Focusing on Operational Activities and new Roles provides a Path to the Future Operational Workspace.

As we enter the new year, the challenge of how and where we start designing the new operational solutions for 2020 and beyond will come up.
I have expanded on a blog I did in November with a white paper, on the facets especially around the Operational Workspace.
I hope this provides some food for thought as we enter the new year.

Companies have invested and executed on the traditional alignment in a plant across process systems, and business systems (such as SAP), leveraging such guidelines such as ISA-95. With the drive towards more and more agility and rapid deployment of products to markets, the alignment of multiple plants, and their operational/automation systems with the business strategy/ applications is a key area. The other key area of critical concern is the operational workplace. With rapid agility, comes the requirement for more alignment, and more complexity, combined with key / rapid decisions to be made in real-time, and as a result the new operational team collaboration, and operational workspace will be critical. Combine this with the facts that over 10,000 experienced baby boomers are retiring each week, (this rate is expected to continue for seventeen years), and that by 2020, 42%+ of the workforce is expected to made up of Gen Y.

So where do you start when planning to design an industrial operational system today?

Some people throw technologies around like Cloud, wireless, and mobile, and begin looking for how to apply them, instead of stepping back and looking at “how they will be Operating, based upon the business, market and both capital and human assets”. This requires developing a plan and landscape to satisfy this future operational state, and then apply the best technologies available to achieve the result in the most timely, cost effective and operationally effective manner.

The future “operational state” of the business needs to take into account:

• The production and delivery requirements of products and services, and how to satisfy the consumer demand, this will probably lead to an “enterprise Industrial/ Manufacturing Landscape” with a holistic view and operational execution across multiple plants strategically located for satisfying delivery.
• The “operational workspace” of the future and how the workforce, including all roles at corporate, in the plants, delivery and supply will execute their required activities in the most effective manner.
• The overall supply chain of raw materials, to delivery, the cost, the environmental impact, and how to minimize energy costs.

It is important to note that, in most cases the automation layer is mature and well established and that their business side is also mature on the second generation business system.

So the question of where do I start designing a system for 2020 a beyond, leads to all three of the above aspects of requirements, but of the three aspects of consideration above, the “operational state” is the one that least understood and probably the biggest impact. The opportunity of significant improvement and gain is in the “Operational Workspace” at the operational layer across multiple facilities. Based around the “activities” a role executes decisions in real-time with consistent actions across a range of workers in that role in different plants.

In defining the future “Operational Workspace” of an industrial landscape there are two key activities that need to defined:

• Define the “Operational Activities”: across the value supply chain, looking at each step of manufacturing and delivery. As these activities are captured look to determine a common set of “activities” that can be applied across the sites. It is important to have a defined set of work/ operational processes from which people execute, and then look to embed these processes in a sustainable manner so that they can evolve over time. The diagrams below show the importance of a framework for operational process and how these contribute to the site operational activities, based on what Toyota has applied.

Embedding these operational procedures is important so that consistency across sites, teams, and the dynamic workforce is achieved and sustained. The diagram below from ARC shows the impact of companies building standards and the difference in the long term if they are not embedded to become part of “Operational Workspace”.

• Define the roles in the new operational workspace: how they will work. These roles could be on site or off site, through the concept of the “flexible operational team”. Define the role, the day in the life of that role taking into account location, what “activities” that role is responsible for, and who and what he/she will interact with through the day. Yes, switch into a “Facebook” thinking of friends, but friends maybe people, (other experts) Assets, Processes, even products. Once this map of “activities” and responsibilities during the day is defined, this drives what information, systems and people this role must interact with in a day. By understanding how a role will work in his/her day e.g. if he/she will be located at a plant or roaming, the way that the role will engage with the operational workspace will become clear as well as the role of such technologies of mobile, cellular networks vs. wireless infrastructure, etc. For a particular activity, the role may be notified using one device, but actually executing the role may need to go to a different device based on the requirement for the activity’s execution. When looking at the role, also understand the expected experience in executing the activity, or the site awareness, potential age (e.g. Gen Y- are they experts providing support), etc. as this effects the design of the most effective operational environment.

This role map is key as now you have a starting point, as to driving consistency in a dynamically changing workforce. These role maps are then combined, composed of “operational activities” associated with the role, where the activity has the required notification, information, actions, community of expertise etc. and architectural landscape so these “operational activities” can complement existing systems.

The architectural landscape should define the layers on top of existing systems, in a neutral way, where these operational activities (model driven approach) will reside, these could be local or remote hosting but will require clear governance and require models to defined in an environment that enables constant evolution of the practices but process experts locally and centrally as a “crowd development”, with governance control.

Initially focusing on a role or set of key roles allows the company to gain an approach on how the operational plant will run in 2020 and the key decisions / activities that required, and start applying these now in an architecture that lives with the current systems, but starts to drive consistency and faster decisions across that same role over multiple plants.

Notice that the discussion is independent of technologies; my assumption on mobile and Cloud that the architecture is set up so that these activities will be able to execute independently of the device, so that the adoption of what devices are used on a plant are relative to the plant and the support that they get. The key is the devices, no matter if desktop or mobile or web, should be suited to efficiency of the role execution.

This approach defines the “Operational Workspace” with roles and activities in a defined framework applied across the industrial landscape of the required value chain for delivering products in a timely manner to desired markets. Optimizing these processes and procedures lowers the cost of materials, wastage, and energy, and maximize the utilization of available capacity.

