Asset Management / Optimization Stands to Take Significant Leaps of Value with the Internet of Things

Last week I talked about the “smart plant”, one of the key areas that is changing and opportunity for a step level of output value is in the “Asset Reliability” / “Operational Continuity”.

The real opportunity in is increasing capacity of through :

• Increased flexibility in the existing assets to run more products, and we understand asset condition through pattern recognition
•  Improved preventive, and “awareness” of asset condition and capability of performing at optimum. The devices / assets are “self aware” and self learning on improvement and conditions so early detection of conditions are seen and corrected in a timely manner.
•  Improved planning and asset utilization through transparency across assets on a site and across sites,

There is a lot of talk around the internet of things (IoT) in the general world but in the industrial world there is huge opportunity just due to the significant number of devices.
Industry pundits predict that by 2020 over 50 billion everyday objects will be connected to the Internet. This does not even include the Industrial IoT and the entire M2M environment, much of which is already in place in our factories, plants, and infrastructure.The initial trend will be to establish one-way communication, ultimately migrating to "many-to-many" communications as more physical objects be-come connected. Connecting all the assets and devices in communities of active tuning, decisions and optimization, requiring a significant rethink and change to current operational management/ supervisory systems and information systems to take advantage, but it aligns with the workforce operational transformation.So if we look at the clear steps that can happen in Asset Efficiency:

1/ Increased information, data in a one way capture of asset information.
This step is the first one and is well under way where increased intelligent devices are monitoring / calculating their performance and the information is logged to an historian. As stated in past blogs we seeing the I/O count between control systems and historians increasing by over a factor of 10. (example a pump use to be 5 to 10 variables, now is 120 to 200, a well head was planned to 50 points now logging 690 points).
Once you have this data companies like Pattern Discovery Technologies (http://www.patterndiscovery.com/) produce solutions that used defined events to investigate through Big Data Techniques asset condition patterns, from this vast historical data, so that better prediction is possible of conditions earlier.

2/ Is by direction, and communities of devices “learning” together and tuning their performance.

So instead of a device/ asset just learning on it’s own, imagine a community or similar type devices learning and sharing their learnings between them. This is not a linear learning of optimization but an exponential learning. So the conditions for a type can be immediately picked up and used by a new device / asset of the same type. Machine learning and community “hub” learning is a powerful predictive capability coming into the market.

Companies like MTELL (http://www.mtell.com/) have introduced some powerful “Machine Learning” capabilities, that combine with their “Transfer Learning” capability. Key is this does not have to wait to new devices/ assets on the plant it can be applied to existing assets, and the “learning” will begin.

The concept of going to “Smart Machines/ assets” that are:

• Self-Aware”
•  Self and Tribal Learning, so improving in predictive understanding of behavior

  Notification and increased analysis capability through powerful tools for asset analysis from the dramatic increase in data available.Now that devices can be connected through wireless to internet, and therefore a “cloud historian that is managed” and these analysis tools can executed centrally, or devices discover each other and learn together provides the breakthrough in the Asset world from predictive to prescriptive.

Operations Innovation & Transformation – the 4 Types a Series

Over the last couple of years Stan   DeVries and I have looked a 100s of projects by leading companies across many industries, analyzing industry trends. Much of what I discussed in this blog over the last year has come from these investigations. But Stan and I thought it was time to talk through these "Operational Innovations" and Stan has put a series of 5 blogs on the topics that I will post over the next 2 weeks. Building on the ideas and concepts.

 High Level Review of the 4 Types Operational Innovation:

There has been much marketing on the innovations in supply chain and customer relationship management during the last 7+ years.  During this time, manufacturing and industrial operations has begun a less publicized transformation on their own.  This transformation goes beyond lean and total quality management principles.  In the 1980’s, we saw the impact of Japanese quality strategies; in the 1990’s, the consumer globalization fundamentally changed where facilities are built, how frequently new products are introduced, and in the 21^stcentury, industrial operations focus on how they create value for their customers, often focused on reliability.  These strategies might seem to be dreams without understanding the innovations that make these sustainable and the new risks can be practically managed.

These innovations are focused on unlocking the value of groups of physical and human assets:

1.       Physical Assets: the move to unifying the industrial enterprise over multiple sites (in groups or as a whole), with a more holistic view in terms of operating strategy and performance management.

2.       Human Assets: the shift to operational teams that spread across the multiple sites (in groups or as a whole), central, and Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) to make a rapid and dynamic decision support system in a dynamic operational world.

The following table published by ARC describes a spectrum of coordination or collaboration across assets, both physical and human:

The innovations are essential and prominent in the Integrated and Optimized portions of the above table.  So physical or human assets become 2 parts of one of the dimensions:

So far, no innovation is immediately apparent.  The other attribute of creating value of these groups is improving consistency or efficiency, either by seeking and maintaining a constant “sweet spot” or by enabling profitable agility.

One way that value can be unlocked from a group of people or physical assets is by improving the consistency of the group’s output.  This is very different from the hope of “the best worker on their best day, every day” or the physical asset’s equivalent.  Instead, the innovation achieves a “new normal” which understands and manages to a repeatable performance or “the new average worker on their average day, every day”.  This focuses on reducing the range of performance in output, whether measured as sales value of production, yield, efficiency, throughput etc.

Another way that value can be unlocked from a group of people or physical assets is by improving the effectiveness of the group’s output – the “synergy”.  This focus might seem to be a cliche, but it has produced significant and sustainable improvements.

So consistency and effectiveness become 2 parts of the second dimension, and now we have 4 quadrants:

Now we have some hints of innovation – how is it possible and practical to achieve significant and sustainable improvement from a group of physical and human assets instead of the “sweat the assets” focus which has been in place for 100 years?  The changes come from using physical and human assets differently when they are required to perform to a group objective.  The 4 quadrants are summarized as follows:

In the lower left quadrant, a group of similar industrial operations (2 or more) adapt their performance objectives, business processes and accompanying hiring and information strategies to optimize the “fleet”.  This innovation can be limited by the distribution flexibility among the locations, but several corporations have achieved success with this.  One example is keeping most of the locations operating at a constant or “base” portion of the combined market demand, and using the more agile locations to deliver the “swing” or variable portion of the demand.  Other examples and methods are described in a following article which focuses on this quadrant.

In the upper left quadrant, a group of complementary industrial operations (2 or more) adapt their performance objectives, business processes and accompanying hiring and information strategies to optimize the “chain”.  This innovation can be limited by the dynamic and range flexibility of some of the operations, but several corporations have also achieved success with this.  One example is seasonal competitiveness, where the “chain” collaborates to achieve maximum throughput during the high demand season and maximum efficiency during the low demand season (efficiency and throughput interact differently across different groups of industries).  Other examples and methods are described in a following article which focuses on this quadrant.

In the lower right quadrant, teams of specialists are grouped to provide value improvement to a group of physical assets, and the group of physical assets can be used as a “fleet” or as a “chain”.  This is much more than a passive “help desk”.  One example is where specialists use real-time bench-marking and other tools, working with new business processes with the physical assets and the dedicated workers, to unlock value of themselves and the physical assets.  Other examples and methods are described in a following article which focuses on this quadrant.

In the upper right hand quadrant, managers and supervisors use consistent measures and business processes to adjust targets for specialists and other workers, using the industrial automation concept of a “control loop”.  One example is where managers negotiate the next day’s production targets each day using the same business process for all specialists and industrial locations.  Other examples and methods are described in a following article which focuses on this quadrant.

The results have been spectacular, including double-digit improvements in efficiency, first-quarterly industry performance, and more.