Product as a Service adds Spice to Operational Landscape!

Last week on the flight across the pacific, I had an engaging discussion on the effect of “disruptive technologies” not just on efficiency, but on the business models available and are expected. This lines up with a discussion on one of “think tank groups” I am involved on looking at the future, where a thread of discussion was around innovation, and much of the focus on technology but the most effective thread was around “operational, business innovation” enabled by the latest technologies.

In the discussion on the plane we went through the new business models due to cloud e.g “on premise”, “infrastructure as a service”, “Platform as a service” and “Software was a service”. These are related software, but now the conversation started to shift to rise in “product as a service”. Now this is nothing new with rental systems, example is the car rental business, but there is evolution happening with companies looking to enter the market or more importantly capture market share by people avoiding buying or leasing products. Example would be kitchen manufacturer supplies all the equipment to the kitchen or more likely and property development with 100s of kitchens. The contract is not for equipment but it is for “kitchen functional capacity”. Another example would a jet engine supplier supplying not engines but “power as a service”. We have already seen this concept with EPCs supplying a turn key plant, and then an operational contract for 5 years, with performance criteria in place.

                                                                  Source ARC

Another example is the growing “contract manufacturing” where companies out source a section of their value network to another party, (not new) but what is new is the tight alignment of this contract manufacturing to the whole value network in order to enable agility. Again we have seen this in the Toyota models in car manufacturing, but the supplier partnership is key, and this is going beyond the relationship, but the direct linking of the information systems. Requiring a value network to be a federation of value assets, which tightly aligned, but loosely coupled. The blogs on the third generation of MES align to this thinking, where value network of a brand becomes a “virtual manufacturing network” across the different value assets no matter who is executing.

 

Key is now stepping back and understanding what does this mean, what is required to make these models work. Importantly the design and manufacturing expertise of products is maintained but the new business is the service side business which requires linking into the full lifecycle management of the product during usage, so manufacturing does not stop at the day of shipping. Why this is intriguing is that I find myself engaged in a number of companies, not in the traditional manufacturing ut in this service business, which is a new business. The engagement has been around enabling central operational centers for monitoring and providing guaranteed levels of service, across many of the products in usage.

This is demanding some re thinking of the product design to provide usage information that can used to provide the levels of service to acceptable. On the contract manufacturing is driving people to “Information Driven Manufacturing” in a manufacturing 2.0 model, where that the facility can easily couple of another companies value networks, accepting actions/ tasks and providing information in real time exception manner.

The acceptance of Service Orientated Architectures and the “Internet of Things” will only accelerate the ability to provide “product as a service” with the leading supplies actually shifting to information in context and enabling a rapid and natural “plug and play” of plants, assets into a customers value network. Food for thought, when we designing the operational systems going forward.

 

Google Glass Comes to Manufacturing

The concept of introducing “multi Sourcing” and then displaying through “augmentation” is not new. Google has playing around with glasses for some time. Do you need Google Glasses to leverage augmentation NO. You could have an IPAD as worker companion showing information relative to the users orientation and focus. Similar to the “Starwalk” application you can download for your IPAD which allows you point up the night skies and see what stars in the orientation.

I was sent this article last week “google Glass in Manufacturing” and the work Indiana Technology and Manufacturing Companies (ITAMCO) is doing with Google Glass and the MT Connect standard to ring a new way of displaying information, and it makes a lot of sense and shows reality. They have some intriguing videos to look at:

http://www.automationworld.com/control/google-glass-comes-manufacturing?sthash.IoJtWexr.mjjo&goback=%2Egde_2063159_member_258444877

http://www.itamco.com/glass/

We at Invensys have been investigating working on opportunities in this area and the likes of the Eyesim product where you have immersive reality is a good example. See this image below

These are pop-ups within your view showing you history and data at your finger tips drawing from a remote site, and sources. If you look at a pump you can see it is running, but you cannot see the RPMs or power being used, yet this data is in the automation systems, so why not ring back to the worker who is connected. Now as he looks at the pump he can see the needed information. So while the above diagram is in the training simulation world the concept is real industrial world, and the videos in the article show more of the concepts.

