Data Structuring/ Normalization and Validation the Hidden Key to Unified Information Solution!!!

For the last 2 weeks I have been on the road, sorry just did not get to updating blog, but a constant discussion topic that keeps coming up. “How to truly build a Unified Information system that allows a view across their industrial/ production assets, and the ability to compare, and understand current state, capacity and performance quickly and easily.”

Warehouse Execution System Opportunity for Different Approach Using a Platform

 

Last week I worked for a day with exciting team of System Integrators who are in the MES space, one is old friend from South Africa who has moved to Australia. The attitude is great, “we will have a go”, so we discussed and visited a customer site around the possible opportunity for Warehouse Execution System, running in conjunction with Warehouse Management System (usually in the ERP system).

People look at me sideways when I talk Warehouse, but in the manufacturing environment distribution and therefore warehousing is key, and actually moving away from storage to real time re-alignment of distribution.  You may ask what does that mean? The more and more we align value assets (manufacturing/ production sites) from single  running identities (islands, Profit and loss centers) to aligned Value Assets, you will see inventory drop, cash increase, and this can only become a reality be changing the warehouse to production like facility vs just a storage system.

This requires an Execution System to work in conjunction with the Warehouse Management System to really enable real-time execution, optimization, and streamlining within the facility, and more and more across multiple facilities. I was encouraged to have a good discussion around this last week, and saw the opportunity to leverage the new technologies available to enable this WES to become a reality that is manageable.

 The traditional execution systems that come with Warehouse Systems are just not flexible and certainly have no concept of multiple warehouse alignment. In the past I have implemented MES but the challenge is integration with the automation world especially relative to locations, and then the different operational procedures different sites have and shifts have.

But today we seeing:

·         Need to real-time alignment with execution on the warehouse, including location health awareness.

·         Traceability within the warehouse

·         Optimization in storing and picking so that minimal times are required and maximum flexibility.

·         The desire for enforcement of operational practices across shifts and sites, needing standards management over sites.

·         The alignment of multiple warehouses and manufacturing / production facilities

So when applying today’s technologies and approaches:

·         The System Platform for real-time interaction, the ability to develop intelligent objects that represent equipment and locations so these can become exception based on health, as well providing a consistent set of transactional triggers for MES. Whilst also providing a distributed platform over multiple sites with these standards being managed over the sites.

·         MES providing the routing and inventory management and tracking and product definition rules

·         Workflow combined with the forms User interface to provide a Model Driven Operational Composite Framework. So task/ activity related User Interfaces with built in operational procedures can be developed and managed  across sites. This provides a sustainable / configurable environment for developing these unique operational procedures. A key capability is to monitor and analyze these procedures to continue to see where bottle necks are, and tune the procedures to increase human operational inter-action efficiency.

The key is the introduction of the platform as a sustainable real-time interaction and trigger system, and the Workflow composite framework to again provide a sustainable environment for procedure User Interface development.

Food for thought!!!!!

Last week I worked for a couple of days with an exciting team of System Integrators who are in the MES space, one is old friend from South Africa who has moved to Australia. The attitude is great, “we will have a go”, so we discussed and visited a customer site around the possible opportunity for Warehouse Execution System, running in conjunction with Warehouse Management System (usually in the ERP system).

People look at me sideways when I talk Warehouse, but in the manufacturing environment distribution and therefore warehousing is key, and actually moving away from storage to real time re-alignment of distribution.  You may ask what does that mean? The more and more we align value assets (manufacturing/ production sites) from single  running identities (islands, Profit and loss centers) to aligned Value Assets, you will see inventory drop, cash increase, and this can only become a reality be changing the warehouse to production like facility vs just a storage system.

This requires an Execution System to work in conjunction with the Warehouse Management System to really enable real-time execution, optimization, and streamlining within the facility, more and more across multiple facilities. I was encouraged to have a good discussion around this last week, with the opportunity to leverage the new technologies available to enable this WES to become a reality that is manageable.

The traditional execution systems that come with Warehouse Systems are just not flexible and certainly have no concept of multiple warehouse alignment.
In the past I have implemented MES but the challenge is integration with the automation world especially relative to locations, and then the different operational procedures different sites have and shifts have.

Operational Innovation !! Technology is here but Culture Needs to Evolve!

Through the travels of the last 2 months talking with many of the leading companies in mining and other industries the concept of “Operational Innovation” is a hidden objective. Why is it hidden because it is not natural for innovation to driven from all parts of the business, companies have a habit of centralizing it. Actually we can all contribute to innovational improvement to the way to take on, execute our “jobs to be done” during the day.

There is always ways to improve, but the key item I see being missed is the “culture not just innovates, and try”, but capture this and embed it. Innovation is about lifting constraints of risk to enabling trying to change items with improvements, yes this means making “failure” as a success measure. When I say failure people look at me twice in the industrial space. But I am talking constructive failure e.g. freeing people up with an environment where they can try new ideas on improving their job, and this experiment/ trial is done in a safe none intrusive environment into the plants operations. But the user is able to allocate time, and feels empowered to come up with ideas, and try them. Once the improvement is validated and tested, the ability capture this and embed it for consistency across plants and teams. Diagnram below comes from ARC comparing the effects of embedding processes vs manual implimentation this takes a significant leap even further ahead if you build in operational innovation culture and systems into your industrail operations. 

