What did 2015 mean to Operational System?

As we enter the final weeks of 2015, did it live up to what we expected, what trends did it star to cement into Operational System design.

These are just some of observations I have seen:

1/ Shift to significant operational transformation programs, vs just projects, as accelerated in the second half of 2015. Certainly we have seen a lot of projects initially started or investigated as projects in 2014, in 2015 reemerge as multi-site, multiyear transformation programs. With the understanding that these programs are on journey both in technology, but also operational goals/ outcomes, and culture.

Certainly a couple of us have seen a significant amount of time allocated to evolving these opportunities working with the customer to help define their outcomes, the approaches, this has been and is still continuing as educational process for all involved. This is fundamentally changing the engagement models between end user vendors and engineering houses as a partnership, requiring changes on both sides.

2/ Cyber Security/ Application Security: This continues to grow as a huge area of interest, but this year it shifted not only how to secure, but how to maintain successfully, evolve their business and agile operations in a tighter security model. Realization that cost is not just in setting up a secure operational environment, but the cost of evolving and sustaining it while maintaining an agile business requires a strategy on it’s own.

3/ Operational Awareness/ Effectiveness: Understanding, not the “aging workforce” but the transformation in both “workforce culture/ approach” and transformation in “Workspace”  are real. That today's and last ten years of operational systems will not satisfy the agile decisions that required, but also the changing workspace culture and methods. The amount of workshops and strategies sessions I have asked to be involved in 2015 was three times that of 2014, and they were clear strategic discussions around people and how people will operate in the future.

4/ Understanding and reality of Internet of Things: The hype has been here and continues around IOT. But there has been some real sole searching in many industrial companies to understanding what it means to them. Many it dawned as the operational alignment end efficiencies they have in the “walls of the plant” now can extend to the “mobile plant”. In Oil and Gas, and Mining moving to include “extraction” wells, equipment in the operational process in real-time. In many other industries, it moved the mobile receivables plants, distribution trucks and then the distribution centers, etc. to be included in the “end to end” operational control.

5/ Realization that the Operational architecture of the future near and long term will have Internet and “cloud” as a natural part of it, and we must design the security, and systems assuming on premise and off premise architecture.

All of the above does surprise us, based on the trends, but it is good to see the shift from talk to reality. I would expect that 2016 this strategic journey programs to increase. Certainly the scope of operational responsibility is changing include a end to end supply chain, that means move outside the plant walls with the traditional systems, and we will see the alignment of Process operations and utility operations (power) into one operational strategy and control.   

Have a very happy holiday season and may 2016 continue the momentum to deliver operational solutions that will handle the "operational transformation" happening around us.

Operations Innovation & Transformation – Operations Control Loops, Aligning the Operational Roles in Industrial Landscape

Constantly I am asked on how to make the operational workforce effective, key is the alignment of the different roles. Traditionally the user interfaces, the targets, kpis each role has worked to have been disconnected, a good company aligns them on paper at least, most even miss this step, with each role setting based on their view on what success is. A classical good example of role alignment is in F1 motor racing where the engineering team and driver are aligned on winning the race, if they were not the driver would drive as fast he can with little care to car to finish, and engineering would advise driver to drive in a way that avoids stress on the car or they build it to last, with alignment they aligning the driving and engineering to finish a race first and no more.

In today's dynamic workplace and market these need change in a dynamic mode at all levels, driving the rapid miss alignment of KPIs and targets.   

The 4 quadrants described in the article “Operations Innovation & Transformation – the 4 Types” positions the upper right quadrant as a strategy for governing business processes and teams of human assets in a new way. 

In the upper right hand quadrant, managers and supervisors use consistent measures and business processes to adjust targets for specialists and other workers, using the industrial automation concept of a “control loop”.  One example is where managers negotiate the next day’s production targets each day using the same business process for all specialists and industrial locations.

In the upper left diagram, supervisors use visual management to observe the ability of teams to navigate targets and constraint in order to improve team performance and adjust targets based on team capability.  This method is used in conjunction with Value Chain Optimization and Fleet Management, and these are in the left quadrants of operations innovation.  These are described in separate articles.  This visual management is used to reduce risk and evolve performance of multiple sites for the same operating shift, and multiple shifts for the same site.

In the upper right diagram, the supervisors use this business process (simplified) as a means to consistently govern targets so that a variety of activity, including different sites, shifts and responsibilities, can be adjusted at the same time and in a coordinated fashion.

Another example is where operators use visual management to address performance challenges that affect the business.

In the upper left diagram, a combination of organizational change management and visual management which helps teams to trust themselves and understand hourly operations performance with a business context.   Dark blue diamonds show a baseline for one month, and the unit cost variation is high, even at high output.  This operation has agility – a 2:1 range in throughput, and normally unit cost should be lower at higher throughput (due to higher efficiency of utilities equipment).  Magenta squares show the results of the first month; unit cost variation is still high, but most of the performance is near minimum cost.  Yellow triangles show the results of the second month, with excellent results.

In the upper right diagram, key performance indicators (KPI’s) and Operating Indicators (OI’s) are arranged together so that performance challenges at all levels are addressed in a timely and consistent manner.  For each level of the organization, lagging and leading indicators with business and operations context are linked together. “WIG” is an acronym for Wildly Important Goals, which helps to maintain focus on the most import performance measures among numerous other indicators.  KPI’s are appropriately developed from the top down, and originate with business goals and measures; OI’s are appropriately developed from the bottom up, and originate with operations targets and measures.

