SIMPLICITY the path to adoption, and alignment!

Last week I talked about the two big concepts companies are going to have to grapple with in order to increase competitive efficiency (operational efficiency).

Last week I was dealing with some projects and again the example of technology solution/ change is simple compared to associated “cultural change” that has to be invoked inorder to achieve the objective and return. Key is adoption of the new approach, why not merge technology/ and human nature, to enable a key ingredients of change adoption by changing the situational experience. Human nature is one to to take the path of least resistance, so “simple”, “logical” and “intuitive” experiences can only promote adoption.

 

Many of you will have read the Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” there many messages but one principle was simple and least path to resistance.  Another book that reflects this and brings many smiles to your face is Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”. Highlighting how engineers add features devices like alarm clocks, movie players, etc that increase the complexity over multiple versions to point that only 15% of features are actually used.

Both of these books are targeted at product development, but in reality, the same applies to Operational/ Automation solutions that must be adopted to succeed, but as it was pointed out again last week to me. Time for dedicated training in this every changing world is diminishing as fast as the introduction of new changes in systems. Combine this with the “rotating staff” symptom I have talked about a lot, with people taking on new activities, so new procedures, experiences, and less time to learn them.Steve Jobs insisted on simple, take out unnecessary actions, always asking “why” is it included, when reviewing a product.

How many of you ask this same question when engineering an operational solution, or we acting like so many of us engineers just add this one new feature, someone might use it. Maybe it is because I am older, or have been bitten many times, but I am starting to follow a similar policy where “choice= complexity”. There is less time for choice; the systems must provide us with options, enabling faster, more consistent decisions and actions. Minimal learning curve, so when looking at an activity, the question should be; “What is associated experience that would minimise the learning to perform that activity confidently?” How does someone learn, most of us avoid manuals, in preference to 3 to 5 minute youtube?

This “simplicity” motto applies to configuration, setup and operational execution at all levels, this is why standards are the only option going forward, providing a set of well designed, proven building blocks that are composed into an application. The standards can be evolved that the consuming application will evolve, with the changes no matter if they model, UI etc.

This is why great products are driven by one person who represents the user, and looks at the final experience, as well as capability. It is pleasing to see this in some the latest engineering projects from system integrators, they have minimal key strokes to achieve a result, and navigation is “follow the colour”. One person said you should also look at your design, not from today, but if you went away and came back in 2 years would you still understand it, and be able operate it, or add changes to it? These are good questions.

The leading “Operational Excellence” companies are on the journey of asset alignment, team alignment, but also driving simplicity to everything from architecture, standards, UI, models, interfaces etc. It is proven to achieve adoption, and sustainability of the solution. Too often we are too close to wood and trees and miss the holistic experience, and forget the drive of simplicity.

The Changing Approach to Enabling the Two Key Assets (Captial/ Human) in Plants

For the last 5 months, you have read about different aspects of what is happening in the market in order to achieve OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE. Realistically it comes down to two key operational concepts:

·          The aligning of the HUMAN ASSETS into an Operational Team operating in the NOW.

·          The aligning of CAPITAL ASSETS into a co-ordinated Supply chain, and not islands of automation.

Talking to people they are all different levels on these two areas, but most focus on Captial Asset performance, yes plant/ equipment utilization. People talk about providing information to “Joe” the operator, but miss the point that information is only part of the journey, decisions and actions need also to happen in a timely manner.

The diagram below illustrates the main elements of these two alignment strategies which leading companies are applying to a different level:

Capital Assets : “The aligning of a value Chain.”

This is the area of asset utilization and performance companies have focused on for years, but now the holistic view across multiple assets, changes the paradigm in these asset performance initiatives.

The four key elements are:

1.        Unified Network of Assets; taking a holistic view across multiple assets of similar type, that were installed and  running independently for years. Key is the ability to be able to do like comparisons between equipment/ asset capacity and performance. Requiring consistent measures, units and validation, so data’s available in   "apples to apples” form.

2.        “Loosely Coupled but Aligned”  : This is linking these sites / assets together, but, not in a way that restricts the flexibility in the organization or operations. Messages and communication must be realtime, but with defined contracts, so that within the plants they can execute uniquely to deliver, also the architecture and systems can be at different versions between sites, yet the integration still works. The concept of “plug and playing” an asset into the system is crucial in this age of globalization and new plants, assets acquired all the time. 

3.        Operational value Chain: Linking together multiple assets into one value chain for a production run, instead of them running is Islands. This requires the integration, awareness of plant capacity but increases efficiency and agility.

