“It’s not raining; it’s pouring”, the rate of change social, workforce, market combined with built up industrial effects, will make 2013/14 exciting!!!!

As we all come to end of 2012, we have time to reflect and look towards 2013, (even bigger things if you are on the Mayan calendar who start their new complete calendar). I find the time over the holidays a time to step back and think, absorb, read, reflect and strategise without the daily routine. As I flew back home, low over the northern coast of New South Wales, Australia I read a number of articles and one from Deloittes on “Tracking the Trends 2012”  which lead with “It’s not raining; it’s pouring” was straight to point and not just for mining, but all industries. Combine this with an improved positive outlook from China and fewer significant potential changes in government next year, 2013 provides the opportunity to build momentum with companies starting the journey to take on solid challengers of unified solutions to achieve “Operational Excellence”. The challenge will be the constraint of bridging the gap between “time and urgency of getting to full production, vs the green light to proceed forward, vs the challenge of the existing install base of “islands of industrial systems”’.

So in the final blog of the year I would like review some of the points raised in this paper, and just expand and enabling further reflection.

The Paper “Tracking the Trends 2012, The top 10 trends mining companies may face in the coming year” by Deloitte (www.deloitte.com/mining). Do not get put off by the word “mining” as 80% of the points raised are relevant across most industries. The article starts with an extremely true statement:

“It’s not raining; it’s pouring.”

“It could be argued that the burning issues facing the industry tend to remain largely unchanged over time. While this may be factually correct, it fails to take into account the extent to which shifting social, economic and political trends affect the mining sector. Looked at in isolation, each challenge may seem familiar. Looked at through a macroeconomic and geopolitical lens, however, it becomes clear that the difficulties afflicting the industry are rapidly reaching an unprecedented level of extremity.”

I do not think enough people realise the extremity of these different factors affecting the ability to achieve “operational effectivness” tending to treat them as individual issues vs interactive. In the industrial sector as it has been traditionally an extremely slow moving, conservative and fragmented operational environment, but not anymore. With globalization, the required speed of decisions, agility to market changes, combine these with age of industrial systems, transitioning workforce and social change. Provides a real opportunity for leading companies to “leap frog” by taking a holistic approach to solving these challengers vs a “piece meal” approach.

1. “The cost of doing business What goes up does not always come down”

“With commodity prices surging to all-time highs, but variable (28% change in price of Iron Ore between Sept and October 2012), accelerated production has become the mantra of most mining companies.”

The result is as onerous as it is predictable: costs are going up across the board.

This applies across all industries, but it is not just the costs going up it is also the volititiy in costs, that change at much more frequent rate, and these costs must be absorbed into the manufacturing costs in order to maintain margin. Energy is an excellent example this going up, and changing, effecting all the costs of materials, and transport costs as well as operating costs. Regulation is another hidden cost that is taxing on manufacturing; from regulations to fit markets, government driven regulation and the growing environmental commitment.

2. “Commodity price chaos  No price stability without greater transparency”

Have commodity prices been reset at a higher level or are we at the top of a bubble that’s about to burst? The answer to that question dictates whether or not current mining projects will be profitable. Unfortunately, indisputable indicators are sorely lacking. Project life times are getting shorter and time to full productin is the key metric, so how do you absorb this dynamic climate? The ability to have approved capex spend, and project designs ready to go at a “minutes notice” with teams executing fast is key. Projects need to sub divided into logical value steps that are achievable and build off each other instead of single huge projects, allowing agility to tune, achieve and adjust through the journey to Operational Excellence. This is as much a culutural change in project running to be journey, as much as an execution.  

3. “The battle to keep profits Government taxes target the mining sector”

“Resource sector profits have long been tempting to governments around the world. This is particularly true at a time when so many nations continue to struggle to repay record levels of debt.”

This statement while centered on mining is true across the world. Governments are looking to change GST, VAT, (sales taxes) or profit taxes in order to access the company profits and compensate for increase costs, and solving their long term debt crisis. This will also continue to increase the complexity in a supply chain that extends across the world, with increased need to be in control of the business, track products, materials and taxes in each to manage the tax costs.

4. “Labour pains  Bridging the precarious talent gap”

“Behind all the tonnes of articles, statistics and reports written about the talent and skills shortages facing the mining industry lies one stark fact: there simply are not enough people to power projected mining company growth.”

All through this year I talked about the workforce transition challenge, as the year progressed the reality set in that this is not a transition it is a total workflorce reset. There are fewer skilled people in the engineering and industrial space, they are less inclined to go to remote locations, and people are rotating jobs significantly. In Another article on Operational Practices in 2020 (which I will expand on in January) they predict 42% of the workforce will be made up Gen Y, and the average time in a role, job will be 2.4 years. This requires a different thinking in Operational System Design to absorb this type of change, and maintain continous production. As I interviewed many people in the latter part of the year, realization of this workforce challenge is starting to sink in, it will make the next 5 years an interesting time!

