The Steps on the Operational Journey from Siloed to Optimized to achieve Operational Excellence

We have all seen the debate on how do we go from todays manufacturing to an effective operational landscape, across the full valued supply chain. The increased urgency of this debate has become  recent discussions, I have with different companies; people are trying understand how they going stay competitive delivering the correct products, to the correct markets, locations, in the correct time, at the correct price and margin. All this with increasing costs in labor, energy, transport and regulation compliance.  

The common thread across the discussions was:

·         Real time transparency across all sites, and “cogs” in the supply chain.

·         Shift from “traditional reporting” to “actionable decisions”

·         Shift from operators to “Operational Teams” that align operations, planning and expertise

·         Shift from Siloed process on a plant or across plants to optimized and aligned.

·         Shift from experience in people to experience in the system

·         Alignment and consistency across the operational decisions and action for a product no matter location. 

Providing the foundation for optimizing and continuous improvement, not just of assets but process, assets, product production, and workforce.

The diagram below shows the journey from a high level, often ask where companies are? Through the lenses of product delivery. 

The road to coordinated has been a journey for the last 12 years with the ISA 95, and interoperability efforts, but still I see multiple systems, multiple business systems, even of the same type, and limited alignment of business strategy across multiple sites at the operational level. What we seeing from leaders is a simplification of operational processes, reduction in variety and uniqueness across process units and plants. How many times do we here “my plant is unique” this cannot apply when each plant is manufacturing the same product. Yes, the plants are different; the layout is different, the equipment is from different vendors, different times, different control systems, but we must harmonize above that.

I spoke last week of “Industrial Internet of Things”  a big part of success of this concept, is that different equipment, from different vendors, become smart, and enabled. You as the operational plant will be able to coordinate (input control strategies) across multiple control devices, (RTUs, Smart instruments, PLCs, DCS, etc.). However, the operational practices and how people interact with these devices will become abstracted from the devices. This must happen, to deal with the changing workforce.

Another  concept will be the “smart product” that is aware of its state, it is requirement/ expectations, and can advise of product health early in the “to be state,” Yes products will a smart thing, this is already happening.

However, what are steps to Optimized you see the above, but I like this diagram below with seven steps. A critical point is that a plant, a value supply chain must get complete step 4, to have a foundation towards optimization.

Companies have been working steps 1, 2 foundation of integrated plant, which is scalable, and evolutionary, so different components can be upgraded, evolved as they need, but the overall system stays aligned and working. Transparency through common measures and models so “trusted real-time information” from sites can be seen.

However, step 3 is the one most companies have not added as it deals with human assets, but is key, and then shift in step 4 to “activities” and tasks so different users will execute “activities.” At this point you are at point where Capital assets and Human assets and acting in a consistent way, and with measurable information.

Providing the opportunity to start quantitatively measuring operational process, productivity across the sites, understand the effectiveness of the different “activities.” So that now core standards for asset measurement, information, and activity/ actions can establish by process and product no matter the assets, controllers, etc. These can rolled out in a module methodology to allow an instrumental evolution, avoid the big bang of a large operational management project, but bring valuable “wins” to the company. 

At this point the experts in process, maintenance, operational planning can see understand, quantitatively measure process and operational procedure and evolve tuning for operational excellence.

Where are you on this journey? Break it down in small steps with tangible wins on a coordinated journey.