What kind of a “driver” should the front-line worker be in the factory of the future?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and it is valid question. With the change roles, changing scopes of responsibility, and changing demographic / way of working, certainly the generic roles of the past 20 years will not work.

But getting back to the “driver” type of the future no matter role. So many people say why not eliminate drivers and humans all together, nothing new this is “lights out manufacturing” but is it practical. I believe not and the reason is the demanding world of today which demands change. 

Certainly where we have consistent planned know execution automation makes the whole sense, but :

•         our product run sizes are reducing
•          product change overs are increasing
•          new product introduction is increasing
•          Agility is key

The ability to absorb and handle change in operations, products and personal is becoming foundational in our operational system of the future.

The above diagram shows the two sides of the thinking, but the key is you have change on the left, and in the pilot actually  is a combination of “automated and human” capability to provide the effectiveness. Most of the flying activities are automated, freeing up the pilot to work the strategy and situation to apply quick, situation-ally aware actions to control to combat the situation.

In manufacturing our productivity has been increasing significantly as seen below, for a period it tracked human compensation, but in 70’s this changed and productivity continue to rise, but not compensation. You might ask "as what do you mean" this curve is relative to team / role, what has happened in the 70s to 2000s we have increased automation, and increased the scope and work a worker covers for the same compensation. 

But this is going to take another step as the low hanging fruits have been taken, with DCS, robotics and PLCs etc. Now how can you increase alignment and decisions so you achieve that level 5 of automation levels that of “Manage by Exception”. This will require a new level of embedded knowledge, community collaboration, and augmented human interpretation.

Standby as we transition the “Driver” from Semi Manual to an Augmented Pilot, where we can easily move "pilots" between plans (plants) and not loose efficiency, and agility to absorb/ combat change! 

Achieving Consistent and Right Results in an Agile World

As Sunday draws to a close, I sit out looking over to pacific the waves crash, and birds fly, it is my time of reflection.

Last week I talked about some of the observations from the last month on the road. But this week I debated with a number of thought leaders and we all aligned on the challenge of a dynamic workforce, and dynamic operational/ business environment, means that chance of “Lights out Manufacturing “ are slim.

One company I was engaged with last week their thought pattern was still about replacing the personal on the plant, going to total automation. While I agree with automation, it is required for consistently and velocity of production. But I struggle with agility.

Two days latter I was at another company and they were all about empowerment of people, they wanted to automate process, and operations to free up people to add complimentary agility and “out of the box” thinking.  As one C level said to me, our market is changing as fast as we ever seen, and

Stepping back and looking at both these companies the second company was more automated than the first and the second was investing in automation more than the first. But their attitude was to gain consistently and free up people from repeatable tasks, and increase the responsibility of people, and empower people to make decisions fast.  

The diagram below really depicts what I started to introduce last week, and what this second company believed in.

That they needed to design their systems and people to play “natively in the dynamic world”, and they have realized that “embedded Intelligence and knowledge” will be key and must grow proportionally with increasing data. They also realized that with agility comes the changing operational environment and situations which will require “augmented intelligence” with the human brain can work out. The key thinkers in the industry are not looking to dependency on 1 to 2 people, they are leveraging the concept of “crowd sourcing” thru a active community of people. As we look at the operational/ automation world of the future the key pillars will be:

•     Ability to capture knowledge and intelligence into the system to automate process, and operations. Key is this is not just traditional automation in PLCs/ DCS etc, it is capturing repeatable knowledge and decisions. So the system must bread a culture of contribution and use natively.
•    Ability to have a community of workers who can share collaborated “naturally” with ease, no matter the location of the users and state. Foundational to this is  the ability trust the information, the measures so a common understanding of the situation, and basis for decision can be made.

Leading to natural decisions, and action paradigm across the team as seen below. I will expand on this more next week.

On the Road Discovering and Listening: Again Operational Work Transformation Leads the change

Sorry, I have not been home for a month, and need to just listen to what people are trying to do, explore new opportunities.
While I found many new thought leaders, and opportunities, when you investigated the core goal, outcome of the project or theme of the people it was a "CHANGE IN WORK EXECUTION".

Much of what I have written about over the last year came up over and over again. Very few people articulated the project as a transformation in the way they work, but when you applied "Outcome Driven Innovation techniques" it was clear two things where happening:

• They wanted to execute a "functional job" faster and more consistently now moving to that job decision and action been taken by a community / circle of people.
• 
  
• They expected more jobs to executed by the same team, and in the same period, this aligned with the increased responsibility that operational teams where taking on.