5. “Capital project quandaries  Project risk rises as the supply/demand gap widens”

“As countries around the world continue their push towards massive industrialization and infrastructure renewal, the number of capital projects across the globe is mounting. At the same time, declining assets across the sector and lower ore grades mandate investment in new development and exploration projects, particularly in light of the escalating safety risks associated with aging mines.”

This is not just mining all industries are seeing this in some form, consider food and beverage where they add new plants, or more than often acquire existing plants with existing aging systems, and practices then require for the alignment. The requirement for increased capital investments to gain alignment, but then the enormous costs of sustaining or evolving these aging assets and systems to be effective in the modern world. Both are putting a strain of project investment and financing and also project execution in a timely fashion due to a shortage of engineering, skilled personal.

6. “The big get bigger Risk multiplies as companies diversify”

In order to stay competitive and in control, larger companies are getting bigger through acquisition to increase the vertical supply chain control and reduce risk, or increase responsitivity. With global expansion, new cultures, establish processes need to melded together and aligned. This expansion is key to stay in the market but in turn increases the risk to companies, and the leading companies are looking for ways, processes and technologies that will smooth out, reduce the risk in merging these new companies into the bigger picture. This can only be done through the roll out of standards and the concept of “federation” vs “rip and replace”. This allows plant cultures and system to be sustained, but the plants/companies to be “plugged” into the bigger value chain, and aligned.  

7. “Volatility is the new stability Planning for the unforeseeable”

“While risk planning requires executives to peer into the future, it traditionally does not demand that they plan for highly-unlikely occurrences. Unfortunately, the stepped-up incidence of implausible events is turning conventional scenario planning on its head. From the widespread effects of the global financial crisis and worldwide political instability to the tsunami in Japan and flooding in Australia, Brazil and South Africa, mining companies find themselves facing the unexpected on a frighteningly regular basis.

Although these so-called “black swan events” are by definition, rare, high-impact and hard to predict, they are finding their way onto corporate agendas, fuelled in part by boards of directors that fear ambush by issues that never appeared on their radar screens. Preparing for these unanticipated surprises – whether they are harbingers of risk or opportunity – may require more of a creative licence than mining companies are accustomed to exercising.

On some level, the process must begin by considering the organization’s vulnerability to extremely unlikely, but potentially catastrophic, incidents – those considered worst-case scenarios. The aim is to challenge existing business assumptions by asking questions that consider myriad sources, from geopolitical movements to volatile weather patterns.”

Continuity Risk Planning is becoming a big common concept in companies as they plan forward, this involves now bringing in these external events, and effect on personal safety, environment etc.

8. “Legislative Olympics Countries compete to become the world’s toughest regulators”

In recent years, however, nations around the world have been loading their regulatory firearms, targeting areas such as bribery, safety, environmental, carbon, financial correctness, etc.

These regulations are coming from governments in the form of new laws, good example the new Carbon Tax in Australia, which will immediately affect the bottom line. Drive from customers and community, example is environmental where companies are starting to be judged based on the moral conduct towards the longevity of the planet. Also, food safety is playing a role in buying habits, this especially seen in China after their scares, so brand integrity is at risk relative to food safety, personal safety and operational safety. All of these bring a new level of risk to board and executive members of companies, as well as the bottom line cost. So naturally in the operational systems capability relative to reducing risk, and the cost is becoming natural a natural train of thought.

The final thoughts in the article sum up the change in the attitude and thinking in the industrial space and how companies are thinking. It is this thinking on a more holistic collaboration with real time coupling and alignment which delivers the most promise for the industry combined with the most risk and challenge.

“From competition to collaboration industrywide-wide issues require an industry-wide response.

It is becoming increasingly incumbent upon mining executives to broaden their purview by fostering improved collaboration – across their own organizations, among industry players and with communities and governments around the world. From an internal perspective, it may help to begin by adopting enterprise-wide processes capable of creating a cohesive culture among disparate international locations. These types of processes can run the gamut – from global labour practices, worker safety programs and supply chains through integrated financial reporting, business intelligence systems and regulatory compliance practices. No matter the adopted solution, the end goal is the same: to ensure consistent practices and communication across the entire global enterprise.”

I wish you all a happy holidays and all the best for the New Year, and I hope this blog through last year has prompted thoughts and thinking, and this article some provoking thoughts.

In the up coming year we have a lot of investment and innovations happening across the industry, and I will continue to explore the directions people are taking on the journey to Operational Excellence.