Happy New Year, A year of Promise for Operational Transformation

As I sit and look out over the surf in south Australia, with the end of year here, we have time to reflect.
Firstly happy new year to all of you.
2014 has a real opportunity to be a transformation year in the Operational Management space, with many of the seedlings of trends and direction becoming increasingly adopted as we accelerate into new requirement of agility.
In this brief blog the areas for watching:

• The increased use of the "internet" as a natural part of the operational / automation architecture
• The increased adoption of the cloud combined with the expect rapid expansion "managed industrial services" (offerings) available from vendors and specialist suppliers
• The increased transition from central to distributed, in all aspects of architecture and operational approach to plants.
• The increased role of energy and environment as one of the big factors in operational/ automation design.
• The change in operational Experience to accommodate the transition of workforce to Gen Y and to a more operational team
• The shift to the "internet of things" where smart strategies will increase the distributed landscape of operations, and control.

So many of these strategies are well under way, but 2014 there is the potential for surge in adoption to increase  as confidence and acceptance of the approaches takes place.

Enjoy the start of 2014.

Confusion Over Standards: Limits or Basis for Innovation?

One of the nice things of this time of year the meeting workload drops, providing the opportunity to do some much needed catch up of reading. An article that sparked some interesting thoughts and is related to a lot of the principles of work and activities. It is worth a read on Toyota’s approach to management of standards around the fundamentals of operational procedures.

http://m.industryweek.com/blog/confusion-over-standards-limits-or-basis-innovation

As discussed at length this year there are a couple of key approaches that will effect industrial operational design:

·         That design needs to move away from interfaces to actually design around activities/ Work; these can be executed through any interface hosted on any device.

·         The other trend is to move to manage / planned work, a knowledge worker moves from a “fire fighting” mode to a 70+ % planned work in a day, which increases safety, and consistent process execution through operational process stands combined with significant cost reductions due reductions in the planned time.

These two trends or approaches will grow in adoption in 2014/ 15 as it is the only practical way to deal with the changing dynamic nature of the workplace and rotating workforce.

The structure outlined below by Jim Laker used at Toyota is a good basis for the how to lay out standards in procedures vs the actual operation instruction. But another key cornerstone of this is knowledge management, with 10000 baby boomers retiring a week in the US, and this rate is expected to sustain for the next 17 years, the requirement for skill vs the talent pool will be offset. So the operational systems must incorporate shared knowledge, crowd sourced and managed to maintain the value. Many of the operational procedures and best practices must be captured over the next 5 years, companies must put a maintainable knowledge management  system, and culture in place, and as you can see in this diagram that standard procedures, operational safety and environment procedures, and practices form the basis for the transition to planned work, and activity based systems.

When you think of standards you think of “handcuffs” on design and therefore innovation, but this is not a logical thought process. How do you enable operational innovation which is based on operational best practices, provides the foundational platform on consistent execution to enable innovation and movement forward. The need to capture operational innovation by taking the best operators and knowledge workers based on years of practices, capture their operational practices within a system so that new less experienced users to adopt the proven practice. Is this a one off NO, this is the continuous process of improvement which will provide the edge for companies to agile.

As you sit down for the Christmas pudding and we look forward to 2014, there is much opportunity and change ahead of us, and these articles provide solid food for thought.

Have a great festive season, and see you in the new year.  

Review of the Blog “A Look at Industrial Operational Management Environment in 2020!!”

Throughout 2013, this blog and the message it brings has generated a lot of discussions and thought, debate when it comes to technology, architectural and cultural decisions being made around industrial solutions. The traditional approach we have taken for the last 20 years in design even evolutionary design of solutions must change, as there are too many vectors arriving at single point in time around:

·         Culture

·         Operational Agility to enable survival

·         Digital native workers

·         Safety and environmental impact

·         Combined with operational practices transformation

·         Technology like the “Cloud” and “Internet of things” extending the scope of the traditional industrial solutions to a wider value chain

I have been asked a number of times what were the big changes in 2013, basically they are listed above. Really when you look at these in the context of “the industrial landscape in 2020”, the transformation and decisions in architectures are key. As stated last week the “internet” will be part of the backbone of the industrial solutions; we will have “on premise “ and “off premise” components of this solution, and the shift to “activities” that transverse devices, roles, and locations are a key turn in the design approach.

So as you wind down on the year and wind up for Xmas I thought it was a good thing to reflect on what I started with this year, the projected landscape in 2020 and the only change is that, in some parts of the world such as China, South Africa many of the characteristics apply today.

Lets face it 2020 is only 8 years away, look at 8 years ago: Facebook had barely launched; iPhone and iPad did not exist, the A380 Airbus had not flown, and there was no YouTube, Twitter had not taken. Yet today Facebook, Youtube and social media are a natural part of our culture and lifestyle. I phone has now past MS Outlook as the world's largest email client, and mobile devices outsell all PC sales, which shows the significant shift in everyday life to always connected with the mobile device, not just for calls, but a text, news, email. Imagine doing business today without a mobile being able to access the required information. So in 2020, what will be a natural part of the Industrial Operational Management/ Plant Operations “day in the life”.

Are we designing today's systems for the future, are we looking at work ethic of 5 to 8 years out when designing? The answer is probably not farther than 2 to 3 years this could be a mistake when all the factors are changing so much.

Over the holiday period in my reading,  I ran into an article “How we’ll do Business in 2012” by futurist Morris Miselowski, which provoked reflection on much of what this blog covered last year, and thoughts about reality at that point in time. During my last trip to UK, I visited a client whom I thought is coming to grip with their automation/ operation system design and planning, but looking into the period 2015 to 20, and defining the roles but most of all the “day in the life” of those roles in 2018/20. This is the correct way to go as it allows the thought and design pattern to shift to the new paradigm we will be facing in 2020.

So let’s set some facts down about the state of the world in 2020 from Mike Miselowski’s article:

• The 32^nd Olympic Games will be held.
• It will be a leap year.
• Baby Boomers will be older than 60
• One in five of us will be over 60 years of age.
• One in three employees will be working casual, part-time or project base vs career in a company.
• 40% of today’s senior leaders will have reached retirement age.
• Gen Y will account for 42% of the workforce.
• The average tenure in a jib / role will be 2.4 years
• One in four workers will be working remotely and virtually.

