Closing the “Last Mile” of Efficiency

Performance Management holds different priorities for corporate management and plant-level stakeholders. Corporate stakeholders tend to emphasize technologies that provide visibility so they care more about the “I” as in Manufacturing “Information” Systems. In contrast, plant-level stakeholders tend to emphasize technologies that provide control so they care about the “E” as in Manufacturing “Execution” Systems (MES) capabilities. These two perspectives converge when both stakeholders realize the need for an integrated approach to tackle the “last mile of efficiency.”

What we have observed is that the vast majority of companies have put in place good practices. Although many of these practices are largely manual or paper-based, they have made progress in their efforts to reduce waste. But these paper-based processes often “hit a wall” when they reach the 90% mark on the three “OEE pillars” because losses at this point often result in “micro-stoppages” that are akin to profits “bleeding by a thousand paper cuts.” Two core challenges must be addressed: Knowing (seeing events in context) and Acting (to recover in a timely manner.)

When companies approach this “last mile” threshold, it changes how they view the scope of the solution because they realize visibility (even if it is real-time) isn’t enough – real-time control is equally important to enable real-time KPI management via a closed-loop process. Specifically, work process integration becomes critical to empower front-line workers to “fix problems at the source” as illustrated below:

We have found that there is “maturity” journey that companies go on in order to achieve efficiency.  We developed the following framework as our internal assessment – it is meant to give an idea of where a company could be in their evolution.

Too often companies are not align on where they are relative to systems, culture, and alignment between the different aspects of the company.

Performance Management Maturity Model

As we have stated many times Operational Excellence is not a project it is journey, and we have found having a framework built on experience as the best way set up the path for companies.

Where do you fit in this maturity road. 

Span of Awareness, Scope of Operation (Responsibility)!!!!

These are terms and concepts that will become a normal wording when defining the new paradigms in Operational Experience of the “Distributed Multi Point Operational Landscapes”.

Two weeks I posted “The Changing Landscape of Supervisory System from HMI, CCR to “Distributed Multi Point Operational Landscapes”, and there was a significant interest, and questions (on email as normal), so I thought I continue to answer some of the topics.  For the last couple of weeks I have been involved in a number of projects that these concepts are having to sorted and defined, in order to complete the design.

So let’s clarify what we mean:

Span of Awareness:

Span of Awareness is relative to what a user / worker is exposed to, this means through the device (control room, mobile phone, tablet, remote station etc) and notification systems he is logged on too, now that the systems are becoming “self-aware”.  Traditionally the worker has only been aware of the equipment and process states that his UI could show but today this is changing to a worker/ member of the “operational team” being notified when the situation of the process is in an abnormal state, and the worker could contribute to resolution.

The concept of “always being connected” now applies to the industrial landscape, and with virtual operational team members being key to modern actionable decision chain.

Scope of Operation (Responsibility):

Scope of responsibility relates to what a work is assign, what “activities” that fall under the workers responsibility at this time. Based upon location, what the worker logs onto, or passed what activities (tasks) to perform, the system must be aware, and provide the worker with first up awareness, and then responsibility. Key is workers, responsibility and activities can vary from day to day, the system must handle this. Scope of Responsibility is very important when managing alarms, as the initial response needs to assigned to the correct user, this maybe not a station.

This is a new dynamic in the distributed supervisory solutions, where the no longer can you design responsibility of control to a station, as what is a station? A responsible user could be on a mobile devices, logon to a fixed station in the system, and drill into a situation and take an action, but that station could not at the location, or temporarily manned.

Example:

This concept is so important with alarms. Let’s take an “unconventional “Gas field” where we can have a compressor station (which there can 100s) with a local supervisory station, but this station will on be “sometimes manned”, as required for local operations. Now traditionally systems would have designed so all alarms from the compressor station would go to that station. But that is no longer valid, as no one maybe at the station, so the system must be aware if the station is manned, and who has current operational control responsibility for that station. This could be the overall IOC (Integrated Operation Center) or a particular user who maybe be driving between sites, and will connected by a mobile device, he would get notified and take action, which maybe logon at the closest station and take actions on whatever compressor station had the alarm.