Dynamic Simulation needs to become a Natural Feature of the Industrial Operational Landscape

To empower operational teams, workforce, each role must understand the context of the future, as well as current state and history. In the traditional industrial solutions, the worker is provided with tools for understanding history and NOW. This is the same as driving a car by only looking at the dashboard of the car, and rear vision mirror. Can you drive the car without looking out 100 meters or longer into the future the answer is NO, you would miss judging the next corner?

So why do we think we can run plants in this same manner?

The leading companies are defining the operational experience of empowering the different roles in the plant operations with the ability to “understand the future”. This will then empower the user with:

·         Understanding of the NOW situation

·         Understand the History

·         An expectation of the future based on NOW situation

·         Access to Experience

The concept or words used to describe this capability is “What If” capability. The ability to have at the finger tips of the worker the ability to ask “what if” question and the system will provide the best estimate based upon the current state of the process/ plant, and history. This provides maybe a “times 10” in time look forward so that it provides another reference point for the worker to base their decision on.

An example of how the general day to day market has come to accept using simulation models as day to day is in the weather. I do a lot of ocean sailing; today a natural tool I use on the boat is weather simulation. On my Ipad,  I have two applications, which connect to a cloud application that will allow me to select a location, and run a number of weather simulation models, based upon the current condition. There are a few models with different characteristics that I use to 2 to 3 models and compare feedback, combine this with reading the weather maps, and do a “gut validation”. It is this future, plus my experience from the weather map reading plus applying local conditions such as mountains that allows me to gather enough information to make decisions on what to do. This effects safety, comfort etc, there were examples of friends on other boats that just listened to general weather broadcast especially in remote places, and they made decisions based on this, but these forecasts were over 1000s of miles and extremely general, and open for interpretation as they were line item. In the same situation,  I ran the models; play off scenarios “what if” based upon local navigation, mountains, and my boat. On at least 3 occasions,  these friends left and where caught with young families in life threatening situations. This is decidedly different to when I was a teenager sailing the Australian coast, where we only had the weather maps, and a number of peoples opinions, we got caught a couple of times in particularly severe weather especially 5 hours out. Today I am able to use the models to look 7 days into the future for a trend, and greater accuracy at 12 and 24 hours. Today these models are a natural part of my navigation tools, having on board capability to download the results of the model, and then tools to ask questions based upon routes I want to go, easy to interpret graphic experiences to see results. (As seen below the weather is overlayed on the charts and uses colors to show intensity, I can work through time forward 5 days by hour).

It is easy to receive model results even at sea by sending an email of current locations, areas I am interested by a text email and the results come back in a data file that I load into my local system with my boat parameters, navigation charts, and I can now easily see graphically the results layered on the navigation charts and ask questions, because of this simplicity to use I now use this many times a day to make and validate decisions.

So why, not on the plant? No matter the role, it could be maintenance, performance engineer, safety, operations, where decisions are having to be made, and experience varies, the ability to get these reference points is key.

This must use high fidelity simulation models to predict the future, but the capability of adding this to a solution must be small. Traditionally simulation systems have been offline, and large after thoughts, especially outside of the oil and gas industry. “Why cannot we just add this future capability similar to adding alarm or historic capability to a device supervisory control?”. The answer should be yes. This will require smaller foot print simulation, dynamic and libraries of simulation models for different devices/ processes etc. Again in the oil and gas world this has been done for years, and companies such as Exxon and others have built libraries of optimization, and simulation capability. All industries require this no matter the complexity, but to achieve reality it must be easy (a natural act) and rich this library of simulation models must be rich, and easy to apply, plus domain experts must be able to develop these models easily, these could be device / process vendors, domain experts, and companies. With the models naturally able to be applied to the automation/ operational platform as just another function.

Yes, dynamic simulation is one of fastest growing aspects of Industrial Operational Systems, as we design systems we must assume that this capability should be included.

Big Data Requires a Big, New Architecture

“The potential of “big data,” the massive explosion of sources of information from sensors, smart devices, and all other devices connected to the Internet, is probably under-appreciated in terms of its eventual business impact. However, to take maximum advantage of big data, IT is going to have to press the re-start button on its architecture for acquiring and understanding information. IT will need to construct a new way of capturing, organizing and analyzing data, because big data stands no chance of being useful if people attempt to process it using the traditional mechanisms of business intelligence, such as a data warehouses and traditional data-analysis techniques.” Dan Woods; Forbes

So does this apply to Industrial Area, I was heading through Terminal 5 in Heathrow this week, and articles banners around Big Data were all around me, and yes it is the latest “train” for people to board, but is it real in the Industrial Space? As I boarded a train, sat doing a mind thinking moment looking at the industrial operations/ automation landscape I realized why there is confusion is that in the industrial space,  we talk about Enterprise Historians, and one person said to me that is big data! I do not think so, it is just one aspect of the growing industrial information dilemma facing all us over the next 5 years.

