What are the hurdles to Real-Time Operational Excellence?

I see a significant increase in “operational Transformable projects” , but too often it is talk, or dreaming, and when we discuss the ideas people like, but they really miss the challenge. Too often they fall back into the traditional approaches can we get access to information, through reports and dashboards. 

Born out of the frustration to gain the transparency to “what is going on NOW”. Yes it is a journey for “operational excellence “ and it will not be done once or ever over in this ever “speeding , agile world”.

Taking a step back and understanding the hurdles to getting to “Managing by Exception”. I thought the image below simplified the discussion.

Understand where you are, and set a vision of where you want to be, and this goes back to shift towards “activities” design vs application or even role.

Above you can see how not having the data in context, or even accessible is key, this is seen in the two bottom challengers. As one customer said last week, how do eliminate cleaning data every 3 months. The answer is simple, capture data as close to the source, validate and structure it as close to source as possible, so now you are storing valuable, trusted information, and you can depend upon it.
But now you have the information people put it into reports, and dashboards, for decisions to be made, but did it get to correct person, did it get decided upon in timely manner, why it did not escalated, or collaborated to accelerate the decision. The system must provide this framework for escalation, and ability ask/ share.

With the changing roles, and people on plants, and the horizontal structure, do we know the decision was made, “accountability” is important when something is sent. Too often tradition alarms, notifications have no accountability, the only way a team works is that they understand their role, and responsibility for decisions.

Then you come to final hurdle “what do I do having made the decision”? This needs to consistent processes across different workers of different experience. Also the system has to shift to a “crowd sourcing” culture of continuous improvement and everyone is empowered to contribute.

This may seem so simple but it is fundamental to the “transformation in Work” yet so many programs are missing these basics.

I will follow this up next week again on why “People and Processes” are key to take the automation to the next level.

A New Approach is Required to Enable It/OT, with Information Driven Systems!

Two weeks ago I wrote about IT/OT convergence, and some thoughts, while the convergence has been happening for years.It seems only lately that we running into the significant step of changing the organization from tradition structures to a modern / new generation Operational IT approach. But the interest in that blog post was significant, with many hits, and many direct emails on ideas, comments.

The fact that 4 significant companies I have visited lately that we find that the head of the traditional IT team, and strategy is someone from Operations, with limited traditional IT experience, but huge amount of Operational and Business experience. The strategies are now not about the technology they lead by an business/ operational value, and how do deliver solutions fast, and efficiently, with technology and systems that are sustainable, and evolutionary.

In the information driven space this is giving rise to a different approach:

Strategies are more than technology, the key is operational cultural transformation that includes device, equipment integration, with people, and alignment and repeat ability through process integration. Leading to strategies as seen below.

The strategies require a focus on accessing the correct information, in context, and understanding the business process design, building on repetitive foundation of standards that can evolved. Understanding that standards and a platform is key to maintaining the evolution over multiple vendors.

Below shows a concept of the three levels of maturity on the journey that is required to bring information under control and effective. This aligns with the “Knowledge/ Wisdom” discussions we have had at the end of last year.

How many of you are moving to platforms for aligning multiple vendors, while moving away from custom code to configured standards for information context and procedures?