4.        Business Strategy and Operational Execution Alignment: This is the area that has been aligned for years through the different EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) but today it is about realtime alignment up and down, changes in a strategy propagate to  the operational plant execution plans naturally.

Human Assets : “Flexible Operational Team.”

Many companies are currently creating performance teams looking at their operational teams, or human assets, recognising the increased efficiencies, and agility available with a coordinated and aligned operational team.

The four key elements are:

1.        Agility through Empowerment: People have talked about empowering “joe the operator”, but empowerment is not just information, it is knowledge, experience, information and ability to act in a consistent and successful way. It is also not just about the operator it is about the team, from utility plays in the plant, and virtual expert players aligned in realtime.

2.        Ability absorb Workforce Transition/ Rotation: As mentioned many times the industry is going through a massive transition of human assets, either with retiring age transitioning to a generation in their 20s, or the fact that people are staying significantly less time in their role either by responsibility or location. We are living in a much more dynamic culture that requires systems to naturally absorb this transition, by being intuitive, shorter time to experience

3.        Operational Consistency: The rotating workforce combined with the holistic view across the assets, the ability to improve across sites is by having an operational control across the assets, so improvements can be made to an operational practise and it can be rolled out across sites. This is at the center of “operational Innovation”, the allowing operational practices to continuously improved.

4.        Flexible Operational Teams: This has been covered at length, the changing landscape of what makes up an industrial operational team, their roles, and environments they work. But the members work in realtime, aware of the same situation, contributing their expertise through knowledge or location. Collaboration, situational awareness is necessary into todays operational experiences.

The future of automation and operational systems, will be based around being able to satisfy these concepts, not one at a time but as whole.    

The Industrial Calculation Landscape, the challenge!!!!

Too often over the last 6 months the desire for managed calculations has come up when reviewing a project or site. Drilling in on the requirements it becomes clear, that the enterprise’s/sites are having trouble aligning, managing calculations/ measures and KPIs. Microsoft Excel has become the source of many of the calculations, providing the freedom for engineers to create Adhoc calculations. The Excel paradigm is an isolated one, ending up with 100s / 1000s of calculations. Many of the companies I talk to across different industries have initiatives underway to eliminate Excel as data source, they do not mind it as an analysis tool. The major chunk of work is to understand the current Excel sheets determine the measures and calculation within these, determine the common calculations and data sources, and then determine a way to create and manage calculations/ measures and KPIs with clear governance. Not and Easy Task!!!

Looking at the landscape of calculations/ KPIs there are 3 main types/ classes, with measures/ calculations within each of these classes.

Historians have had calculation engines associated with them for years, but this is the middle class, and looks at time series and summarizes, aggregates data based on time slices. This is key, but we see the increasing need for lower level calculations associated with equipment types, for delays, throughput, mass balancing etc. It is key that these equipment/ area calculations are apart of the templates of equipment, providing consistency across the instances. The hierarchical management of these calculations / measures so evolutions can happen and be easily rolled out across a site or sites. Also, these plant associated equipment calculations require having state, with the ability to trigger alarms/ events and workflows in a pro- active manner.

The top layers are what people call KPIs these will come across equipment, sites and creating realtime and historical measures and then KPIs'/ calculations.  These KPIs need to have state ability to be seen in dials, dashboards and be stored. They trigger operational boundary conditions for operators, plant and process people. They could be off site and at the enterprise, also triggering procedures based upon exception conditions.

When starting to look at this landscape, calculations and measures will be dependent on other calculations and the quality of these calculations. Also, the requirement to understand the impact of of calculation changes, providing a governance and control on these calculations. Driving the requirement for the  ability to visualization a spider dependency view/ graphic across calculations.  Companies will have to revisit their architecture, and how they will manage these calculations in order to achieve the full value longer term, as they will continue evolve. It is essential that a more holistic view is taken vs just one set of or class of calculations (e.g.| Historian as they form only one part of the jigsaw).

Certainly Invensys is evolving the ECS’s  (Enterprise Control)  approach to calculations at all levels based on the common drivers we seeing.

Getting out from behind the desk/ control terminal!

 

The above comment was made to me by an oil and gas company, and when I enquired to their expectation, it was clear that they wanted to empower "controllers" (operators) to be responsible for more. Enable decisions to be made faster while also gaining consistency across teams and shifts.