When I look at the predictions of Big Data by Industry from Gartner:

The column for “Manufacturing and Natural Resources” which has every row in “Hot” or greater and points to “Volume of data”, “Velocity of data” and especially “Underutilized Dark Data” as Very Hot. This is should not be a surprise to anyone with the historians out there with 10000s of tags soaking up the data at second intervals. In the last 7 years,  Invensys Wonderware has installed 128 million I/O in historian points. Another point not brought out here is the need to make the data “trust worthy” and auditable so business decisions can depend upon it, much of the industrial data is just captured today, not validated against the current state of the process etc.

Now lets understand the “Jobs People want to do today” has there been a change? Yes there has been around the responsibility scope increase. This is both in making decisions and more business impactive decisions, as well as the increase in breadth e.g. Area that a person has to manage.

Initially this seems okay, but  now consider  the devices in the field today, and the amount of data coming from a device that traditionally would have 2 to 3 points, can have 400 points. Is this exaggeration, lets look at an example of a pump.

In the old days,  a pump would have:

• Speed
• Pressure

 Today:

• Speed
• Temperature
• Pressure on incoming and outgoing
• Vibration
• Energy calculations (many variables)
• Number of starts
• Volume
• On goes the list

The reason is that today devices are much smarter this to improve performance, efficiency, maintenance lifetime, and energy consumption management as well as predicting the operational reliability of  the pump. Compared with the old requirement of turning it on and making sure it is pumping to make sure it does not run dry.

Now take one device and put it in a plant context where it is one of 1000s, we have effectively increased the volume of data by 100000s and it will not stop growing. So the ability to capture this data as close to local data source, validating the data, but accessing the data, understanding events, patterns, and relationships across devices, plants, and device types etc required for this ever increasing drive to lower the OPEX costs, through increased efficiency and lower maintenance lower energy consumption  etc.  Again review this data historised for  a pump, the data falls under multiple categories:

·         Operational

·         Energy

·         Maintenance

·         Efficiency

Different roles within the “day to day” running of the industrial operations will analysis the data in different ways, to draw different conclusions. Examples are some people will want to look across multiple pumps and compare efficiency, energy etc vs the Operator who is just look at the current status and availability.

Will the traditional industrial tools be good enough?  I do not think so as all data is not in one form, one data source, take the above time series historian data, combine this alarming, events, and operational data. The introduction of new architectures, “Information Models” and analysis tools which will enable a view across large amounts of data, put this data in the context (this does not mean a data warehouse) and analysis tools quickly bring out trends/ relationships between data from different sources over large areas. All with the simple objective of enable more “real time decisions support”. An example of this is in the latest Wonderware Information Server 2012 R2 (released this month) with a new operational analysis capability. Seen below this capability is out of the box across, MES, Batch, Time series historian data and alarms data sources, providing an immediate view into a trend with a “halo” to show the shift, or batch or phase of operations the process was in, and associated alarm data, all at the operators finger tips.

This is the first step as Invensys will be expanding this capability through the next few years across the Enterprise Control Solution. I will expand on this Big Data in Industry and Decision Support concepts over the next couple of weeks.     

It is the End of the Year, what is on people minds this year vs. Last year?

Sitting a coffee table in Convent Garden in London, the chilling winter wind blowing through me, but the dazzling lights of Christmas and the holiday season dance about me. I have the opportunity to absorb the discussions of the last week discussing with teams from around the world what is driving operational thought leaders in mining, transport, and infra-structure. Now I look up at dazzling lights my mind shifts to the thought of;”is there a difference in operational priorities this year vs. last year and the answer is YES!!!”

The economic outlook is “soft” and nervous; certainly infra-structure projects from governments are under increased scrutiny. Last year there was some optimism as things were turning, today for many they walking carefully, we are seeing commodity prices causing pull back in major/ mega projects. Also, we are another year into this final run on the experience of “Baby Boomer” and Early Gen X (born 1960 to 1970) moving on, and that experience going out the door.

Reflecting on the key themes underlying discussions in Operations Strategy as we end 2012:

·         How to increase the effectiveness of roles, so they are able to make more decisions. This is leading to active discussions around “decision support systems” more than reports, but an experience that will enable a holistic view on information in context and actions to be taken in a timely manner.

·       Opex cost tightening, that strategies are around reducing operations costs, through increased efficiency, the discussion is not on people reduction, but is around “energy” reduction. This is causing discussions on energy around how to align plant, equipment usage to low energy rate periods and bring this into the plant operational planning.

·         The Aging worker discussion has shifted or started to shift to how deal with people in roles for short periods causing limited experience. There is recognition that this is not just an age issue, but the nature of operational business and HR that people are moving locations, roles at an increased frequency compared with 5 to 10 years. Note that this has only started to be recognized but with recognition.  