Is this future or just around the corner, what is without a doubt is the “operational Innovation and empowerment” can take significant steps leveraging existing technologies!   

 

System Management over Level 3 (operation/ Automation Software)/ System Sustainability Grows as a Focus

We have seen “system management/ diagnostics/ health” coming for a while, and it is overdue the increasing focus on ISA Level 2 and Level 3 software sustainability and management, this means operational, and automation software. Including MES, OEE, Asset Utilization, historians, supervisory system, alarming systems, HMIs and device integration, out to quality management, and the other home grown systems that make up this un structured space. At the business applications, the business databases, back office applications and also at the PLC and DCS code, we have seen mature system management strategies and systems put in place. In this middle layer where there is no dominating player, and there is a lot of project centric applications, there is little defined strategy, or approach. Now with IT coming down and also the shift for more aligned systems, this area has come under an increasing spot light. Due to the realization that this area of level 2 and level 3 software working in unison, and reliable is key to successful “operational Effectiveness” of a company and plant.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been involved in a number of “HMI upgrades” (this was the term used in the project) discussions, but a closer look at who was driving the project it was not engineering, it was Operations. They are looking for changing their Operational empowerment and effectiveness through a cultural change (will talk this again next blog) but also through an alignment in operational actions, and decisions across teams, sites, and production runs. With less buffer in production, there is less room for delayed decisions or unplanned downtime or unnecessary down time. So these projects are not about upgrading HMI to the latest technology, they about evolution to a new operational approach, and with that to a platform that will enable:

·         Operational decisions faster

·         Operational decisions more consistently

·         Operational evolution and agility, through being able to add new functionality and evolve in a managed methodology, with standards, and governance

·         Operational continuity based upon system risk awareness and fast corrective actions

The discussions in all cases lead to the word of Governance on the implementation of application configuration, standards, and how this can be managed with versions, etc.

The second discussion was around running system and system management, understand the risk on software and hardware it is running now, and predicting risk so actions can be avoided.

At recent customer council in Europe with key customers both of these were raised as significant focuses for them, and that both must align with It practices while still enable uniqueness of the operational environment. Many are building or planning to build their own management systems.

This lines up with Invensys Soft ware’s focus on System Management with such initiatives:

• Proactiv: the remote monitoring of site software and feeding back issues to Invensys experts who will pro actively engage with partners and the site to take corrective action early.
• Software Asset Manager: which looks out over all the known systems on the site and identifies the Invensys software versions, patches state.
• License management: Again this is the central licensing management across actual PCs and virtual systems.

Also, we evolving the holistic approach to system diagnostics, and to enable ease of site monitoring and awareness, also aligning this with Microsoft System Central for larger sites.

It is key that all running software supply it’s state and instrumentation as a service in a consistent way, so it can be management and work no matter the vendor if customers are to build a sustainable system.  

Knowledge a Key Component of Modern/ Future Operational System: "Data vs Information vs Knowledge Understanding the Difference"

 

For the last couple of weeks,  I have discussed in this blog the concept of “expertise, knowledge,” how to multiply this, and why harnessing and bringing knowledge as a natural part of your Operational Architecture is key to dealing with the changing operational human assets due to age, culture, length of time in role, digital.

I was at a customer on a white board and discussing some of these concepts, and I realized that there was confusion between DATA, INFORMATION and KNOWLEDGE.

Sitting over coffee afterwards I agreed that this was not uncommon, and actually comes down to the fact that many people have not had the time to think through what does their operational landscape look like in 2020. That afternoon I was reviewing another customer in Europe vision, and they had a set of functional maps relative to activities on how they expect to operate in 2020 and what is needed, and reflecting on this knowledge is the foundational part built out of many parts.  

I was reading this article from Tom Davenport at Harvard on how knowledge workers collaborate (his book is called Working Knowledge)

, thought it is worth bringing up in the blog I have extracted some points from an article  "Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know" By Thomas H. Davenport and Lawrence Prusak