This is a dynamic environment where responsibility of control changes between people, and how they interact with the system.  This leads to the design requirement I outlined for alarms two weeks ago.

 Management of alarms: it is essential for safety, legal, environmental and health requirements that new alarms animate, suppress/shelve, annunciate and trigger display changes only at the point(s) of operation, and only the workers using the point(s) of operation can acknowledge or silence new alarms. This means all alarms from asset to process, operational, but scope of alarm responsibility is aligned with span of operation (responsibility) but as a team there are “no blind spots” and alarm, situational awareness is escalated based on responsiveness, and situation. Assumption of control, and someone doing something must be removed.

The last statement is very important, when you have a dynamic operational team, you must avoid “blind spots” and if in the above example the responsible worker did not respond to alarm in a given time, or the situation gets worse, the system must escalate automatically to the next level, avoiding un awareness, and managed situation becoming critical.

The other concept introduced two weeks ago was the “assignment of Operation”, it is important due changing situation that operational responsibility of an asset can be changed to a more suited worker. Example above if I knew as the remote worker that I was going to drive to next station and I would lose connectivity I would pass control back to IOC, but I would not leave the current station and connectivity until the IOC “accepted” responsibility, and was aware that they now have responsibility for that area, and the system will expect alerts, alarms to action-ed from the IOC.  

Assignment of operation: an authorized worker must have an easy and reliable means to assign and adjust the spans of operation. 

Again I refer to the diagram below, that of the Flexible Operational team and how they will work together, avoiding “blind spots” and providing team work that will enable the fastest actionable decision and resolution. 

Over the last couple of weeks as I view designs I see people applying traditional thinking, a modern system may be distributed for high availability, and isolation control, but they are still apart of one operational platform. Where operational work, events, and situational awareness of the whole system is managed as a team.

Are you building this into your design?  

Mastering Variety in Industrial Production, Issues a Challenge for Industrial Architectures and Drives the Requirement for Platform Strategies

For many businesses, variety (or choice) is core to the strategy where its effect cascades down to the execution level (as well as upstream in the B2B value chain.) The operational challenge of variety (or variability) is that it can create waste and inhibit velocity. The challenge and opportunity is with companies, especially as they move to unified value chains (multi plant manufacturing). “How do you manage this Variability, so that production consistency, agility and increased production output are achieved?”

“Standardization is not a business goal – it is a means to an end.
The goal of business is to make a profit.”

                                                             - Continuous Improvement Leader

Thus, any standardization effort must distinguish between the different types of variety in a way that maximizes profit without constraining the business strategy. Thus, the business challenge can be summed up (using the Food & Beverage example illustrated on the above) as follows:

• Mastering necessary variety: More brand choices drive the number of order line items (SKUs) and master recipes, which in turn drive the resulting plant-level recipes that must accommodate the variations in process equipment as well as ingredients. This type of variety is necessary and must be mastered in order to survive and succeed against the competition. Other “necessary variability” are material composition variance from different suppliers or regions, raw materials will vary. Location delivery in skus due to language, for example, the same product will have to be delivered to different countries in different language or different quality requirements. All must be mastered to optimized production.

• Accommodating unavoidable variety: Situations like M&A make it difficult to standardize on any single automation vendor, where “rip-and-replace” isn’t economically viable despite engineering’s desire for a more homogeneous environment. The growing one in this area is the “changing workforce” how do have a system that can accommodate a changing, (rotating) workforce while maintaining timely decisions and consistency in actions.

• Eliminating unnecessary variety: Anything other than the above two scenarios would be eligible for standardization.

This challenge is driving companies to adopting “platform strategies” that abstract the variability and can absorb variability while provide a platform of services that enable standards to be built on. Providing the architecture for “sustainable innovation” through managed standards that can evolve over time. The word of standards can be operational models in supervisory for alignment of context and structure, as well as operational actions to guide users through tasks in a consistent way. Also, configuration of control strategies should be over multiple vendors, where common control standards for process can be deployed over multiple controllers but managed in structured way.

