Role of IT changing from Central IT to Consultant IT as new devices/ and services become absorbed into the industrial architecture?

I thought this paper (below) introduced a fascinating discussion on the changing role of IT, from central IT to more of a guideline, consultant to management of devices and services in an organization. In the industrial space,  we have seen leading companies go from enforcing mobile device (the one issued by the company) to issuing one, but also allowing employees to bring in their private preference of the device and connect it to the corporate network and use it in the day a to day work job.

 This research is necessary, because it reflects and profiles a new order in directing and controlling the use of information technology, which we need to expand » 

Business Leaders Spending On Technology Because It's Too Important To Let I.T. Go It Alone

www.forbes.com

By John McCarthy In the Forrester report, "Tracking the Renegade Technology Buyer", we uncover the motivations and technology spending priorities of over 1,000 John McCarthy North American and European business executives. The data from the Forrsights Business Decision Maker Survey was collected in Q4, 2012. Of the 891 respondents that had a budget [...]

This trend will only continue as the Gen Y and Gen X will not put up with different experiences, therefore different operational processes. Another trend is the rapid mind switch from having to build specific applications for me or my plant/ role, to accepting “good enough” applications that can be down loaded and up and running in minutes, with limited configuration. Providing a significant increase in information available and for that last 20 to 30% that comes with custom systems people are questioning the time, cost and sustainability. This mind shift has come with home, commercial experience of the applications on the “Application stores” just search and select one and accept the value it brings the expectation is not that I can customize it significantly.

Example the applications below provide in a 10 minute setup and download (as long as the site has the remote connector that publishes the data to the cloud in a secure manner) 80% of the information many roaming workers need. Is it ideal layout reports in standard corporate format no, but it is “good enough” and is self serviced by the user delivering significantly more information than they have today.

On the back end systems,  the same is happening as the acceptance of SAAS and managed services within the Industrial Operational architecture grows, the need to have IT infrastructure reduces ut the capability grows in computing and capability by leveraging the service provider. IT will have to manage these service providers and plug them into the industrial architecture in a secure way that is aligned with the IT guidelines of cooperation.

One discussion this week was with large process company, and they said why would they use “cloud” in their operations they have covered in their industrial automation/ operations systems. This contradicted the operations team in the same company who are concerned about operational continuity and uptime, and with the increasing upgrades, security patches, they looking for the maintaining vital decision support capability at higher availability, a key advantage of a managed service is the increased availability. Combine this with the need to increase the information on an issue to a worker so decisions can be made faster. The discussion shifted to the requirement for understanding the “future” through “what ifs” and how that can be made available to all workers. This is near real-time activity, and could e a service hosted in the cloud (public or private) consumed by the users as needed,not all the time, but the computing power will need to elastic. It was not long before the IT member of the discussion was seeing the opportunity, and asking more questions, this will be increasing situation/ discussion over the next 12 months in the industrial sector.  

The growing influence of operations, and how to empower operational decisions in an increasing climate of workforce transition, and rotation, the acceptance by IT of using my device, and allowing these applications. Shifting IT’s role from not providing as this is coming from out side either with the device or from the service provider, but to consultant that provides guidelines and maintains the integrity of the security system.

Interesting thought and trend!  

Information vs Data Leads Discussion on the Future of Operations!

“Gather all the plant data and analyze afterwards” are common words you hear about the market, but when the discussion happens this approach a “putting head in the sand” approach, with limited bigger picture consideration. Today the key to agility is empowerment of decisions and actions in the NOW. This does not require data it requires trustworthy, in context information.  The last couple of weeks has enabled some fascinating and productive engagements. In a discussion,  last week at a Mining Thought leadership on the future a sizable group of interested people attended and took part in discussions.  

A key concept of “mine of the future” and actually for most industries oil and gas, power, food etc. is the agility to take more holistic operational view of the system and day to day operations. This requires alignment at 3 loops (the diagram illustrates these loops) of operations with the alignment in decision and actions. Foundational to this is the information that decisions are based on, requires not HISTORIANS but Plant/ Operational Information Systems, that align information and actions for effective use my different operational roles. Companies that make this foundational move will have a system where data structure, validation is “managed” not coded, that the system is trust worthy so people will depend on and use the system.

To many times the discussion with mining and process end users who are implementing an information system for increased decisions support, that they require a re look at the data sources and how to put it in context, and validated. An example of this was a coal company in South Africa they had spent significant time working on an information system and the historians and data warehouses, but lost effectiveness through:

• Data alignment across sources, E.g.| Finding different data streams that effected the same asset calculation for say energy.
• Data validation
• Data structure

The conversation remarkably quickly ended up going back to redo of the structure of data coming into the historians, and getting this data structured, validated before it went into historian. They had two choices either going to source in this case PLCs and adjusting the running code (not a smart idea), or put a structuring layer in which would structure the data, validate the data, and provide high availability and single names space to manage over the distributed historians.

This is a departure from the story he was told that just put a historian in and capture the data worry about analysis afterwards, that is old and in effective saying. As discussed in the “mine of the future” discussions  the challenge is to “federate” the existing data sources on a plant, E.g.| Historians, alarm event data logs, operator logs, and delay, downtime data bases, E.g.| The alignment of the data sources into effective information that actions can be taken. The concept of “self service” becomes necessary, as there was a lot of comment around of trying to minimize the process analysis phase and role in the data, and try to get effective information to operational people quickly. Another example is an oil and gas plant’s decision system that is effectively been run 24 hours out of phase with the plant, by only have decision able reports/ dashboards from the past 24 hours at 2 to 3 in the afternoon so. Again this delay was due to data gathering, data alignment, validation, in MS Excel manually done by 3 people, the company was exploring ways to eliminate this manual creation, so the whole process is “near real time”.

