The User Interface is Evolving from User Interface Application to Role centric and now Activity centric!!

As discussed two weeks ago this is NOW not the case, a “day in the life” of a role in the plant, (e.g. process engineer, maintenance engineer, operator) today is transient in state. Today the knowledge worker in order to execute the activity they are responsible are often required to move  out from one state, say the control room, to a local operator station, then maybe mobile. Same can happen for other roles where they are still responsible for an activity or supporting the activity when they leave the plant, so may need mobile awareness, and interaction through the web.

This has shifted people to think that we should be designing the User Interface not based on App User Interface applications but based on role.

But in the last year there has been a shift beyond this to “Activity” based, this is significant move. Meaning that operational activities with their intelligence/ information and actions need to designed so that can execute on all User Interfaces (desktop and roaming devices). The change is that due to a workers location, and plant situation the worker may have to take on new activities which are typically outside of their defined role. Matching the growing demand for agility in operational roles.

But as discussed last week the requirement for natural training and certification becomes more critical, as a worker may take on an activity due to location, and they have not performed this activity for a while so the worker must be able access an online instruction, and sign off any required training before executing the activity. When I talk about this concept people say "this is not real, what about liability?" valid question. There are many activities that can performed in a timely manner that will reduce risk to safety , environment and therefore operational continuity. Yes it is key for the worker to be able to go through an online training and certification, the system will record all actions or audit.The worker may select a “best operational practice” and the system will guide the worker through the steps, with instructions to successfully execute the activity.

So I encourage to start thinking of Operational interfaces as an interface to execute Operational activities, and what would be the “day in life” of those who would typically responsible for it.

As we move forward with evolving the User Interfaces from Invensys, expect to see more and more collaboration services which start to deliver this activity based operational interaction. But today everything I have talked about here is possible with the current tools. 

Next week I will expand on a real situation of this evolution in an Upstream Scenario...

Traditional User Interfaces have been thought of as applications, e.g. InTouch, Suite Voyager, etc., we have seen people and vendors start moving to Role based, but today the Thought Leaders are going to Activity Based, What does this mean?

Traditionally we in product development / marketing no matter what company I have worked for, we have thought about functionality relative to User Interface products, e.g.  InTouch, Information Server, Fox View etc., this was correct for the time as roles in a plant tended to be dedicated to one type of user interface and we satisfied this market by delivering a particular user interface product.

The Perfect Storm in Industrial Operations = People Excellence

The most significant disruption in operational strategy thinking is happening in this post GFC (global financial crisis) era, in determining an operational execution environment enabling timely contributions by the operational team to plant execution. The focus is on currently on operational processes, but quickly this will drive a new operational experience to go with a new operational execution plan. Traditional user interfaces will not “cut” it both in products, or the way they have been implemented. Let me expand on my thoughts on this operational experience, which I refer to as “People Excellence” driving a new paradigm of operational empowerment for all roles in plant operations.

In order to contribute to strategy I spend a significant amount of time a week, listening and asking end-users, and implementers, discussing changes and ideas. A common thread  around the world is operational personal challenge, especially the finding of people to replace to existing “baby boomer generation” and lack of experience available in the market.

This is only part of what I believe the most significant disruption in operational strategy in the last 20 years, yes since the introduction of the PC.
There is a perfect storm happening with these vectors:

·     Aging workforce: the significant amount of current experienced operations, maintenance, process workers who will retire in the next 5 to 10 years. I have heard some mangers in “oil and gas upstream” talk about 80% of their current team will be gone in 5 years. We have to be able to capture knowledge and enable

·      Operational Agility means Decision NOW: To be competitive decisions must be made now this has caused a change in thinking that workers need to be empowered to make more decisions, through more information, higher knowledge and access to experience, a transition from “worker” to “knowledge worker”. This also means they have more responsibility. As one customer said last week traditionally they had an operator cover 5 to 10 wells, this was fine when you have 100 wells which lived 20 years, but in the next 5 years he stated “we will have 20000 + wells, we will not have 20000 operators”.

·      The Rotating operational person means “time to experience” is shorter than ever: With the experienced generation retiring and transitioning to a generation 30 years their junior, and the new factor that people are not staying in their role or location longer than a year. One company stated 10 years ago people were in a role/loaction approx. 5 years, now they are seeing 8 months, so we have to design assuming limited experience. 

·      Transition to digital native worker, with very different expectations, causes challengers with worker retention: The new generation is “digitally native” they expect access to knowledge, they expect “touch experience”, they expect collaboration form anywhere, they expect to learn on the fly.

Step back and look at all these vectors; you have significant disruption happening for those in charge of industrial / manufacturing operational execution strategy. 

That will require:

·       A new generation of user interface products with more than interface capability, but embedded knowledge access, experience access, actionable procedures, collberation services and natural intelligence to really empower the operational workers in all roles.

·       Operational experience design. Notice I did not use HMI (Human Machine Interface), as it is a true “operational experience” that goes through the “day in the life” of the new generation of operational knowledge workers.