Does this mean one platform? NO, not for the industrial landscape different layers of the industrial operations landscape have different roles. Providing different services and different ability to absorb variety, but the common services between these platforms must enable them to “tightly aligned but loosely coupled”.

 As we have pointed out the key to success in this dynamic but changing world is the ability to “Master Necessary Variety” in your business, while “Accommodating Unavoidable Variation”, eliminating all other variation for efficiency.

Food for thought!

"Times are a changing": Re imaging of Our World, it is flow on to Industrial Experience

As I sit on a plane heading over the Pacific again, I look around me and even my life and see how we are re imaging, or changing the way we perform daily activities. The different devices, applications change the way in which we engage with traditional activities.

Example below in the images are real:

Hotel checking happens from the applications on my smart phone instead of registering at the front desk.

In Singapore last month it was was Friday afternoon, I was on the street hoping to get a taxi to airport, initially, you think wave one down. No, not today there must have been 8 of us trying to compete for taxis at peek hour. So out comes the smart device and Über application, and I nominated a price on line for car, happy to pay a little bit more to not miss my flight, and secure a service, a win for me, a win for the driver ( he got a bigger fair).

I travel allot overseas, and I use electronic money/ wallet from my smart device to pay for immediate services when I arrive when credit cards are not available.

All of these are natural approaches to practical day to day actives and there are many more, how many of use the traditional A to Z street maps, does not even exist in the car anymore we have the GPS.

So how is this re imaging coming over into the industrial world, it is happening fast than you expect. The operational day to day life of all of us in the industrial space will be totally different in 5 years, but it has already started. With changes in company IT to enable commercial off the shelf devices into the plants, allows the innovation of industrial world to leverage these devices.

Last week I was working with a supplier with irradiation pivots for farmers. They had empowered the farms to monitor and control the moisture on their fields and control the irrigation pivots from an application on the smart phone. Replacing the need for the SCADA application at each farm, very logical. See image below.

Source "Waterforce"

Alarms and motivations now going to smart device which could be smart phone, of the new smart watches from google see below.

The traditional field worker contacting central controls room by radio, to the empower field agent, who has cameras so that control room can see the field. Plus the field worker has smart devices iPads with context to gain knowledge of current state of an area, plus information at his finger tips instead of going back to the workshop.Also best operational practices have been embedded in the field device so he knows not just the decision but the best action, and how to execute.

Training use to be going around with an experienced worker and learning from him, taking notes and taking time to come to experience. This being replace with operator training simulators, and immersive, 3D virtual environments as seen below. So now in a safe environment operators and field workers can go through scenarios, learn practices without having people in the field in danger and provide "near life experience". Much more effective than in the plant, and faster as situations can be played out, so experience is gain rapidly.

Nothing new to pilots, for years with the effect that situations the pilot and co pilot understand their role, and actions instinctively. Example the Hudson River landing 3 minutes the pilot and co pilot understood roles, understood actions. They did not have communicate hey just executed; this same approach needs to happen between the operator and field worker and even the virtual expert, and it is all possible today.

This re imaging of the industrial operational, worker day is happening with increasing speed but with it comes efficiency and empowerment, all key in agile world, and time of operational transformation.

The Steps on the Operational Journey from Siloed to Optimized to achieve Operational Excellence

We have all seen the debate on how do we go from todays manufacturing to an effective operational landscape, across the full valued supply chain. The increased urgency of this debate has become  recent discussions, I have with different companies; people are trying understand how they going stay competitive delivering the correct products, to the correct markets, locations, in the correct time, at the correct price and margin. All this with increasing costs in labor, energy, transport and regulation compliance.  

The common thread across the discussions was:

·         Real time transparency across all sites, and “cogs” in the supply chain.

·         Shift from “traditional reporting” to “actionable decisions”

·         Shift from operators to “Operational Teams” that align operations, planning and expertise

·         Shift from Siloed process on a plant or across plants to optimized and aligned.

·         Shift from experience in people to experience in the system

·         Alignment and consistency across the operational decisions and action for a product no matter location. 

Providing the foundation for optimizing and continuous improvement, not just of assets but process, assets, product production, and workforce.

