Taking a Lead from the Human Body with Reducing risk through an Enterprise Nervous System for Industrial Architectures

For the last couple of weeks I have been travelling in what seems hundreds of meetings with many people. However, last week I had a number of presentations on the direction of Operational/Automation systems, and challengers of the 7 to 10 years.

Twice a question was asked around flat vs. layered architecture, similar question around one platform vs. multiple platforms.

•       Layers allow me to contain change

•       Layers allow me to manage complexity, divide and conquer

•       Inter-operable layers reduce technology lock-in and increase options for clients

•       Federated means lower level has autonomy but cannot violate higher level rules and principles.

Too often people put forward ONE platform/layer, but actually the world is made up of layers of information, interaction, and decisions. It is important to optimize across a layer, so interaction with the “things” at that layer is focused, efficient, and in context of that layer in content and time. As you transverse layers so does the context of information, the interaction between different “things” and complexity or focus change.

In the industrial automation/ operations control has it’s layers of executing with the different equipment components in the process unit, requiring speed and tight coupling. As we go up the layers to supervisory then MES and Information, the context changes, responsibility for decisions increases, but time context changes. The “things” interacting change, combined with more complex messages with more context.  

The diagram above illustrates some of the concepts between the natural layering in humans, and the corresponding concepts in industrial information systems, and the required isolation, focus of sectors is key.    

Bio-mimicry is an emerging science that adopts nature’s designs to solve human problems. Moreover, the concept of federation, which enables central coordination but local autonomy, is part of nature’s design for information management.

If we think about it – the human nervous system has over a billion neurons spread throughout the body to help control its various functions. If the brain had to deal constantly with a billion signals, it would “crash” the system. Thus, nature has designed a system where functions are layered in an architecture that helps create a robust sense-and-response mechanism.

Autonomous functions (layers) which have Interoperability is key for fast relevant actionable decisions to take place with the most efficiency. So why do we ask about one, when we should design in layers but understand the layers the context, things, and actions. But understand how the layers must be “loosely coupled but aligned” so that operational execution aligns with business strategy in near real time.    

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

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

Example below in the images are real:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source "Waterforce"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The common thread across the discussions was:

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

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

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

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

·         Shift from experience in people to experience in the system

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Federation of Multiple Control Systems is a Key part of the Operational Transformation, It’s time for an “Industrial Enterprise Configeration Environment”

We talk about federation of information across data sources in an information driven manufacturing environment, but an effective operational transformation is about decisions and actions in a timely manner and consistent manner. Too often we talk at the high level and over look the extensive work required on the plan automation control integration. Most plants are on to at least their second generation of control, in DCS, PLC and SCADA. These systems are mature and functionally immensely rich that they can expand and evolve to satisfy most processes today.

The Modern Automation/ Operational system is not an enclosed system, it will have many controllers of different sizes running different processes, hopefully the correct controller for the correct process. With the evolution of the “Internet of things” in the automation world there is a trend to smaller powerful controllers so each asset/ process has it is own control that links into the higher world. This makes sense as long as there is the ability to federate these controls from a:

·         Naming convention consistency across the controllers

·         Control Standards for a process over different controllers

·         The ability to configure different levels of a control/ process strategy across controllers but deployed to a different controller instances which in many cases will be controllers from different vendors.

·         The ability to automatically configure the integration with the supervisory platform and the controller at the same time, any changes are automatically managed and sustained.

·         Clear governance over the management of standards and versions across the supervisory and controllers

·         Version management is key the ability to manage different versions of standards in the same strategy deployed to different controllers, combined with incremental updates.

·         The End to End System Integrity at the time of deployment, this is the step most people are concerned with as the system must make sure the integrity of the different parts of control sub system are in place, so we have no dead ends on references that can cause controllers to not function. Assumed in this is the peer to peer communication and referencing between controllers of different roles, types and vendors.

Yes, the leaders in the operational transformation while implementing a Supervisory Platform with operational standards and decision support, they are complimenting their investment with an equally often more significant investment in alignment of the existing and new control systems. Their standards, their interfacing and most of all their management of integration and standards.

The new generation “Industrial Enterprise Configuration Environments” will live above the individual vendor configuration systems but enable a holistic management of strategy and standards leveraging a multi discipline team, with version governance naturally built in. I was fortunate last week to review and investigate such a system that is pre –release but represents potentially the most significant step in control strategy/ level 2 / 3 alignment in the last decade.