·         Having people more aligned into effective work. This is an intriguing one, but there is a lot of discussion on what workers are doing in their 8 hours and how much of it is effective. This aligns with the shift towards focusing on “planned work” vs. “ad hoc, unplanned” work. This immediately provides benefit in safety levels, and efficiency.

·         The discussion of how to execute solutions of the complexity required, unifying many sites and systems, how to build and sustain standards, how to execute in a timely fashion at minimal risk when shareholders are constraining capital budgets. Yet everyone realizes the programs must go on, so a healthy discussion around how execute, modularization of the program into “bite size chunks” using multiple engineering teams. This discussion will grow in momentum in 2013.

·         With the drive down on Opex and Capex, there is an increasing review of the custom, unsustainable solutions running in the operations, especially MES, which traditionally had a significant customization. Companies are investigating programs to shift the cost or growing and sustaining the systems away, either by new solutions based upon off the shelf products, or outsourcing the sustaining of the system.

There are many other side conversations around information in the context, the unifying of data, potential to use “Big Data” concepts (see blog coming up in the coming weeks). There is  realization in the holistic view across the Enterprise Landscape, and the changing Operational Worker, I believe there will be a resetting of role definitions across the plants, as the “day in the life “ of Operational Worker (no matter the role) is changing significantly with the freedom mobility brings.

I am sure I have missed some points, but the key is the “outlook” is different, and the leading companies are considering different factors on when, what and how they will evolve their operational systems in order to achieve Operation Effectiveness.

All good food for thought over these upcoming holiday period.

Cloud in the Industrial Landscape

I am struggling and understand why there is a debate on Cloud in the Industrial Architectures.The Cloud is here, it is real, and most of us use it many ways today. Many of us had a similar concept in past architectures with main frames, for central data storage. The Cloud technology provides a natural fit to many Industrial Operational Landscapes, in order to address multi site, the roaming user outside the plant, and sharing of information across the industrial enterprise.

For the past year, I have talked about the evolving the Industrial Enterprise, with multiple sites, and the need for standards, in KPIs, data structures, objects layouts etc. How to achieve this without a central repository? With the infra structure increasing both in networks both wired and wireless, 3G/ 4G that all devices can leverage this growing infrastructure. Even in remote places on distributed gas fields, people are designing the industrial architecture to leverage the 3 G mobile networks, providing  10 mb with a dual modem, so why not?

Certainly as we access the changing "jobs to be done" or increased scope knowledge workers are responsible for across sites, the increased data/information access, we see Cloud as a natural part of the architecture both public and private, or within a plant site, but still managed from outside service. Things are changing too quickly on the IT side for people to keep up, and the need for common.

So you will start to see historians be sold in the cloud, already Enterprise Asset Management systems are sold as a service hosted in the cloud running across multiple sites.

In small businesses (e.g.| Companies/ sites with small employee counts and often not It or engineering resources on site),  the concept of MES, information systems, historians, and even HMIs be hosted or sold as a service is logical. You maybe laughing at the HMI as it “must” be local, yes, but I went to 3 small business sites last week, and all would prefer not having any PCs / servers on their site. Already their ERP and back office (Microsoft Office) hosted outside, so why not HMI, Historians and MES? With “thin client technology, virtual machines”  there is no need to put a PC on the shop floor, it is easier to have a thin client that enables independence of the Operating System.

Standards such as report templates, KPIs, Knowledge based systems all need to be central, and the cloud technologies like MS Azure enable the infrastructure out of the box.

At Invensys we are assuming the Cloud as an option in solution architectures as people go forward, that does not mean it is required, but people can start with an " on premise" and evolve latter on the technology should allow this. The industrial applications should evolve with the architecture, allow companies to expand and evolve, even having different architectures for the large plants vs the small plants, but still achieving the unified industrial landscape.

Instead of saying, it will not apply in the industrial world, this technology provides the opportunity to solve some of the remote operational challengers end users are facing with standard technology, in a secure way. Instead of asking “WHY WOULD WE USE CLOUD in INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS?”. We would should be asking “WHY NOT USE THE STANDARD OFF THE SHELF CAPABILITY SUCH AS CLOUD?” 

Reaction to my Blog on Windows 8!

Two weeks ago I discussed the fact that I believe the release of Windows 8 is a key milestone in the evolution of the Operational Experience.

There was a lot of reaction and debate as some people took this “as there will be a quick adoption of Windows 8 in the industrial environment”, which is not what was stated. The comment was relative to key milestone. Many people have gone to Windows 7, and it is a remarkably solid release, and will satisfy people for years.

