Transforming the way should view integration?

Even though this seems to be clear the levels of worker engagement, but in many cases the true impact on the solution design has not been considered. I thought the diagrams below introduced the concepts of integration in relation to worker empowerment. These are very important in design for the “new world of work” or “smart Work”, too many of us talk mobility, or delivery anywhere, this should be just assumed in the system, not a feature.

There are important distinctions of how we should view about integration, not to actual connection but relative to how that integration will be used by the worker/ users. Too often we look at integration on how the linkage is happening, but there are key requirements on the integration based upon user. 

Data Integration, the users expects to see the access to data across all systems/ sources in a transparent access with assumed reliability.

Process Integration: Is the data is transformed into information relative context to asset, and process at the time in a trusted form, but is presented in an open loop dashboard as decision support.

Performance Integration: Data as been transformed into context driven information for decisions, but now aligned to activities of the time, place and role, so that actionable decisions can be taken. But key to a closed loop actionable decision is timely delivery of knowledge, and associated actions, with accountability, this will in many cases require collaboration in order to accelerate the repeatable actionable decisions.

Again so many of the discussions in designing systems for the next 10 years a beyond are shifting from applications, to “activities” that will be required to deal with new work no matter if engaging with human assets, capital assets or applications. The above discussion on re thinking “integration” relative to how the results of that integration will be used aligns with transformation in solution design.

Activities Behavior Starts to become Reality
As I flex back from South Africa last week I was listening to an interview on innovation, and there was interview with Microsoft Manager for Australia, and she talked about the change in culture they have implemented in the Australian offices. Switching to Activity based officers meaning that no one has a permanent seat or desk, you go in a morning and select a desk based upon the activity you are doing that day. As you may be on the road, you may be do activities that do not need you in the office, you maybe at other offices. She talked about it as a significant change in culture but it allows agility and focus to adapt your day and role based upon activities not a role.
This is the same I see in my own life and how I have discussed realtive to the Flexible Operational Team in the industrial space, these can only be achieved when people and the culture support an Activity Based thinking and Approach. In South Africa last week, I continued to see the evolution towards this thinking in mining, and food and beverage as I spoke with customers, many do not realise they on this path, yet their actions and ideas are heading in this direction.

This is no different in my life every day, I talk about my work life being in my back pack, with my lap top, IPad, mobile cell, and mobile  wireless hotspot. Based upon the activities I have that day, meetings, calls, site visits, PowerPoint presentation preparations, technology knowledge catch up, interviews,  strategy brainstorming, these are distinct activities require different modes of thinking, I choose the best environment and location for doing these.

This is very different to the way I worked 10 to 15 years ago in an office and defined role, today my activities and role change daily based on the situation and achieving our business goals and the contribution I can make each day to that, certainly my agility, and effective working time and delivery has increased.

This is the same for the industrial world and the changing approach I am seeing in the industrial place, where companies are going to the Flexible Operational Team, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago, can only be truly achieved when people are working against activities vs roles. Key to evolution is that there will be a management of activities, both planned and reactionary, which will be acted upon by the best person, or team in order to respond as fast as possible. This does not mean that people are assigned to a certain interface/ roles,  they should be able to go to best location in the plant in order to execute that activity. This is why the whole operational control is evolving to a an aligned set of systems, that allow people to access, understand and take action in the most effective place possible.

 I was in South Africa at the annual conference there, as usual I saw a lot of innovation, and thought leadership, building on what I have seen in Western Australia in the last 6 months. The big discussion was around effectively using the human asset, through "time to Experience shortening" knowledge access, and actions, and collberation.

 But you see this continued evolution from:

Applications        to        Roles        to         Activities

Activities require a change in thinking:

·         How align information and actions from different systems to enable a co-ordinated and assignable activity.

·         How the UI changes to activities with the information, ability drill and understand and then the associated actions, which may require multiple people and certain procedure.

·         Plus a culture that allows roles and people to be flexible to take on different activities in a must more agile process.

I will expect to see this activity thinking and approach accelerating over the next year but as I have said this means aligned systems, access, and contextualization in order to make it fully effective.  

Bringing Reality to Activity based vs Role!

Upstream Gas Field example of why Activity based thinking in Operational Experience design is going to be critical for success. 

Last week I introduced the concepts of “Activity based “user interfaces vs Role Based, this is shift, and I want to this week bring reality to this concept with a story.

Here is Australia we have a number of big projects around “Unconventional Gas” like elsewhere in the world this is introducing significant operational challengers. The challenge with this type application is in traditional gas a well was drilled and would produce 20 years and it would be managed, the new unconventional gas type fields you have 1 to 6 new wells been drilled and coming on line a day, they only live 3 to 5 years , and you have 1000s of them.

To put this context a particular project traditionally would have had an operator every 5 to 10 wells, but they only have 25 to 50 wells, but in the next 2 years this company will drill 10000 wells, and they don’t plan on having 2000 operators. What they expect is an operator will be able to handle 50 to 100 wells, and eventually the “Operational Center” overlooking all the fields will handle all 10000 wells. So here we have an application which will have:

·         Roaming operational workers working out of car, but connected and able to go to a particular well or compressions center.

·         Local compressor operator stations controlling local water treatment/ or compressor plants

·         Basin or field control stations controls 1 to 5000 wells in the field

·         Operational Center can control all operations 10000 wells, 400 compressor stations etc.

The operational execution plan to run this operation requires a team of people between all these types of user interfaces that can collaborate, and execute activities. Due to the fact that the distance between wells is approx. 1 km, the distributed operational system is 1000s km / miles in area.

When designing the operational experience for this application, requires thinking to enable decisions to be made quickly, with the assigning of activities dynamically to knowledge workers based on skill and location and this requires:

·         The wells and assets to be intelligent so they report by exception, so the operational workers, operators, maintenance, or process engineers do not have to monitor the system, the system monitors itself and prompts on exception and this is not alarming it could be escalation based on a number conditions.

·         How a worker could be at say the field control center, then accept a task to be done, get in their car and drive to a site maybe 100km away, and still be in contact, still be able to see the information, and still able perform actions, and collaborate with the other members of the team.

You will see an important step here the knowledge worker from the Field office accepted a task/ activity, probably based upon information on a condition that would effect production. This activity may have been within the scope of his role, but now he is 100km out in the field and the “operational Center” notices another unsafe condition beginning to develop in a compressor station 20 km from where the field worker is. Due to the fact that he is the only personal within 100 km, and therefore a couple of hours closer to situation, the Operational Center should be able to assign a new activity/ task to the field worker. He is able to accept this, even though the task and activity is outside of his role, on immediately accepting the activity all the required training, online instruction is available to field worker from his roaming unit (car) and he is able to collaborate with the operational center and other experienced team members. The field worker is effectively acting as an agent for others to go to compressor station, while driving the 20km to the site, he able to communicate with the experts and understand the objectives and results intended and the current situation.

This is more than assigning a task/ activity it is the fact that the system is designed in activities with all the required data, information, experts, knowledge, procedures, online instructions including online certification if need. This design enables a dynamic operational strategy to be applied across devices, roles and locations.  

Interesting thought, does traditional HMI / operator station design thinking satisfy the above??

There seems to be confusion on the concept of "Federation" so standby lets discuss next issue.