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.