“It’s not raining; it’s pouring”, the rate of change social, workforce, market combined with built up industrial effects, will make 2013/14 exciting!!!!

As we all come to end of 2012, we have time to reflect and look towards 2013, (even bigger things if you are on the Mayan calendar who start their new complete calendar). I find the time over the holidays a time to step back and think, absorb, read, reflect and strategise without the daily routine. As I flew back home, low over the northern coast of New South Wales, Australia I read a number of articles and one from Deloittes on “Tracking the Trends 2012”  which lead with “It’s not raining; it’s pouring” was straight to point and not just for mining, but all industries. Combine this with an improved positive outlook from China and fewer significant potential changes in government next year, 2013 provides the opportunity to build momentum with companies starting the journey to take on solid challengers of unified solutions to achieve “Operational Excellence”. The challenge will be the constraint of bridging the gap between “time and urgency of getting to full production, vs the green light to proceed forward, vs the challenge of the existing install base of “islands of industrial systems”’.

So in the final blog of the year I would like review some of the points raised in this paper, and just expand and enabling further reflection.

Dynamic Simulation needs to become a Natural Feature of the Industrial Operational Landscape

To empower operational teams, workforce, each role must understand the context of the future, as well as current state and history. In the traditional industrial solutions, the worker is provided with tools for understanding history and NOW. This is the same as driving a car by only looking at the dashboard of the car, and rear vision mirror. Can you drive the car without looking out 100 meters or longer into the future the answer is NO, you would miss judging the next corner?

So why do we think we can run plants in this same manner?

Big Data Requires a Big, New Architecture

“The potential of “big data,” the massive explosion of sources of information from sensors, smart devices, and all other devices connected to the Internet, is probably under-appreciated in terms of its eventual business impact. However, to take maximum advantage of big data, IT is going to have to press the re-start button on its architecture for acquiring and understanding information. IT will need to construct a new way of capturing, organizing and analyzing data, because big data stands no chance of being useful if people attempt to process it using the traditional mechanisms of business intelligence, such as a data warehouses and traditional data-analysis techniques.” Dan Woods; Forbes

So does this apply to Industrial Area, I was heading through Terminal 5 in Heathrow this week, and articles banners around Big Data were all around me, and yes it is the latest “train” for people to board, but is it real in the Industrial Space? As I boarded a train, sat doing a mind thinking moment looking at the industrial operations/ automation landscape I realized why there is confusion is that in the industrial space,  we talk about Enterprise Historians, and one person said to me that is big data! I do not think so, it is just one aspect of the growing industrial information dilemma facing all us over the next 5 years.

When I look at the predictions of Big Data by Industry from Gartner:

It is the End of the Year, what is on people minds this year vs. Last year?

Sitting a coffee table in Convent Garden in London, the chilling winter wind blowing through me, but the dazzling lights of Christmas and the holiday season dance about me. I have the opportunity to absorb the discussions of the last week discussing with teams from around the world what is driving operational thought leaders in mining, transport, and infra-structure. Now I look up at dazzling lights my mind shifts to the thought of;”is there a difference in operational priorities this year vs. last year and the answer is YES!!!”

Cloud in the Industrial Landscape

I am struggling and understand why there is a debate on Cloud in the Industrial Architectures.The Cloud is here, it is real, and most of us use it many ways today. Many of us had a similar concept in past architectures with main frames, for central data storage. The Cloud technology provides a natural fit to many Industrial Operational Landscapes, in order to address multi site, the roaming user outside the plant, and sharing of information across the industrial enterprise.

For the past year, I have talked about the evolving the Industrial Enterprise, with multiple sites, and the need for standards, in KPIs, data structures, objects layouts etc. How to achieve this without a central repository? With the infra structure increasing both in networks both wired and wireless, 3G/ 4G that all devices can leverage this growing infrastructure. Even in remote places on distributed gas fields, people are designing the industrial architecture to leverage the 3 G mobile networks, providing  10 mb with a dual modem, so why not?

Certainly as we access the changing "jobs to be done" or increased scope knowledge workers are responsible for across sites, the increased data/information access, we see Cloud as a natural part of the architecture both public and private, or within a plant site, but still managed from outside service. Things are changing too quickly on the IT side for people to keep up, and the need for common.

So you will start to see historians be sold in the cloud, already Enterprise Asset Management systems are sold as a service hosted in the cloud running across multiple sites.