Again the driving strategies and challengers people where seeing are:

•  Transparency with trust to see/ understand the current situation of the operational landscape across sites as if one operational plain. Note the word trust, this particularly was on data and information, moving away from local excel, or reports to trusted data that is in context and validated.
• 
  
• Embedded Experience/ knowledge to enable faster decisions but more importantly consistent actions across a changing demographic of workforce.

But an interesting point came up a couple of weeks ago in discussion or capturing knowledge, one group made clear that "embedding experience and knowledge into the system was the ultimate goal" but that this was not reality, and that Augmented Experience will come from a combination :

• Embedded knowledge and experience, but it was clear that this was not just a system, but the culture of workers contributing in context regularly is a major step in the knowledge journey for companies.
• But also a "community of experts, contributors" who can be tapped into in real time. They are able to see the situation in real-time, in context and with trust on what they seeing, and can then apply their own experience to enabling the decision. This again needs new thinking in how to enable, and culture to work in teams.

While this is not new to this blog it was good to continue to validate as I traveled, driving the energy needed to create potential solutions for this space.  
  

Operations Innovation & Transformation – Fleet Management

We saw the expansion of control system, operation system extending beyond the fall walls of plant(fixed plant), in mining, oil and Gas, and Food and Beverage, and a month into this year we have this trend growing. The challenge being placed is how can we bring, apply the same approach found on fixed plant to fleet, or mobile plant. This blog takes a look at the network of fleet management across plants, next week we need to move to mobile plant.

  

The 4 quadrants described in the article “Operations Innovation & Transformation – the 4 Types” positions the lower left quadrant as a strategy for using a “fleet” of physical assets in a new way.

In this quadrant, a group of similar industrial operations (2 or more) adapt their performance objectives, business processes and accompanying hiring and information strategies to optimize the “fleet”.  The move is to unifying the industrial enterprise over multiple sites (in groups or as a whole), with a more holistic view in terms of operating strategy and performance management.

This innovation can be limited by the distribution flexibility among the locations, but several corporations have achieved success with this.  One example is keeping most of the locations operating at a constant or “base” portion of the combined market demand, and using the more agile locations to deliver the “swing” or variable portion of the demand.  Another example is allowing all locations to serve their local markets without contribution from any other of the “fleet”, but they all adapt their operations to meet a shared performance objective, such as yield or efficiency.

A key method used to sustain this strategy is the increased automation of work.  This is a significant step beyond scorecards, dashboards or rigid workflows.  The following 2 examples show how real-time performance measures (different from traditional KPI’s) and proactive procedural automation sustain this differentiation:

•  A “fleet” of similar industrial operations have some distribution flexibility so that they can deliver a portion of each other’s market demand.  Each operation delivery point and each operating shift for that segment are benchmarked with the others, and all delivery points and their shift performance carry a real-time performance score.  Some delivery points are more agile, and some operator shifts have fewer errors than others (quality, over/under delivering, reworks).

Coordinators (different industries have different names for this function) use workflows to negotiate upcoming changes in demand and the operating shift and the coordinators use the same visual demand, using a “tram line” display.  Information to the right of the center dashed line is forecast and planned.

•          A “fleet” of similar industrial operations within a single location or nearby locations has distribution flexibility, but they only share in real-time benchmarking (such as efficiency) and online performance guidance.  The following is an example when all physical assets are used, with equal output at this point in time:

• All of the physical assets share real-time benchmarking performance on efficiency and availability.  Now consider what can happen differently when supply or demand changes suddenly, such as an unplanned outage within the industrial operation or within a client’s operation:

In the left-hand diagram, losing capacity can cause all of the “fleet” to shut down, if fast and accurate guidance isn’t available and used to either import capacity (if feasible) or negotiate reductions in demand with one or more of the customers.

In the right-hand diagram, a client’s unplanned outage causes some or all of the “fleet” to operate in zones which might be unstable and trigger unplanned outages, if fast and accurate guidance isn’t available and used to either shut down one of the physical assets or export some of the product (at a discounted price).

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. 

Forecasting and Predicting, Must be a Cornerstone of the Modern Operational System

For the last couple of weeks Stan and I have been working with a number of leading companies in Oil and Gas, Mining, and F & B around their Operational Landscape or experience of the future.