The last 5 points echo a lot of what we are starting to see in the market, especially in certain parts of the world e.g.| China and South Africa have both lost the Baby Boomer and the first half of Gen X generations. Gen Y is already a significant portion in their workforce, bringing with them real-time/ transient approaches to tasks with limited experience, they require solutions to absorb this work ethic vs challenge it. By 2020, we will all be in this mode, and it is the thought / and industry leaders who “embrace” this transitional work ethic so they can execute and grow the business by harnessing it that will be a leapfrogging the market.

Mike Miselowski made a comment on tomorrow’s workplace in business, but it applies to the operational space as well:

“The 2020 workplace will need to be adept at uniting a physically – present tribe of employees with a tribe of offsite, and often transient, staff. The latter will be specifically chosen for their ability to add value to the task or project, regardless of where they are on the globe.”

This concept aligns with the thoughts we have discussed in this blog around the transition from Applications – to – Roles – to – Activities, in the operational life. Many businesses are going away from offices to activity based workplaces where you choose you workplace (desk), location for the day based on the most efficient place to execute activities at hand. Compare this with the traditional office with family photos, and all your files. Now the workspace is clear with a power supply, internet connection (probably wireless) and all your files and information will be in the “cloud” or only local working space on your local device. Traditional automation solutions run a process with a specific layout for a PC or workstation which does not align with “activity” thinking, agility in users/ roles, the industrial operational work experience of tomorrow must allow activities to be chosen and the materials, information and procedures to execute all available no matter my location or device.

Tomorrow the “cloud” will be a natural part of the operational, automation world especially relative to information sharing, knowledge management, operational procedures consistently, and KPI consistently. The architectural landscape will be an “Industrial Enterprise landscape” across the value chain of the product, spanning plants, countries, cultures, automation systems, and vendors and companies. Yes,  the “federated” operational system delivering the product / service required to be “end to end” to the customer, with real-time awareness, and agility across the value chain, and this will span companies. The only way to compete is based upon service, requiring  responsiveness and agility.   

The average tenure will be 2.4 years, and if you consider 6 months to a year in today's terms is used in bringing a new person into the role to 100 % productivity. The approach to “time to performance” of new personal will need to change dramatically, and learning will natural, on the job, and self/ online training. Manuals will only be references, the learning and understanding will be You Tubes for short, focused skill absorption. The attitude of “why not”, and “what if” will prevail, and the system must explain or limit the “why not” and enable the “what if” question to be answered.

Systems will constantly evolving and changing, as changes in the “value chain of a product or service” evolve with different players, plants, supplies the ability to “plug and play” a new member of the value chain into flowing system will be key.

All the best for Xmas and New Year, and as you reflect on the year ahead I hope some of the comments above are forming some of the foundation for the themes for 2014, it will be a very exciting year, as the reality in the transformation of the industrial landscape takes shape initially from vendor offerings (Example this time last year the historians were “on premise” now two leading vendors have solutions for Tier2 (enterprise Historians) in the cloud) Invensys been one.

Applying New Technologies “Cloud/ Internet of Things” to Achieve addition “Jobs to be Done” vs Initially Applying to Existing Systems

Last week I was in Perth speaking with many people, and again it struck me that people were not looking a new opportunities for such technologies as the “cloud, or Internet of things” they were still in the traditional mindset.

As I have mentioned before I am a big believer in “The Outcome Driven Innovation” approach to looking at markets, opportunities. Providing a clear view into trends and focus on what is important.

So why are not people looking at the opportunities beyond the traditional industrial space of automation systems, to extend the scope and alignment of complete value chain. Example was with Invensys’s recent release of a “cloud based historian” the initial people you talk to are struggling on the benefit vs just a “tier 2 / Enterprise historian”. This is not surprising when “the conversation continued”, they were applying the technology to solve an existing “Job” problem which was well satisfied vs reviewing opportunities to add value that just are not served today.

But when I asked the question about their 1000’s of small auxiliary plants with low manning (if any),  for water, substations etc, and the opportunity to have 10 to 100 points coming up into a “managed  historian like service” so no need to: host, setup, manage a historian, and no need buy an over sized historian as now the small points from one plant can be included in a historian capability used by others (multi tenant). On the realization that we could actually extend the reach of the existing system, and therefore the opportunity optimize and tune these less visible plants, providing transparency and potentially interaction, people “sparked” up, and now the “Cloud” had some real additional value.

The same discussion happened over dinner with the “Internet of things” where again people were thinking of applying within the existing plants, vs extending the scope of control, visibility to a less well served segment of the value chain. Really the initial opportunity is to extend the unified system, and to remote devices and empower the roaming staff. Example is the “cold supply chain” in the distribution of food, where leaving the plant you have a series of refrigerated trucks and distribution centers. In order to achieve positive release of product and end to end full history the products. The “internet of things” provides the opportunity of each of the devices, plants (trucks) can be connected the temperatures of the products recorded as well as what products are in the truck. In a geographically distributed solutions, the concepts of isolated, remote assets, roaming value assets such as wells, trucks, and roaming people the logical is to have them all connected, the ability todo analysis and notification, react faster etc. Extending the traditional landscape/ scope of the automation system, with the technology step very minor if you have a 3G/ 4G approach and a tiered /Hybrid architecture. The hybrid architecture provides data integrity, with store forward etc,  addressing possible disconnects, but with the bandwidth management now available on data systems is key. This is only one example the if we look at other roaming equipment such as mine trucks and trains, wells and roaming drill rigs etc. Why now is because the technology, infrastructure and requirement exist, combining these provides a new level operational value. The move to supporting EDGE/ GPRS interfaces will become a natural part of industrial solutions, with self discovery capability.