The diagram below shows the journey from a high level, often ask where companies are? Through the lenses of product delivery. 

The road to coordinated has been a journey for the last 12 years with the ISA 95, and interoperability efforts, but still I see multiple systems, multiple business systems, even of the same type, and limited alignment of business strategy across multiple sites at the operational level. What we seeing from leaders is a simplification of operational processes, reduction in variety and uniqueness across process units and plants. How many times do we here “my plant is unique” this cannot apply when each plant is manufacturing the same product. Yes, the plants are different; the layout is different, the equipment is from different vendors, different times, different control systems, but we must harmonize above that.

I spoke last week of “Industrial Internet of Things”  a big part of success of this concept, is that different equipment, from different vendors, become smart, and enabled. You as the operational plant will be able to coordinate (input control strategies) across multiple control devices, (RTUs, Smart instruments, PLCs, DCS, etc.). However, the operational practices and how people interact with these devices will become abstracted from the devices. This must happen, to deal with the changing workforce.

Another  concept will be the “smart product” that is aware of its state, it is requirement/ expectations, and can advise of product health early in the “to be state,” Yes products will a smart thing, this is already happening.

However, what are steps to Optimized you see the above, but I like this diagram below with seven steps. A critical point is that a plant, a value supply chain must get complete step 4, to have a foundation towards optimization.

Companies have been working steps 1, 2 foundation of integrated plant, which is scalable, and evolutionary, so different components can be upgraded, evolved as they need, but the overall system stays aligned and working. Transparency through common measures and models so “trusted real-time information” from sites can be seen.

However, step 3 is the one most companies have not added as it deals with human assets, but is key, and then shift in step 4 to “activities” and tasks so different users will execute “activities.” At this point you are at point where Capital assets and Human assets and acting in a consistent way, and with measurable information.

Providing the opportunity to start quantitatively measuring operational process, productivity across the sites, understand the effectiveness of the different “activities.” So that now core standards for asset measurement, information, and activity/ actions can establish by process and product no matter the assets, controllers, etc. These can rolled out in a module methodology to allow an instrumental evolution, avoid the big bang of a large operational management project, but bring valuable “wins” to the company. 

At this point the experts in process, maintenance, operational planning can see understand, quantitatively measure process and operational procedure and evolve tuning for operational excellence.

Where are you on this journey? Break it down in small steps with tangible wins on a coordinated journey.

Operational Work, Accountability, and the evolution to Activity Design is Fundamental

As I toured customers in North America, Australia and Middle East over the last month, the discussions around operational / supervisory/ automation design have come up. Over and over again the core theme becomes evident that of "activities/tasks" become a core to design vs. the stations and interfaces.

One customer broke their plant up into logical operational/process cells, and then defined not the User Interfaces, and interfaces but the "actions, decisions " that need to be made to operational and manage these cells. The commentary was different from the old days where they would have defined the user interface (HMI, DCS workstation) now they were think "tasks". They believed that they would have "universal" stations on plant floors that could access all "tasks" so roaming people could just go to the closest station to take action, after being notified on their mobile device.

They had made a decision that they did not want control actions to take place from a mobile device, but all information relative to the situation and "task/ activity" can be seen on a mobile device, this is a fair decision.

The clear thinking in the design is that

1.  No longer is control only local, they have a central control, and roaming workers which all need to see situation and act on " tasks/ activities"
2. That their operational differentiation in the market is down to their operational processes/ procedures not technology or User Interface.
3. That these Operational procedures that make up these " tasks/activities" will evolve, and you are not certain who person, role, device, or location this " task/ activity" will be acted upon.

It was good to see the logical, free thinking, and we were able then to go into the design of what makes up an "activity/task." With the key elements being

1. trigger condition
2. notification, including escalation to relevant team through the activity lifetime
3. decision support information
4. relevant action operational procedure to resolve which could go across multiple people based upon the Resolution Path.

The diagram below shows the seven detail core elements, key is dealing with "emergent work" vs "planned work".

The other point that came up in the discussions was "accountability" so that actions and who owns the decision and action is clear eliminating confusion. " Governance" of the procedure so that it can evolve and managed over time so that it can be tuned, evolved in value over time.