A clear message from the last couple of weeks is we need to step back, align the existing systems, to provide that key foundation for operational empowerment, absorb significant milestones such as advancement in the communication infrastructures; Example putting 4G communications in the Pilbra mining area (remote north western Australia), providing significant data capability. (A topic for next week). This need to absorbed into the industrial / operational Architecture, internet will be a natural part of the backbone, leveraging computing power remotely for functions, such as storage, analysis, model running, help accelerate the decision support.   

Third Time Lucky for MOM/ MES Architectures?

For the last 15 to 20 years companies have implemented MES (Manufacturing Execution System)  systems, and MOM (Manufacturing Operations Management) systems, remembering MOM is a super set of MES. These implementations executions have been both custom, and using off the shelf applications for MES, and success has varied, but even the successful ones are struggling to evolve to current agile requirements due to the method of implementation. One end user asked me on the flight “has MES been successful?”, I stepped back and thought about a couple customs who have implemented end to end MES. Based on one MES system so that manufacturing master data is managed by one system, with the customer stating their MES has been the most valuable software implementation on the plants, it just works and is the heart of their manufacturing. So the answer is yes, but the fact of the question allowed me to reflect on the normal bumpy roads MES implementations have had.

I was read Charlie Gifford’s latest book “The MES Chronicles” (ISA 95 best practices book 3.0), which has a set of articles around Gartners’ Manufacturing 2.0, explaining the concepts, and reality to the concepts. It is well worth the read if you are looking at the industrial/ manufacturing operations space.

 

 

In the introduction,  Charlie does an excellent job raising the challenges of MES, and the fact that we now with Manufacturing 2.0 going through actually the third architectural attempt at MES. How true his comments are when I reflect on my own career which had gone through all 3 since 1995 when we released InTrack (original MES Product).  A key consideration to this discussion is that MES is a concept of managing the executing the manufacturing, with the off the shelf solutions and customer systems built for a particular industry  with rules and practices for that industry. So looking at Invensys’s first generation MES system InTrack it was built for the semi conductor/ electronic industry, and the outstanding success stories I referred to were from that industry. Invensys’s second generation product built Wonderware MES for food and Beverage industry, and again has worked remarkably well in that industry and related industries. This does not mean they cannot be applied in other industries, but the “glove fits well”. That is why I do not like the generalization of MES, we should categorizing them by industry types, to help selection, and stop companies force fitting the wrong models into their practices.

Charlie in his book reflected on the three generations of MES/ MOM as:

“20% of advanced manufacturers discovered that the first two MOM attempts lead to:

• High cost MOM systems with extremely poor data integrity
• High cost change during new production introductions, production scaling time to market and continuous improvement.”

“ The first two MOM attempts occurred in the 1990s, and 2000s, actually were also found a primary hinderance to continuous improvement efforts because the MOM system owners were typically understaffed, under skilled, and un governed to support real innovation. “

His % might be low, but the point is that MES / MOM solutions have typically been architected in a “point to point” / application integration, with high levels of customization restricting evolution to the original developer. Many of the original InTrack MES implementations have maintained the database well, and the rules within it, but significant custom code has been developed for human interaction and data validation, and data validation on automated events acting on the system.  Like highly customized ERP implementations the ability to evolve , upgrade the systems become an anchor on manufacturing agility. Yet that is the reason why people put these systems to increase efficiency and consistency of production, but the issue is manufacturing practices, new product introduction is constantly changing and evolving, and the systems must be able to absorb this change naturally if the implementation are going to allow for the required agility needed today.

So the third attempt at MOM with the Manufacturing 2.0 concepts undoubtedly lead to:

·         An SOA (service orientated Architecture) that allows plug and play of the 15 to 20 Operational applications required to run a plant, allow the inter-operability to set up using messages through sustained services vs application integration.

·         This integration is a model based using tools such as workflow and sustainable environment.

·         Validation and data entry rules will be model driven, so that embedded best practices, that can evolve in a sustainable way as staff evolve in the organization.

·         Semantic information, and data management models based on proven models such as ISA 95 will enable existing and different models of the different operational applications to align.

The book outlines many of the concepts. MES are not a standalone product, it is  an architecture that merges level 2 events from automation, with validation of data, events in a structure asset/ operations model that can interact with the different operational applications through the life of a manufacturing operation. Key is the acceptance of  architecture which has model driven interoperability (so the model can evolve with governance) and the introduction of workflow to be a natural part of the operational system to capture the procedures as embedded operations that again have governance so can evolve as the practices of the plants change. Like successful ERP implementation, customization must be avoided, configuration within the tools provided make the system sustainable, but this will be a mind shift for people. Too often people talk about APIs, and taking coding tools to build a solution, this is fine for the short term, but will come back and bite when time for change and evolution. The project and program owners at the end users need to take a more holistic view and enforce an architectural cadence of configuration vs programing and making sure the “human to application”, and “application  to application” integration are model centric approach where configured services  using workflow configuration is key.