"Smart, intelligent, brilliant devices" what is key is "self aware" devices

As I listen to “Youtubes," lectures on the Internet of Things, and in industry forums, I hear the terms of " smart, intelligent, and now brilliant" devices, as we move to smart cities, smart farms, smart airports, and smart industrial sites. I asked myself what is the core value and difference?

There is a significant leap and a significant switch from monitoring devices from a high application or humans, to " self aware" devices that monitor their own health and capability. Next you ask the difference between "smart" to " brilliant" devices and interestingly there is even amongst the marketing hype! The level of capabilities associated to the device that takes them from simple "self awareness" of asset health, to predictive and "machine learning" capability to move from the " as is" alarm to "to be " state."

However, it is all increased levels of embedded "self awareness" capability as close to the device or in the device to monitor, and understand it is effective condition to the "golden" operating condition, with the intent to sustain "operational continuity." The key is device level " awareness" and the connection of these devices to the Internet apart of a  holistic system( site, enterprise), raising exception conditions automatically, and acted on in a consistent, and “best practice procedure." With many of the same types of devices can now be aware of each other, learn from each other and grow in "self awareness" capability. Increasing the ability to shift to the "to be " state where exception conditions seen early,  corrective action can be taken fast and early to maintain " operational continuity."

As we go forward the " future" will also be incorporated into the device, eg high fidelity simulation models will be available for common devices, and will learn relative to the particular device setup and situation. Enabling not just the current condition but the future condition window to be seen, and " what if" to be played out but inexperienced operational staff to make well informed and correct decisions. This simulation model will either run locally or be called upon by the device to a remote simulation environment with discrete device models.

All of this device awareness is what I see as a paradigm shift the "Internet of things" brings and the opportunity to the industrial operational space for the next jump in productivity.

I have heard many times, and agree with the Internet of things, "self aware"devices that leverage their "brothers and sister devices" and other intelligence not applications, brings the next step change in output growth and GDP output. Called the "third industrial revolution" where and industrial revolution is when a significant step change in GDP productivity output is achieved, the first two been:

1/ the first industrial revolution with the steam engine, and then self pro population capability for production and transport.

2/ the Internet in 1992 to 2000, and beyond where human communication, collaboration and the " flat world was introduced" switching us from regional to global effectiveness.

3/ the Internet of things" self aware devices, and collaboration between devices, applications and people to address the fast moving world we live in and the requirement of “Now” decisions and satisfaction.

Too often all of this is associated with larger companies and utilities, but last week I visited a small food plant in rural Australia, to discuss their next step in operational change, and competitiveness. Two thought leaders where present, and it was great to have a very active and productive discussion around not problems, but opportunities. Leading to a powerful discussion on discovery investigations around these opportunities, and the key opportunities were again:

1/ People cost, therefore effectiveness

2/People efficiency in a dynamic and changing workforce

3/Brand integrity, and quality

4/Variable costs in materials but now energy

The discussion took us to the operational work space of the future the need for not data, but effective information that enables exception based operational management, supervisory control of the plant, and process.  Shift from process management to product production management, spanning all the processes and production units required to produce a product. A shift to activities that are required in order make the product and enable operational continuity.

The concept of "self aware plant” made up " self aware devices” and " self aware process" with embedded operational procedures was a reality, and not just for big companies, but even more critical for small to medium companies/sites that have fewer resources.

Maybe the new world is not that far away!

The Biggest Transformational Opportunity for Industry is the “Distributed and Collaborative” architecture IoT

Over the last couple of months, people have me what is the biggest change to the future I see as the shift to a distributed yet collaborative world of interconnected devices, applications, people assets and system. Yes, this is referred to as the “internet of Things” IoT others call it the Internet of Everything”, but the key is smart devices providing information, be able to interact with each other.

Some people look at change since 1993 when the internet was introduced the biggest thing to happen, but I believe the value, and paradigm step in the way we work, and do things in the industrial world and at home as we move to Internet of Things concepts will be a far more dramatic transformation. Key is the world will be distributed in action; vs centralized, yet things will collaborate and interact for faster decisions, and awareness.

“ARC Advisory Group uses the term Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) to refer to the emerging practice of connecting intelligent physical entities, such as sensors, devices, machines, assets, and products, to each other, to internet services, and to applications. Industrial companies can use information from these connected devices to lower costs, optimize processes, and transform their applications, services, or business models.”

 To be honest, this is not a new idea I remember working on some R & D developments 12 years ago around putting web servers into instruments, the concept was to expose information easily and in a standard way. It was too early for the rest of the infrastructure was not there. Today that it is different, with wireless now a normal concept in an industrial plant, the advancement of cellular networks from a data point of view with 3G and 4G especially in geographically distributed, providing the backbone for ability of devices to realistically connect with enough bandwidth. Combine this with the SOA “service orientated architectures and applications, and the rise embedded intelligence within devices, and mobile devices the opportunity is here!

“But is it a matter of just exposing everything to the internet and we have changed the world?”

