Virtual Expert Teams, Provide One answer to “Time to Performance”

We often hear of the aging workforce as a big problem, and certainly it is due to fact that it is not a evolutionary transition to next generation of workers it is leap to new generation of workers missing at least one generation. So from "baby boomers" to Gen Y or Millennials.

As has been stated many times comes with this a change in "Experience levels" of the job, and site, but correspondingly comes a change in the way they native work, engage with others sharing more, asking more, providing the opportunity to bridge this experience transition.

Last week in some discussions around Integrated Operational Centers (IOC) it was clear that IOC is not about bringing what happens field control rooms into a central location, the real transformation happens when experience and operational work transformation happens. Shifting to an operational experience where:

• Experience can be shared across sites, and workers through standard operational interfaces and experiences
• Shift to Exception based experience from monitoring, where the user interacts with the system only when required.
• Where planners, operational control, and subject matter experts can align, and collaborate in real-time, sharing the same view on a situation.

But it was clear that the companies making the big step are going further, and really introducing the "Flexible Operational Team " concept, shifting from an operator to a true operational team. From site workers who now are agents (eyes) to the rest of the team on site, to central control working closely with real-time planning and work order execution, to experts in maintenance, process, safety, and management providing the real-time knowledge and experience across multiple sites, and multiple situations. The diagram below shows this "flexible operational team" and the associated transformation in operational work across the team, due to new work ethic of sharing and asking.

But what we seeing in the market is some innovative approaches to solving this existing experiencing and the transfer, and it is through the use of “Virtual Experts Teams”. So what is this concept?

Key is to have these highly valued knowledge experts which could be across different aspects of the business e.g. asset management, process, planning, optimization, quality being empowered to work across the many enterprise production assets/plants. Today many of these experts are restricted in their contribution to their local plants, but a number of companies have started strategies which say we must leverage these people. These experts must be able to access the state, information of the plants in a consistent manner even though they may have never been there. They must also have the natural ability to collaborate with the local teams.

This means a local team is able to call upon the best experts relative to the situation they are dealing with. The expert is able to go online and access the plant situation in “near real-time” so they can see the situation while collaborating with the site team. They are able to drill in and do analysis, so as to draw upon experience and provide advice in real-time to the local team.

Now is this easy, I would say no, as just accessing the plant data is not effective, as the expert maybe over the other side of the world, never been to the plant and so the data will be in different measures/ context to what he expects. So in order to achieve this virtual team we need to have a “trusted information” system, where the data / information is a consistent context.

But the above concept is real, and is valid with leading companies currently implementing these "virtual communities" with subject matter experts on call across sites and situations. The operational team experience is not a "rip and replace" it is built on the existing automation/ supervisory systems installed in 90s, and 2000s, but now aligned with a validated model, and context. Plus a collaboration user experience where systems notify of "abnormal situations" and the controllers will share and collaborate in real-time, and virtual experts can access their view of the situation in real-time. Note the view of the expert may be different angle on the data relative to their expertise, 

But the system is NOT a one way information system, it is bidirectional, interactive experience with accountability, of action and role, with a built in ability to evolve the knowledge and experience of the system for the future.

Too often I am seeing slices of this Operational Team landscape, being implemented without realizing the whole picture to realize the paradigm shift in value.  

Impact of the Gen Y on Automation/ Operational Systems!

The last 3 weeks I have been travelling North America and Australia supporting the upcoming 2012 R2 software releases from Invensys, and as I write this I am on a plane to China. Discussions with  end users, and engineering houses across many industries, and there are a number of discussion points that I will make topics over the next couple of weeks.

One is around theimpact of  incoming operational workers/ process engineers from the “Gen Y” generation that is people born 1980s to early 2000s, sometimes referred to as the “Millennial Generation”. Usually the conversation starts by people talking about the aging work force and the retiring “baby boomer” generation (born Post WW2 and before 1960, evolving to discussion on the  transitions from Baby Bommer to Gen Y, missing the majority of the Gen X (born 1960s and 1970s), who have gone into other professions away from the industrial world.  The story of the retiring of the workforce and impact has been around for 10 years, but the realization in many of the conversations is that Gen Y are not the same, and the bigger issue will be “RETENTION” of Gen Y.

I saw an article on the fact that one career for a life time has gone, to me that started to go in the Gen X world, when I even look at myself. Starting from an electrical engineer in a steel works, moving into control software, development and product management, across a long list of countries, not one role or location for a career. Gen Y will take this to a new level, as they handle problems, learning and tasks totally differently.
Do we go on training for being Facebook users? NO. So why do we need to have training on Operatinal HMIs on the plant, the system must lead the user, thetraining is expected to be in the system, not in a class room.
One person said do you remember:

·          Sitting in libraries and researching:  YES

·          Using a phone book to look a phone number :  Yes

Now ask would a Gen Y person remember or even consider this with the internet to search enabling access, and information and   filtering at their finger tips, and this ability to filter is huge. Phone numbers are in contact lists on phones, or face book. Example for our products ther are online manuals, Gen Y will not read them; they will expect short Youtubes (of no more than 7 minutes) on a subject, and wiki approach to support material.

The question of Gen Y retention is a monumental one, in the industrial, manufacturing space, when looking  at the operational experiences we designed they were for the Baby Boomer/ early Gen X. The products are also in many cases the same experience vintage, even if we have added many new capabilities. Is it exciting enough for GenY? Can they access information to make decisions in a form and experience aligned with experience they in personal life on internet, smart phones, and social community?  As industrial environment moves slowly we are behind, but the change is picking up, but my feeling and feedback from many people this operational experience will have to jump  in the next 5 years.

Many companies have not evolved the experience, why because they added new capability, but their thinking the actor / user is a Baby Boomer/ early Gen X ( these generations where more aligned)  not the  Gen Y which is paradigm shift. The real revolution in operational experience has happened in the commercial since 2000, due to Apple, Facebook, Twiiter, Wiki etc. During this time, many companies have being executing the integration between systems, ERP systems, plant floor, evolving the control, improving the supply chain. Not many have evolved the User Interfaces or Operational control rooms; if they have they have upgraded the technology, maybe gone from control rooms to line side kiosks and unified operational experiences over multiple control systems. Not seriously addressing a new level operational experience required to be agile and responsive in today’s world, and enable the Gen Y to perform at most effective.

In some of the new Operational Centers we seeing shift with the introduction of collberation (but in many applications), and common knowledge systems, but really the need for situational awareness, rapid learning, intuitive systems (faster time to performance) are key. The whole method, filtering, discovering of Gen Y is totally different to “Baby Boomer” , expect frustration if they can not satisfy the hunger for rapid information, and decision the work in their personnel lives.  

So in these discussions people eyes open, with realization, that both products that they build automation and operations solutions on as well, as well as the design of the Operational experience will need to fundamentally change. This is why I talk about this as the “Perfect Storm” as the operational experience and the way people have to work as a team, access and make decisions for:

·          Addressing the global agility required today and future

·          Sustain the working practices of Gen Y generation

·          Address the changing Operational practices of the flexible operational team

Many people ask me why we are spending  so much investment in time and energy in the new operational experiences, but when you consider just discussion there is no choice, and the time has being coming, will you be ready?