Top 10 Manufacturing Operations Blogs for 2014

Many of you probably already are subscribed to MOM blogs, but just in case you not I though these top 10 showed some interesting thoughts.


http://cerasis.com/2014/12/22/top-10-manufacturing-blog-posts-2014/


On my blog the two topics which had a number of blog posts, but had highest hits were around:

1/ Situational Awareness , and change in the way we must design based upon impact
2/ Internet of Things and Cloud.

Interesting the year before cloud and internet of things created very little interest, but this aligns with significant growth in interest in these topics in 2014, and will only grow further into solid reality in 2015.
Enjoy 

Effective Situational Awareness (Actionable Decisions) requires “Engineers to evolve to Artists.”

Industrial situational Awareness is a key concept for the future of supervisory/ operational systems. Moving beyond ASM (abnormal situational Management standards) which have had mixed success, not due to standard, but due to implementations. Understanding this subtle difference in implementation is when we start talking “engineers evolving to an artistic, human factor aware.”

This image shows a traditional process screen with photo like images, and the right hand image shows the intensity of eye focus based upon color and drawings. The issue is the awareness of the alarms up the top or indication symbols up the top are lost, this is where the ASM brings a cleaner view, as seen in the image below where this same screen has been evolved to ASM. Yet even that design can be improved.

Last week we had the Australian User Conference combining old Invensys and Schneider Electric, many productive discussions. However, one that stood out was with a college Rik De Smet around the effective situational awareness. Rik like me has been involved in a number of operational centers most notably one in Oman across 70 existing DCS systems . Where the project applied ASM (Abnormal Situational Management concepts) but derived from human factor experts in Holland, where they looked not just the effect of grey, but went well beyond into understanding the tracking of a user’s eye. The results drove screen layout, color and application of awareness.

The conversations last week went beyond this, to the fact that now many companies have released ASM based graphic libraries, and how many engineers are applying them without the full thought. Yes, it brings improved results, by de-cluttering the experience, but there is another level of operational value. It has been proven in upstream oil and gas, transportation, mining that well applied “situational awareness” (ASM) applied at graphics, and alarms regularly provides 30 to 40 % improvement in awareness and responsiveness over traditional screens with photo generic and many colors.  

Rik has been taking this to a new level with tools to evaluate engineered screens and to see where the focus is, and to provide feedback to designer. These tools, track the eye focus and intensity of eye focus (distraction) to a spot or image. Providing valuable feedback for the designer to adjust the layout and effect. With good examples of what appeared to be an effective ASM type screen, with some managed tools taking into account “human factor.” A heat map showing that same screen with actual eye focus, and it was clear that tuning was required in order to gain that early awareness that was expected.

This image is now showing a typical ASM screen applying standards in ASM, and alarm borders around critical equipment. Many people would be satisfied with this, but when you now apply the eye intensity tool, to that same screen, you do see focus on the critical equipment in the middle. But you also see a loss in focus to the bottom, navigation buttons and even company logo, all of which are not important in awareness of the plant state.

This insight brought a new level of true “human factor” and effective “artistic” side to play in the design, to enable a step up in results to the next level of value. For me, it brought reality to a factor I suspected that the system engineers going forward from today, need extra tools, or someone in the project requires the expertise. There are online human factor tools coming available, and these services will become vital in the next few years.

We combine this “early awareness” to enable decisions, but the real requirement is to go to “actionable decisions” that empower the user to lead to a decisions, and action very rapidly that is a best operational practice. In another conversation my mind went back to Hudson River plane landing, where the pilots did not speak for 3 minutes, that took roles, made decisions, and action ed out well trained operational procedures that enabled rapid success. The two pilots had not met prior to that take off, but they were able to combine to execute. The only way we can bring this into industry through the changing of operational approach, embedding experience and process, so we do not just enable decisions, but “actionable decisions.”

Smart Plant a Realistic / Holistic View

Smart Cities, Smart Airports, Smart Farms, Smart Upstream Fields are all the talk, but when you get down to interviews with companies, cities etc, the definitions change from city to city, from major oil company to another, so if you looking for a clean definition it not to be found. But there are underlying trends you see across all of them:

Trends/ Objectives:

·         Faster decisions and less people monitoring / responsible for more. Leading to the Integrated Operational (control) centers.