Another discussion last week that stands out in my mind was around a customer who considered the cloud as unsafe from a security point of view. Then someone decided to really test this unsafe assumption and had an internal review of their security exposure vs the cloud solution, and it became very clear that their own “on premise” architecture was significantly more exposed than the cloud solution. This study was a good example of the ignorance of the new architectures; this customer is now shifting their architectural landscape to a hybrid architecture including “on and off” premise components.

It is clear that “Internet” will be part of the backbone of industrial automation and operations solutions. Especially as the market drives for more accountability End to End and decisions in the NOW, no matter where the key decision person is independent of device.

Globalization vs Continentalization, the world is shifting to Continentalization

Listening to a discussion on supply chain logistics panel, then follow the debate with some leading logistic thinkers and companies, and then stepping back you start to see a change to focusing from Global outlook to a Continental outlook, and networks of supply chain. When you listen to logistics thinkers, the cost of fuel, and changing climate conditions with increased storms, and the increased requirement for speed and reliability of delivery to end users is driving change in thinking to how to build efficient continental value networks.

Brand loyalty is decreasing, while convenience of consumption increases in buying behavior. The fact that I need to consume a product now and the ease buying, plus price will lead me to alternative products. In the 2000’s, we had a change to Globalization this is still happening in companies acquiring other companies and will increase, as people change to consume, buy online, but now comes the challenge of fulfillment in a timely and cost effective manner. Sourcing in low cost countries is becoming risky and costly due to transport costs, and distance, and since 2006 we continued to see a rise in transport costs, and environmental responsibility that adds to cost.

To address this, we seeing a move gradually to a continental value chain reducing distance some reducing time and uncertainly/ risk of delivery.  Also reducing cost through short distances, and fewer segment changes. These Value supply chains do cross borders.

Increasingly the complexity and value of the return of Global value delivers less value, vs a tighter and more agile continental value chain. New product integration can fit the market; changes in that market are absorbed and adjusted to faster. So information networks, and operational landscapes that enable transparent view and action across the continental chain, awareness of situation and state, the ability interact faster and adjust is key. Already in the smart grid discussions you starting to see the ASEAN Grid a distributed / collaborative grid for the nations of ASEAN.  In the food / CPG industries, primary production will happen centrally in one or few places in the continent, with packaging and final end product manufacturing happening locally servicing the language vs country. The Business System, Product Life Cycle Management, Asset management, and value chain planning and scheduling done across multi value sites in a logically ONE production landscape.

From an industrial / manufacturing system point of view this shift still a holistic view, where a set of value generating assets and their systems, assets and people will be interlinked across set of interconnected service buses to satisfy the needs within a continent. The uniqueness of each site, will be maintained, but the alignment will now exist through this “loosely coupled but aligned approach”, with operational management cross the borders and taking this continental view. The scope of the projects should be more contained than a global view. Combine this with the creation of dynamic operational community with cultural boundaries within the continent, the education requirement reducing “time to experience/ performance of staff can scope to the continent, which will reduce time zone miss alignment, as well.

The Biggest Transformational Opportunity for Industry is the “Distributed and Collaborative” architecture IoT

Over the last couple of months, people have me what is the biggest change to the future I see as the shift to a distributed yet collaborative world of interconnected devices, applications, people assets and system. Yes, this is referred to as the “internet of Things” IoT others call it the Internet of Everything”, but the key is smart devices providing information, be able to interact with each other.

Some people look at change since 1993 when the internet was introduced the biggest thing to happen, but I believe the value, and paradigm step in the way we work, and do things in the industrial world and at home as we move to Internet of Things concepts will be a far more dramatic transformation. Key is the world will be distributed in action; vs centralized, yet things will collaborate and interact for faster decisions, and awareness.

“ARC Advisory Group uses the term Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) to refer to the emerging practice of connecting intelligent physical entities, such as sensors, devices, machines, assets, and products, to each other, to internet services, and to applications. Industrial companies can use information from these connected devices to lower costs, optimize processes, and transform their applications, services, or business models.”

 To be honest, this is not a new idea I remember working on some R & D developments 12 years ago around putting web servers into instruments, the concept was to expose information easily and in a standard way. It was too early for the rest of the infrastructure was not there. Today that it is different, with wireless now a normal concept in an industrial plant, the advancement of cellular networks from a data point of view with 3G and 4G especially in geographically distributed, providing the backbone for ability of devices to realistically connect with enough bandwidth. Combine this with the SOA “service orientated architectures and applications, and the rise embedded intelligence within devices, and mobile devices the opportunity is here!

“But is it a matter of just exposing everything to the internet and we have changed the world?”

NO, the issues around security who can see, who can interact with your devices, is key, this is still maturing and evolving in techniques and practices, but reality is closer than most people seem to realize. The next is context, and intelligence, while smart devices and instruments are reality for new installations these do not apply to existing plants which is the majority of the world. So how do you “intelligence enable” existing devices, assets and processes in the industrial world?

We seeing people increasing use the PLCs and controllers to add intelligence around devices like motors and pumps, conveyors etc. But also there is work happening in what people call “stranded assets” where electronic manual rounds that managed and planned now bring back regular data from these stranded assets, as well intelligent platforms coming into play, putting a layer of intelligent objects that add intelligence and “self awareness” to unintelligent devices. The key is that information from a devices transforms to deliver increased value through context, validation, and “situational awareness”.

ARC is referring to this as CBM (Connected Device Management) platform I suspect their definition is more narrow than mine, as I believe the Internet of Things is no just about information, but the action as well, but never the less it provides a foundation.

