Operational Continuity Foundation is Rapid / Early Decisions by Systems and People.

I was involved in an interview last week for an article in a magazine, like so many of these we had an expectation of the subject the editor wanted but as started it was clear that subject and expectations where different. Basically the editor wanted to understand about “big data” being applied in a particular industry, again it was someone with a technology concept the market is throwing about vs really understanding the business / operational challenge the industry is facing.

It did not take long for us to evolve the conversation into the number the main things companies must harness:

• Operational Continuity: Maintaining their producing plants at the maximum output, with greatest efficiency, and best product margin
• Agility: to supply the market with the correct product at the right quality, and right price and the right time in an every dynamic market
• Asset Management/ Utilization: This is both fixed, mobile capital assets (non breathing assets, such as plants, trucks, ships) and the human assets (breathing assets). We find that as globalization increases the buying and selling of capital assets increasingly happen, introducing of challenge of  how do incorporate existing systems, automation, and practices into your overall value chain to provide the above “Operational Continuity” and “Agility”. Same when the asset is sold how you dis engage it cleanly especially with IP in the products and process. Combine this with the dynamic Human Asset landscape where human assets are moving regularly between plants and locations. Causing on a site not to have the required experience to make decisions, but people are in a role of having to make the decisions. YES the asset world for both capital assets and human assets is shifting form traditional stability in both classes for the last 20 years to one of both dynamic.

This comes back to conversation I started last week around “Achieving Consistent and Right Results in an Agile World” and the need for systems that have both:

• Embedded knowledgeand experience: key in this system is have a culture and system that naturally enables knowledge to captured and arranged, managed to be current and while native consumption of this knowledge is simple.
• Augmented Collaboration of Experience: That in this dynamic world the need for a community of human assets of different experience in role and locations to contribute naturally to a decision in real time, augmenting the embedded knowledge. 

This calls for a system that enables people and systems, all of different levels of capability, and experience to work in coordinated way to reach a decision and act. The above diagram is a simple one of the core items of Action orientated Augmentation system.

Unconditional to success is:

• Detect the situation requiring attention as early as possible, pin pointing the location and cause as best as we can. The traditional alarm, “as is” is too late. This does not apply just to process situations but also operational/ supply chain situations that effect “Operational Continuity”.
• Understanding:This means the right person, or people, or system is notified with the required context of the situation. To often transitional systems are application based, so you alarm to control room, or SCADA system. There needs to shift to notify to people and roles, with acknowledgement of acceptance so that correct people are investigating and acting. Yes this will mean systems require unique logons, and shift to named users as people will be connected more, across applications and devices, and accountability in a team situation is fundamental so tasks do not get dropped. But core to understanding is the ability not to be just notified but to investigate, from the provided context the situation based on the workers experience, to collaborate fast with peers, and contribute an opinion.
• Decide: Based on the incoming opinions from systems, and people, and raid decision can be determined based upon experience, knowledge, and technology. The decision could be made by a system or person based upon the inputs.
• Actions: The appropriate actions and process to resolution can then taken across people (one or many) and across systems.

All the way along the system will rapidly manage the process of detect, understand, decide and act, and then track the success and increase the embedded knowledge. 

This is not a question of a new technology like "big data" it is about having a framework that works across your operational landscape to empower people, and systems to leverage existing knowledge and experience to evolve the Operational Success of the company.

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.

Is the Transition to Gen Y so Significant in the Industrial Environment?

This question was put to me by a magazine editor in Czech Republic this week, he was from Gen Y (born after 1980), and he was commenting after one of my presentations.  This is not the first time I have asked “do you genuinely think the transition to Gen Y will be that significant?” It is truly valid challenge, so I decided I needed answer why I believe it is a significant milestone or transition in the operational approach or culture in the Industrial Market.

As he asked the question he was texting and recording the interview on a Samsung PDA, and he had prepared his questions well, by researching me on Linkedln, and reading this blog. To him this was a natural way of doing research, yet an interviewer the week before from Gen X (early) had not done this research, he just had heard my presentation and asked questions based off this.

Yes, many of us from the  Bayboomer, Gen X generations have transitioned to living by our PDA, always “connected” and using email and text for communication, we do our research off Youtubes and forums, but while we transitioned it is not natural. We certainly do not share as well, yes some of us have Facebook accounts, but many do not. I asked a group of 120 people in the Gen X and Babyboomer generations how many had Facebook accounts it was less than 20%, but the small segment who were Gen Y had 100% with FaceBook accounts and all had contributed at least 1 you tube to public domain.

Gen Y has grown up in an environment where the internet is just a natural part of life, most would not remember a time without internet, and the same applied to mobiles that are used for more than voice. SMS texting comes before having an email account, where to Gen X we had email before Text, and tend to use email as the primary text communication vs SMS. The way Gen Y naturally searches on Google and filters the information and rapidly transverse the information to a desired result. They expect to use a map on PDA and see the closest banks, restaurants and other information. Wiki Pedia is a natural source of knowledge, and it is natural to contribute with comments, and material to Youtube and pedia style environments. The most significant transition of generation from Early Gen X and Babyboomer is the shorter time in a role and location, the willingness to transition their career more often. Remembering by 2020 the expectation is the average tenure in a role will be 2.4 years or fewer, people are expected to have at least 4 careers and over 20 jobs in these careers.

These are contributors to the transition, but given that many of the industrial supervisory and operational interfaces/ experiences created over the last 15 years, have been defined to control the process of a unit or equipment. Many are in isolation (islands of control) with limited inter application integration as the design was not done in a holistic view as the project had a deliverable goal and timeline. The navigation, and operations/ actions of the user interface had a fixed button navigation, and assumed a certain level of experience, and on how to use interface and control the process, this experience often came from training on the interface by the developer to the users.

Combining the holistic end to end operational control which requires multiple workers to run the system, often the operational stations are now transitional, so the workers will transition from one workstation to another executing the actions, the experience needs to be consistent to help smooth transition as they do their daily role, plus the ability to access the states elsewhere in the plant, based upon a notification they would have received maybe on a screen or mobile, and they require more detail than available on mobile, so they will drill in using a remote workstation. Now as the worker is executing his day, he is faced with a situation that is new to him, or requires some process experience, and he is unsure of the decision to take as he has only been in this plant 3 months. The operational interface requires for the user to collaborate with a remote expert on that process, sharing the situation, some screens and states, plus a live conversation, this should be natural in order to make a decision and take a correct action as soon as possible.

So when I talk about the significant evolution we going through in operational culture and approach, I am referring to the ability to maintain operational continuity while absorbing this constantly dynamic / rotating operational workforce with now limited experience in a role and location.

The growth in operational programs that are looking re-engineering their supervisory (HMI) systems, and operational interfaces to provide:

• Consistency of operational experience across workstations and devices
• Natural Collaboration with others of more experience or in the operational team.
• Multi workstation and mobile devices on a common system that interact
• The natural learning, and knowledge management and access
• Consistency in operational actions across workstations, devices and processes
• The shift to exception based operational control, using the ASM (abnormal Situation Management concepts) for faster recognition and action on the situation.

Is confirmation that it is not a technology upgrade only it is an operational culture approach that is driving the expectation significant increase operational agility?

Is your supervisory/ plant operational system ready to absorb a dynamic workforce, while maintain operational continuity in the agile world of increased new product introduction, and competitive pressures.

I would be interested in people’s comments.