·         Increased agility and efficiency through transparency across the whole landscape, so better alignment to plans

·         Increased Operational Continuity

·         Lowering of cost through increased understanding of operations, and operational efficiency of assets. Energy management and material management.

·         The Operational Workforce transition of experience and to a dynamic, digital workforce.

·         Environmental/ Safety and regulation control, limiting exposure and cost

·         Change of equipment/ instruments to “smart equipment” which have increased intelligence and “self monitoring” , a dramatic increase in data that needs to be understood, and used for more predictive awareness

Yes this is all a part of the Operational Transition I have been talking about, and believe will transform the industrial sector over the next 5 to 10 years, as part of the 3^rd industrial revolution.

But in the last couple of weeks we have worked with a company in Asia who has a really good grasp of “smart plant” and the overall concepts that need to addressed in their journey.

They are really looking at the 4 main themes with their unique names, but they also looking across these and how they interact, as well not just a plant but across assets.

This is built on their belief that Operational Workspace is changing and not in one area but multiple dimensions, with workforce change, but also ICT changes like “cloud," “Bandwidth," IOT (Internet of Things), Smart / intelligent devices, and the move to naturally using simulation.

The diagram below shows the two big axis they see changing, not too different to People and Asset changes we have seen before.

An interesting observation is the shift to “larger, more complex process” this is true in all industries, as the problem we are being asked to solve is significant compared with the traditional control, but the opportunity for return is significant as well. But with the use of centralized computing, and shared learning, the cost, and ability to solve these today over all size plants is possible.

In reality the fact that this company has engaged on journey and understands it is journey is important, understands the goals, and direction, the shift to manage “work” and transition their architecture to embrace “intelligent devices” so they can leverage the IoT developments and Big Data, Industrial Analytics. Probably means they will lead the transition and be positioned well in the new world beyond 2020, but we all entering this world!     

The Biggest Transformational Opportunity for Industry is the “Distributed and Collaborative” architecture IoT

Over the last couple of months, people have me what is the biggest change to the future I see as the shift to a distributed yet collaborative world of interconnected devices, applications, people assets and system. Yes, this is referred to as the “internet of Things” IoT others call it the Internet of Everything”, but the key is smart devices providing information, be able to interact with each other.

Some people look at change since 1993 when the internet was introduced the biggest thing to happen, but I believe the value, and paradigm step in the way we work, and do things in the industrial world and at home as we move to Internet of Things concepts will be a far more dramatic transformation. Key is the world will be distributed in action; vs centralized, yet things will collaborate and interact for faster decisions, and awareness.

“ARC Advisory Group uses the term Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) to refer to the emerging practice of connecting intelligent physical entities, such as sensors, devices, machines, assets, and products, to each other, to internet services, and to applications. Industrial companies can use information from these connected devices to lower costs, optimize processes, and transform their applications, services, or business models.”

 To be honest, this is not a new idea I remember working on some R & D developments 12 years ago around putting web servers into instruments, the concept was to expose information easily and in a standard way. It was too early for the rest of the infrastructure was not there. Today that it is different, with wireless now a normal concept in an industrial plant, the advancement of cellular networks from a data point of view with 3G and 4G especially in geographically distributed, providing the backbone for ability of devices to realistically connect with enough bandwidth. Combine this with the SOA “service orientated architectures and applications, and the rise embedded intelligence within devices, and mobile devices the opportunity is here!

“But is it a matter of just exposing everything to the internet and we have changed the world?”

NO, the issues around security who can see, who can interact with your devices, is key, this is still maturing and evolving in techniques and practices, but reality is closer than most people seem to realize. The next is context, and intelligence, while smart devices and instruments are reality for new installations these do not apply to existing plants which is the majority of the world. So how do you “intelligence enable” existing devices, assets and processes in the industrial world?

We seeing people increasing use the PLCs and controllers to add intelligence around devices like motors and pumps, conveyors etc. But also there is work happening in what people call “stranded assets” where electronic manual rounds that managed and planned now bring back regular data from these stranded assets, as well intelligent platforms coming into play, putting a layer of intelligent objects that add intelligence and “self awareness” to unintelligent devices. The key is that information from a devices transforms to deliver increased value through context, validation, and “situational awareness”.