It was good to see a shift in design thinking, but it was clear these are thought leaders, most people in the forums were still traditional approach, yet they talked about the changing workforce. I wonder how you can design a system based upon HMIs and workstations based on location, vs. the "activity" approach when the world will operationally evolve and the concept " operational flexible teams " come into play.

The competitive advantage is based on how fast decisions are made and acted upon, how agile the operational processes and procedures can be evolved, and how effective companies leverage their fixed production assets, and their human operational assets.

Personality, Patterns, and Principles are key Pillars to User Interface and User Experience

I was watching a Microsoft session on user interface, and they spelled out the concept of the “3 Ps” in their design. I thought it would be effective to pass it on with commentary:

Personality: the visual interactive design

Patterns: Common interface patterns

Principles: the guidelines by which you set out UIs e.g. colors, fonts etc.

The three Ps we overlook in defining the report, the dashboard or user interface in the industrial world, the three Ps are not new, many of applying them without realizing.

Personality: This is a way in which the user interface interacts with the role and user, which requires the designer to define the targeted user, and make sure they understand the experience effective experience, knowledge and activities the role has. If you take the “activities" approach again understand the expect interaction, to create efficient decisions and actions, so that the system is intuitive. This means in different cultures based on regions the personality may change, certainly the personality between a dashboard for a maintenance engineer vs. production management is very different relative interaction. In 2014, the explosion of mobile applications for different "activities" /"roles" will occur instead of generic applications for the industrial market. This does not mean generic is wrong, but I firmly believe that if there is a choice between a specific application for an activity vs. a generic the specific will chosen as it will have the personality to suite the effective execution of that "activity".

Patterns: The user interface patterns are also key, to make the experience intuitive and familiar the layout, arrangement patterns need to be set out. Even though the actions maybe different the navigation, experience of where and how to find or execute something should not take learning when swap pining between different activities. These patterns should go across roles and “activities".

Principles: This again is key for familiar and consistent experience. Guidelines for use of color, fonts, backgrounds etc. are, and important comfort factor as the user enters and works with the system.

With so many different user experiences the knowledge worker interacts with today from reports, dashboards to interactive screens across desktops, pads, to mobile to notifications and video. All designed by different content developers and made available to knowledge worker community of the company. Increasingly the content developer will not know the content consumer other than by “activity" and role, as the host for the content will be user interface hosting frameworks (example the portal) that host, layout and enable navigation of content that is created elsewhere. So a piece of content for activity could be hosted in a desktop, then a PDA, then a web applicant all the same time, with the user traversing between "at will". To achieve a smooth, effective transition the 3 Ps in user experience for content design are key, far more important than in the last 20 years. Combine this with the dynamic nature of the workforce community initiative, familiar experiences will a pillar for competitive advantage. It is important that these standards can be managed, and evolved, we are investing alot in tools to make this managed easier and effective.

Collaborative Manufacturing is Becoming a Reality

The concept of Collaborative Manufacturing has been attempted in the past and successfully with Toyota and others but the time has come for a change that will enable an ecosystem of small agile manufacturers to form a “product value chain”. So lets start with what is Collaborative Manufacturing:

In Collaborative Manufacturing, designated individuals and organizations – both internal to a manufacturing enterprise and extended to its suppliers, customers, and partners – work together for mutual gain. The objectives of Collaborative Manufacturing are to streamline end-to-end business and supply chain processes and provide a more comprehensive and

accurate information base from which to make decisions.

Collaborative Manufacturing allows multiple groups to act together as they set plans and policy, agree to actions, and execute operations. Collaborative Manufacturing can boost responsiveness, agility, and customer-centricity. It also fosters the most cost-effective methods to design, source, make, deliver, and service standard, mass-customized or to-order products.

An effective Collaborative Manufacturing strategy requires business processes to include more inputs and interactions than most traditional processes. To support Collaborative Manufacturing, information systems must integrate and aggregate information from across the manufacturing business and from its suppliers, trading partners, and customers. It must also provide the means to intelligently distribute that information across various business entities.