In small businesses (e.g.| Companies/ sites with small employee counts and often not It or engineering resources on site),  the concept of MES, information systems, historians, and even HMIs be hosted or sold as a service is logical. You maybe laughing at the HMI as it “must” be local, yes, but I went to 3 small business sites last week, and all would prefer not having any PCs / servers on their site. Already their ERP and back office (Microsoft Office) hosted outside, so why not HMI, Historians and MES? With “thin client technology, virtual machines”  there is no need to put a PC on the shop floor, it is easier to have a thin client that enables independence of the Operating System.

Standards such as report templates, KPIs, Knowledge based systems all need to be central, and the cloud technologies like MS Azure enable the infrastructure out of the box.

At Invensys we are assuming the Cloud as an option in solution architectures as people go forward, that does not mean it is required, but people can start with an " on premise" and evolve latter on the technology should allow this. The industrial applications should evolve with the architecture, allow companies to expand and evolve, even having different architectures for the large plants vs the small plants, but still achieving the unified industrial landscape.

Instead of saying, it will not apply in the industrial world, this technology provides the opportunity to solve some of the remote operational challengers end users are facing with standard technology, in a secure way. Instead of asking “WHY WOULD WE USE CLOUD in INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS?”. We would should be asking “WHY NOT USE THE STANDARD OFF THE SHELF CAPABILITY SUCH AS CLOUD?” 

Reaction to my Blog on Windows 8!

Two weeks ago I discussed the fact that I believe the release of Windows 8 is a key milestone in the evolution of the Operational Experience.

There was a lot of reaction and debate as some people took this “as there will be a quick adoption of Windows 8 in the industrial environment”, which is not what was stated. The comment was relative to key milestone. Many people have gone to Windows 7, and it is a remarkably solid release, and will satisfy people for years.

Some people commented that Windows 8 will only be for the commercial market, e.g.| the “surface" tablet market, this will initially be true, but people also said with the IPAD people would not take it up. At a conference 2 weeks when Iooked around 90 % of people were on tablet devicse vs 2 year before everyone was taking notes doing email on laptop computers. We are all still doing the same “job" of taking notes and doing emails, but we have shifted to a new device due to the technology making my execution of job of taking notes and emails more efficient due to:

·         Size of the device it is easier to carry and handle at the conference

·         The speed at which it boots up, it is instant vs starting up.

·         I can see emails fast

·         I use mind manager for note taking this runs well as an app on the tablet

·         I can also draw diagrams easily that are captures as part of my notes

·         I can also take photos of diagrams, slides and whiteboard discussions and include these all as part of my notes.

People did not recognize this 2 years ago, but they now see the advantage and have evolved.

Looking at Windows 8 it provides significant new capability and paradigm change by going to “touch” that when combined with new devices, pcs coming from the hardware suppliers there will advantages people see in improving their “jobs" on the industrial floor. These advantages will only become fulling clear as people apply it.

But when combined with:

·         Gen Y’s expectation of “touch” experience

·         The natural requirement of collaboration over multiple interfaces in one system with personal or role base views to information

·         The whole methodology of jobs today, requiring evolution of the operational experience.      

Windows 8 is a potential key milestone, but that does not mean fast take up, that will probably come in Windows 9, as the story, situation, and advantages are well understood.

An example of the advantage of the “touch” world is the zoom by gesture it is natural to zoom, or expand out, and then swipe left and right for panning, these are far more natural than the taking a mouse a “clicking” on a location and dragging a zoom box over the area I want see in more detail. Watching my children struggle with mouse vs the touch screens of the IPAD they ask why we need to do this, they first go to the screen which is not “touch” enabled, but that is natural.

I will ask the same question I proposed 2 weeks ago:

“As you go to upgrade the industrial interfaces, would you not buy devices include these capabilities and come with Windows 8 vs the traditional PC, even if your HMI, Operational experience has not evolved yet?  

Time for “Off the Shelf” Operations/ MES Solution

As I sit on another plane heading across the Pacific from California, I have time to reflect on the discussions both this week, and over the last 6 months, with leading food and beverage and process companies.

The growing trend in the MES space, (which the dominate solution is “custom solutions”), is to replace these systems with “off the shelf” products, enabling companies to focus on the core business. This trend is similar to the ERP space in the 90s, and initially in the MES space in the late 90s, and 2000s, but MES solutions of this time did not deliver the complete solution, and the eventual solutions have become unsustainable for the “operational journey”. Thousands of sites have installed MES Products from Invensys and other vendors, that are  highly successfully having run for over decade delivering significant value, but this time around there is more functionality capability people want, the architecture is not just one plant but multiple, and tolerance for custom code has significantly dropped. So why? And why now?