“Connected Device Management (CDM) platforms are emerging as pivotal, value-added components of the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. These software entities -- used to manage intelligent connected products, devices,machines, and other assets -- reside between connected products or devices and the Big Data, analytics, cloud platforms, and other applications that reside at higher levels of the IoT architecture. “

 

The Key is that there is a layer needed between the analysis applications, and larger business/ operational decision makers and applications, and the devices of the industrial world. This layer needs to take devices from just information to “exception based” notification, and “self aware” devices to avoid overwhelming the Enterprise applications. But it is not just up, it is also across devices, in order to make a “self ware” notification, and intelligent device will have to talk to another device or devices to understand the full context of process etc. This introduces the concept of Internet of Things not just applying to devices but all to operational processes and their state, as well.

I saw an interesting application of this concept in the “Smart Grid” world of power that we needed to model and has as “living things” such things as “storms, fires, tides etc” these living entities need generate alarms, notifications etc. So key to this platform is that these intelligent objects are not data structures they are "living" entities providing data context, intelligent alarm, events and notifications and awareness of state relative to situation and surroundings.

This is an exciting topic of distributed, but collaborative “things” enabling faster real time decisions and actions across assets, process and people will provide the next level of opportunity. Aligning with many of the concepts of the “Third Industrial Revolution” with distributed micro power generation, with the interconnected intelligence across consumption, supply, storage in an economic growing structure, it too is the Internet of things concepts applied to change the world we live in.

Food for thought, and a good thread of thought for a series of blogs.  

 

Focus on "Roles being more effective" provides a potential path forward towards 2020!!

Last week I was engaged with a number major customers, in different industries, all looking at the future, and determining the next approach, and talking technologies and how to apply them. The companies have invested and executed on the tradition alignment in a plant across process systems, and also evolved their SAP business system. What concerned me was the throwing of technologies around like cloud, wireless, and mobile, and looking for how, instead of stepping back and looking at what are they trying to achieve, and then applying technologies to that plan.

It is important to note that, in both cases, their automation layer is mature and well established and that their business side is also well thought through and well on the way to being established on the second generation business system.

Again the opportunity of significant improvement and gain in operational efficiency is at the operational layer across multiple facilities. Again the role of people and enabling decisions in real-time are key but not just decisions but a consistency in action in the operational control loop.

The question of where to start came up, and through the discussion the opportunity of stepping back and taking a look at the roles that an operational plant will require from the roles in 2020 to execute. These roles could be on site or off site, through the concept of the “flexible operational team”. Define the role, the day in the life of that role taking into account location, what decisions and actions that role is responsible for and who and what he will interact with through the day. Yes, switch into a “Facebook” thinking of friends, but friends maybe people, (other experts) Assets, Processes, even products. Once this map of a decisions and responsibilities during the day is defined, this drives what information, systems and people this role must interact with in a day. It will also determine what operational procedures (Operational Activities) the role will potentially engage.

This role map is key as now you have a starting point, as to driving consistency in a dynamically changing workforce. Combining these role map, composed of “operational activities” associated with the role, where the activity has the required notification, information, actions, community of expertise etc. and architectural landscape so these “operational activities” can compliment existing systems.

The architectural landscape should define the layers on top of existing systems, in a neutral way, where these operational activities (model driven approach) will reside, these could be local or remote hosting but will require clear governance and require models to defined in an environment that enables constant evolution of the practices but process experts locally and centrally as a “crowd development”, with governance control.

This focus on a role or set of key roles allows the company to focus on how the operational plant will run in 2020 and the key decisions that required, and start applying these now in an architecture that lives with the current systems, but starts to drive consistency and faster decisions across that same role over multiple plants. Notice I have not talked technologies, my assumption on mobile and cloud that the architecture is set up so these activities will be able to execute independently of the device, so the adoption of what devices are used on a plant are relative to plant and support they get, key is the devices no matter if desktop or mobile or web should be suited to efficiency of the role execution.

The clear opportunity is the linking of smart/ intelligent assets to people, and optimized process, and this is the essence of distributed industrial systems of the future on which “Internet of things’ / “Industrial internet” and the “third Industrial Revolution” are based. Key not getting overwhelmed with technology (it is here) it is the “job” or operational improvement that is the opportunity, and how to achieve this. A good starting point is understanding and achieving consistency in the key roles in the future vs the dynamically evolving workforce.

Is the day of I/O as the valid size measure of an Industrial Supervisory System coming to an end?

I would state "yes" to the end of I/O as a valid size of system between the controllers (DCS, PLCs smart devices) and the supervisory layer both operational control and information, historian.

No doubt some people are gasping when I say this, and this is a normal reaction from the tradition industrial market, but take a deep breath and step back and look at the modern world.

I/o is being commoditized by the fact that devices are becoming smarter, which means a factor increase in information coming from these devices to enable more effective operational management.

Examples:

·         Motor has gone from 5 to 10 I/O traditionally to now 100 +

·         Gas wells were a 2 years look at 50 points, I saw that same well logging 680 points

The list can go on, but in order to drive operational excellence devices will get smarter and more real time in context information is required. As we move into "Internet of things" in the industrial world where smart devices, processes etc. and linking into the system, talking to each other is key, again information is key.

So how can we say I/O is accurate or even a “ball park " metric for sizing a system. In many cases, companies are not increasing their assets that run their plants they are just increasing the amount information coming from existing assets.

So where is the value it is in the delivery of content, information, and enablement of effective decisions and actions to run the plant in the optimum way? Empowering system, people and applications to take a decision and action in a timely manner.

With the changing operational paradigm in from connected desktops to workers using a number of devices at once in the execution of the daily tasks where content can be displayed and interacted independently of the device. There is also a transformation in client applications e.g. traditional HMI (human man interface) to “Roles” and now the real shift to Operational Systems designed around "activities".

 

Yes, the world is changing and so must the industries metrics for licensing evolve to align with today's customer value indicators!

“Staying Evergreen” key to Cyber Security Strategy!!!