The results have been spectacular, including double-digit improvements in efficiency, first-quartile industry performance, and more.

No longer can we have different roles not aligned and decisions in real-time at all levels requires adjustments but alignment not just top down, but bottom up due to a situation, but approvals in real time and adjustments in real time. So workflow and linking is required so governance of decisions and actions is maintained. As seen in the diagram below. Are linking these, are you looking at the Dynamic Performance Measure approach with measure, indication and notification all aligned to the level, time, and approach.

Personality, Patterns, and Principles are key Pillars to User Interface and User Experience

I was watching a Microsoft session on user interface, and they spelled out the concept of the “3 Ps” in their design. I thought it would be effective to pass it on with commentary:

Personality: the visual interactive design

Patterns: Common interface patterns

Principles: the guidelines by which you set out UIs e.g. colors, fonts etc.

The three Ps we overlook in defining the report, the dashboard or user interface in the industrial world, the three Ps are not new, many of applying them without realizing.

Personality: This is a way in which the user interface interacts with the role and user, which requires the designer to define the targeted user, and make sure they understand the experience effective experience, knowledge and activities the role has. If you take the “activities" approach again understand the expect interaction, to create efficient decisions and actions, so that the system is intuitive. This means in different cultures based on regions the personality may change, certainly the personality between a dashboard for a maintenance engineer vs. production management is very different relative interaction. In 2014, the explosion of mobile applications for different "activities" /"roles" will occur instead of generic applications for the industrial market. This does not mean generic is wrong, but I firmly believe that if there is a choice between a specific application for an activity vs. a generic the specific will chosen as it will have the personality to suite the effective execution of that "activity".

Patterns: The user interface patterns are also key, to make the experience intuitive and familiar the layout, arrangement patterns need to be set out. Even though the actions maybe different the navigation, experience of where and how to find or execute something should not take learning when swap pining between different activities. These patterns should go across roles and “activities".

Principles: This again is key for familiar and consistent experience. Guidelines for use of color, fonts, backgrounds etc. are, and important comfort factor as the user enters and works with the system.

With so many different user experiences the knowledge worker interacts with today from reports, dashboards to interactive screens across desktops, pads, to mobile to notifications and video. All designed by different content developers and made available to knowledge worker community of the company. Increasingly the content developer will not know the content consumer other than by “activity" and role, as the host for the content will be user interface hosting frameworks (example the portal) that host, layout and enable navigation of content that is created elsewhere. So a piece of content for activity could be hosted in a desktop, then a PDA, then a web applicant all the same time, with the user traversing between "at will". To achieve a smooth, effective transition the 3 Ps in user experience for content design are key, far more important than in the last 20 years. Combine this with the dynamic nature of the workforce community initiative, familiar experiences will a pillar for competitive advantage. It is important that these standards can be managed, and evolved, we are investing alot in tools to make this managed easier and effective.

Achieving Operational Effectivness through Planned Operational Work vs Adhoc Work

As one customer said “We have teams and programs on captial asset performance for years, this will continue, but the real opportunity for gains is with increased efficiency across the operational team!”

 

The emergence of “Operational Performance Teams” to work along side the well established “Capital Asset Performance Teams”, with the focus on improving the operational effectiveness of the plants. In today's challenge is how do evolve the workers operational practises into a sustainable model. Moving to planned work vs ad-hoc work in a day and week takes a change in culture but delivers significant results in reliability, improved safety. The key to increased agility is through effective, real Operational Teams, having to collaborate and execute work in a timely manner, with the freedom to pass work items between team members for effective execution.

 

To achieve operational effectiveness the discussion between companies is not just information awareness, it is also looking at implementing operational work item systems that are not just logging and generating end of shift log reports. The discussion has shifted to a “journey of operational alignment and culture” as seen the below. Today many companies find they do not actually know what work items workers are doing in a day, many state that they ad-hoc and fire fighting, which is decidedly in efficient in time and cost, plus directly increases the safety risk. Companies have quoted figures of 35% of a typical plant workers day is planned rest is “unplanned”. The diagram above is intriguing depiction of a possible journey in a workers operational work management, key will be changing the culture of work management on the plant and dynamic workers.

The ISA 95 working group has also released a work management structure for operational systems as seen below:

The key are seven items that are required for Operational Effectiveness:

 

This is decidedly different to traditional electronic log systems, and the key is the fact that this is not a logging and task management, it is also capturing, and planning and assigned embedded operational procedures. The ability to pass work items between different operational team workers. On the plant we do often have a good work management in the Asset Management system, this is extremely effective for asset management, but the Operational Work management is for all items in the industrial landscape, and day. It is also targets improvement by performance monitoring of operational procedure execution and seeing how to improve these procedures. This can only happen if the actions taken are consistent, and this depends on “embedded operational procedures/ workflows”. Combining this with planning and realtime shift dispatching of work items, and constant realtime execution, transferring of work items made up tasks between team members with clear ownership so “accountability” which is key.

Invensys is continuing to evolve it is offering in the space to satisfy the every growing requirement of managing operation work items and therefore the efficiency of the human assets. Working with leading companies as they evolve on this journey of operational effectiveness, expect to see a lot more discussion on this area. My question is how can companies run a team without Operational work items management, that is why electronic log books ave grown in the last few years, but this is only a step in the correct direction.