Rotating Staff, Worker Retention becomes key Design Considerations

After 2 weeks in Asia, and the 2 weeks before travelling Australia and USA, the concern of worker retention, and the different attitude of the Gen  Y, rotating work force is of real concern.  In China they already shifted to an educated GenY late Gen x population of workers keen to learn, jump to experience rapidly. With this comes ambition to change, and experience so many discussions talked centered on worker retention.

This discussion will continue to grow as people realize the reality that people will take on roles for shorter times, rotating locations, or advancing the ladder, moving from company to the company as opportunities arise. In software; we saw this in the “.com” era, where we saw a 20% turn over, but with that we saw  evolution in the work environment.  The idea as attract and retain people, with both interesting work, and an environment which has services and facilities to make people want to stay.

The same is starting to happen in the industrial sector with the “Integrated Operational Center”, bringing operators and experts into environments that and better for families, and working, as well as enhancing  collaboration, increasing agility. As we go through the next 5 to 10 years in the transition from “Baby boomer” and Gen X to Gen Y, the learning of a role, situation must be different. It must enable:

·         Self-Education

·         The ability to Ask and learn, this means knowledge systems at the finger tips no matter what device, location, or situation.

·          To learn on the job, “Youtubes” and knowledge embedded into operational experience

·         The ability to access experience through collaboration with experts no matter where they.

As stated in earlier blogs; this must become a part of the design of Operational, process, maintenance and operational management experiences. Not an afterthought, but just a natural configuration as people do today with alarms, they should configure knowledge access. If you are sitting designing operational experiences at the moment, sit back and allow yourself time to understand how you will add the learning experience so that the user will be able to become experienced and capable in an efficient time.

The two countries I am seeing this change most pronounced are China and South Africa, as they both have an educated Gen Y coming through more rapidly than in most countries to fill a void of Baby boomer and Gen X. The demand for a new generation of experience will grow, and Advanced Process Graphics will help, but experience must be embedded.

Will Windows 8 be a turning point Industrial/ Manufacturing Operational Interface? Yes !

How influential will the launch of Windows 8 be in the industrial, manufacturing market?

I believe while it is not the first one with concepts (Apple did that) because of the size and market share in the Industrial Space, and the combination of other market, demographic factors (outlined below) that this is a significant mile stone in the Industrial Supervisory experience transformation.

Impact of the Gen Y on Automation/ Operational Systems!

The last 3 weeks I have been travelling North America and Australia supporting the upcoming 2012 R2 software releases from Invensys, and as I write this I am on a plane to China. Discussions with  end users, and engineering houses across many industries, and there are a number of discussion points that I will make topics over the next couple of weeks.

One is around theimpact of  incoming operational workers/ process engineers from the “Gen Y” generation that is people born 1980s to early 2000s, sometimes referred to as the “Millennial Generation”. Usually the conversation starts by people talking about the aging work force and the retiring “baby boomer” generation (born Post WW2 and before 1960, evolving to discussion on the  transitions from Baby Bommer to Gen Y, missing the majority of the Gen X (born 1960s and 1970s), who have gone into other professions away from the industrial world.  The story of the retiring of the workforce and impact has been around for 10 years, but the realization in many of the conversations is that Gen Y are not the same, and the bigger issue will be “RETENTION” of Gen Y.

I saw an article on the fact that one career for a life time has gone, to me that started to go in the Gen X world, when I even look at myself. Starting from an electrical engineer in a steel works, moving into control software, development and product management, across a long list of countries, not one role or location for a career. Gen Y will take this to a new level, as they handle problems, learning and tasks totally differently.
Do we go on training for being Facebook users? NO. So why do we need to have training on Operatinal HMIs on the plant, the system must lead the user, thetraining is expected to be in the system, not in a class room.
One person said do you remember:

·          Sitting in libraries and researching:  YES

·          Using a phone book to look a phone number :  Yes

Now ask would a Gen Y person remember or even consider this with the internet to search enabling access, and information and   filtering at their finger tips, and this ability to filter is huge. Phone numbers are in contact lists on phones, or face book. Example for our products ther are online manuals, Gen Y will not read them; they will expect short Youtubes (of no more than 7 minutes) on a subject, and wiki approach to support material.

The question of Gen Y retention is a monumental one, in the industrial, manufacturing space, when looking  at the operational experiences we designed they were for the Baby Boomer/ early Gen X. The products are also in many cases the same experience vintage, even if we have added many new capabilities. Is it exciting enough for GenY? Can they access information to make decisions in a form and experience aligned with experience they in personal life on internet, smart phones, and social community?  As industrial environment moves slowly we are behind, but the change is picking up, but my feeling and feedback from many people this operational experience will have to jump  in the next 5 years.