ARC is referring to this as CBM (Connected Device Management) platform I suspect their definition is more narrow than mine, as I believe the Internet of Things is no just about information, but the action as well, but never the less it provides a foundation.

“Connected Device Management (CDM) platforms are emerging as pivotal, value-added components of the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. These software entities -- used to manage intelligent connected products, devices,machines, and other assets -- reside between connected products or devices and the Big Data, analytics, cloud platforms, and other applications that reside at higher levels of the IoT architecture. “

 

The Key is that there is a layer needed between the analysis applications, and larger business/ operational decision makers and applications, and the devices of the industrial world. This layer needs to take devices from just information to “exception based” notification, and “self aware” devices to avoid overwhelming the Enterprise applications. But it is not just up, it is also across devices, in order to make a “self ware” notification, and intelligent device will have to talk to another device or devices to understand the full context of process etc. This introduces the concept of Internet of Things not just applying to devices but all to operational processes and their state, as well.

I saw an interesting application of this concept in the “Smart Grid” world of power that we needed to model and has as “living things” such things as “storms, fires, tides etc” these living entities need generate alarms, notifications etc. So key to this platform is that these intelligent objects are not data structures they are "living" entities providing data context, intelligent alarm, events and notifications and awareness of state relative to situation and surroundings.

This is an exciting topic of distributed, but collaborative “things” enabling faster real time decisions and actions across assets, process and people will provide the next level of opportunity. Aligning with many of the concepts of the “Third Industrial Revolution” with distributed micro power generation, with the interconnected intelligence across consumption, supply, storage in an economic growing structure, it too is the Internet of things concepts applied to change the world we live in.

Food for thought, and a good thread of thought for a series of blogs.  

 

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.

Big Data requires Pattern Awareness to Provide Situational Awareness

2012 saw the rise in what I call “Industrial Information Systems, Projects”. You may say “rubbish”, the whole historian, and information business has been around for years, and the answer is true. Today these projects are different dealing with a “lake of data”, delivering to more people, of different roles typically not even aware of what an historian is drawing data from many different sources including historians, xml files, transactional data sources such as MES and Batch systems, alarm, event systems, MS Excel and customer odd databases, as well real-time data. There is no one supplier, one source, or structure to this data. The challenge is when the context and knowledge of the data is retiring from the companies, but the size of internal community of roles and workers requiring access is increasing. How often I have been asked and discussed the issue of data validation and data awareness, vs architecture, and technologies at tossed into conversation hoping for a “silver bullet”, but I believe the solution comes with new capabilities like “Big Data” but also evolutions in existing industrial implementations, with a more holistic design!

I believe the growth will accelerate in “Industrial Information Systems, Projects” during 2013, and beyond, but this is not about delivering reports and information, it is about “empowering” the increased community in  business in making real-time decisions, based on real-time trustworthy, effective industrial information, no matter their location. I continue to get surprised by the notion that the solution is an Enterprise Historian on top of the existing system, acting as a data warehouse. I ‘Scratch my head” and usually “ask how to you know the data is valid, in context, and comparable. Too often it is a blank look they were lead to believe the data in or supplied from their SCADA, lower level historians, etc. is the only thing they need to access. Key to understanding is the ability to detect patterns, across data, but there needs to be enough context to allow the evolving big data tools to enable detection of patterns.

 

Last week this blog discussed exception based “self aware” models required in today’s proactive operational/ supervisory systems, especially as devices grow in intelligence capability. This model is also key to putting things in context enough to enable this analysis and patterns to be seen way further than process analysis. Big data concepts of pattern analysis, save that pattern, and now have it as auto detect on a similar pattern happening again, triggering an operational process that will continue a proven procedure to resolution, guiding the workers involved interacting in a consistent and pro active manner with the objective for early detection and fast resolution. This automatic pattern recognition, detection, and embedded procedure are one key aspect of the modern situational awareness concept. Building on last week’s blog concepts of the “self aware” model, if these smart devices and processes include a pattern recognition capability as part of the “self” intelligence, the shift is a response from the “as is” status to the ‘to be”. The diagram below shows a significant opportunity for improvement with the two “value of early corrective action” lines  effectively illustrating the value gain in early detection and pro active correct action.

