Information vs Data Leads Discussion on the Future of Operations!

“Gather all the plant data and analyze afterwards” are common words you hear about the market, but when the discussion happens this approach a “putting head in the sand” approach, with limited bigger picture consideration. Today the key to agility is empowerment of decisions and actions in the NOW. This does not require data it requires trustworthy, in context information.  The last couple of weeks has enabled some fascinating and productive engagements. In a discussion,  last week at a Mining Thought leadership on the future a sizable group of interested people attended and took part in discussions.  

A key concept of “mine of the future” and actually for most industries oil and gas, power, food etc. is the agility to take more holistic operational view of the system and day to day operations. This requires alignment at 3 loops (the diagram illustrates these loops) of operations with the alignment in decision and actions. Foundational to this is the information that decisions are based on, requires not HISTORIANS but Plant/ Operational Information Systems, that align information and actions for effective use my different operational roles. Companies that make this foundational move will have a system where data structure, validation is “managed” not coded, that the system is trust worthy so people will depend on and use the system.

To many times the discussion with mining and process end users who are implementing an information system for increased decisions support, that they require a re look at the data sources and how to put it in context, and validated. An example of this was a coal company in South Africa they had spent significant time working on an information system and the historians and data warehouses, but lost effectiveness through:

• Data alignment across sources, E.g.| Finding different data streams that effected the same asset calculation for say energy.
• Data validation
• Data structure

The conversation remarkably quickly ended up going back to redo of the structure of data coming into the historians, and getting this data structured, validated before it went into historian. They had two choices either going to source in this case PLCs and adjusting the running code (not a smart idea), or put a structuring layer in which would structure the data, validate the data, and provide high availability and single names space to manage over the distributed historians.

This is a departure from the story he was told that just put a historian in and capture the data worry about analysis afterwards, that is old and in effective saying. As discussed in the “mine of the future” discussions  the challenge is to “federate” the existing data sources on a plant, E.g.| Historians, alarm event data logs, operator logs, and delay, downtime data bases, E.g.| The alignment of the data sources into effective information that actions can be taken. The concept of “self service” becomes necessary, as there was a lot of comment around of trying to minimize the process analysis phase and role in the data, and try to get effective information to operational people quickly. Another example is an oil and gas plant’s decision system that is effectively been run 24 hours out of phase with the plant, by only have decision able reports/ dashboards from the past 24 hours at 2 to 3 in the afternoon so. Again this delay was due to data gathering, data alignment, validation, in MS Excel manually done by 3 people, the company was exploring ways to eliminate this manual creation, so the whole process is “near real time”.

A clear message from the last couple of weeks is we need to step back, align the existing systems, to provide that key foundation for operational empowerment, absorb significant milestones such as advancement in the communication infrastructures; Example putting 4G communications in the Pilbra mining area (remote north western Australia), providing significant data capability. (A topic for next week). This need to absorbed into the industrial / operational Architecture, internet will be a natural part of the backbone, leveraging computing power remotely for functions, such as storage, analysis, model running, help accelerate the decision support.   

Expanding from a Process/ Plant to Holistic Landscape will fuel the debate of “on premise vs off premise”!

I had an an editor speak to me this week about “the shift to Multi Plant view across the industrial landscape, then he mentioned cloud is a dream in Industry”. Quickly correcting him that it should not be a shift to multi plant view versus an expansion on top of the existing local/ remote operational view, and “cloud” is truly real especially with virtual teams, and multi site. This confusion is common at the moment with some vendors and consultants pushing the Enterprise Historian view that really focuses on only one perpective in operations, that of the analyst performance team. That does not mean there is a swing to a new architecture, the architecture must support at least the two communities of interest with different views:

• Operational day to day teams: requiring a view focused on limited time span e.g.| 7 days and view one process or plant
• Planning, Management, Performance / optimization teams and expert support teams : wants to look at broader view across sites, and broader time span of months and years usually offline for analysis, and strategic thinking.

The expansion to holistic view will also push the debate of the industrial architecture, to a combination of:

• On Premise computing: The local plants with real time needs and short time spans will often have the required information and capability local on premise. This can apply also apply in a remote operational center infrastructure which is still local to the remote site, or on the site and just virtualized to the center.
• Off Premise computing: The shifting of data, analysis, and actions to an off premise computing, either specialised data center, or “cloud” etc, private or public, freeing up the local operational day to day infrastructure from this heavily lifting. Providing also the ideal opportunity merge and consolidate a view and capability across the industrial landscape of a company, this will involve storage, but also realtime model of the production, and operational awareness activities across the different teams.

In the blog on 2020 the following characteristics were expected:

· One in three employees will be working casual, part-time or project base vs career in a company.

· The average tenure in a job / role will be 2.4 years

· One in four workers will be working remotely and virtually.

The ability to see information and data in a near realtime, view according to my focus is key no matter what current device or location being used. The ability to connect, collaborate and share advice is key to decisions in the now and the ability share knowledge when the average experience in a role will be less than 2 years The holistic view will drive many parts of the architecture “off premise” into a managed service.

Three times in a week one in mining two in food, from companies across the world, I was asked to comment on an “End to End” view of information, and especially state. One for operational effectiveness and agility, the other for reduction in delayed time in achieving a “positive release” of products to customers. In both cases the company IT and thought leaders raised both “cloud” and “big data “ techniques. As I mentioned last week, the acceleration in acceptance of these technologies is astounding in the last 6 months.

The mixed reaction to last week blog many agreeing, many debating the reality, but for the second camp, I think they unaware of cost, technology updates, and the expectation of the new generation for doing things fast. Also, there is a shift to be able to buy this holistic capability as  services  vs total up front.

I fundamentally believe that, within 2,  years,  we will laugh at this debate of “on premise” vs “off premise” in the industrial landscape, the modern aligned and agile business will have  an industrial/ operational architecture that naturally applies both On and Off premise computing. “On premise” computing reducing to “only required data/ computing to satisfy the limited operational time span, e.g.| 7days even shorter” everything else will be “off premise”. The landscapes will enable users to view content device independent and across the landscape, but drilling to a plant and process, collaborating across the virtual team from site to corporate to worldwide experts.

Certainly over the next 2 years the expansion in Invensys’s portfolio capability spanning local to enterprise landscape, and include both “on premise” and “off premise” as well as managed services as not a specialty but a natural way to grow value from your systems.