Many companies have not evolved the experience, why because they added new capability, but their thinking the actor / user is a Baby Boomer/ early Gen X ( these generations where more aligned)  not the  Gen Y which is paradigm shift. The real revolution in operational experience has happened in the commercial since 2000, due to Apple, Facebook, Twiiter, Wiki etc. During this time, many companies have being executing the integration between systems, ERP systems, plant floor, evolving the control, improving the supply chain. Not many have evolved the User Interfaces or Operational control rooms; if they have they have upgraded the technology, maybe gone from control rooms to line side kiosks and unified operational experiences over multiple control systems. Not seriously addressing a new level operational experience required to be agile and responsive in today’s world, and enable the Gen Y to perform at most effective.

In some of the new Operational Centers we seeing shift with the introduction of collberation (but in many applications), and common knowledge systems, but really the need for situational awareness, rapid learning, intuitive systems (faster time to performance) are key. The whole method, filtering, discovering of Gen Y is totally different to “Baby Boomer” , expect frustration if they can not satisfy the hunger for rapid information, and decision the work in their personnel lives.  

So in these discussions people eyes open, with realization, that both products that they build automation and operations solutions on as well, as well as the design of the Operational experience will need to fundamentally change. This is why I talk about this as the “Perfect Storm” as the operational experience and the way people have to work as a team, access and make decisions for:

·          Addressing the global agility required today and future

·          Sustain the working practices of Gen Y generation

·          Address the changing Operational practices of the flexible operational team

Many people ask me why we are spending  so much investment in time and energy in the new operational experiences, but when you consider just discussion there is no choice, and the time has being coming, will you be ready?

Modularization Standards enable Fast Deployment and Minised Risk

This week I have met with many engineers from different companies in a number of industries. It is nice to see innovation and people pushing the limits. A company I met built modular solar power plants, and rolled them out over many sites. Due to this modular approach, like the physical plant, they just assemble these plant control, and operational systems. How can this be done with traditional automation systems with tags?

Standards have been talked about in the past, yet I continue to talk with people, and they really do not fully understand them, and value, but also the governance and culture which must go with them. This customer was different, and it was “breath of fresh air”, they saw value, they applied governance, and management.

Standards provide the advantages of:

·          Application reuse

·          Faster project time to Value

·          Reduced risk and errors

·          Reduced commissioning time

·          Provide consistency of experience, operations, control etc across applications

·          Ability to manage evolutionary functionality over multiple sites

 

October / November User Group Events Provide the Opportunity to See Reality to Industry Trends

October / November User Group Events Provide the Opportunity to See Reality to Industry Trends

I am stting on a plane to LAX, on the first of many over the next 6 weeks, as I visit many of the Invensys Operations Mgmt User Groups Events, providing a more direct environment for users and potential users to engage with each other and the thought leaders.

I hope many of you are going to these events, found on the Invensys site.(www.iom.invensys.com)

As I talk with customers and engineering houses this is an exciting time of evolution, as companies continue to drive to a holistic view across their industrial facilities, and agility. Below shows the big trends we saw about 5 years ago, these are no long future they are reality. The user groups events will show case studies, and technologies enabling reality to these transitions.

SIMPLICITY the path to adoption, and alignment!

Last week I talked about the two big concepts companies are going to have to grapple with in order to increase competitive efficiency (operational efficiency).

Last week I was dealing with some projects and again the example of technology solution/ change is simple compared to associated “cultural change” that has to be invoked inorder to achieve the objective and return. Key is adoption of the new approach, why not merge technology/ and human nature, to enable a key ingredients of change adoption by changing the situational experience. Human nature is one to to take the path of least resistance, so “simple”, “logical” and “intuitive” experiences can only promote adoption.

The Changing Approach to Enabling the Two Key Assets (Captial/ Human) in Plants

For the last 5 months, you have read about different aspects of what is happening in the market in order to achieve OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE. Realistically it comes down to two key operational concepts:

·          The aligning of the HUMAN ASSETS into an Operational Team operating in the NOW.

·          The aligning of CAPITAL ASSETS into a co-ordinated Supply chain, and not islands of automation.

Talking to people they are all different levels on these two areas, but most focus on Captial Asset performance, yes plant/ equipment utilization. People talk about providing information to “Joe” the operator, but miss the point that information is only part of the journey, decisions and actions need also to happen in a timely manner.

The diagram below illustrates the main elements of these two alignment strategies which leading companies are applying to a different level:

The Industrial Calculation Landscape, the challenge!!!!

