The Next Decade will see a Dramatic Increase in Asset Intelligence and Asset "Self Capability"

For years, we have seen the evolution of asset management, but as we push the agile industrial evolution, the role of a "self aware" asset is key. The need to have stable high operational continuity is key, and this means assets running at performance and reliability while also being able to absorb change.

 There are 3 significant vectors aligning on the evolution of the asset:

a/ Assets are becoming connected to Internet and network, the cost of putting a wireless device, or 3/4G connection on a device is dropping to a point that it is a no brainier for asset agility, and sustainability.

b/ Asset interaction with other "things" around it, e.g.| Other assets, people and systems, being aware of their condition and state, adjusting it' s own operation relative to their state and expectation so the whole of system runs at maximize efficiency.

c/ The dramatically increasing smart/ intelligence in an asset, and in the next decade we going to see this asset develop of “self awareness" becoming more effective.

An example of this was a coal seam gas well, originally it was expected to be approx. 50 I/O between the device and supervisory system, in the space a year this has grown to 680 I/O remember these are not field I/o many are derived attributes from the control, state and operation of the well. Providing a wealth of information on the status and condition, so risk to operations of that well.

These  assets  are  comprised  of  hardware  (physical components,  instrumentation,  and  communications  hardware).    But software, analytics, and ecosystem play increasingly prominent roles.    The software and analytics provide the intelligence and the ecosystem provides additional support and services for individual assets, fleets of assets, or dynamic networks of assets.   With the addition of software, analytics, and an ecosystem; products (physical assets) may be deployed and managed “as a Service.”

 

 

 

 

The diagram above shows the step changes in what intelligence will mean, most assets today are at the "instrumented and analytic" steps. This is already a dramatic step in an asset being able to determine it's own state, and healthy, and exception handle notifications.

The step change is when assets move to “active" that seek to maintain it's self and bring awareness to maintenance early, and adjust operations it's self to sustain. Then to "goal orientated" seeking to self tuning performance and optimization, so gain the most out of the asset relative to it's surrounding assets that make up the process, and relative to the system and people. 

This approach to assets is a paradigm shift from traditional asset management and brings it down to operational real-time environment, to enable decisions in the NOW on a solid foundation value producing assets.

 

Key Operational Challengers of the next 10 years: New Product Introduction, Agility to Change, and Operational Effectiveness with a transforming workforce.

Sitting at dinner with three end users who own strategy, we had a stimulating discussion on the key design parameters or drivers for operational/ automation systems over the next 10 years. Key was the high level operational drivers not the technical hurdles that they are facing as these are just constraints that designs and new practices must absorb. One End users from Water utilities industry, food manufacturing, other from mining. The surprising part was that within 15 minutes we had narrowed the drivers to three key items:

Agility to adjust to market conditions and change:

The clear common requirement was the end to end operational alignment, understanding across the value chain. This holistic operational control, was a significant change in all three industries the sites had run with independence, in all cases the expectation was that site / regional uniqueness will be maintained but now alignment and traceability of action, product across the total value chain, e.g.| multiple assets/sites. A fascinating discussion here was both water and food talked that they expect this end to end to include outsourced assets that make up the chain, and effect the quality of the product or service that their brand is delivering. This is why it is the ability to federate assets and systems while still allowing site uniqueness is key. The inclusion of non company assets in the value chain and requiring operational traceability, accountability and agility to change are just around the corner.

 

The operational workforce transformation operational role retention / rotation: The impact of the operational culture, approach with gen Y and more holistic operations. These  have covered extensively in the blogs, but is the area both of my dinner companions spent over 50% of dinner time. The key areas are

·       The knowledge transfer from the retiring generation and how is the captured.

·      The highest critical concern is the fact they are already seeing people in roles for much less time, and this is across the operational roles. So the issue is how to embedded and design the experiences to enable to become effective dramatically faster, e.g.| 20% of the time today. Our conversation went away from industrial operational systems, to commercial systems, such as Facebook, banks, mobile phone applications. The key here is these applications are being delivered to market without having to train the users, they have intuitive experience that leads users through the steps. Agreement that this is a paradigm shift in operational design, from today's approach where user interface is thought of well after the control, and we have engineers who are not human in factor people, designing the systems. All attendees said we need to continue this discussion, as this is not just control rooms, but reports, and information etc. 

New Product Introduction: The life time of products and services is dramatically reducing, and the companies stated that seem to have ever change and introduction of new products and services. The move is to individual products and services for each consumer. How do we introduce, absorb these new products and services to the operational systems that will deliver them in a timely manner without significant error.

This could be considered agility, but both wanted this pointed out separately as it is a real dynamic that effecting them, vs the infrastructure and assets that are also changing and must absorb agility of change. An intriguing point here was that they commented that operational system and automation system absorb new product introductions without change, but all commented on the challenge of new assets with existing systems requiring federation into the system, and how do introduce new products procedures to operational staff. So the discussion for new product introduction was not just for systems, but also for people to execute, how can they take the new product from the PLM system, and deliver the control, and instructions, across many sites with different systems, and different cultures.  

