2016 the turning point in the Operational Work Transformation!!

Will this statement stand true to the operational execution world we live in, probably only time will tell, but based on the trends I outlined at the end of 2015, and looking forward I believe 2016 provides the opportunity.

By the way, welcome to 2016 may it be an exciting and productive year!

The holiday break it provides a time to reflect and discuss, and in one conversation my last blog was raised and really “how much transformation was happening?” Initially, I thought it was a comment against the trend we are seeing with the “Operational Transformation”, but this was a friend working in a major food manufacturing company. His comment was actually the momentum of change is well underway, and happening at increasing pace.

There were 4 areas that he felt his business and associated industry where trying grapple with to stay ahead:

1/ Agility of effective, valued productsand brands to the market (which he stated was regional, eg specific tastes of similar products changed by region and so your go to markets, packaging, etc. His example was around cheese how the tastes in say Mexico for cheese are totally different to Australia, and then Italy. This leads the increased importance of regional new products vs global new products, and effective speed and cost of innovation, execution and introduction.. So the challenge of “new product Innovation” and then “New Product Introduction” and delivering it to the market at the correct margin to be competitive in timely manner is a whole focus. His comment was this is the core competitive advantage that his company identifies, and must keep driving while dealing with the other transformations happening.    

2/ Operational Workforce transformation: He agrees with me that too much focus has been on the “aging workforce issue” and that most of HR and Operational teams have missed the bigger transformation, and that is the one of new generation work methods and transformation in workspace that goes with it. He felt like his company woke up to this mid way thru last year when they could not just not fill positions, but are having significant challenges in retaining talent, not within the company but in roles. He felt like initially people thought that would just get a transition to a new workforce yes younger of different experience. But they had not realized that way in which people will work, think, interact, and gain satisfaction will also change.

3/ “Planet Awareness, Image”: this one was an interesting discussion, as he raised it as a real strategy for evolving the brand of the company to been seen as proactive to the environment, to attract further “feeling satisfaction” of customers. He also stated that government regulation, and increasing costs of disposing of waste, and energy costs also are now seen a significant bottom line costs, and must be managed more efficiently. But during this discussion, it was also clear that the perception of being “proactive to the environment” in use of energy, carbon footprint, environment etc was also a key strategy for attractive talent to work in the company.

4/ Transparency across the total product value chain, “end to end”. This strategy was about tractability and making sure they happy with brand all the way to customer, but also about cost as they were “outsourcing” increasing amounts of the value chain. But this did not mean they lost responsibility for product while in “outsourced manufacturing partners” execution. The transparency across the supply chain enables increased flexibility and lower costs through inventory reduction.

These 4 strategies are combined with the current strategies to increase plant performance utilization and lower cost of materials through waste /loss reduction.

When you sit back and look at these strategies a constant set of pillars came up in the Operational Solution approach:

·       Everyone having access to information and knowledge no matter their state or location, this means internet becomes a part of the solution backbone.

·       Cyber Security is very much top of mind, both in strategy to secure,  manage, to contain cost and risk.

·       Data validation/ and contextualization, if transparency and faster decisions are required how do you gain consistent information across different sites. \

·       Delivering a new “operational Workspace/ experience” that has embedded knowledge that does not get stale, and enables imitative learning for a dynamic and collaborative workforce.

As the night conversation went on it was clear that the 4 strategies was really about changing the way in which the company manages and executes operational work, no matter how big or small. But becoming in control of not just the planned product work, but the day to day, minute to minute work at the different levels of the operational loop.

Based on the trends of 2015, this long conversation, I wonder if we will see 2015 as the year people recognized that needed to rethink how they handling “Operational Work”. With 2016 becoming the year where momentum continues to grow on projects turning to programs, that span plants, and value chain and an increasing amount of companies put teams, strategies and programs in place to evolve their operations to transform the way handle “operational Work”!

You might ask what about “big data” and the “internet of things” but these are technologies that will be part of the enabling system for a  new operational solution.