Too often over the last 6 months the desire for managed calculations has come up when reviewing a project or site. Drilling in on the requirements it becomes clear, that the enterprise’s/sites are having trouble aligning, managing calculations/ measures and KPIs. Microsoft Excel has become the source of many of the calculations, providing the freedom for engineers to create Adhoc calculations. The Excel paradigm is an isolated one, ending up with 100s / 1000s of calculations. Many of the companies I talk to across different industries have initiatives underway to eliminate Excel as data source, they do not mind it as an analysis tool. The major chunk of work is to understand the current Excel sheets determine the measures and calculation within these, determine the common calculations and data sources, and then determine a way to create and manage calculations/ measures and KPIs with clear governance. Not and Easy Task!!!

Getting out from behind the desk/ control terminal!

 

The above comment was made to me by an oil and gas company, and when I enquired to their expectation, it was clear that they wanted to empower "controllers" (operators) to be responsible for more. Enable decisions to be made faster while also gaining consistency across teams and shifts.

Transforming the traditional role of sitting in a control room behind a terminal, to a dynamic role, where the operator can get up and roam to investigate, make decisions and take actions in a timelier manner. This concept embraces all of the concepts this blog has raised over the last couple of months and shows the transition in the industrial sector to focusing operational empowerment.   

Why our User Interfaces must be come Model Driven?

I referred to “Model Driven “ navigation last week, and got some reaction that we are already there with ArchestrA Graphics. This made me step and re read what I in the last blog, and realise that I had assumed some understanding.

Yes today ArchestrA Graphics are built into the model in the objects etc, this is a significant step from the classic InTouch like window which the graphics are independent of the model, just linked, but many applications do not build in navigation to the model. My actually intention was not just these graphics in the model but take the whole operational experience to  level, that the model and views into this model for operational control etc, can be independent of the device and layout. Also, the model must be able to change freely and not a characteristic of what device or who will engage with it.

Navigation needs to be a Natural Act!!!!

Last week I visited some sites and engineering houses as they developed new systems. What struck me was the amount of time, and effort we put into designing a forced navigation between screens and windows. Even though, I knew this in my mind, I asked Why?.

In designing navigational buttons,  thereby enforcing a method of navigating through the application, which then now needs to trained to the people. Why cannot the system has Natural navigation built from the application model.

So what is this about?

Change in Reaction Time due Advanced Process Graphics

Change in Reaction Time due Advanced Process Graphics

The transformation to Advanced ProcessGraphics aligned to the level shift in operational responsibility to achieve the operational agility needed in the “Flexible Operational Team”. In the last month, it has been rewarding to see two customers embracing this technique with results of straightforward, responsive Navigation.

The diagram below shows the evolution of the HMI graphic, in the 80s it was what I call the black DCS screen, to 90’s and 2000’s which we have a photo like graphics and many colors, to the drive today of uncomplicated, 2D graphics.

Operator Training Systems become the Corner Stone for Management of Change to a Flexible Operational Team.

Over the last month I have hosted a number of customer workshops on the evolution of Operational Teams, which you have seen in the discussion over the last couple of months is going through a significant change.

I enjoy these discussions, and brainstorming, especially with groups who have been charged with Operational Performance, and they have moved away from grinding out more value from capital assets (this is a very mature area with asset management) and have shifted their focus to the Human Assets. It is funny to think 10 years ago we were talking “lights out manufacturing” without humans, the best comment I have heard to this notion is that “turning the lights out makes it hard for operators to find their way to the control room”. The real change is people have realized that complex / agile decisions needed today require the human brain, so the role of people in the aligning of an operational process is key.

Composite Frameworks What are They, How do they Play?

As we look at MES and Operational solutions the role of the consistent operational execution and experience is key to achieving operational consistency.

Traditionally companies have built User Interfaces to an API, with the calls needed to execution actions and transactions coded in. These have worked well especially within a plant. But a key to operational systems being effective and agile is their ability to adapt on a regular basis, this requires a sustainable and evolving system. This is especially important in form/ transaction activities where information is provided and where actions/ data input, and procedures  that need to be carried out. But the challengers of operational procedures:

ü  Operational Process cross-over functional domains and applications

ü  Lack of governance

ü  Agility

ü  Responsive manufacturing business processes

ü  Increase the performance of their people assets

IS MDM the same in in the Industrial space as in Enterprise?

Following on from last week this is a good question that may take a couple of weeks to explain, debate.