So why now what is different?

Key to me is that fact that small enterprises can now leverage “Managed service” in the cloud that deliver the rich operational business capability of inventory management, operational process and manufacturing, and specification management which was only available to much larger companies. Now an end to end product chain can be developed with aligned a process and enable a product manufacturer to divided up over multiple operations, each operation executed by a small manufacturing entity.

The transparency of the product manufacturer across the sites all using “managed services “ in the cloud for ERP/ Order fulfillment, and MES operations / quality etc., provides the visibility to enable this agility. Effectively one Product Manufacturing chain (route) is been executed updated on a particular site as the product moves through, transport, assemble are also managed in this higher MES.

Yes, it will require a new thinking and alliance of small businesses but the value on agility and cost and the ability to scale provides a real opportunity for a new manufacturer and deliver model to take on the larger companies.  

To maintain a competitive edge, manufacturers must make a major shift in strategy to effectively synchronize activities among functionally and geographically dispersed groups. Those with whom they need to collaborate include:

• customers and, in some cases, their customer’s customers;

• distributors and channel partners;

• materials and sub-product suppliers;

• outsourced or contract manufacturers;

• logistics partners for distribution, warehousing, and transportation;

• providers of services such as legal and regulatory advice;

• multiple departments and divisions within their own company and with any of those entities described above.

A Collaborative Manufacturing strategy can help a company maximizes the effectiveness of its value chain in order to better control profits and address changing market demands.

Is this real, my answer is yes, I was on a plane last week, and two fellow travelers talked about the alliance and the seeking out others to make this ecosystem, combined with the agility of 3D printing, and then assemble these two expected to grow and had a good pipeline due to satisfy the “pay on delivery, with small order sizes” also the ability to have local final assembly close to distribution centers and significant retailers make them more desirable to occupy the “shelf space”. Both agree the reality is only now that the tracking and management are common across the plants in a hosted “managed service”.

Food for thought! 

Focus on "Roles being more effective" provides a potential path forward towards 2020!!

Last week I was engaged with a number major customers, in different industries, all looking at the future, and determining the next approach, and talking technologies and how to apply them. The companies have invested and executed on the tradition alignment in a plant across process systems, and also evolved their SAP business system. What concerned me was the throwing of technologies around like cloud, wireless, and mobile, and looking for how, instead of stepping back and looking at what are they trying to achieve, and then applying technologies to that plan.

It is important to note that, in both cases, their automation layer is mature and well established and that their business side is also well thought through and well on the way to being established on the second generation business system.

Again the opportunity of significant improvement and gain in operational efficiency is at the operational layer across multiple facilities. Again the role of people and enabling decisions in real-time are key but not just decisions but a consistency in action in the operational control loop.

The question of where to start came up, and through the discussion the opportunity of stepping back and taking a look at the roles that an operational plant will require from the roles in 2020 to execute. These roles could be on site or off site, through the concept of the “flexible operational team”. Define the role, the day in the life of that role taking into account location, what decisions and actions that role is responsible for and who and what he will interact with through the day. Yes, switch into a “Facebook” thinking of friends, but friends maybe people, (other experts) Assets, Processes, even products. Once this map of a decisions and responsibilities during the day is defined, this drives what information, systems and people this role must interact with in a day. It will also determine what operational procedures (Operational Activities) the role will potentially engage.

This role map is key as now you have a starting point, as to driving consistency in a dynamically changing workforce. Combining these role map, composed of “operational activities” associated with the role, where the activity has the required notification, information, actions, community of expertise etc. and architectural landscape so these “operational activities” can compliment existing systems.

The architectural landscape should define the layers on top of existing systems, in a neutral way, where these operational activities (model driven approach) will reside, these could be local or remote hosting but will require clear governance and require models to defined in an environment that enables constant evolution of the practices but process experts locally and centrally as a “crowd development”, with governance control.