Some people commented that Windows 8 will only be for the commercial market, e.g.| the “surface" tablet market, this will initially be true, but people also said with the IPAD people would not take it up. At a conference 2 weeks when Iooked around 90 % of people were on tablet devicse vs 2 year before everyone was taking notes doing email on laptop computers. We are all still doing the same “job" of taking notes and doing emails, but we have shifted to a new device due to the technology making my execution of job of taking notes and emails more efficient due to:

·         Size of the device it is easier to carry and handle at the conference

·         The speed at which it boots up, it is instant vs starting up.

·         I can see emails fast

·         I use mind manager for note taking this runs well as an app on the tablet

·         I can also draw diagrams easily that are captures as part of my notes

·         I can also take photos of diagrams, slides and whiteboard discussions and include these all as part of my notes.

People did not recognize this 2 years ago, but they now see the advantage and have evolved.

Looking at Windows 8 it provides significant new capability and paradigm change by going to “touch” that when combined with new devices, pcs coming from the hardware suppliers there will advantages people see in improving their “jobs" on the industrial floor. These advantages will only become fulling clear as people apply it.

But when combined with:

·         Gen Y’s expectation of “touch” experience

·         The natural requirement of collaboration over multiple interfaces in one system with personal or role base views to information

·         The whole methodology of jobs today, requiring evolution of the operational experience.      

Windows 8 is a potential key milestone, but that does not mean fast take up, that will probably come in Windows 9, as the story, situation, and advantages are well understood.

An example of the advantage of the “touch” world is the zoom by gesture it is natural to zoom, or expand out, and then swipe left and right for panning, these are far more natural than the taking a mouse a “clicking” on a location and dragging a zoom box over the area I want see in more detail. Watching my children struggle with mouse vs the touch screens of the IPAD they ask why we need to do this, they first go to the screen which is not “touch” enabled, but that is natural.

I will ask the same question I proposed 2 weeks ago:

“As you go to upgrade the industrial interfaces, would you not buy devices include these capabilities and come with Windows 8 vs the traditional PC, even if your HMI, Operational experience has not evolved yet?  

Time for “Off the Shelf” Operations/ MES Solution

As I sit on another plane heading across the Pacific from California, I have time to reflect on the discussions both this week, and over the last 6 months, with leading food and beverage and process companies.

The growing trend in the MES space, (which the dominate solution is “custom solutions”), is to replace these systems with “off the shelf” products, enabling companies to focus on the core business. This trend is similar to the ERP space in the 90s, and initially in the MES space in the late 90s, and 2000s, but MES solutions of this time did not deliver the complete solution, and the eventual solutions have become unsustainable for the “operational journey”. Thousands of sites have installed MES Products from Invensys and other vendors, that are  highly successfully having run for over decade delivering significant value, but this time around there is more functionality capability people want, the architecture is not just one plant but multiple, and tolerance for custom code has significantly dropped. So why? And why now?

Reflecting on the discussions across many industries from process, mining, food, beverage, and general manufacturing, there are some common threads to the demise of “custom MES”:

·    The customer MES solutions are functionally very rich exceeding the traditional functional definitions of MESA etc with inbuilt operational practices in code, often focused on only a plant’s needs. The pace of change in operations, and pressure for new capability is growing both in capability and time to deliver.

·    Opportunities have moved from one plant to multiple plant, in order to provide the consistency and agility across the industrial landscape. Requiring significant governance, and alignment both in execution and information.

·    There is a younger generation (Gen X born 1960 to 80s) at the CIO and engineering level that have grown up with “packaged software”, and know that it works and should be leveraged.

·     Rotating staff in all roles requires faster time to experience, requiring embedded operational practices across plants.

It is also necessary to note that the MES solutions on the market where developed from a level 3 point of view yet when applied they must interact with the plant automation systems, as well as the many workers across the plants.

There were two areas of solution that contributed to the custom code:

Automation Layer Integartion:

Since the MES Products originated from level 3 specialized supplies (even if they are now apart of automation companies their origins came from standalone companies) the plant floor integration was external to MES  model using OPC etc, requiring significant custom code in the automation layer was to validate the event, and data. A sustainable solution requires  level 2 and 3 systems natively modeled, with minimal custom code as illustrated below.  The ability to configure (not code) a set of equipment templates, that model the equipment (entities) with built in supervisory capability as well as operational capability for such things as production data capture, quality sampling, utilization capture etc. Rolling these templates out over multiple sites, providing a consistent automated production event/ data capture.

Client, Human Interface:

The second area of significant coding on the first generation of MES solutions was at the client or user interface that captures manual data, at production event generation. The data  validation is required as close to source, requiring significant custom code that guides the data entry for the  user with constructive feedback. Also, the  job never seemed to finish with the operational practices continuing to change/ evolve as the companies operational practices evolved. In the above solution workflow combined with form generation and interaction, enables change and evolution in a sustainable manner.”Activity” specific interfaces and associated workflows will guide the user through the activity, and interface to MES capability capturing the required information.