Are these three points new no, but the fact that 3 decidedly different thought leaders from three different industries rapidly agreed on these as operational drivers, combining this with the fact that each point effects the others. The eventual take away was they were being asked to deliver one operational ecosystem to run the end to end product production over multiple assets with operational consistency. While 3 dynamics constantly change, the value assets / plants are added and taken away, new products and services are added at an ever increasing rate, while the operational workforce is becoming dynamic with a culture of evolution of the role and job, and people will not be in a role longer than 2 years.

What and exciting time we live in!!!

Federation of Multiple Control Systems is a Key part of the Operational Transformation, It’s time for an “Industrial Enterprise Configeration Environment”

We talk about federation of information across data sources in an information driven manufacturing environment, but an effective operational transformation is about decisions and actions in a timely manner and consistent manner. Too often we talk at the high level and over look the extensive work required on the plan automation control integration. Most plants are on to at least their second generation of control, in DCS, PLC and SCADA. These systems are mature and functionally immensely rich that they can expand and evolve to satisfy most processes today.

The Modern Automation/ Operational system is not an enclosed system, it will have many controllers of different sizes running different processes, hopefully the correct controller for the correct process. With the evolution of the “Internet of things” in the automation world there is a trend to smaller powerful controllers so each asset/ process has it is own control that links into the higher world. This makes sense as long as there is the ability to federate these controls from a:

·         Naming convention consistency across the controllers

·         Control Standards for a process over different controllers

·         The ability to configure different levels of a control/ process strategy across controllers but deployed to a different controller instances which in many cases will be controllers from different vendors.

·         The ability to automatically configure the integration with the supervisory platform and the controller at the same time, any changes are automatically managed and sustained.

·         Clear governance over the management of standards and versions across the supervisory and controllers

·         Version management is key the ability to manage different versions of standards in the same strategy deployed to different controllers, combined with incremental updates.

·         The End to End System Integrity at the time of deployment, this is the step most people are concerned with as the system must make sure the integrity of the different parts of control sub system are in place, so we have no dead ends on references that can cause controllers to not function. Assumed in this is the peer to peer communication and referencing between controllers of different roles, types and vendors.

Yes, the leaders in the operational transformation while implementing a Supervisory Platform with operational standards and decision support, they are complimenting their investment with an equally often more significant investment in alignment of the existing and new control systems. Their standards, their interfacing and most of all their management of integration and standards.

The new generation “Industrial Enterprise Configuration Environments” will live above the individual vendor configuration systems but enable a holistic management of strategy and standards leveraging a multi discipline team, with version governance naturally built in. I was fortunate last week to review and investigate such a system that is pre –release but represents potentially the most significant step in control strategy/ level 2 / 3 alignment in the last decade.

Time for Information Driven Manufacturing!

Information Driven Manufacturing concept is starting gain traction in the thought leaders. Information Driven Manufacturing is a manufacturing strategy that combines the concepts of collaboration and value network manufacturing, building on the newer technologies to achieve and sustain a agile competitive multi plant business. A key concept to this strategy is that explicitly recognizes that avoiding change, while comfortable, may represent a bigger risk for the organization that the risk associated with introducing new solutions where appropriate.  There is a different culture not taking technology for the sake of it, but an attitude that understands the need for alignment of people, value asset network (multi-plants) and business and operational processes, to reduce cost, but most of all provide a flexible manufacturing base that can adjust with market providing the necessary agility to absorb market change, acquisitions, and new products rapidly and in a cost effective manner.

 

 

Source ARC Feb 2013

Information Driven manufacturers take a holistic view of manufacturing and the production plant’s role within the extended value network. They apply information technology broadly  to improve or replace business process. With the maturity of internet, workflow, databases, and other technologies there is a host of possibilities that can be applied in a program to improve the dynamic nature of the whole manufacturing from people to assets, and processes, to enable consistency of execution and therefore the opportunity to be dynamic to absorb, evolve to change.

The cornerstone of  information driven company is the empowerment of all people in their roles, to make decisions and act as an aligned team, based upon process and business information, provided in a holistic view (across assets E.g.| unified model despite the underlying sources), contextualized, visualized so that it can be analyzed easily relative to their roles. Key is making sure this information and core data are a “Trusted system” and the leading companies are now applying consistent embedded actions to go with the information decision so that consistency in action, and reduction in skill experience are needed to achieve a consistent, timely result.

The culture in an information driven manufacturing company, is understood the value and need of change/ evolution in a constructive way, but executing this change on proven technologies but not just used in their business, but looking outside their business and asking “why cannot we apply that for this____”. They have active investigations through internal, and external looking at:

 

More and more I am engaging with leading companies who are looking at open minded people to make a team who can constructively develop a value program. It is important to recognize this is more than one program, it is alignment of programs, technologies and cultural journey which leading companies are on, and potential benefits are significant in agility (market share) and long term cost, through staying 'ever green" and aligned.