Accelerated Training is the only way to Deal with Dynamic Workforce Paradigm

As time period workers are in a role and especially a site, the systems and culture of learning, interacting and gaining knowledge must change. This happens with the knowledge and learning coming from this system as the worker requires and prepares for executing a task, vs tradition class / face to face sessions.

Operations teams in a broad range of manufacturing have discovered that the workforce, especially operators, are changing jobs more frequently.  This challenge has become more important than the “aging workforce”, although this also contributes to the acceleration of turnover.  There must be a strategy which effectively trains operators faster than their turnover.

One part of training best practices is to continue the training throughout the operators’ work term, such as summarized in the following diagrams:

The right-hand diagram summarizes some amount of acceleration in benefits, where OTJ is on-the-job training.  While this acceleration appears to be attractive, this acceleration isn’t enough – the time to profitability is still several years.  So an additional strategy is necessary, as shown in the following diagram:

The above diagram describes a strategy of acceleration: instead of focusing on the basics, the training focuses on the dynamic aspects.  This means that the operators are trained as early as possible on “advanced” topics.

The power generation industry has developed a measure of operator excellence called “error free”.  It is a measure where loss of production or damage to equipment was identified with operator errors.  During the last 7 years, power generation companies have demonstrated up to 6:1 acceleration in achieving “error free” status.

The technical change in the training simulators is focused on simulating the dynamic aspects such as weather, supply chain demand and changes in raw materials.

Operational Windows Enable are a basis for Operational Management Experience (IOC)

I have talked about the drive by many companies to reduce “Operational Variation” across plants, teams, and industries. This is core to the journey to "operation excellence" gaining consistency, awareness and early detection of situations. When you look at the table below on the levels of human operational automation, the drive of the integrated operational experience is trying to reach level 5 "Worker management by exception", a big part of this is awareness of current operational process status relative to optimum.   

There are many ways that operational control will be implemented, as pointed out it could be through actions and processes becoming embedded and certainly this will be the big driver in the road to “Operational Innovation”.

But another way is through displaying key operational indicators to a knowledge worker, where  these indicators are mapped within boundary conditions. These boundaries are set up based on the time and relevance to the role and activity/ task the knowledge worker is performing. This sort of “operating Window” enables the knowledge worker the context, and recommendations, knowledge to enable operational decisions in a timely and ever consistent way. This same operational window can be used over multiple sites/ and teams for that role and activity providing consistency control.

The figure below is an example of an operational window.

Where on the left you can see the operational running trend, but you can see the changing boundary conditions of operation based upon product etc., The green shows the area where optimum control, safety, and production performance is. The right hand side you have reasons, and number instances of deviations for periods out of operational control.

Placing this sort of operational window where the operational boundaries come from the business strategy but in context of the role and activity no matter where in the plant operational team, but the feedback and running side is real-time from the plant. This window is place adjacent to  current control/ HMI screens the operator is using, or the maintenance or process screens the users are working, and you start the transformation to a knowledge worker. 

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.

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.

 

The Perfect Storm in Industrial Operations = People Excellence

The most significant disruption in operational strategy thinking is happening in this post GFC (global financial crisis) era, in determining an operational execution environment enabling timely contributions by the operational team to plant execution. The focus is on currently on operational processes, but quickly this will drive a new operational experience to go with a new operational execution plan. Traditional user interfaces will not “cut” it both in products, or the way they have been implemented. Let me expand on my thoughts on this operational experience, which I refer to as “People Excellence” driving a new paradigm of operational empowerment for all roles in plant operations.

In order to contribute to strategy I spend a significant amount of time a week, listening and asking end-users, and implementers, discussing changes and ideas. A common thread  around the world is operational personal challenge, especially the finding of people to replace to existing “baby boomer generation” and lack of experience available in the market.

This is only part of what I believe the most significant disruption in operational strategy in the last 20 years, yes since the introduction of the PC.
There is a perfect storm happening with these vectors:

·     Aging workforce: the significant amount of current experienced operations, maintenance, process workers who will retire in the next 5 to 10 years. I have heard some mangers in “oil and gas upstream” talk about 80% of their current team will be gone in 5 years. We have to be able to capture knowledge and enable

·      Operational Agility means Decision NOW: To be competitive decisions must be made now this has caused a change in thinking that workers need to be empowered to make more decisions, through more information, higher knowledge and access to experience, a transition from “worker” to “knowledge worker”. This also means they have more responsibility. As one customer said last week traditionally they had an operator cover 5 to 10 wells, this was fine when you have 100 wells which lived 20 years, but in the next 5 years he stated “we will have 20000 + wells, we will not have 20000 operators”.

·      The Rotating operational person means “time to experience” is shorter than ever: With the experienced generation retiring and transitioning to a generation 30 years their junior, and the new factor that people are not staying in their role or location longer than a year. One company stated 10 years ago people were in a role/loaction approx. 5 years, now they are seeing 8 months, so we have to design assuming limited experience. 

·      Transition to digital native worker, with very different expectations, causes challengers with worker retention: The new generation is “digitally native” they expect access to knowledge, they expect “touch experience”, they expect collaboration form anywhere, they expect to learn on the fly.

Step back and look at all these vectors; you have significant disruption happening for those in charge of industrial / manufacturing operational execution strategy. 

That will require:

·       A new generation of user interface products with more than interface capability, but embedded knowledge access, experience access, actionable procedures, collberation services and natural intelligence to really empower the operational workers in all roles.

·       Operational experience design. Notice I did not use HMI (Human Machine Interface), as it is a true “operational experience” that goes through the “day in the life” of the new generation of operational knowledge workers.

Example you see a massive $10B projects but they are all at risk due to lack of people to execute them and more importantly run them after they built.

As I stated in the last blog one of the “legs” of what Enterprise Control is about is “Empowerment of Operational People” this will be through a multiyear program of “People Excellence” which will evolve Invensys from a product centric approach to user interaction, to a more “operational centric experience”. Providing freedom to knowledge worker to execute his daily tasks, decisions through a number of user interface devices, different locations, and interacting with different team members naturally no matter the state.

There are many concepts here which I will explore over the coming weeks.