Synching between systems, I see people look at data warehouses , they do manual binding, but these are just not practical in a sustainable and every changing world. There are many systems usually upwards of 20 + systems which come from different vendors and even if they do come from the same vendor they implemented by different cultures in the plants. The thought pattern on “just asset naming” is different between these groups. So the concept of MDM for Industry is a hidden one, but we believe is a key one for the future of sustainable solutions that are federating multiple systems together, so expect to see investments and products to trying to address this. In this blog I want to have a discussion on why MDM what it is, and Gerhard has done a good job, and I will expand on it.

Does Master Data Management does it Apply in Industry

 This again most automation engineers and plant personal look at me with a "blank look". But those in the business side / IT understand the need and challenge. But the real question does this have a chance to really work in the operations level 3 space, let's have discussion around this.

As Gerhard Greeff – Divisional Manager at Bytes Systems Integration put it in his paper"When last did you revisit your MOM?"

"Master Data Management (MDM)

The third proof of this conservative thinking is that very few manufacturing technologists have ever heard of Master Data Management (or MDM) and fewer understand what this actually mean. Enterprise solutions have long relied on MDM systems to ensure naming consistency and data translation between disparate enterprise-level solutions. Manufacturing has not even given this a thought as can be seen by the proliferation of point-to-point interfaces between systems."

Around the 2000 time, I like many of the MES linked people were looking at how to integrate to ERP systems through EAI etc, and we found ourselves on many inter- operative meetings. Discussing how bring S95 to reality, how can lower the risk, and engineering in this interoperability. Now 10 years on the EAI approach has worked for some companies, but as one of them said to me that 10% of the challenge and inter operative communication, synching is between the ERP and MES/ Operations. Actually 90% is at the ISA level 3 and it is as another company put" the invisible barrier, limitation to achieving industrial agility".

 

Remote Diagnostics Monitoring logical for Preemptive support, and Higher Availability.

I talked about last week the influence of IT on the strategies for System Administration/ Diagnostics with respect to drive towards using off the shelf IT tools for System Admin such as Microsoft’s System Center.  But there is another trait form It coming into software and that is the desire for pro-active monitoring of the software systems, vs the traditional just logging of systems.

I was in an executive meeting a couple of years ago in Southern Africa, where we had a number of the CIOs from some of the world leading companies and we discussed the shortage of expertise, the outsourcing of IT and engineering, and the increasing complexity of solutions, and most of all the ever changing evolution of modern software components of a solution. These brainstorming discussions around one table with a set of leading thought leaders , brought up challenges and opportunities.

One of the key challengers was having expertise on internal teams that understood the error measures , best practices and can stay up to date, as it is hard to (impossible to have dedicated people) to one system or product. Now this has been solved by traditional database companies, and systems, by these companies providing a diagnostics / monitoring service that pro-actively   the site systems, with a dedicated team of product experts, who are up date and can dedicate 100% of their time to staying up to date. In the "Business Applications Software" segement and in DCS hardware, and High availability hardware companies this has existed for a long time, but  not in the traditional automation software sector. But again in the last 2 years we have seen this practice, or service come being offered.   

Already Invensys Southern Africa  has set up and is offering this service as an Invensys Sentinel service:

“As skills scarcity increases, most production technicians are stretched to the limit with their Daily tasks. Little time is left to maintain the running software systems and very few can find the time to develop and maintain specialist knowledge to diagnose faults on these systems.

As a result of this change in market conditions, Invensys offers Sentinel Services (ISS) technology that monitors the performance of your Wonderware system — continuously.

Invensys delivers the following Sentinel Services capabilities:

·          Continuous proactive monitoring

·          Remedial remote diagnosis support

·          Wonderware system health review

Command Center in South Africa

We achieve this by installing special “agent software” on each Wonderware server located at customer sites. These agents monitor the system on a 24x7 basis to ensure that critical resources are performing within best practice norms.

If an unacceptable threshold is reached, an alarm is raised and Invensys engineers are alerted before an issue develops. Remote connectivity is also designed to ensure that, if there is a problem, Invensys experts can work with you to make appropriate adjustments to correct the issue and return your system to normal operation quickly and easily.

It is typical of the innovation of the Southern African team, and you can expect to see this evolve into a main stream offering over the next 12 months.

Again these CIOs (eg IT) had an expectation of the fact they can monitor their business datbases and applications and systems by external services with with the expertise WHY NOT in the automation/ operations software. Another example of impact of existing IT practices and it been adopted as an acceptable practice in this automation sector.

But I would question the need for just monitoring we want to go to exception based awareness of the software systems, and treat these as assets in your production system just like the your large capex assets such as furnaces, bottling lines, pump stations, WHY NOT? I would like to start down this topic this week and expand to making Software apart of Asset Maintenance strategies.

What is the influence of IT on System Administration/ Diagnostics Approaches in Automation/ Operations  Systems?