Too often the conversations start off from a technology point, and we spend the initial couple of days trying to swing the conversation to the way in which they need to operate in the future and what their plans are around operations.

It becomes clear very quickly that there is allot of good intent, but real thought into how they need to operate in order to meet production expectations both in products and margin has not been worked through.

Over and over again we see the need for faster decisions, in a changing agile world, and this requires an "understanding of the future" this maybe only 1/2 hour. The time span of future required for decisions depends on role, (same as history) but it is clear that modeling of future is not just something for the planner, it is will become a native part of all operational systems.

This blog from Stan captures some of the necessary concepts.

  

Operations management systems must deliver better orientation than traditional reporting or decision support systems.  One important aspect of operations is the dynamic nature – there will be a journey of changing schedules, changing raw material capabilities, changing product requirements and changing equipment or process capabilities.

It might be helpful to consider desired and undesired conditions, using the analogy of driving a car on a long trip.  The planned route has turns, and it may involve traffic jams, detours, poor visibility due to heavy rain or fog; the driver and the car must stop periodically; and the driver may receive a telephone call to modify the route.  The following diagram is a sketch which displays how an integrated view might appear:

In the above example, the actual performance is at the upper limit for the target, and the scheduled target and constraints will shift upward in the near future.  The constraint is currently much higher than the scheduled target limits, but it is forecast-ed to change so that in some conditions in the future, the constraint will not allow some ranges of targets and limits.  This simple view shows a single operations measure with its associated constraints and target.

• At this stage, we propose a definition of “forecasting”: a future trend which is a series of pairs of information, where the pairs include a value and a time.  The accuracy of the values will be poorer as the time increases, but the direction of the trend (trending down or up, or cycling) and the values in the near future are sufficiently useful.
• In contrast, “predicting” is an estimate that a recognized event will likely happen in the future, but the timing is uncertain.  This is useful for understanding “imminent” failures.

The following diagram shows an example of estimating the probabilities of 5 failure categories, where the first (rotor thermal expansion) is the most likely.

Given these two definitions, it is helpful to consider industrial equipment behaviors.

• Several types of equipment, especially fixed equipment such as heat exchangers, chillers, fired heaters etc. exhibit a gradual reduction in efficiency or capacity, or exhibit varying capability depending upon ambient temperature and the temperature of the heat transfer fluid (e.g. steam, hot oil, chilled water).  While the performance is changing, the equipment hasn’t failed, although its performance might reach a level which justifies an overhaul.  In extreme cases, sudden failures can occur, such as tube rupture or complete blockage.  These benefit from “forecasting”.
• Other types of equipment, such as agitators, pumps, turbines, compressors etc. exhibit sudden failures.  These benefit from “predicting”.

One analogy of incorporating both “forecasting” and “predicting” is that it is like driving a car without looking forward through the windshield/windscreen, such as shown in the following sketch:

In the above sketch, the road behind the car is clear, but ahead, a potential collision will occur.  High-performance operations requires that teams prevent unplanned shutdowns or other events.

Help Operators move from “Coping” to beyond “Optimizing”

This is a great blog from Stan DeVries, really opening some of the challenge thinking.

"A recent meeting with a customer discussed the best practices for centralized control rooms and integrated operations centers.  They summarized 4 levels of operator performance:

•         Coping
•          Aligning
•          Optimizing
•          Stretching

While the focus of the meeting was on optimizing, the customer pointed out that we must enable the newer operators who begin by “coping”.  It is worthwhile to consider the differences between these 4 levels:

•         Coping requires high concentration on operations activity and events, where the operator has little flexibility to adapt to teamwork with other operators.  The operator has been qualified to work in a centralized control room or integrated operations center, but they have difficulty to maintain pace.
•   Aligning requires moderate concentration, where the operator can safely and reliably adapt to most of the teamwork activity, but reaching team targets is still difficult, such as value chain efficiency or throughput.
•   Optimizing requires a different type of concentration, where the operator has learned how to cope and how to align, but now the operator focuses on achieving the team targets, and the targets change periodically – in some industries (e.g. power generation and natural gas liquids processing) the targets change every 15 minutes.
•   Stretching is achieved by “error free” operators who have learned how to beat the optimization targets.