The above approach is a full MES/ Operations architecture, that enables the configuration of embedded operational practices of a site and company, but in “off the shelf” products, faster solution delivery and in a more sustainable way. In many ways, this adding of realtime natural interface, combined with workflow for human interaction and embedded operational procedures extends the traditional MES capability as defined by “MESA or ISA 95” to be  a second generation that does have the opportunity to be adopted across 1000s of plants.  

Rotating Staff, Worker Retention becomes key Design Considerations

After 2 weeks in Asia, and the 2 weeks before travelling Australia and USA, the concern of worker retention, and the different attitude of the Gen  Y, rotating work force is of real concern.  In China they already shifted to an educated GenY late Gen x population of workers keen to learn, jump to experience rapidly. With this comes ambition to change, and experience so many discussions talked centered on worker retention.

This discussion will continue to grow as people realize the reality that people will take on roles for shorter times, rotating locations, or advancing the ladder, moving from company to the company as opportunities arise. In software; we saw this in the “.com” era, where we saw a 20% turn over, but with that we saw  evolution in the work environment.  The idea as attract and retain people, with both interesting work, and an environment which has services and facilities to make people want to stay.

The same is starting to happen in the industrial sector with the “Integrated Operational Center”, bringing operators and experts into environments that and better for families, and working, as well as enhancing  collaboration, increasing agility. As we go through the next 5 to 10 years in the transition from “Baby boomer” and Gen X to Gen Y, the learning of a role, situation must be different. It must enable:

·         Self-Education

·         The ability to Ask and learn, this means knowledge systems at the finger tips no matter what device, location, or situation.

·          To learn on the job, “Youtubes” and knowledge embedded into operational experience

·         The ability to access experience through collaboration with experts no matter where they.

As stated in earlier blogs; this must become a part of the design of Operational, process, maintenance and operational management experiences. Not an afterthought, but just a natural configuration as people do today with alarms, they should configure knowledge access. If you are sitting designing operational experiences at the moment, sit back and allow yourself time to understand how you will add the learning experience so that the user will be able to become experienced and capable in an efficient time.

The two countries I am seeing this change most pronounced are China and South Africa, as they both have an educated Gen Y coming through more rapidly than in most countries to fill a void of Baby boomer and Gen X. The demand for a new generation of experience will grow, and Advanced Process Graphics will help, but experience must be embedded.

Will Windows 8 be a turning point Industrial/ Manufacturing Operational Interface? Yes !

How influential will the launch of Windows 8 be in the industrial, manufacturing market?

I believe while it is not the first one with concepts (Apple did that) because of the size and market share in the Industrial Space, and the combination of other market, demographic factors (outlined below) that this is a significant mile stone in the Industrial Supervisory experience transformation.

 

In my original blog on the" operational experience transformation" (Perfect Storm), I outlined one of the transformations is the shift from " click" to "touch". (Referred also to as "multi touch" or "gesture" driven interfaces).

This transformation started with Apple iPhone, accelerating with the Ipad in the personal world. The real transformation is likely to happen over the next 3 years, as delivery of more devices, mobile, and desktop that adopt Windows 8, enabling people to redesign their supervisory application for Generation Y and the new operational team paradigm. 

Windows 8 launch this week, is a paradigm shift for Microsoft, in many aspects bigger than the windows 3.11 to windows 95 (with the introduction of icons vs tree lists). Apple does not lead the industrial PC market with HMIs etc, it is Microsoft that dominates here, and it is this reason that will see this as the one of the defining milestones, dove tailed with multiple other transformational drivers:

1.   The expectation of being able to continue working, while walking in a roaming state

2.   The explosion of high performing, low powered, but rich, effective mobile devices.

3.       Generation y that has just swallowed up the " multi touch" experience the expectation of doing anything anywhere It is this market, landscape discontinuities that when lined up at once will drive on a large scale the transformation to "touch"

I have heard people this week say “it will be slow to adopt touch in industry” I think that is narrow minded.

As the “PC” suppliers deliver the touch desktops (which will still support mouse driven "click"), but with screens that enable the Multi Touch. Why purchase a new HMI PC that does not support both "touch" and "click"? Especially as Windows 8 does take the experience to a new level, while still supporting the classic windows 32 and "click" applications.

For a number of years, we have investigated multi touch relative to industrial landscape "day in the life", leveraging a Microsoft Surface Device.  Very positive reception  was  received when a scenario of collaboration situation, where analysis is being done and then results are “pushed” to remote workers for sharing and bring them in to virtual discussion. This lines up with the other transformational driver in the industrial world that of the operational team vs individual operations. When showing this to customers, and thought leaders it is surprising to see the acceptance and realization of the new dimension of value.