Knowledge a Key Component of Modern/ Future Operational System: "Data vs Information vs Knowledge Understanding the Difference"

 

For the last couple of weeks,  I have discussed in this blog the concept of “expertise, knowledge,” how to multiply this, and why harnessing and bringing knowledge as a natural part of your Operational Architecture is key to dealing with the changing operational human assets due to age, culture, length of time in role, digital.

I was at a customer on a white board and discussing some of these concepts, and I realized that there was confusion between DATA, INFORMATION and KNOWLEDGE.

Sitting over coffee afterwards I agreed that this was not uncommon, and actually comes down to the fact that many people have not had the time to think through what does their operational landscape look like in 2020. That afternoon I was reviewing another customer in Europe vision, and they had a set of functional maps relative to activities on how they expect to operate in 2020 and what is needed, and reflecting on this knowledge is the foundational part built out of many parts.  

I was reading this article from Tom Davenport at Harvard on how knowledge workers collaborate (his book is called Working Knowledge)

, thought it is worth bringing up in the blog I have extracted some points from an article  "Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know" By Thomas H. Davenport and Lawrence Prusak

 

   

Firstly this comment on why knowledge is key:

“Knowledge, by contrast, can provide a sustainable advantage. Eventually, competitors can almost always match the quality and price of a market leader's current product or service. By the time that happens, through, the knowledge-rich, knowledge-managing company will have moved on to a new level of quality, creativity, or efficiency. The knowledge advantage is sustainable because it generates increasing returns and continuing advantages. Unlike material assets, which decrease as they are used, knowledge assets increase with use: Ideas breed new ideas, and shared knowledge stays with the giver while it enriches the receiver. The potential for

new ideas arising from the stock of knowledge in any firm is practically limitless -- particularly if the people in the firm are given opportunities to think, to learn, and to talk with one another.”

 

Then the difference between Data/ Information/ Knowledge.

 

Data is a set of discrete, objective facts about events. In an organizational context, data is most usefully described as structured records of transactions. When a customer goes to a gas

station and fills the tank of his car, that transaction can be partly described by data: when he made the purchase; how many gallons he bought; how much he paid. The data tells nothing about why he went to that service station and not another one, and can't predict how likely he is to come back.

 

Unlike data, information has meaning -- the "relevance and purpose" of Drucker's definition. Not only does it potentially shape the receiver, it has a shape: it is organized to some purpose. Data becomes information when its creator adds meaning. We transform data into information by adding value in various ways. Let's consider several important methods, all

beginning with the letter C:

• Contextualized: we know for what purpose the data was gathered
• Categorized: we know the units of analysis or key components of the data

• Calculated: the data may have been analyzed mathematically or statistically
• Corrected: errors have been removed from the data
• Condensed: the data may have been summarized in a more concise form

 

Knowledge derives from information as information derives from data. If information is to become knowledge, humans must do virtually all the work. This transformation happens through such C words as:

• Comparison: how does information about this situation compare to other situations we have known?
• Consequences: what implications does the information have for decisions and actions?
• Connections: how does this bit of knowledge relate to others?
• Conversation: what do other people think about this information?

The article goes into a lot more depth, but I think it is this transformation from information to knowledge that is key as it enables the all important action to be taken. Too often we get caught up in hype and miss the reason why we are capturing data and information it is really to enable faster, and more efficient decisions and actions.

So this leads to the concept of “Intelligent work” which has the information in a knowledge form, with experience and associated actions, the leaders will design their systems to centered on this approach.  

 

Bring the Problem to the Expert vs Expert to the Problem!!!!! Virtual Expert Communities are required!

 “The 2020 workplace will need to be adept at uniting a physically – present tribe of employees with a tribe of offsite, and often transient, staff. The latter will be specifically chosen for their ability to add value to the task or project, regardless of where they are on the globe.” Mike Miselowski Futurist

This is the concept of flexible operational teams, and the ability unify into a collaborative and sharing environment the people on plants with those outside the plant, and even outside the company or country, who provide expertise. As I continued my travels last week, I engaged with two clients in different industries one in Oil and the other in mining who have remote sites, and the need to bring expertise from elsewhere in their organization to the remote site. These sites are extremely remote, and will involve a day or so travel to get there, and age on the site is reducing and so with it the experience. Both companies talked about getting expertise to site, decisions support centers or often collaborative walls or environments.