This focus on a role or set of key roles allows the company to focus on how the operational plant will run in 2020 and the key decisions that required, and start applying these now in an architecture that lives with the current systems, but starts to drive consistency and faster decisions across that same role over multiple plants. Notice I have not talked technologies, my assumption on mobile and cloud that the architecture is set up so these activities will be able to execute independently of the device, so the adoption of what devices are used on a plant are relative to plant and support they get, key is the devices no matter if desktop or mobile or web should be suited to efficiency of the role execution.

The clear opportunity is the linking of smart/ intelligent assets to people, and optimized process, and this is the essence of distributed industrial systems of the future on which “Internet of things’ / “Industrial internet” and the “third Industrial Revolution” are based. Key not getting overwhelmed with technology (it is here) it is the “job” or operational improvement that is the opportunity, and how to achieve this. A good starting point is understanding and achieving consistency in the key roles in the future vs the dynamically evolving workforce.

Key Operational Challengers of the next 10 years: New Product Introduction, Agility to Change, and Operational Effectiveness with a transforming workforce.

Sitting at dinner with three end users who own strategy, we had a stimulating discussion on the key design parameters or drivers for operational/ automation systems over the next 10 years. Key was the high level operational drivers not the technical hurdles that they are facing as these are just constraints that designs and new practices must absorb. One End users from Water utilities industry, food manufacturing, other from mining. The surprising part was that within 15 minutes we had narrowed the drivers to three key items:

Agility to adjust to market conditions and change:

The clear common requirement was the end to end operational alignment, understanding across the value chain. This holistic operational control, was a significant change in all three industries the sites had run with independence, in all cases the expectation was that site / regional uniqueness will be maintained but now alignment and traceability of action, product across the total value chain, e.g.| multiple assets/sites. A fascinating discussion here was both water and food talked that they expect this end to end to include outsourced assets that make up the chain, and effect the quality of the product or service that their brand is delivering. This is why it is the ability to federate assets and systems while still allowing site uniqueness is key. The inclusion of non company assets in the value chain and requiring operational traceability, accountability and agility to change are just around the corner.

 

The operational workforce transformation operational role retention / rotation: The impact of the operational culture, approach with gen Y and more holistic operations. These  have covered extensively in the blogs, but is the area both of my dinner companions spent over 50% of dinner time. The key areas are

·       The knowledge transfer from the retiring generation and how is the captured.

·      The highest critical concern is the fact they are already seeing people in roles for much less time, and this is across the operational roles. So the issue is how to embedded and design the experiences to enable to become effective dramatically faster, e.g.| 20% of the time today. Our conversation went away from industrial operational systems, to commercial systems, such as Facebook, banks, mobile phone applications. The key here is these applications are being delivered to market without having to train the users, they have intuitive experience that leads users through the steps. Agreement that this is a paradigm shift in operational design, from today's approach where user interface is thought of well after the control, and we have engineers who are not human in factor people, designing the systems. All attendees said we need to continue this discussion, as this is not just control rooms, but reports, and information etc. 

New Product Introduction: The life time of products and services is dramatically reducing, and the companies stated that seem to have ever change and introduction of new products and services. The move is to individual products and services for each consumer. How do we introduce, absorb these new products and services to the operational systems that will deliver them in a timely manner without significant error.

This could be considered agility, but both wanted this pointed out separately as it is a real dynamic that effecting them, vs the infrastructure and assets that are also changing and must absorb agility of change. An intriguing point here was that they commented that operational system and automation system absorb new product introductions without change, but all commented on the challenge of new assets with existing systems requiring federation into the system, and how do introduce new products procedures to operational staff. So the discussion for new product introduction was not just for systems, but also for people to execute, how can they take the new product from the PLM system, and deliver the control, and instructions, across many sites with different systems, and different cultures.  

Are these three points new no, but the fact that 3 decidedly different thought leaders from three different industries rapidly agreed on these as operational drivers, combining this with the fact that each point effects the others. The eventual take away was they were being asked to deliver one operational ecosystem to run the end to end product production over multiple assets with operational consistency. While 3 dynamics constantly change, the value assets / plants are added and taken away, new products and services are added at an ever increasing rate, while the operational workforce is becoming dynamic with a culture of evolution of the role and job, and people will not be in a role longer than 2 years.

What and exciting time we live in!!!