Example you see a massive $10B projects but they are all at risk due to lack of people to execute them and more importantly run them after they built.

As I stated in the last blog one of the “legs” of what Enterprise Control is about is “Empowerment of Operational People” this will be through a multiyear program of “People Excellence” which will evolve Invensys from a product centric approach to user interaction, to a more “operational centric experience”. Providing freedom to knowledge worker to execute his daily tasks, decisions through a number of user interface devices, different locations, and interacting with different team members naturally no matter the state.

There are many concepts here which I will explore over the coming weeks.

What can you expect from this Blog??

Why a blog, what value is it to me; should I read it on a regular basis? All valid questions, and ones you should ask in this age of too much information, and too many tasks to do.

So what can you expect from this blog?  A discussion and presentation of concepts and thoughts around the today and future automation/ operational management system; what are the challengers and forward thinkers I encounter challenging me with, what is my thinking and response.

As a “System Strategist” my role is to listen and guide the Enterprise Control System to be a system, to be aligned with how people trying to solve solutions, and look ahead 3 to 5 years on what needs to be thought of. Many people say I live 3 years away from today’s reality, probably a fair statement, so treat the concept and read as that.

I work in the Common Architecture Team, which looks across the whole of Research and Development at the projects and products to make sure the architecture and functions are aligned for when you, the end user, are composing a solution out of multiple components.

With the ArchestrA platform we are well-placed for scalable / agile solutions.

In this blog I want to test concepts: after listening to many people in the industry, looking at the projects being proposed in the industry, and understanding where the constraints are, are there other ways, if not - why not?

I will update this blog regularly at least once a week with concept/ idea, thought, or feedback, and I look forward to response and discussion.

Why Enterprise Control ? Why not a traditional automation / MES like system?

No longer can we think automation/ MES system as we did in the 90s and 2000s, they will not satisfy, more importantly we cannot have many systems working in isolation, there is too much data, and speed for decisions is critical. This does not mean replace these systems (they basically work, and execute) we need to UNIFY, extend and align these into one PROACTIVE OPERATIONAL SYSTEM. This could be across one plant or across and “Industrial Enterprise” made up of multiple plants that make up the supply chain, or the operational capacity for the enterprise.

“Products and services can be copied. Our business/ operational processes and our business models are our differentiators.” 

  CEO – Global Enterprise (2011)

This quote captures a lot, products and services are commodities in this “flat world”, the differentiator will be on business and operational processes. How dynamic the business is relative to how quickly they can adapt these processes from strategy to business and operational practices and rollout across their industrial capacity into executing practices that are consistently executed.   

So what is Enterprise Control? No matter if this is the correct name or not (there will be many names in the market), to us it refers to an operational system (over one plant or over the enterprise plants) that aligns business processes / strategies from the business system, to proven operational processes that efficiently execute them in a timely manner by empowering and orchestrating the operational systems(automation controls, MES, Batch, optimization), and operational knowledge workers.

When asked what it provides in a short comment this is what I answer with:

The Enterprise Control Vision is to provide a set of capability that enables customers to achieve "Operational Excellence” through three strategies:

·         Empowerment of Operational People

Operational personnel (e.g. operators, process engineers, process experts, maintenance, quality, production management) are empowered in real-time to make decisions through operational awareness, access to experience, collaboration, and best practices in a pro-active system.

·         Unification through Federation across assets, applications and systems

Align the different assets and processes across the operational management layer (of the traditional automation levels) so that the industrial operations are more agile.  These assets that reside within a plant, process and across multiple sites are aligned to business and operational processes, and require consistent measures and information. So that each of the existing applications/ controls continue to run, but their models are aligned, and communication happens with orchestration execution, in order for the Operational Process to execute in the most timely and effective manner.

·         Built on a Sustainable platform of capability so that the system has longevity to evolve.

ECS will be implemented in stages and evolve in scope, breadth and functionality through its lifetime at each customer installation, which could be 20 years.  The system has been engineered and architected in a way that enables this evolution to occur in a sustainable way and caters to changing engineering teams and technologies.   

Over the next couple of weeks I will expand my thoughts, what I am hearing when talking to industry thought leaders, and what is possible and we investigating, looking at in concepts. What you should be thinking about. As a traditional approach to building a Operational System will not work there are significant differences, but “rip and replace” has no place either. So understanding the concept of Federation is important in this industrial sense stay tuned.

I often get asked this question, mainly from engineers, but when I speak with Operational people in all industries the focus has shifted from controlling the process, (this is assumed as most people are on at least second generation controllers) to controlling the profit and production. This means operational dynamics/ agility so decisions are made in NOW by all operational people no matter the role.

Over the next couple of weeks I will expand on the changes I am seeing and we looking at relative to addressing what some people are referring to as the biggest operational evolution since the industrial revolution. The “day in the life” of modern operational worker coming out of this recession is forever changed. As the market is not recovering from GFC,  it is fundamentally being RESET to a new operational paradigm in this “flat world” with a transition to a new generation of digital workers.