Another company in oil and gas last year summed up the problem when he described his team of 35 experts doing 1300+ flights in a year that it was “taking the expert to the problem” and it causing the loss of the expert team as they looked for alternative jobs than living away from family. Also, the response to the problem was delayed, and in many cases the problem did not justify the cost in travel or wasted expert’s time in travel. So his comment,  we need change to a situation where we “take the problem to expert”.

Another company in the metals industry is implementing this on a global basis a community environment across their global experts  with the:

Vision

• Break Down Communication Barriers between Continents
• Break Down Communication Barriers between Plants
• Break Down Cultural/Language Barriers and Inhibitions
• Break Down Network Barriers Between Computer Systems
• Create One Secure Global Network accessible by whole Expert Community
• Standardized system with common variables, standard calculations and standard names for data points for all the like assets / process across the companies worldwide sites.

Goal:

• Share Experiences with Live & Historical Data
• Instant online Information Exchange For Problem Solving
• Create a Powerful Knowledge Database
• Create a Community For Helping Each Other

So how do you make this a reality?

How do you take experts on the other side of the world, who have not been to a site, and enable them to contribute expertise on a subject, e.g. a particular process on an asset type, to a worker sitting on site. If the expert went to the site, or called the site he would ask a lot of questions on data, status and history to understand the situation before he can contribute.

 So the above company is trying to enable a “facebook” concept across the company pockets of expertise and sites that will actively engage the experts with the operational workers and make an active community, breaking down all the traditional boundaries that prevent this.

To do this they need to:

• Capture the historical data, current state from the existing systems.
• They need validate this data to make it trust worthy in their case 100+ rules of integrity
• They need transform the data into standard measures and states for that process/ asset so that the variables mean the same no matter which plant the expert engages. 
• The need an operational experience both at the plant, the roaming worker and the virtual expert that naturally enables collaboration in realtime as well as sharing.

All through the last couple of weeks travel, this alignment and empowerment of local people with remote is of significant concern. The tradition Control Room  systems today do not make this part time, transient engagement natural, and it is only by changing the solution to a team/ community, which is available at the local workers finger tips this can become a reality.

This is not something new, people have been trying to implimentation something to enable remote support for years, often throwing technologies such as PC Anywhere etc at it to allow access, and now with the introduction of social media increasing that. Most of it has focused on remote operations from an Operational Center on shore or in a better location. The real step change happens when an active community is developed of experts who collaborate and build knowledge while directly collaborating with the site teams as seen below.

 

Below you can see examples of the Offshore oil industry especially in the north sea what they have been doing while this is a significant step it is only a step, vs and a significant jump to a community.

Yes,  it lines up with Mike Miselowski’s comment of “The 2020 workplace will need to be adept at uniting a physically – present tribe of employees with a tribe of offsite, and often transient, staff.”

Leveraging the social media functions, but in a secure way, that understands security access level, plant control access and location of the people to enable correct engagement levels. So we should not be designing an operation HMI, control room experience , remote access focused on just the plant and process, consideration must be taken how collaboration, and sharing of information will happen in a near real time manner!!  Not just adding messaging, key is making the data and information consistent and trust worthy in near real time, as well as having inbuilt knowledge capture systems.

 

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.  

The Changing Execution of Flexible Operational Team

“What does Operational Collaboration Mean for my Modern Supervisory System?”

Last week I travelled to Western Australia, a state where there is a significant mining boom, and a challenge of how to operate it’s plants with a 3 way changing market:

·          The need to be agile to maximize production, which drives a push towards streamlining  “Value Generating Assets”.

