in the AI revolution, working to embrace the possibilities that lie ahead. The future of gen AI is bright, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll build together. To learn more about how MongoDB can accelerate your AI journey, explore the MongoDB AI Applications Program .

November 4, 2024