The continued transformation of the automation/ operation systems under the significant influence of IT continues 14 to 15 years after the influence started to be felt during the “year 2000” panic and awareness. To me the most significant impact of this period was that corporate IT become aware during the software audits of the amount of desktop/ and servers running on the plants. From this time I have sat in many meeting where leading company IT engineers have discussed how they can bring more management and therefore sustainability to these systems.

The pressures on these trends / discussion continue and for good reason:

·         Security and threat of cyber security attacks down in plants is now not a dream but a reality

·         The continue stream line of IT and driving the IT cost down through outsourcing.

·         Also the never ending annual, and sub annual upgrading of OS especially now that most automation/operations systems run on Microsoft Operating systems, there is a treadmill of upgrades, due to security and technology evolution.

These are to name a few, and this is so different to 80s and 90s (when many of the current automation systems where originally developed), where the OS was isolated from these outside effects.

But the above pressures will not go away, no matter how much automation engineers “dig their heads in the sand”, because the reality of:

Why SOA in industrial/ manufacturing space?

This is a question I have heard a lot, I have also heard SOA been thrown about in  Industrial market limited real understanding of the potential value.

So this week to add to the discussion I have included an extraction from “When last did you revisit your MOM?” By Gerhard Greeff – Divisional Manager at Bytes Systems Integration

“You may think that the SOA concept applied to manufacturing is outrageous and that it will never work. After-all, you have talked to the Enterprise Architects and they just don’t get the complexities of the manufacturing environment. But before you skip this section, do yourself a favour and read what SOA actually does according to Gartner and MESA and then think how you can apply that to manufacturing and MOM specifically.

Manufacturing 2.0 what is it?

If you have been watching AMR now Gartner for the past 3 years they introduced the concepts of “Manufacturing 2.0", which looked at where manufacturing and industrial architectures could go. Many of the concepts were not new, but they did a good job showing a whole picture and the components needed to make this architecture real. Too often you get a concept thrown forward but it is only part of what is required, and people miss the whole picture.

But this concept of Manufacturing 2.0 has been picked up by MESA in their push on educating the market, and they now run certification courses on the concept of Manufacturing 2.0. These courses are good for hybrid, discrete and process companies and system integrators, even if you have been doing MES for years you will learn techniques and concepts.

The diagram below shows two levels of Manufacturing 2.0, one from the enterprise level, where the manufacturing is fitting into a corporate SOA architecture. Down in the bottom right hand corner is “manufacturing”, now the second diagram drills into the next level, showing a real SOA architecture in industrial landscape.

Operational Control is it Real?

As you have heard over the last couple of months in this blog that we or I believe in that leading companies must start changing their thinking in operational system design to embedded best practices and enable consistent decisions in the NOW.

An example of this is seen below on a operational control project Invensys did in process industries:

The key thing provided to the operational people was KPIs in their operational context as seen in the screen up in the right hand side.

The spot chart shows operational points layered over each other. With the pink and blue showing operational control prior to implementing an “Operational Window” based  upon Dynamic Performance Measures which provide in the context of the worker/ role, aligning strategy, measure and action.

The yellow shows the same teams operations post the application of the “Operational Window” approach, you can see the significant reduction in variation and distribution of the operational control. To this client it has realized significant cost reductions, and it did not require hardware implementations or plant changes it was an initial step in the road to operational excellence by gaining operational consistency through awareness.

This is not the final step in is an initial step but a real one with only information in context role and business strategy,  to enable aligned decisions in the NOW.
It is time to discuss SOA architectures and Manufacturing 2.0 is it real and why, I have had many people ask and discuss with me situations these concepts will be critical so in the next couple of weeks we will expand down this path. 

Operational Windows Enable a Form a Operational Control

I have talked about the drive by many companies to reduce “Operational Variation” across plants, teams, and industries. This is a key part of "virtual situation room". As I continue to talk with different companies this theme continues to grow and come up, many companies do not understand or realize they implementing steps towards it but when you discuss the underlying goals it is true.

There are many ways that operational control will be implemented, as pointed out it could be through actions and processes becoming embedded and certainly this will be the big driver in the road to “Operational Excellence”.

But another way is through displaying key operational indicators to a knowledge worker, where  these indicators are mapped within boundary conditions. These boundaries are set up based on the time and relevance to the role and activity/ task the knowledge worker is performing. This sort of “Operating Window” enables the knowledge worker the context, and recommendations, knowledge to enable operational decisions in a timely and ever consistent way. This same operational window can be used over multiple sites/ and teams for that role and activity providing consistency control.

The figure below is an example of an operational window.

