Do Traditional Reports have a Role in the Agile Industrial Operations World of today and tomorrow?

This is a question that keeps coming up, and product managers/ engineers keep saying we need reports, but in some many ways they are confused between the past and the reality of NOW decisions today. “Today” the need for “Operational Decision” data which is the status now, and over a short time span, with the ability to discover conditions, causes, through relationships, to make “Now” decisions. These are not traditional reports which display a pre defined period and fixed formate. Also, the concept of Dashboards, predefined Gadgets on the desktop, mobile device that act like tickers. All of this is about empowerment of the NOW and reports do fit this role, so do traditional reports have a future????

This discussion has raged on for the last few years, and certainly there many mixed feelings on this, causing disjointed information approachers in Companies and from vendors supplying the solutions and products. This is not surprising as this typical of an area going through a dramatic paradigm shift in use, users, and the role, and it is happening and changing so fast, plus the merging of business information into the common strategies brings a new culture to plant.

Yes, traditional reports will have a role, but a more accurate definition of a “report” will be a “printable report”, with a definition of:

• Layout are fixed format that enables print out
• The print out could be paper, or PDF or other formats
• Well determined data/ information for a specific role, event.
• Triggered on a regular event e.g.| shift, day, end of batch.

These reports  records that used as apart of the audit of company, product, or production, for delivery records, and operations records especially as regulations requirements continue to increase.  The new generation of workers and the people coming from the business applications will expect more in what is referred to as “operational information”. This is real time information, situational awareness, and process analysis, ad hoc navigation through the information to bring awareness of conditions.

Most people are already using “gadgets” on the desktop, or mobile faceplate, for weather, stocks etc, providing instant awareness. I use these for weather, time in different parts of the world and exchange rates on my iPad and desktop saving the time to search on line. Vendors are developing industrial measure “tickers” (dials) that bring instant awareness of the key information people are interested in. Example is seen below of set of potential indicators for an industrial environment.

 

Typical industrial dials, will become "gadgets"

 

The association process data and operational context

 

“Search” will become a natural concept like “Google” new search services will start to be delivered that enable people to search, query across the “lake of industrial data and information” leveraging the navigational information  models that will be provided over the industrial data sources in order to enable this operational decision support.

Yes,  the world is changing, services in information will move to online that is a natural place, to allow the people across the distributed/ virtual enterprise access to the realtime, information in a consistent way.This year  historians will move into the cloud from Invensys and other vendors, but the real advantage of the virtual cloud will come with information, leaving the data sources local.

Tools used will be range based upon those the worker is most comfortable with, why would a business person who works in say SAP’s Business Objects want a different tool to access the required industrial operations information for their decisions. The traditional thinking by vendors and industrial people that all industrial analysis tools are provided by the industrial vendors and specialised for this space is flawed. As the community of people accessing this operational industrial information increases.

So the industrial vendors will shift their focus to providing the information model that enables navigating and information consumption by a range of standard “office” and “Business Intelligence” tools. Yes,  these industrial vendors like Invensys will provide specialized presentation, and analysis content tools that work in these other environments but provide a workflow that aligns with the industrial thinking and approach.

I will expand on this evolution of information over the next couple of weeks, but Printable Reports will exist, but they probably will be 10 to 15% of what will be used in the daily plant operations for realtime  decisions.