The key question is how can operators achieve and sustain best performance?  A quick answer is more training, but too often the training paradigm isn’t adequate.  Best practices have shown that the effective method is treating the targets like a game, and applying newer visualization to support it.  Before we look at any example of a “game” or possible visualization, we need to consider the innovation in the training approach:

•          Training becomes holistic – the students learn about how to perform in team settings
•          Training moves beyond the classroom – classroom training is essential, but structured on-         the-job training becomes very important
•          Operator performance becomes less “private” – team performance is visible and shared.

So what can the new training experience feel like?  Consider an example which has been published in regional industry conferences, where the initial focus was optimizing energy across multiple sites and all operating shifts:

The dark blue diamonds is hourly efficiency performance over a wide range of throughput, across all sites and all shifts.  The magenta squares are the result of one month of teamwork, and the yellow triangles are the results after two months.  Please observe a few key characteristics of this experience:

• Very dynamic operating conditions
• “Blind” presentation – operator names are not shown
• Graphical context – instead of bar or gauge displays, operators see how their performance compares with others.

The operator is given other detailed displays both during training and for normal operation, but the exercise is focused on teamwork.  Consider the significant improvement in the above displays."

Operational Innovation !! Technology is here but Culture Needs to Evolve!

“Operational Innovation” is a hidden objective of many companies, even if they do not know it, again this came home last week. Why is it hidden because it is not natural for innovation to driven from all parts of the business, companies have a habit of centralizing it? Actually we can all contribute to innovational improvement to the way to take on, execute our “jobs to be done” during the day.

There is always ways to improve, but the key item I see being missed is the “culture not just innovates, and try”, but capture this and embed it. Innovation is about lifting constraints of risk to enabling trying to change items with improvements, yes this means making “failure” as a success measure. When I say failure people look at me twice in the industrial space. But I am talking constructive failure e.g. freeing people up with an environment where they can try new ideas on improving their job, and this experiment/ trial is done in a safe none intrusive environment into the plants operations. But the user is able to allocate time, and feels empowered to come up with ideas, and try them. Once the improvement is validated and tested, the ability capture this and embed it for consistency across plants and teams.

This is a step change in thinking in the manufacturing environment but the technologies exist today to embed operational processes (which is where there is huge opportunity to reduce variance across plants and teams). Example is the ability to put a simulator/ operator training system in place, as not just a trainer but as a bigger opportunity as environment to enable operational workers to go in a test a new idea, it is real, but a safe environment and measured improvement can recorded. I have seen one company use it with two or 3 of their best operators to put them through the same situation and capture the workflow/ process they took to resolve the situation, and then look to come up with an embedded process which they will put back into their system.

This is similar to what happened on Apollo 13 where they used the simulator to test the start up sequence over and over again until they go it correct, it formed an operational process. What we saying today and you can see in the diagram below the significant value increases in operational improvement come from enabling all people to innovate and contribute and feel like they can contribute in a constructive way. By embedding the process you are moving to a sustainable process, that is model driven.

You will hear many of us in Schneider- Electric  talk about Dynamic Performance Measures , with a context measure and the supporting actions to take that activity to success. Providing the approach for measuring in context, while aligning across roles to strategy, understanding how well am I doing to strategy.

The key learning I hearing around the world is that in the industrial space people and culture is not aligned with innovation, it is about insurance, why not look at the opportunity through safe environments and constructive safe trailing. Yes this is change but the results are proven and ability to improve.

How can we build a culture of innovation not just in technology and product development, but in "Operational Execution" that can harnessed , proven and rolled out across sites. It starts with culture and environment that allows operational innovation, testing, failing and capturing.

What are the hurdles to Real-Time Operational Excellence?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can we achieve the last mile of operational Excellence without IOT?

This question was posed to me last week, and it is a good one. The critical items is to understand what is operational excellence is trying to achieve to realized that it is journey and moving goal of effectiveness pushed by the market and technology. Like when you are riding a wave, you staying in front, and leveraging the wave to excel, otherwise it swallows you up.

Operational excellence is about:

• Agility to deliver products/ services to Customer/ market at the correct price, time and location
• The ability to rapidly introduce new innovation value to lead the market and open new markets
• The ability to enable sustainable innovation and value through effectively leveraging people, and technology.

The diagram below illustrates this, and I am sure some people will have different angles, but it is about leading the competitive edge.

But can you achieve this with the traditional approaches? I believe you can get to 60/ 70 % of the way with traditional approaches and current technologies, but that last mile needs a paradigm shift in “actionable decisions”. Agility requires timely decisions across a team, and consistency and timely actions associated with the decision across teams, roles etc.