This week I spoke at SCADA Australia conference, where many of the leading companies in the SCADA, geographical industry, such as water, power distribution, rail etc. While the increased awareness of the empowering real-time analysis and decisions was discussed. The major discussions were around Cyber Security strategies and threats and virtualization. The surprise to me was the fact that the debates did not link these two discussions, and there was very gradual take up on virtualization.

This is very different to what we have seen elsewhere in the world especially North America and Western Europe where virtualization has become the default approach to the industrial architecture. People discussed the reason why people go to virtualization is a cost of servers, yes this is a factor but in most cases this is only a side benefit. The big advantage is the abstraction of the software application from the hardware and infrastructure.

Speaking with customers the linkage between Cyber Security and the need to stay current, not just patching etc, is becoming a main stay of their “sustaining” strategy. Many of the security fixes and improvements do not happen in patches,  but in point and major releases, this is with infrastructure software such as Operating Systems, and databases, as well as industrial software. So many leading companies are looking at architectures and deployments that enable their systems to stay “evergreen” eg on the current releases. The advantages happen in security but also in general cost of sustaining the system so you do not end up with major application jumps.

So I ask myself why you would not employ standard architectures on a virtualized platform, allowing hardware to evolved and for high availability architectures to allow upgrades of software and minimal time to switch over from the running version to new version, plus providing an environment for testing. Many of you will say that is what we doing, but within the last 6 weeks in eastern / central Europe, ASEAN and Australia I have seen a reluctance to adopt virtualization this I would understand if we turned back the clock 4 to 5 years ago, but the technology is very mature today, and well proven.

The other trend happening is the move away from customization and everything to configured, using standard tools and capability. This is key to enabling applications to stay evergreen, the advantage of customization vs cost to sustain is just not worth it. A solution architecture decision should not an event, it must be a journey, with the key consideration of operational continuity will be sustained which maintaining the systems in an “evergreen” state.

Dynamic Discussion on Transformation From MES to Operational Management System

In the last 2 months I have lead a number of public sessions and forums on this subject with my college Stan Devries two weeks ago we hosted 2 of these in Dallas, and again there was a lot of reactions and good discussion. A couple of months ago I blogged about the third generation of MES / MOMs, creating a lot of interest.

The diagram below shows the concept of transformation, it is really a move from traditional server, API based solutions with heavy customization restricting the required agility required today vs an SOA (service orientated) and model driven architecture. 

 

The discussions in the sessions centered on the amount of custom code surrounding the core MES functions which have been fairly stable for 10 years, evolving by industry. This custom code is a “ball chain” impact on the ability for the MES / operations system to evolve, due to integration with real time events, and the interaction with people. The one consistency is that the human interaction and operational interactions / process are continually evolving with new procedures changing regulations. Too much scripting, custom user interfaces, have been traditionally required.

The notion of “Model Driven Operations” where the design of an operational system is modeled based upon operational activities such as Material consumption, quality sampling, new product setup etc. The associated steps in the action are modeled within a workflow, and the required human interface forms are included in the associated steps, in the workflow. These are bundled interfacing with the MES functions, initiated manually or automatically from a plant event. This change from user interface to design based upon application, location to activity based design where the activities can be reused over multiple roles, locations, and sustained and evolved in the model. This shift was discussed a lot and too many this was a new step or thought process in the MES/ MOMs design approach.   

Also, the discussion of the concepts around the Gartner “Manufacturing 2.0” architecture combined with the emergence of “cloud” and the opportunities this new hybrid architecture proposes for consistency in management of operational processes, and measures while sustaining the local execution. The diagram below provides a view of one potential architecture here. There are several options we are trying at the moment, and it appears that Operational Management is ideal for a hybrid Architecture.

The sessions we held outlined the above topics and discussion was constructive and in agreement, key is that “are solution builders really taking into account all these points?” There is so much opportunity for small through to multi nationals.

Next week I want outline an interesting discussion on the shift to “distributed” world centered on the “Third Industrial revolution debate, I had on the flight last week across the pacific, as the concepts we seeing so much in the industrial world.

 

It is a matter of "when" not “if" for the cloud in Industry!

At the Invensys North American user conference, last week the discussion and chatter around cloud was in full swing. Many people on a discovery phase, realising that it was not "if” it was more " when"!

Even in the large companies while the issue of security and IP protection was significant and a hot topic for discussion, there was a general feeling this will be resolved and proven in the next couple of years, opening up the opportunity for companies to considerate possibilities.

It was clear that many companies are a different maturity, thought pattern relative to cloud.

In many of my Operational Transformation sessions, the discussion and realization that the business operational requirements of the next decade are most effectively satisfied by the cloud architecture no matter if it is "private" or public. Key was the discussion around even design current solution architectures in a way that will easily expand to the cloud when the security concerns are satisfied.

 Interestingly some of the leading companies realized the significant initial opportunity is the delivery of operational/ industrial services such as historian, MES, operational work procedures with domain solutions built on top to small and remote sites. These sites have limited engineering, and it local support and this has been the barrier for adoption of many of the traditional tools applied in the larger plants. In a simple way the ability to have multiple end sites historized their information (it maybe on a few tags or items) have calculations performed on them and but without having to install, setup or maintain a historian or information set of clients. Small numbers of tags and limited knowledge has restricted use of such tools. This can all change now, with the cloud infrastructure that can expand, and access sites in a secure way even if it a one “diode” out of the plants, the information can now be stored, structured and then a set of safe tools provided for access. So in locations like India, China, south East Asia and small sites in USA the opportunity for using these tools limited to larger sites with support capability is key.

My thoughts swing back to my trip earlier in the year to New Zealand where an engineer from Water waste water industry just stated ”why would you put another server on  remote sites, the hassle of sustaining them in harsh environments, patch managing, and just keeping fan going when there is not local service is too much”. Last week this underlying message kept ringing through from all sized companies, as a real opportunity for reduction in sustaining costs, and increasing the reliability and increased value to these remote small sites.