The diagram illustrates how a condition over time “x axis” changes in cost/ value through time, and how the traditional alarm systems are in the “as is” state, and the whole objective to “SITUATIONAL AWARENESS” is to shift to the “to be “ state.

October / November User Group Events Provide the Opportunity to See Reality to Industry Trends

October / November User Group Events Provide the Opportunity to See Reality to Industry Trends

I am stting on a plane to LAX, on the first of many over the next 6 weeks, as I visit many of the Invensys Operations Mgmt User Groups Events, providing a more direct environment for users and potential users to engage with each other and the thought leaders.

I hope many of you are going to these events, found on the Invensys site.(www.iom.invensys.com)

As I talk with customers and engineering houses this is an exciting time of evolution, as companies continue to drive to a holistic view across their industrial facilities, and agility. Below shows the big trends we saw about 5 years ago, these are no long future they are reality. The user groups events will show case studies, and technologies enabling reality to these transitions.

I have talked about the transition from “replacing people” to “Empowering People” at length, this I believe is one of the biggest transitions in automation history. The move to realtime, with a holistic view, with the requirement to be agile, while now managing the production, not the traditional focus on process control. Process control will come naturally when production management is sustained and efficient.

One of the exciting concepts being introduced at these events is the new contextualization process analysis which really starts to information tools “out of the box” to a new level. Providing not only the traditional trending but the ability be aware of the other context associated with that data, event etc. Yes, many of us have built this in the past but now to have natural tools with this capability brings value faster.

This is all apart of the much trend to “Situational Awareness”, (which I will expand on next week) the ability to be aware of situations, and associations, so the "discovery experience to understanding" is natural. No matter if it is alarms, a batch, and event, and process variable, as operators, and personal oversee more data awareness must be easy.

Also the introduction of new modules for quality, and significant historian architecture enhancements.

Initially starting in USA, theses events go on to Europe and Asia.

Please content me via email (tim.sowell@invensys.com) if you would like to meet up and discuss any of the concepts I talked through in this blog, or others that you interested.

Why our User Interfaces must be come Model Driven?

I referred to “Model Driven “ navigation last week, and got some reaction that we are already there with ArchestrA Graphics. This made me step and re read what I in the last blog, and realise that I had assumed some understanding.

Yes today ArchestrA Graphics are built into the model in the objects etc, this is a significant step from the classic InTouch like window which the graphics are independent of the model, just linked, but many applications do not build in navigation to the model. My actually intention was not just these graphics in the model but take the whole operational experience to  level, that the model and views into this model for operational control etc, can be independent of the device and layout. Also, the model must be able to change freely and not a characteristic of what device or who will engage with it.

Similar to the web browser if you look at the web page content, it is design unaware of the device, the real estate etc that is available. The location which a page is displayed, or accessed is up to the browser consumer.

If we now take a look at the range of User Interfaces below, these likely will be all in one solution on the one namespace, with all users being able to access the same state and data of the plant. Interacting with plant and interface relative to their role’s actions. So in the example below you would have 5 plus user interface type experiences, different laoyouts due to device and role etc.

Now add to this the roaming user, with the increasing policy of “get out from behind the desk/screen”, where the available real estate on a mobile device calls for a different layout.

How can we design user interfaces the way we did in the 90s? Where we designed a HMI application for a role/ location, with a fixed layout and navigation experience.

Today engineers will continue to evolve the model of the plant, developing say a new process unit, including in this required interfaces (windows) that enable control, analysis etc. These windows, forms, specialized clients will be accessible to all users through their own user interface.

Avoiding people having to reengineer each user interface, each time the model changes. So to avoid this, the navigation of which windows are available at this level in the model, needs to be built into the model. Today some applications are doing this with ArchestrA Graphics in the application, but to go with this is need for each user to be setup their user interface layout.

This means each user/role can define their own layout, with panes as to where certain information is displayed. Where navigation come up, etc.

I saw a very good example of this two weeks ago, where navigation through the model could be through a tree, through the mimic drill, etc, and the model provides the context. As Invensys evolves the operational experience tools so that engineering and lifecycle costs reduce as the solution complexity increases, the above situation is a real one which we are making natural.

Consider your user interface designs to day, do not think narrowly to one role, one layout, it is time to move the user interface screens to the model, away from the role/ display etc, providing the freedom to have my own experience.