A core concept of Internet of Things (IoT) is teams of things (devices, and people) interacting in an orchestrated manner to achieve an operational timely result. With devices being more “self-aware”, empowered to take actions, interacting with workers or other devices to move “work “to the next step.

This foundation of IoT and the orchestration of devices /people, timely knowledge, provides that much needed paradigm shift to enable that last mile on the above operational excellence journey. The constant discovery of new capabilities, and knowledge through big data techniques, the ever increasing lake of embedded knowledge lends it as the basis for companies to go on this Operational excellence journey, but with this is the required cultural evolution to continuous improvement and knowledge/ wisdom.

                                       Source ARC

The above IOT maturity model matches to Operational Excellence journey, especially on the stages of “smart, and autonomous” linking to the Operational Excellence stages of “Driving Business and Driving the Market”). Foundational to Operational Excellence is timely knowledge and procedures being delivered so actionable decisions can be taken in a consistent manner across plants, assets and people. The IoT principles provides the opportunity to deliver this knowledge, while abstracting the variability in plant, assets and experience levels of people.

To me the desire and programs being enabled at companies to take them down the operational excellence journey provides the cultural evolution needed combined with IoT to succeed and make IoT effective not just from technology but most of all business side

Why this time round the Smart Strategies (plants, airports etc.) have a chance to succeed!

Too often as a technologist and presenter of where operational systems are going, people come up to me afterwards and ask are you grounded? We have seen people talk about Intelligent, smart manufacturing strategies before but they have failed.

Yes we have had a number of significant attempts with technology and “lights out manufacturing” and various levels of MES/ operational systems, including the rollout of significant ERP programs. But there are some key walk away learnings. 20 / 20 vision is a good reflection:

Since 1995, projects have failed because:

• They started as technology projects
• They were implemented as technology roadmaps
•  Insufficient organization change management
•  Insufficient innovation
• Insufficient integration of people, process, strategy and technology
•  Innovation fatigue

The key with above observation is that too often these programs have been lead from within and based upon applying a technology, expecting the technology to transform the company. The technology goes in often not driven from operations but from automation engineering, or IT, and really it does not have buy in from the plant or “edge” operational people.

Since 1995, projects have succeeded because:

• They started as work transformation projects
• They were implemented as holistic combinations of people, process, strategy and technology
• Senior management actively sponsors the “new way of doing work”
• The Covey “high performing organization” based on their “4 disciplines of execution” are applied

The success of these programs is that they “operational improvement/ transformation driven” but leverage the latest technologies and processes to implement. With this comes the cultural evolution, the buy in from all levels especially “edge operational workers”. There are clear “wild” goals on a direction improvement, and measures put in place to make sure the direction is moving correctly. These are also not projects they are recognized as programs and journeys where assessment, tuning and cultural shift must happen.

 Is there a “silver Bullet” of technology that will take you through this transformation, I say NO, but due to many “planets lining up at the moment” around operational agility, the flat world and transformation of both the workforce and workspace. The operational transformation journey companies are on is been driven by operational requirement to change, and everyone recognizes this, and there are significant technologies with mobility, IOT, and cloud that enable different architectures and solutions to generated faster and aligned.

It is an exciting time of transformation, but always understand why you doing something, and you understand the measures to make sure you are on the correct path. 

Managing Variation is Corner Stone of Operational Growth but Requirements Platforms

I wrote about this 2 months ago, but seem to have spent the last two weeks talking and working through this “managing of Variability/ variation” as key. Too many people said that you are forcing standards, but these only come once you have a platform of abstraction on top of variation you want manage or accommodate.

 “How do you manage this Variability, so that production consistency, agility and increased production output are achieved?”   While the concept of everything being a standard would be great, it is not practical and there are variability’s that we must “manage” and others we must “accommodate”.