NO, the issues around security who can see, who can interact with your devices, is key, this is still maturing and evolving in techniques and practices, but reality is closer than most people seem to realize. The next is context, and intelligence, while smart devices and instruments are reality for new installations these do not apply to existing plants which is the majority of the world. So how do you “intelligence enable” existing devices, assets and processes in the industrial world?

We seeing people increasing use the PLCs and controllers to add intelligence around devices like motors and pumps, conveyors etc. But also there is work happening in what people call “stranded assets” where electronic manual rounds that managed and planned now bring back regular data from these stranded assets, as well intelligent platforms coming into play, putting a layer of intelligent objects that add intelligence and “self awareness” to unintelligent devices. The key is that information from a devices transforms to deliver increased value through context, validation, and “situational awareness”.

ARC is referring to this as CBM (Connected Device Management) platform I suspect their definition is more narrow than mine, as I believe the Internet of Things is no just about information, but the action as well, but never the less it provides a foundation.

“Connected Device Management (CDM) platforms are emerging as pivotal, value-added components of the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. These software entities -- used to manage intelligent connected products, devices,machines, and other assets -- reside between connected products or devices and the Big Data, analytics, cloud platforms, and other applications that reside at higher levels of the IoT architecture. “

 

The Key is that there is a layer needed between the analysis applications, and larger business/ operational decision makers and applications, and the devices of the industrial world. This layer needs to take devices from just information to “exception based” notification, and “self aware” devices to avoid overwhelming the Enterprise applications. But it is not just up, it is also across devices, in order to make a “self ware” notification, and intelligent device will have to talk to another device or devices to understand the full context of process etc. This introduces the concept of Internet of Things not just applying to devices but all to operational processes and their state, as well.

I saw an interesting application of this concept in the “Smart Grid” world of power that we needed to model and has as “living things” such things as “storms, fires, tides etc” these living entities need generate alarms, notifications etc. So key to this platform is that these intelligent objects are not data structures they are "living" entities providing data context, intelligent alarm, events and notifications and awareness of state relative to situation and surroundings.

This is an exciting topic of distributed, but collaborative “things” enabling faster real time decisions and actions across assets, process and people will provide the next level of opportunity. Aligning with many of the concepts of the “Third Industrial Revolution” with distributed micro power generation, with the interconnected intelligence across consumption, supply, storage in an economic growing structure, it too is the Internet of things concepts applied to change the world we live in.

Food for thought, and a good thread of thought for a series of blogs.  

 

Focus on "Roles being more effective" provides a potential path forward towards 2020!!

Last week I was engaged with a number major customers, in different industries, all looking at the future, and determining the next approach, and talking technologies and how to apply them. The companies have invested and executed on the tradition alignment in a plant across process systems, and also evolved their SAP business system. What concerned me was the throwing of technologies around like cloud, wireless, and mobile, and looking for how, instead of stepping back and looking at what are they trying to achieve, and then applying technologies to that plan.

It is important to note that, in both cases, their automation layer is mature and well established and that their business side is also well thought through and well on the way to being established on the second generation business system.

Again the opportunity of significant improvement and gain in operational efficiency is at the operational layer across multiple facilities. Again the role of people and enabling decisions in real-time are key but not just decisions but a consistency in action in the operational control loop.

The question of where to start came up, and through the discussion the opportunity of stepping back and taking a look at the roles that an operational plant will require from the roles in 2020 to execute. These roles could be on site or off site, through the concept of the “flexible operational team”. Define the role, the day in the life of that role taking into account location, what decisions and actions that role is responsible for and who and what he will interact with through the day. Yes, switch into a “Facebook” thinking of friends, but friends maybe people, (other experts) Assets, Processes, even products. Once this map of a decisions and responsibilities during the day is defined, this drives what information, systems and people this role must interact with in a day. It will also determine what operational procedures (Operational Activities) the role will potentially engage.

This role map is key as now you have a starting point, as to driving consistency in a dynamically changing workforce. Combining these role map, composed of “operational activities” associated with the role, where the activity has the required notification, information, actions, community of expertise etc. and architectural landscape so these “operational activities” can compliment existing systems.

The architectural landscape should define the layers on top of existing systems, in a neutral way, where these operational activities (model driven approach) will reside, these could be local or remote hosting but will require clear governance and require models to defined in an environment that enables constant evolution of the practices but process experts locally and centrally as a “crowd development”, with governance control.

This focus on a role or set of key roles allows the company to focus on how the operational plant will run in 2020 and the key decisions that required, and start applying these now in an architecture that lives with the current systems, but starts to drive consistency and faster decisions across that same role over multiple plants. Notice I have not talked technologies, my assumption on mobile and cloud that the architecture is set up so these activities will be able to execute independently of the device, so the adoption of what devices are used on a plant are relative to plant and support they get, key is the devices no matter if desktop or mobile or web should be suited to efficiency of the role execution.

The clear opportunity is the linking of smart/ intelligent assets to people, and optimized process, and this is the essence of distributed industrial systems of the future on which “Internet of things’ / “Industrial internet” and the “third Industrial Revolution” are based. Key not getting overwhelmed with technology (it is here) it is the “job” or operational improvement that is the opportunity, and how to achieve this. A good starting point is understanding and achieving consistency in the key roles in the future vs the dynamically evolving workforce.