Activities Behavior Starts to become Reality
As I flex back from South Africa last week I was listening to an interview on innovation, and there was interview with Microsoft Manager for Australia, and she talked about the change in culture they have implemented in the Australian offices. Switching to Activity based officers meaning that no one has a permanent seat or desk, you go in a morning and select a desk based upon the activity you are doing that day. As you may be on the road, you may be do activities that do not need you in the office, you maybe at other offices. She talked about it as a significant change in culture but it allows agility and focus to adapt your day and role based upon activities not a role.
This is the same I see in my own life and how I have discussed realtive to the Flexible Operational Team in the industrial space, these can only be achieved when people and the culture support an Activity Based thinking and Approach. In South Africa last week, I continued to see the evolution towards this thinking in mining, and food and beverage as I spoke with customers, many do not realise they on this path, yet their actions and ideas are heading in this direction.

This is no different in my life every day, I talk about my work life being in my back pack, with my lap top, IPad, mobile cell, and mobile  wireless hotspot. Based upon the activities I have that day, meetings, calls, site visits, PowerPoint presentation preparations, technology knowledge catch up, interviews,  strategy brainstorming, these are distinct activities require different modes of thinking, I choose the best environment and location for doing these.

This is very different to the way I worked 10 to 15 years ago in an office and defined role, today my activities and role change daily based on the situation and achieving our business goals and the contribution I can make each day to that, certainly my agility, and effective working time and delivery has increased.

This is the same for the industrial world and the changing approach I am seeing in the industrial place, where companies are going to the Flexible Operational Team, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago, can only be truly achieved when people are working against activities vs roles. Key to evolution is that there will be a management of activities, both planned and reactionary, which will be acted upon by the best person, or team in order to respond as fast as possible. This does not mean that people are assigned to a certain interface/ roles,  they should be able to go to best location in the plant in order to execute that activity. This is why the whole operational control is evolving to a an aligned set of systems, that allow people to access, understand and take action in the most effective place possible.

 I was in South Africa at the annual conference there, as usual I saw a lot of innovation, and thought leadership, building on what I have seen in Western Australia in the last 6 months. The big discussion was around effectively using the human asset, through "time to Experience shortening" knowledge access, and actions, and collberation.

 But you see this continued evolution from:

Applications        to        Roles        to         Activities

Activities require a change in thinking:

·         How align information and actions from different systems to enable a co-ordinated and assignable activity.

·         How the UI changes to activities with the information, ability drill and understand and then the associated actions, which may require multiple people and certain procedure.

·         Plus a culture that allows roles and people to be flexible to take on different activities in a must more agile process.

I will expect to see this activity thinking and approach accelerating over the next year but as I have said this means aligned systems, access, and contextualization in order to make it fully effective.  

Why Exception based Operational Systems are the Only Practical Way?

As you unify your operations the more and more you roll up data, the more you drown in data and events etc. It becomes very quickly impractical to digest this information at the rate it is coming, and then it gets ignored or situations missed.

This calls for different thinking and taking the users away from MONITORING to now been naturally made aware of a situation through presentation, of the condition.

Concepts like the Advanced Process Graphics are  changing the thinking in the way data is presented so time to awareness to situations is dramatically reduced.  This I will discuss in the future.

But the big point of this discussion is move to Exception Based thinking meaning that the system notifies the correct people of a condition. This reduces the data needing to be consumed by a operator, and reduces the data that needs to be sent over networks. The issue with post analysis like through historian it is not real-time, and means you has gathered all the data not the critical data.

Virtual “Situation Room” for Industry

We are not talking about just large Operational Centers but as pointed out over the last couple of weeks these are coming into play more and more especially in Mining, Upstream, and refining, but realistically it is just a part of the new “Virtual Situation Room” that enables the “Flexible Operational Team ”.

The key aspects of a “Virtual Situation Room”:

·         Operational Activities are Transformational across the "day in the life" of the worker, who does not need to be tied to a particular location to execution that activity

·         Collaboration and Interaction is Natural across the Operational Team

·         Awareness and context is native so situational awareness and decisions can be made dramatically faster, workers are not monitoring systems, they brought aware of growing situations.

·         Team work is natural, learning is natural across the team

·         Embedded operational practices enable Operational Innovation as a part of the operational culture.

·         Alignment of the different levels of loops in the industrial landscape are aligned

·         Unification/ alignment through federation is core across plant systems, and multi plant

Standards What do they mean?, What does it take?

As we evolve the Enterprise Control capability around multi-site and system, (yes distributed system), I have been out talking to people. A common topic is standards, the more architectures try to unify/ standardize process, operations etc., the more standards apply, but they have been round for years in control blocks. But why is it such a struggle at the supervisory level, and MES? Basically it appears to be:

·         Defining what is a standard? and Why make it a standard?

·         Governance and investment to make a standard but the much big investment to maintain and evolve the standard, it must be justified.

·         But at the core is this mis understanding that standards are like “applications”, when that are closer to “products”.