Manufacturing 2.0 what is it?

If you have been watching AMR now Gartner for the past 3 years they introduced the concepts of “Manufacturing 2.0", which looked at where manufacturing and industrial architectures could go. Many of the concepts were not new, but they did a good job showing a whole picture and the components needed to make this architecture real. Too often you get a concept thrown forward but it is only part of what is required, and people miss the whole picture.

But this concept of Manufacturing 2.0 has been picked up by MESA in their push on educating the market, and they now run certification courses on the concept of Manufacturing 2.0. These courses are good for hybrid, discrete and process companies and system integrators, even if you have been doing MES for years you will learn techniques and concepts.

The diagram below shows two levels of Manufacturing 2.0, one from the enterprise level, where the manufacturing is fitting into a corporate SOA architecture. Down in the bottom right hand corner is “manufacturing”, now the second diagram drills into the next level, showing a real SOA architecture in industrial landscape.

I was having dinner Gerhard Greeff last week who trains the MESA courses on Manufacturing 2.0. I have known Gerhard a couple years he has written some good papers on the topic, (especially one titled “When was the last time you saw your MOM?”) and it is always rewarding debating concepts, and validating many of the areas we working on.

Some key points we discussed what they call the Manufacturing Service Bus, and our proposal and work around what we developing called the ArchestrA Service Bus, which is a true web service bus, for the industrial landscape. This is currently going into beta and will be released in it' s initial form with data services in the System Platform 2012R2 releases due at the end of the year. The data services will be just an inherent component/ function of the ArchestrA infrastructure extending it to enterprise and multi-site. A first step to what we refer to as ArchestrA 2.0 our new evolution of the core technology and architecture of system that will go to enterprise.

You can think of ArchestrA 1.0 as unifying the plant, and ArchestrA 2.0 as unifying the industrial enterprise, which is where many companies are coming to. Allow multiple plants to become “loosely coupled but aligned", with standards driven over the sites, yet the uniqueness, individualism of the sites is sustained. Too many companies say they are SOA, but it is key to using true services, that have defined contracts, that will be sustained through changes of technology and versions. As we move towards Federation of more than automation systems but other applications and multiple sites that implemented differently the ability align, and relate data models through standard contracts will be key.

The challenge I have with “Manufacturing 2.0” being rolled out is that there is not an “off the shelf “ sustainable solution to achieve the goal. Because the other main goal required beyond aligned federation is to have solutions that are sustainable “limit custom code”. Can you build services YES, but it is key to build them into your architecture and culture to make them sustainable, that is why we working on many evolutions to achieve Federation in a sustainable manner. Let’s discuss this over the next couple of weeks.

Operational Control is it Real?

As you have heard over the last couple of months in this blog that we or I believe in that leading companies must start changing their thinking in operational system design to embedded best practices and enable consistent decisions in the NOW.

An example of this is seen below on a operational control project Invensys did in process industries:

The key thing provided to the operational people was KPIs in their operational context as seen in the screen up in the right hand side.

The spot chart shows operational points layered over each other. With the pink and blue showing operational control prior to implementing an “Operational Window” based  upon Dynamic Performance Measures which provide in the context of the worker/ role, aligning strategy, measure and action.

The yellow shows the same teams operations post the application of the “Operational Window” approach, you can see the significant reduction in variation and distribution of the operational control. To this client it has realized significant cost reductions, and it did not require hardware implementations or plant changes it was an initial step in the road to operational excellence by gaining operational consistency through awareness.

This is not the final step in is an initial step but a real one with only information in context role and business strategy,  to enable aligned decisions in the NOW.
It is time to discuss SOA architectures and Manufacturing 2.0 is it real and why, I have had many people ask and discuss with me situations these concepts will be critical so in the next couple of weeks we will expand down this path. 

Operational Windows Enable a Form a Operational Control

I have talked about the drive by many companies to reduce “Operational Variation” across plants, teams, and industries. This is a key part of "virtual situation room". As I continue to talk with different companies this theme continues to grow and come up, many companies do not understand or realize they implementing steps towards it but when you discuss the underlying goals it is true.

There are many ways that operational control will be implemented, as pointed out it could be through actions and processes becoming embedded and certainly this will be the big driver in the road to “Operational Excellence”.

But another way is through displaying key operational indicators to a knowledge worker, where  these indicators are mapped within boundary conditions. These boundaries are set up based on the time and relevance to the role and activity/ task the knowledge worker is performing. This sort of “Operating Window” enables the knowledge worker the context, and recommendations, knowledge to enable operational decisions in a timely and ever consistent way. This same operational window can be used over multiple sites/ and teams for that role and activity providing consistency control.

The figure below is an example of an operational window.

Placing this sort of operational window where the operational boundaries come from the business strategy but in context of the role and activity no matter where in the plant operational team, but the feedback and running side is real-time from the plant. This window is place adjacent to  current control/ HMI screens the operator is using, or the maintenance or process screens the users are working, and you start the transformation to a knowledge worker. 
Next week I discuss an example where the above technique has shown dramatic results in operational variation in "Operational Control is it Real?"

Where on the left you can see the operational running trend, but you can see the changing boundary conditions of operation based upon product etc., The green shows the area where optimum control, safety, and production performance is. The right hand side you have reasons, and number instances of deviations for periods out of operational control.  

Virtual Expert Teams, Provide One answer to “Time to Performance”

We often hear of the aging workforce as a big problem, and certainly it is due to fact that it is not a evolutionary transition it is leap to a new generation, and in most cases due to market the realization of the true situation was not understood.

But what we seeing in the market is some innovative approaches to solving this existing experiencing and the transfer, and it is through the use of “Virtual Experts Teams”. So what is this concept?

Key is to have these highly valued knowledge experts which could be across different aspects of the business e.g. asset management, process, planning, optimization, quality being empowered to work across the many enterprise production assets/plants. Today many of these experts are restricted in their contribution to their local plants, but a number of companies have started strategies which say we must leverage these people. These experts must be able to access the state, information of the plants in a consistent manner even though they may have never been there. They must also have the natural ability to collaborate with the local teams.

 

This means a local team is able to call upon the best experts relative to the situation they are dealing with. The expert is able to go online and access the plant situation in “near real-time” so they can see the situation while collaborating with the site team. They are able to drill in and do analysis, so as to draw upon experience and provide advice in real-time to the local team.

Now is this easy, I would say no, as just accessing the plant data is not effective, as the expert maybe over the other side of the world, never been to the plant and so the data will be in different measures/ context to what he expects. So in order to achieve this virtual team we need to have a “trusted information” system, where the data / information is a consistent context. Yes the concept is possible we seeing companies use the ArchestrA system Platform as this contextual approach and standards management.

But the above concept is real, and is valid with leading companies currently implementing. I will expand in the coming weeks, as these "virtual expert teams" are key concet in the "virtual sistuation room". This was confirmed last week in Asia when I attended a sales kick off many discussions within our teams showed that this concept is an area of great interest. 

We often hear of the aging workforce as a big problem, and certainly it is due to fact that it is not a evolutionary transition it is leap to a new generation, and in most cases due to market the realization of the true situation was not understood.

But what we seeing in the market is some innovative approaches to solving this existing experiencing and the transfer, and it is through the use of “Virtual Experts Teams”. So what is this concept?