Transforming the traditional role of sitting in a control room behind a terminal, to a dynamic role, where the operator can get up and roam to investigate, make decisions and take actions in a timelier manner. This concept embraces all of the concepts this blog has raised over the last couple of months and shows the transition in the industrial sector to focusing operational empowerment.   

By unleashing the controller from their seat, they are free to investigate, see for themselves, and interact with others with experience to make informed decisions faster.

What is the reason why users have been locked to the desk/ control room, why has this transition not happened successfully before?

It is simple, the requirement to be monitoring the plant. A traditional control room is the central place alarms, notifications were traditionally piped.

So to free up the user, to leave the control room, the user needs to empowered with situational plant awareness, freed from monitoring, shifting to the experience of exception based notification. As the user roams the plant, the user is still responsible, and aware, and able to make decisions across the plant he is responsible for even if he not in view of that a particular piece of equipment. Driving the requirement for the mobile device the user carries to allow notification, drill thru access to information and ability to collaborate so the dependency to sit in the control room has lifted.

The challenge with the “Integrated Operational Centers”,  these centers which are set up for sites, multi site control, is the responsibility of the operators is significantly increased, in some cases going from 100s of possible alarms to 10000s alarms, and the user is unable to monitor the system must be exception based.

The discussion of two weeks ago with “Advanced Process Graphics” is key as this provides and exception based view to the plant. “just follow the color” that easily shows the controller of pending situations. As the user needs to drill through to understand the situation he just clicks’ on the color no matter where it is on the screen, removing the barrier of having to learn the navigation of the device.

This situation was illustrated two weeks ago when I observed a user start from a desk top on a situation, leave the desk, where he had one layout, and then move to IPAD experience where the same information was displayed but a different layout. The user did not have to worry, as the screen on IPAD was grey, except for the particular equipment at fault which had a red outline. Watching the user he did care about the layout he just clicked the color and followed the drill through by following the color.

So freeing up people is not just about providing  mobile data and information must free them to navigate with freedom, no matter the format, no matter where they start an activity, and have access to everything.   Why now? The technology is here with wireless plants, commodity devices to suite different applications/ roles, and the desire and culture to enable the flexible team, and design to enable exception based notification.

Over the next few years this area of exception based design, and like the discussion last week “model driven” significant advances will be forth coming.  

Why our User Interfaces must be come Model Driven?

I referred to “Model Driven “ navigation last week, and got some reaction that we are already there with ArchestrA Graphics. This made me step and re read what I in the last blog, and realise that I had assumed some understanding.

Yes today ArchestrA Graphics are built into the model in the objects etc, this is a significant step from the classic InTouch like window which the graphics are independent of the model, just linked, but many applications do not build in navigation to the model. My actually intention was not just these graphics in the model but take the whole operational experience to  level, that the model and views into this model for operational control etc, can be independent of the device and layout. Also, the model must be able to change freely and not a characteristic of what device or who will engage with it.

Similar to the web browser if you look at the web page content, it is design unaware of the device, the real estate etc that is available. The location which a page is displayed, or accessed is up to the browser consumer.

If we now take a look at the range of User Interfaces below, these likely will be all in one solution on the one namespace, with all users being able to access the same state and data of the plant. Interacting with plant and interface relative to their role’s actions. So in the example below you would have 5 plus user interface type experiences, different laoyouts due to device and role etc.

Now add to this the roaming user, with the increasing policy of “get out from behind the desk/screen”, where the available real estate on a mobile device calls for a different layout.

How can we design user interfaces the way we did in the 90s? Where we designed a HMI application for a role/ location, with a fixed layout and navigation experience.

Today engineers will continue to evolve the model of the plant, developing say a new process unit, including in this required interfaces (windows) that enable control, analysis etc. These windows, forms, specialized clients will be accessible to all users through their own user interface.

Avoiding people having to reengineer each user interface, each time the model changes. So to avoid this, the navigation of which windows are available at this level in the model, needs to be built into the model. Today some applications are doing this with ArchestrA Graphics in the application, but to go with this is need for each user to be setup their user interface layout.

This means each user/role can define their own layout, with panes as to where certain information is displayed. Where navigation come up, etc.

I saw a very good example of this two weeks ago, where navigation through the model could be through a tree, through the mimic drill, etc, and the model provides the context. As Invensys evolves the operational experience tools so that engineering and lifecycle costs reduce as the solution complexity increases, the above situation is a real one which we are making natural.

Consider your user interface designs to day, do not think narrowly to one role, one layout, it is time to move the user interface screens to the model, away from the role/ display etc, providing the freedom to have my own experience.