Virtual Expert Teams, Provide One answer to “Time to Performance”

We often hear of the aging workforce as a big problem, and certainly it is due to fact that it is not a evolutionary transition it is leap to a new generation, and in most cases due to market the realization of the true situation was not understood.

But what we seeing in the market is some innovative approaches to solving this existing experiencing and the transfer, and it is through the use of “Virtual Experts Teams”. So what is this concept?

Data Structuring/ Normalization and Validation the Hidden Key to Unified Information Solution!!!

For the last 2 weeks I have been on the road, sorry just did not get to updating blog, but a constant discussion topic that keeps coming up. “How to truly build a Unified Information system that allows a view across their industrial/ production assets, and the ability to compare, and understand current state, capacity and performance quickly and easily.”

Warehouse Execution System Opportunity for Different Approach Using a Platform

 

Last week I worked for a day with exciting team of System Integrators who are in the MES space, one is old friend from South Africa who has moved to Australia. The attitude is great, “we will have a go”, so we discussed and visited a customer site around the possible opportunity for Warehouse Execution System, running in conjunction with Warehouse Management System (usually in the ERP system).

People look at me sideways when I talk Warehouse, but in the manufacturing environment distribution and therefore warehousing is key, and actually moving away from storage to real time re-alignment of distribution.  You may ask what does that mean? The more and more we align value assets (manufacturing/ production sites) from single  running identities (islands, Profit and loss centers) to aligned Value Assets, you will see inventory drop, cash increase, and this can only become a reality be changing the warehouse to production like facility vs just a storage system.

This requires an Execution System to work in conjunction with the Warehouse Management System to really enable real-time execution, optimization, and streamlining within the facility, and more and more across multiple facilities. I was encouraged to have a good discussion around this last week, and saw the opportunity to leverage the new technologies available to enable this WES to become a reality that is manageable.

 The traditional execution systems that come with Warehouse Systems are just not flexible and certainly have no concept of multiple warehouse alignment. In the past I have implemented MES but the challenge is integration with the automation world especially relative to locations, and then the different operational procedures different sites have and shifts have.

But today we seeing:

·         Need to real-time alignment with execution on the warehouse, including location health awareness.

·         Traceability within the warehouse

·         Optimization in storing and picking so that minimal times are required and maximum flexibility.

·         The desire for enforcement of operational practices across shifts and sites, needing standards management over sites.

·         The alignment of multiple warehouses and manufacturing / production facilities

So when applying today’s technologies and approaches:

·         The System Platform for real-time interaction, the ability to develop intelligent objects that represent equipment and locations so these can become exception based on health, as well providing a consistent set of transactional triggers for MES. Whilst also providing a distributed platform over multiple sites with these standards being managed over the sites.

·         MES providing the routing and inventory management and tracking and product definition rules

·         Workflow combined with the forms User interface to provide a Model Driven Operational Composite Framework. So task/ activity related User Interfaces with built in operational procedures can be developed and managed  across sites. This provides a sustainable / configurable environment for developing these unique operational procedures. A key capability is to monitor and analyze these procedures to continue to see where bottle necks are, and tune the procedures to increase human operational inter-action efficiency.

The key is the introduction of the platform as a sustainable real-time interaction and trigger system, and the Workflow composite framework to again provide a sustainable environment for procedure User Interface development.

Food for thought!!!!!

Last week I worked for a couple of days with an exciting team of System Integrators who are in the MES space, one is old friend from South Africa who has moved to Australia. The attitude is great, “we will have a go”, so we discussed and visited a customer site around the possible opportunity for Warehouse Execution System, running in conjunction with Warehouse Management System (usually in the ERP system).

People look at me sideways when I talk Warehouse, but in the manufacturing environment distribution and therefore warehousing is key, and actually moving away from storage to real time re-alignment of distribution.  You may ask what does that mean? The more and more we align value assets (manufacturing/ production sites) from single  running identities (islands, Profit and loss centers) to aligned Value Assets, you will see inventory drop, cash increase, and this can only become a reality be changing the warehouse to production like facility vs just a storage system.

This requires an Execution System to work in conjunction with the Warehouse Management System to really enable real-time execution, optimization, and streamlining within the facility, more and more across multiple facilities. I was encouraged to have a good discussion around this last week, with the opportunity to leverage the new technologies available to enable this WES to become a reality that is manageable.

The traditional execution systems that come with Warehouse Systems are just not flexible and certainly have no concept of multiple warehouse alignment.
In the past I have implemented MES but the challenge is integration with the automation world especially relative to locations, and then the different operational procedures different sites have and shifts have.