Invensys and others will accelerate the delivery of applications that leverage the Multi touch, for use in the Industrial market.

Remember it is not just up to us vendors, I mentioned earlier in the year in a blog that applications designed for " click" do not work well in "touch", but "touch" designed applications work well in "click". So as, you look forward and design your operational interfaces take this into consideration, example "pop ups" are a struggle in the "touch world".

So yes last week with windows 8 launch, I believe it is a significant milestone in the “industrial, operational” experience transformation, even if not for tomorrow but within the next 2 to 3 years.

Impact of the Gen Y on Automation/ Operational Systems!

The last 3 weeks I have been travelling North America and Australia supporting the upcoming 2012 R2 software releases from Invensys, and as I write this I am on a plane to China. Discussions with  end users, and engineering houses across many industries, and there are a number of discussion points that I will make topics over the next couple of weeks.

One is around theimpact of  incoming operational workers/ process engineers from the “Gen Y” generation that is people born 1980s to early 2000s, sometimes referred to as the “Millennial Generation”. Usually the conversation starts by people talking about the aging work force and the retiring “baby boomer” generation (born Post WW2 and before 1960, evolving to discussion on the  transitions from Baby Bommer to Gen Y, missing the majority of the Gen X (born 1960s and 1970s), who have gone into other professions away from the industrial world.  The story of the retiring of the workforce and impact has been around for 10 years, but the realization in many of the conversations is that Gen Y are not the same, and the bigger issue will be “RETENTION” of Gen Y.

I saw an article on the fact that one career for a life time has gone, to me that started to go in the Gen X world, when I even look at myself. Starting from an electrical engineer in a steel works, moving into control software, development and product management, across a long list of countries, not one role or location for a career. Gen Y will take this to a new level, as they handle problems, learning and tasks totally differently.
Do we go on training for being Facebook users? NO. So why do we need to have training on Operatinal HMIs on the plant, the system must lead the user, thetraining is expected to be in the system, not in a class room.
One person said do you remember:

·          Sitting in libraries and researching:  YES

·          Using a phone book to look a phone number :  Yes

Now ask would a Gen Y person remember or even consider this with the internet to search enabling access, and information and   filtering at their finger tips, and this ability to filter is huge. Phone numbers are in contact lists on phones, or face book. Example for our products ther are online manuals, Gen Y will not read them; they will expect short Youtubes (of no more than 7 minutes) on a subject, and wiki approach to support material.

The question of Gen Y retention is a monumental one, in the industrial, manufacturing space, when looking  at the operational experiences we designed they were for the Baby Boomer/ early Gen X. The products are also in many cases the same experience vintage, even if we have added many new capabilities. Is it exciting enough for GenY? Can they access information to make decisions in a form and experience aligned with experience they in personal life on internet, smart phones, and social community?  As industrial environment moves slowly we are behind, but the change is picking up, but my feeling and feedback from many people this operational experience will have to jump  in the next 5 years.

Many companies have not evolved the experience, why because they added new capability, but their thinking the actor / user is a Baby Boomer/ early Gen X ( these generations where more aligned)  not the  Gen Y which is paradigm shift. The real revolution in operational experience has happened in the commercial since 2000, due to Apple, Facebook, Twiiter, Wiki etc. During this time, many companies have being executing the integration between systems, ERP systems, plant floor, evolving the control, improving the supply chain. Not many have evolved the User Interfaces or Operational control rooms; if they have they have upgraded the technology, maybe gone from control rooms to line side kiosks and unified operational experiences over multiple control systems. Not seriously addressing a new level operational experience required to be agile and responsive in today’s world, and enable the Gen Y to perform at most effective.

In some of the new Operational Centers we seeing shift with the introduction of collberation (but in many applications), and common knowledge systems, but really the need for situational awareness, rapid learning, intuitive systems (faster time to performance) are key. The whole method, filtering, discovering of Gen Y is totally different to “Baby Boomer” , expect frustration if they can not satisfy the hunger for rapid information, and decision the work in their personnel lives.  

So in these discussions people eyes open, with realization, that both products that they build automation and operations solutions on as well, as well as the design of the Operational experience will need to fundamentally change. This is why I talk about this as the “Perfect Storm” as the operational experience and the way people have to work as a team, access and make decisions for:

·          Addressing the global agility required today and future

·          Sustain the working practices of Gen Y generation

·          Address the changing Operational practices of the flexible operational team

Many people ask me why we are spending  so much investment in time and energy in the new operational experiences, but when you consider just discussion there is no choice, and the time has being coming, will you be ready?