·          The shortage of skill sets and experience

·          The changing demographic of the workforce to a younger more “digitally native” aware personal

As I spoke with people in the industry from engineering to operations, the topics I have been discussing in this blog over the last couple of months were confirmed. It does require a different thinking on how to put a system together, and not just different technologies but also an awareness in the design of the system of the constraints these new dynamics bring. This is calling for a rethink of operational practices and collaboration in real-time, to enable the “Flexible Operational Team Work” required, this goes beyond “Operational Centers” it is a new level teamwork, which will require a new thought pattern when designing the operational systems.

In the past we have run our plants and systems in a isolated or independent way with planning looking across them, but this was at best a daily evaluation/plan but if we are to really get the full agility, and performance many leading companies across the world are looking at the industrial production capacity in a more holistic manner.  This we started to talk about with the concept of “Federation” but will expand on in latter blogs.

The skill shortage and especially experience shortage continues to come to the surface when I discuss directions in companies thinking, and constraints which effect how they run, and therefore the changes needed in their operational practices. The fact that experience cannot be assumed so intuitive learning online, and access to experience in knowledge, people etc, we have covered this at length in earlier blogs.

So we are seeing a different thinking from operational execution across a plant or plants. Companies are looking at “Operational Centers” which span multiple plants assets. In refining we have seen this huge operational centers started appearing in the last 10 years, but when you look at “transport” such as airports, and railways we have seen them for a while also in the water utilities industry. If you walk into the Barcelona Airport control center it is a very large control room with huge screens in front, and then operational work stations covering every aspect of the airports operations. This is instead of many control rooms in plants or terminals. At the back of the room their “collaboration rooms” used to discuss situations with experts, where operational people can be drawn into discussions with experts, and it is only a couple of steps to get access to information, and other people. We have seen the same in Power in Eskom’s (South Africa’s ) power utility looking across their 22 power plants.

But when I really speak to teams, and customers, and people step back, the “Operational Center” is only a stepping stone to a new operational paradigm of the “Flexible Operational Team” the diagram starts to illustrate this. This shows from the Operational Center which is permanently manned but this person or persons become the “quarterback” call the plays, and aligning the people across the team into execution of activities. Utilizing the user interfaces below in the plants which traditionally were manned but now are moving to transiently manned.

Also the introduction of the plant team being “active/ roaming” so they have personal devices for notification and interaction, and the ability to go to a local UI maybe a machine or plant room, and “take on control” in a smooth safe manner, to execute the task/ activity and move then pass back control to the Operational Center and move on.

This is a dynamic/ flexible team; able to do more jobs, and respond to different situations, but to achieve this system must incorporate “exception based awareness”. Conditions in the plant must “pro-actively raise awareness” to Operational control room, it must provide operational procedure recommendations to the operational center and to the team members.  An alarm is one form, but to understand a developing condition and trigger an automatic investigation, and procedure so awareness all the way to the experts is key so as an operational person comes aware, these people are already aware and active.

An import concept in this “Flexible Operational Team” is the harnessing of the external experts, these could be local or remote and these experts have different skills and expertise, which the operational center can call on naturally, and have them actively interact with the plant or other experts. Providing expertise/ experience on hand, today this hard to pull together but as we move into this new operational paradigm the interaction and sharing must become a natural act. The different team members are naturally aware of which expertise is online, their capability, and the ability share, interact at a point of click. The foundation to this “Flexible Operational Teamwork” is the concept of a  “Real-time Virtual Situation Room” (will expand in the coming weeks) the expert is probably automatically interacting or aware of the developing situation, they are able to access, see the situation over plants, with focus, and context in what ever state they are in (roaming, desktop, web etc).

The concepts here are not new, as we co-ordinate across these teams today but they must become more active and real-time.  While technologies and product are evolving to make this more possible, infrastructure like bandwidth is allowing the experts to be anywhere, the full advantage will only be realized when people start designing this flow, and interaction naturally into their systems.

Food for thought as we evolve our systems, and the concepts of a Real-time Virtual Situation Room and Operational Innovation will become common concepts, we will discuss in the coming weeks.