 “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 mining example illustrated in the above) as follows:

1. Mastering necessary variety: When running a mine or plant, such things as Ore Body quality (raw material quality) that varies not according to the ideal plan. Breakdowns of equipment, weather like hurricanes/ cyclones disrupt ports and operations, tides effect ships coming into ports. These are “necessary variability” that all must be “mastered” to optimize production, operations, and you need to put systems in that allow you change plans and strategies as required. I had one workshop last week where the team was looking at long term strategies in the traditional sense. They had not adjusted their thinking to a long term strategy now has to make of shorter operational plans that can be adjusted in “near real-time” due to “master” these “necessary” variability. The operational systems must empower all people to be planners in their time span, to empower actionable decisions that are related to achieving the bigger strategy, and clear impact is understood.  As products, deliverables change and vary more regularly, plans will become shorter and increased volume of plans to achieve a business strategy.
2. Accommodating unavoidable variety: Situations like different automation vendors or implementations across equipment, processes and sites. It is impractical to think a company can acquire new or existing equipment and processes and expect a particular PLC or automation system, the OEM equipment suppliers just make the change to cost prohibitive. In order for companies to grow and be agile, they must “accommodate” natural variety from equipment suppliers, existing sites, but be able to apply their operational standards/ processes across the different equipment.  Another area that that limits operational excellence is the different “experience” levels of the workforce, from shift to shift, from site to site. The operational systems must abstract operational/ or site experience by embedding operational procedures/ actions into the system providing a guidance and consistency of operational decision and action. This starts to generalize the workforce experience enabling significant operational workforce flexibility between sites, and hiring, addressing the challenges of workforce / skill shortage.
3. Eliminating unnecessary variety: Anything other than the above two scenarios would be eligible for standardization.

It is NOT about “rip and replace with standards it is about “mastering and accommodating” these variations while enabling operational excellence growth and continuity by applying operational standards across this variability. Key is “platform strategies” that abstract the variability and can absorb variability while provide a platform for services that enable standards to be built on. Providing the architecture for “sustainable innovation” through managed standards that can evolve over time. 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 a 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”. Providing a structure to acquire new “brownfield plants” accommodate their existing automation and process. But apply the new companies’ differentiation through applying their operational procedures across these acquired plants.

This is not a new concept, but I seem to explain it a lot now days!!!!

Knowledge must transfer to Industrial Systems to Combat the Skill Shortage/ Lack of Experts

A couple of weeks ago I talked about tacit knowledge and how it is key due changing way experts will be deployed, and short fall in skilled workforce. This was driven home again this week, with the release of skill assessment by “Accenture 2014 Manufacturing Skills and Training Study” that showed some real truths to the situation in the USA.

The diagram below show the current split of jobs that Highly skilled to skilled to unskilled, then the second shows that percentage of the Highly skilled and skilled jobs will grow over the next 2 years.

This is in total contradiction to the next set of questions around how severe is the skill shortage in customers.

The take away is that we putting in more complex processes, and systems in order to compete in the “flat world” which requires increased skilled people, yet there is reducing capacity in skilled, and highly skilled talent, actually the pool is shrinking.

The study goes on to talk about training and the use of operator training systems, and the need for intuitive (self learning) systems. But my thoughts rang back to discussion on Tacit Knowledge and how critical it is to capture experience not in words, or videos, but in systems that enable actionable decisions (built on embedded captured operational experience). Examples are Embedded operational Procedures, simulation for the future, pattern recognition on conditions to see events before they happen, all new techniques just entering the operational systems.  

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. Although it is that which is used by all people, it is not necessarily able to be easily articulated. It consists of beliefs, ideals, values, schemata and mental models which are deeply ingrained in us and which we often take for granted. The key to acquiring tacit knowledge is experience. Without some form of shared experience, it is extremely difficult for people to share each other's thinking processes.

Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” – as opposed to “know-what” (facts), “know-why” (science), or “know-who” (networking). It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down. On this account knowing-how or embodied knowledge is characteristic of the expert, who acts, makes judgments, and so forth without explicitly reflecting on the principles or rules involved. The expert works without having a theory of his or her work; he or she just performs skillfully without deliberation or focused attention. Apprentices, for example, work with their mentors and learn craftsmanship not through language but by observation, imitation, and practice.

The study goes on to provide examples of the impact of this shortage for a midsized $500m complaint to be $4.6m loss annually:

Food for thought!!! Tacit Knowledge must be captured in a form that new users can take actionable decisions in a reliable and effective way, through knowledge and experience moving from the experts to the systems in a sustainable approach that can evolve.

The Smart Plant Culture, What is it?

The concepts of an agile / smart plant, facility are not just in the assets, equipment, and systems, the key to the modern world is the efficiency in the work, and how people and expertise is used across the given tribes of people working and contributing to the business success. This article by Stan captures what is core to that culture.

