Industrial Internet of Things: What does it mean to me?

I must have sat through 3 to four presentations of IoT in the last 2 weeks from different vendors, different industries. Combine this active strategic discussions within our development teams, you see many angles and thought approaches.

ARC’s definition:

“The industrial internet of things is a collection of technologies that can come together in a targeted  solution to improve business performance and machine availability”.

The key is the transition to information driven system has begun and it is about alignment of devices, process and people, to be effective in real-time agile production. Extending across the plant, and the whole value supply chain, providing transparency in end to end operations.

All are valid, but the question was asked on a site visit last week " what does it mean to us?". So I stood up and went to white board and drew three circles and intersected them, to represent the opportunity.

"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 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.