What I wanted to point out throughout this year the momentum “wave” and discussion around the possibilities with using cloud has increased dramatically. As companies like Invensys focus on understanding the customer’s barriers to adoption and work on the IP and Security concerns to enable a “trusted system”, the adoption will increase. All Enterprise Architects in Industrial space need consider, especially the smaller remote sites that as a central engineering and IT organization there is cost and trouble is servicing effectively.  

Operational Transformation of Supervisory and Operational Landscape will Take Center Stage!!

As I sit waiting in another airline lounge ready to cross the Pacific again, my thoughts go to the key message that was delivered in Europe User Group Events 2 weeks ago, the event in Brisbane last Friday for the launch of Foxobro Evo(new Systems offering from Foxobro), and then in this weeks North American User Conference in Dallas.

The consistent message from customers to discuss, is “how do we deal with the changing operational culture”? I will be delivering 3 sessions on the operational transformation that is happening in the industrial world:

• Supervisory Transformation from HMIs to an Operational Landscape
• Information transformation from historians to Operation Information
• Operational Transformation from MES to Operational Management across sites

None of this is new, but the diagram below reflects the transformation at the supervisory level, where:

• Existing HMIs from 90s designed for the “island” process and the Gen X thinking are needing to reviewed, people are needing upgrade the technology, but with that transform.
• There is the transformation of the workforce to “digital native”, to shorter tenure ships in roles and locations, to multitasking as a natural work method.
• Operational practice transformation driven by competing in the “flat world” where decisions need to be now, inventory levels are minimum, product change is norm, new product introduction is rapid and across the world. Regulatory constraints impact and we from working on our own to working in teams, leveraging different roles, skills to make decisions and take actions faster and in more consistent way.
• Accountability and governance is growing
• Scope of management is growing, and the day in the life is changing, not behind one desk.

Why would you just upgrade to the latest version, when you probably have different HMIs from different vendors and version, done by different project teams all working in isolation limited interaction.

The move to modern operational experience system,  adopting the hierarchy, and object strategies for standards, embedding operational process, building in natural governance and intuition. Collaboration is natural including sharing, and the ability for the teams to virtual, so expertise is at the “finger tip”.

It is necessary to note that this is not just a vendor evolution, to me it is more and solution and cultural evolution and realization, where are you in this journey???

The reaction and discussion will be good, one of the areas we engaging in a series of sessions around operational world , roles, devices, “day in the life” in 2018-20.  The fact that the demand for these one on one sessions has been astounding is indicative of the change and awareness!! 

Is the end of heavily customised Industrial Operational Systems here?

“What are you saying came?” A comment back from an engineering house, as I started talking about the end users looking for speed to production of projects and are prepared to compromise customization for this!

Not surprising as their business is built around satisfying end users desires for heavily customized automation and operational solutions, even built on standard industrial products, companies have pushed for the customization of these products to suit the way they intend or operate.

I would challenge that these days of heavily customization are coming to an end, driven by the need to get systems and plants up as fast as possible at the compromise for totally custom solutions.

The concept of “good enough" driven from companies such as Apple where their applications from the store provide “specific” task capability (book taxi, airport flight status, email  etc.) with limited customization and configuration options, yet we constantly adopt them due to risk, and speed of and convenience of now.

There are a number of trends that point to this move to adopt proven completed functionality vs customize:

·         Also in manufacturing people are looking for " plug in and play" process modules units, "skids" that have machinery and control configured and proven and are already tested and commission, so now we just have to plug them together. Example in packaging lines, but even refinery ports where we have had modular solutions with equipment, instrumentation, piping and control for years and just bolted and plugged them together.

·         Multi site companies are driving programs around standards, and then enforcing these to be rolled out and managed across sites and in many case different system integrators.

• So now as look at the adoption of “Managed Services” into the industrial market, we see the need for speed to full production as key, causing people to avoid capital projects/ RFPs and look to gain an advantage by using what is available already as a “managed service”. This has not hit larger companies but certainly is becoming the norm at Tier 3 (small companies) and at tier 2 companies, who want take advantage of the opportunity now. The concept of a set of managed services for:
• Energy monitoring and analysis across all my pumping stations in a water plant or plants
• Production/ process information solution that draws up real time data from many plants and assets and stores it in a historian like storage, with out of the box notifications, rules, and analysis clients that are self service to a wider community. Again this could be across facilities monitoring, unconventional gas wells, pump stations along a pipeline etc.
• Manufacturing operations (MES) for a particular industry that provides manual good/ materials receivables, inventory and WIP management across the manufacturing floor, production order management to CNC machines etc. Again the screens, the forms, the reports are built for that industry, the proven system, the companies provide the master data (customers, products etc), and the rest is available fast as managed services. So a typical MES/ Operations project for a small plant with RFP and definition would go from 6 month to 2 weeks and extremely low risk.

At VM Ware conference two weeks ago again we see the cloud services, and significant discussion that adoption of cloud based services is at the expense of customization. The idea of plugging in a solution and plant and leveraging the design as is will become the norm I believe in the next 3 to 5 years, and certainly provide the edge of agility to those adopt this approach.

Does this mean I think the day of the system integrator is over, NO, they have the unique domain knowledge to build these ‘managed services” and provide the local services to rapidly deploy standards and “managed services”. Yes the way of working in the engineering house will change but I see this as significant opportunity not the other way round!  

Is the Transition to Gen Y so Significant in the Industrial Environment?

This question was put to me by a magazine editor in Czech Republic this week, he was from Gen Y (born after 1980), and he was commenting after one of my presentations.  This is not the first time I have asked “do you genuinely think the transition to Gen Y will be that significant?” It is truly valid challenge, so I decided I needed answer why I believe it is a significant milestone or transition in the operational approach or culture in the Industrial Market.