 The Smart Plant is characterized by its behavior, which is a combination of technology enablers and the culture of the organization.  If the people don’t effectively use the technology, then the plant won’t behave in a “smart” way.

One of the most effective analyses of culture and culture change comes from Roger Connors and Tom Smith, who have written a book called Change the Culture, Change the Game.  They assert that actions and results only change when beliefs and experiences are changed.  When management attempt to change the results without changing beliefs and experiences, the organization doesn’t produce lasting change, and the amount of “disengagement” and rebellion increases.  These authors have also analyzed a key aspect of culture that they call “accountability”.  In this analysis, they recommend shifting an organization’s behaviors from what they call the “blame game” to a behavior of openness, ownership, teamwork and collective actions to solve the problems.

Dr. Stephen Covey has embraced these and he has written a book called Principle-Centered Leadership, which recommends a combination of changing the goals and measures, combined with a different approach to managing performance.

In the above diagram, the most important goals are called Wildly Important, and these are made clear and prominent.  The second step is to shift from the traditional “lagging” measures to “leading” measures, so that organizations can continually prevent problems and take full advantage of opportunities.  The third step is a “compelling” scoreboard, which requires all workers to have information with sufficient frequency and detail that affects their jobs.  This often requires hourly information focused on manufacturing or processing “cells” or “units”.  And the fourth step is a supervisor “cadence” or regular review and adjustment of targets.  In many industrial facilities, this might occur daily.

The Smart Plant culture reaches across organization silos, reaches across locations and reaches across time to share ownership of challenges and solve problems together.  The “blame game” is minimized and new employees are oriented into the shared beliefs and experience of problem-solving and sharing information, both good news and bad news.  Training shifts from isolated prevention of blame to team training which share performance.

Article authored by Stan DeVries Snr SOlution Architect at Schneider - Electric

The Re Think on the Role and Use of the Experts in Industrial Operations/ Automation!

For a while now I have spoken about the trends in the operational workforce, and people have been talking about the aging workforce (expect major impact over the next 7 years), but the talk has only been in one dimension.

Over the last week as we did analysis across a couple of industries an “aligning of the planets” into a major market disruptive event has become clear not just from the “aging” workforce retiring , but from two additional dimensions.

The diagram below tries to show the 3 converging dimensions that became clear where speaking with 2 customers and then listening to a few others.

Looking at this diagram you have 3 clear dimensions, driving different aspects of the new strategies we seeing in “Smart Facilities/ Plants” etc., but they all effect each other, and will cause a significant shift in how we handle experts.

Experts can be in the Operational Process, Production, IT, Automation, Asset etc.

1/ Reducing Expertise Capacity (Aging workforce): Nothing new here except the impact of GFC (global financial crisis) has pushed out the retirement of many people. But as predicted in Europe that in 2030 there will be an 8.3 million deficit in people entering the workforce vs retiring or leaving. Other charts show the next 7 to 10 years will see the acceleration of retirements in industry.

Two big feedbacks in this area:

•         People are predicting that the workforce of 2020 will have 30% of experience of the current workforce, does not mean they less qualified, but their first hand experience in a role or location will be down. That tacit knowledge vs the explicit knowledge you can learn from text books.
•          Two companies just talked about even the shortage of people hiring into positions even from Gen Y.

One comment from the mining field “I've been told by engineers on more than one mine site that they just don't run the existing equipment as well as they used to in the early 1990s. Particularly the big plant and equipment. This seems to be more an issue of availability of expertise and training!”    

2/ New Digitally Native/ Dynamic workforce: This I have talked about at length, but it is still an eye opener for many people that the above “ageing workforce” retiring is not just about the loss of experience (which significant), but the transition. The new workforce is not the same as the old, and the interfaces, procedures, approaches will not work, or keep the experts.

•         They are digitally native they expect to collaborate, share, and in the NOW
•          They will evolve in roles, careers, and locations many times to the point that they will not stay in a role/ location for longer than 2 years. We already seeing this in some parts the world.  
•          There ability to use tools to execute exceeds to two pervouse generations, but their tolerance and ability to solve, investigate work determining execution is reduced. The system should provide the information and action.

3/ Personnel Efficiency Reduction: This was brought to me 2 weeks ago and I was surprised as I know in my own work that I do far more than I did 10 years ago, and effect all parts of the globe so my reach is more effective.

