As the weeks go on the discussion continues to increase
around the opportunities, and growing consideration of Cloud playing in the
industrial automation and operations architectures within end users. One of the
emerging realization of opportunities in the transitional activities on
bringing a plant on line, such as commissioning and operational learning. Not
been mission critical activities, as one person put it “why would you want buy
and set up hardware for activities such as FAT (factory acceptance testing) or
training simulation for only 2 to 3 months?”
The concept of a virtual FAT environment is not new, what
is intriguing is the fact that the “cloud” offers expandable (elastic)
computing engaged for a temporary period on a monthly plan. Too often the limitation
on FAT efficiency is availability of hardware, due to project budgets of
purchasing hardware , no flexibility to expand and then the hardware goes to
site, restricting the offsite testing and the ability to have multiple FATs
happening at the same time. The cloud can easily host the virtual images of
servers, control simulators and different workstations of a plant.
Key is that an engineering house can provision the
required computing capability in days and test out the loading required
computing power required by the application via a cloud virtual environment.
They can create a temporary FAT or development environment in the cloud, which
can exist for the life of project build, costing is leasing, the system can
expand as the project grows or goes through different stages. This is different
to a virtual environment in that the computing power in unlimited, and it grows
and shrinks with the requirement and it avoids out of date hardware with no
home.
Another end user discussion is relative to training
simulation. Traditional OTS (Operating Training Systems) programs expect a long
term steady state of training capability, but as the initial project go live,
and the evolution of existing staff, and associated staff they have a temporary
requirement for significant operational and worker training systems, and again "
cloud seems ideal for this". The fact that a simulation OTS can be set up
and then expanded, accessed from different locations, and then dismantled after
the demand drops without the need to by unnecessary hardware is key.
Both of these examples are not earth shattering, but the
discussion and questions show a shift in thinking. I am fully of the belief that
a typical automation/ operations architecture which spans geographical
boundaries and even within a plant, will be a HYBRID architecture in the next 3
to 5 years. With on premise set of applications, (probably upgraded versions of
the existing ones on the site today), and with a set “cloud” based applications
either on private or pub that work in a complementary fashion with the plants.
Providing additional richness to the site applications with extra computing
power to execute applications such as simulation (“What if”), for training,
knowledge systems, and cross plant applications such as history, information,
and decision support. The development of security architectures that
accommodate the cloud for industrial space, where security access is handled
external to plants fire walls, combined with the plant firewalls, providing significant
security.
Another example comes from a recent paper from Analysts
ARC on MOM/MES customer interviews which stated:
“Another implementation timesaver to look for is the
availability of cloud-based MOM/MES system for development. Compared to waiting
for on – site servers and data bases to be acquired, deployed, and configured;
the cloud-based system can be often be
provisioned in a few hours so the team can get right to work. If templates are
also used stake holders can immediately begin to make system decisions that
otherwise might take weeks or months to reach and base these on the best possible
information, the actual system behavior.”
As
we have seen over the last 6 to 8 months the discussion grows around using the
cloud, especially as the cloud based industrial applications continue to be
released to market, and the next 6 months will see a step increase in these. The
time has come to understand what the requirement is for the business ,then ask the question which is the
best way to implement this in a scalable and affordable low risk manner. 
No comments:
Post a Comment