As he asked the question he was texting and recording the interview on a Samsung PDA, and he had prepared his questions well, by researching me on Linkedln, and reading this blog. To him this was a natural way of doing research, yet an interviewer the week before from Gen X (early) had not done this research, he just had heard my presentation and asked questions based off this.

Yes, many of us from the  Bayboomer, Gen X generations have transitioned to living by our PDA, always “connected” and using email and text for communication, we do our research off Youtubes and forums, but while we transitioned it is not natural. We certainly do not share as well, yes some of us have Facebook accounts, but many do not. I asked a group of 120 people in the Gen X and Babyboomer generations how many had Facebook accounts it was less than 20%, but the small segment who were Gen Y had 100% with FaceBook accounts and all had contributed at least 1 you tube to public domain.

Gen Y has grown up in an environment where the internet is just a natural part of life, most would not remember a time without internet, and the same applied to mobiles that are used for more than voice. SMS texting comes before having an email account, where to Gen X we had email before Text, and tend to use email as the primary text communication vs SMS. The way Gen Y naturally searches on Google and filters the information and rapidly transverse the information to a desired result. They expect to use a map on PDA and see the closest banks, restaurants and other information. Wiki Pedia is a natural source of knowledge, and it is natural to contribute with comments, and material to Youtube and pedia style environments. The most significant transition of generation from Early Gen X and Babyboomer is the shorter time in a role and location, the willingness to transition their career more often. Remembering by 2020 the expectation is the average tenure in a role will be 2.4 years or fewer, people are expected to have at least 4 careers and over 20 jobs in these careers.

These are contributors to the transition, but given that many of the industrial supervisory and operational interfaces/ experiences created over the last 15 years, have been defined to control the process of a unit or equipment. Many are in isolation (islands of control) with limited inter application integration as the design was not done in a holistic view as the project had a deliverable goal and timeline. The navigation, and operations/ actions of the user interface had a fixed button navigation, and assumed a certain level of experience, and on how to use interface and control the process, this experience often came from training on the interface by the developer to the users.

Combining the holistic end to end operational control which requires multiple workers to run the system, often the operational stations are now transitional, so the workers will transition from one workstation to another executing the actions, the experience needs to be consistent to help smooth transition as they do their daily role, plus the ability to access the states elsewhere in the plant, based upon a notification they would have received maybe on a screen or mobile, and they require more detail than available on mobile, so they will drill in using a remote workstation. Now as the worker is executing his day, he is faced with a situation that is new to him, or requires some process experience, and he is unsure of the decision to take as he has only been in this plant 3 months. The operational interface requires for the user to collaborate with a remote expert on that process, sharing the situation, some screens and states, plus a live conversation, this should be natural in order to make a decision and take a correct action as soon as possible.

So when I talk about the significant evolution we going through in operational culture and approach, I am referring to the ability to maintain operational continuity while absorbing this constantly dynamic / rotating operational workforce with now limited experience in a role and location.

The growth in operational programs that are looking re-engineering their supervisory (HMI) systems, and operational interfaces to provide:

• Consistency of operational experience across workstations and devices
• Natural Collaboration with others of more experience or in the operational team.
• Multi workstation and mobile devices on a common system that interact
• The natural learning, and knowledge management and access
• Consistency in operational actions across workstations, devices and processes
• The shift to exception based operational control, using the ASM (abnormal Situation Management concepts) for faster recognition and action on the situation.

Is confirmation that it is not a technology upgrade only it is an operational culture approach that is driving the expectation significant increase operational agility?

Is your supervisory/ plant operational system ready to absorb a dynamic workforce, while maintain operational continuity in the agile world of increased new product introduction, and competitive pressures.

I would be interested in people’s comments.

The Change Landscape of business Intelligence, EMI and Analytics driven by Information Driven Companies

All through this week in Europe I have spoken with customers looking for decisions in the NOW, and more people empowered to make these decisions. This does mean the traditional worker is evolving to knowledge worker, and this is across the different roles in the operational plant. But following on from last week’s blog the drive for realtime decisions is driving up the requirement for more advanced analytics to enable that decision, especially as the experience and time in the role of the decision maker reducers.

This drive for information and decisions, is causing significant other transformations in intelligence segment, and these are captured in a recent ARC table:

Some of the fundamental concepts it points out:

• The shift in time focus from Past to Future: in the industrial world I would put that as truly an expansion from the past and current to now past, current and future.
• From a performance to a predictive view that enables that decision
• Move from Batch data to realtime, this is key as we move from reports to dashboards that are dynamic with small trend tails showing now and immediate past easy to understand from a glance.
• Move from IT intensive creation to Self service: this is even more apparent in the industrial space as operations want to be self empowered without the complexity and delay in engaging either engineering or IT.
• Users move from a few Gurus to a collective team of people what I referred to as the flexible operational team (many blogs on this) where experience is shared to achieve realtime decisions. Virtual experts in an active community either from within a company across sites, and subcontractors/ suppliers can now be in the realtime decision with the on plant person.
• Deployment will shift from “on Premise” to a “Managed set of on demand services” this while only just starting in the industrial space makes logical and even more sense in the industrial space. Because the information and these virtual communities will live outside of plants and across the world. Companies are talking of Asset Facebook concepts to where a community of peers and experts across plants working on similar equipment and processes can interact share and make informed decisions together. The concept of a hosted set of services for an Information environment will be foundational for this to work.
• Another comment is the automated actions, I see this more in the industrial space as the shift from just supplying information to having embedded operational procedures to guide users through consistent actions.

Yes,  the traditional EMI (Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence) system will transform dramatically, and it will need to work well with the I tools which are also transforming, as well as provide “preconfigured experiences” to enable users to answer known decisions and enable “self Service” for rapid adoption.