But in Solomon Benchmarking for refining, which is really the Refining industry benchmarks by which companies in that industry judge their performance. Indicated from 1994 to 2012 the Personal Cost Index is dropping. PCI (Personal Cost Index) is equal to “Personal Cost/ Equipment/ Asset Capacity to Produce “. Over the last 18 years the trend has been that Asset/ Plant capacity increase has not kept pace with the increase in Human Overhead cost. Example in 2010 = 23.5 2012= 25.7. Driving strategies to use fewer experts across wider influence over the total industrial supply chain, increasing the effective output.

Is this surprising initially probably yes, but when I went back and looked again, in my role I have increased my efficiency and output, by leveraging new technologies built into the latest office, communication, and task execution tools.

But has that same dramatic increase in tools capability to empower operators and experts to increase their effectiveness happened in the industrial world, ASM (Abnormal Situational Management Consortium) and others indicate that we have not increased the empowerment of industrial worker. We have done integration, we have looked asset performance, process performance, but in most cases until recently we have not changed the personal experience significantly to performance tasks.

With the true application of the ASM concepts, going to Integrated Operational Centers, going to exception based awareness, vs monitoring. Truly not just making the equipment smart, but leveraging the smart “self aware” equipment to empower a new level of operational efficiency and increased output relative to the amount of experts and operational staff.

Also during the same period the both the “mechanical and operational availability” in refining has dropped.

This is all food for thought, but in so many of conversations I am having today with leading thought leaders in industrial companies, the need for innovative ways to effectively use their workers and experience across their industrial supply chain is “top of mind.”

A foundational pillar in an Effective Operational Excellence Strategy, is the strategy around using experts differently, leading companies towards the “Virtual Expert Teams” that collaborate on trusted information with the local teams. Indications are that the operational work-space of 2020/ 25 will have a significant 40% less operational experts across a companies industrial supply chain, with the systems housing the required knowledge to be agile.

Operational Manufacturing Interface (OMI) vs Human Man Interface(HMI) or SCADA

Over the last year, I have visited many sites, discussed with many peers the evolution of the Operational Experience in the Industrial Landscape. But over and over again I find myself in the much debate on the role and capability, as usual this is not anybody being incorrect it is a miss communication more often than not.

The traditional industrial user experience which has been owned by the Human Man Interface (HMI) or DCS workstation, where people control, monitor and interact with the process in a focused way. So in these discussions people use the HMI, but I find myself questioning what experience are they targeting or describing. More than often I pull up the diagram below to provide a reference for Industrial Operational Experience of today.

 An HMI for a process cell with a narrow focus is very different to the Operational Interface used in an Integrated Operational Center, and very quickly people see the different.

This does not mean the Time of the HMI is over, I fundamentally think it does it's job well, at the focused point at which a process cell and the human come together in a simple, clear and concise experience at a reasonable process to set up and sustain.

But as you move to the right of this diagram, increasing reason-ability, increased scope of control, increased value in decisions. No longer can you monitor the system, the system be an exception based bring to attention the critical items. The focus is on Operational Continuity, which goes beyond control to Optimization and performance, and effective alignment of the operational team. Understanding the operating boundaries set up by safety to humans and environment, and maintaining maximum operational/energy performance.

To achieve this, the user is looking at operational view/dashboard of the high level process with the ability to investigate situations onto surrounding operational view real estate for deeper focus, without losing the overall screen. This avoids missing situations, as this Center view is an exception based.   The ability to investigate and then share with others in the team, easily, and for dynamic live collaboration to exist between the site field staff and operational experts, production, maintenance etc no matter where they are.

The information, types of content used in these investigations are not standard process graphics of traditional HMI, they are to name a few:

Video, alarms, alarm event analysis, forms for data entry, and searching. Reports, documents, live collaboration tools, such as chat, video conference, and operational analysis tools to put events, data in the context of now, past and future for " what if" etc.

Key is the interaction between this content, with ability focus on the main screen and situation, then automatic relations across other content for rapid investigation and understanding is achieved for fast decisions.

This is NOT and HMI in the traditional sense and has caused us to term this new interactive, multi content environment in a new type of operational experience the " Operational Management Interface". This multi content environment will go across the operational control room to roaming expert maybe on a tablet, but different layout experience, and to the site.

The key is the interactive, collaboration experience across multiple content types to enable rapid decisions.

As you design for 2020 and operational workspace required over the next few years and for the next 20 years, ask yourself what is required by role, and activity.