Why design for 2020, not today! What does the “Why Not” and “What If” Attitude mean?

One of the enjoyments of writing a blog is to see the reaction, get the response, they seem to come via email, it is fasinating what topics generate interest and response.  Last week I had a set of emails asking “why care about 2020, when we are focused on today?” Another set asked about the attitude “Why not” and “What If”? Both are fair and deserve further discussion.

So why care about 2020? Why Now?

As mentioned last week, there are a number of factors which are changing the whole paradigm of the operational/ automation system. The way we have designed for the last 15 years will not be good enough for:

·         The rapid decisions needed today

·         The breadth of responsibility people will have

·         Gen Y’s attitude, and work approach

·         The rotating workers, remember by 2020 people will only be in a role for 2.4 years average. Effecting experience and knowledge to make decisions, and take actions.

·          The whole methodologyy will be transitional between desktops, different mobile devices, connected and not connected, visual  interaction, next minute audio. The transition will be seamless and natural, to increase the fluidity of executing the task.  

·         Systems will be in services for 15 to 20 years, but go through many technology changes and evolutions.

An interesting stat on 2020  is that 65 % of the tasks and jobs GenY will do during their career have not yet been invented. Also, not their professional working time will span 6 careers, 14 jobs.  So the design of the system must fundamentally absorb change. Key is the move away from designing to roles and applications, but design to “activities” with the required:

·         Notification

·         Information

·         Awareness

·         action to be taken

·         Access to knowledge.

Designing this self contained “activities” that can be hosted in all user experiences no matter the device or mode,  allows new activities to built as needed, applied to the system, and the system naturally absorbs the new activity without re-engineering impact.

The reality is that in many parts of the world,  these changes are happening now many will be in full effect in the next 2 to 3 years. Already the thought leaders in the world are designing to deliver information faster, take actions more consistently and reduce the “Time to Performance” through in built training, intuition.

What does the “Why Not” and “What If” Attitude mean?

The attitude of trying, having a go! Is a natural child like the attitude,  that applies also to people who do not have experience, similar to a growing child. Ever increasing business/ operational pressure will call for faster decisions and actions, driving increased empowerment. With increased responsibility must come increased education, and understanding to make decisions. The systems must provide guidance to so that workers can try, and make decisions faster, without significant risk.

Driving the requirement for inbuilt  “what if” capability, to answer the questions a new worker to make that decision. This could be accessing history, access experience, running a “future what if simulation model” that allows highly accurate expectations of a result near term into the future based upon the current state of the system. Yes,  it sounds too “over the top” but in the new dynamic of operations, and reduced experience the ability to ask questions is a key part of learning.

The attitude of “Why Not” and What If” is not new it is natural in children today. I see it every day in my 4 and 7 year old, yes they learn boundaries and risk based upon answers and trials. The challenge before us is to build this answering, and guidance into the systems, so it is natural, and not too costly to implement in dollars or time.

This is why the concepts of “knowledge systems”, ‘big data”, “dynamic simulation”, and “collaboration” will be come fundamental capabilities of Operational Systems.  

Operator Training Systems become the Corner Stone for Management of Change to a Flexible Operational Team.

Over the last month I have hosted a number of customer workshops on the evolution of Operational Teams, which you have seen in the discussion over the last couple of months is going through a significant change.

I enjoy these discussions, and brainstorming, especially with groups who have been charged with Operational Performance, and they have moved away from grinding out more value from capital assets (this is a very mature area with asset management) and have shifted their focus to the Human Assets. It is funny to think 10 years ago we were talking “lights out manufacturing” without humans, the best comment I have heard to this notion is that “turning the lights out makes it hard for operators to find their way to the control room”. The real change is people have realized that complex / agile decisions needed today require the human brain, so the role of people in the aligning of an operational process is key.
Human roles are becoming shorter, many rotating sites due to expertise, and changes in practices coming about all the time due to regulations, or increased efficiency. The introduction of Remote Operational Centers and the fact that we have dynamic teams on site, as well as the virtual team see the diagram below.

What came up in all the workshops was not just the technology of collaboration, but the challenge of “Managing the Change” in operational culture. It is great to people recognizing this, as it is the biggest hurdle to success. Why you may ask? A key concepts in the new operational environment is the move to Advanced Process Graphics which are very different operational experience to the 3d effects of the 2000s. (see the diagram below shows the evolution of operational experience below ).

These new graphical approaches provide fast recognition and action of situations; as well companies are trying to gain style, layout, and visualization standards. So now an existing operator is now going to move from their existing interface to a new interface with different experience which should be more efficient so they can handle more information, but it will be a leap of change. These new layouts, and experiences will enable consistency of operations over sites, collberation, and increased efficiency.

In all the discussions the concept of the “Operator Training System” (OTS) comes to front of mind to be critical in this “Management of Change” and also the reduction in the “Time to Performance”, as illustrated in the diagram below. Often the teams have come in with the thought that the OTS is a nice to have, but as we get into the discussion the realization that it is not just for training, it will enable:

·      The new operational experience can be tested and trained against in as many situations as possible. Enabling a transition of the operator from the old to new collectrative Advanaced expereince. With the level of the operator being tracked to see when they reach a level of satisfaction that means they can switch.

·       It provides a safe environment to test, and validate the new operational experience, making sure that it has been well tested.

·       Enable the Training of Operational staff on real situations

·       The ability to report on each Operators capabilities and effectiveness on an ongoiing basis.

·       A safe real environment to enable “operational Innovation” by letting your best Operators get into situations and innovate better procedures or capture their procedure so you can set up a standard procedure for that situation. The OTS provides the critical environment for Innovation that of allowing experimentation in a safe way.

·         The ability for experienced operational people to be trained on new locations / sites prior to being transferred, this includes the 3d Virtual environments which provide the physical familiarity.

By the end of these workshops OTS moves up to not a nice to have but an essential component on the evolution of the Operational Experience. I hope you are looking at OTS in a different light, I cannot see companies doing this evolution without OTS.

Virtual Expert Teams, Provide One answer to “Time to Performance”

We often hear of the aging workforce as a big problem, and certainly it is due to fact that it is not a evolutionary transition it is leap to a new generation, and in most cases due to market the realization of the true situation was not understood.

But what we seeing in the market is some innovative approaches to solving this existing experiencing and the transfer, and it is through the use of “Virtual Experts Teams”. So what is this concept?

Key is to have these highly valued knowledge experts which could be across different aspects of the business e.g. asset management, process, planning, optimization, quality being empowered to work across the many enterprise production assets/plants. Today many of these experts are restricted in their contribution to their local plants, but a number of companies have started strategies which say we must leverage these people. These experts must be able to access the state, information of the plants in a consistent manner even though they may have never been there. They must also have the natural ability to collaborate with the local teams.

 

This means a local team is able to call upon the best experts relative to the situation they are dealing with. The expert is able to go online and access the plant situation in “near real-time” so they can see the situation while collaborating with the site team. They are able to drill in and do analysis, so as to draw upon experience and provide advice in real-time to the local team.

Now is this easy, I would say no, as just accessing the plant data is not effective, as the expert maybe over the other side of the world, never been to the plant and so the data will be in different measures/ context to what he expects. So in order to achieve this virtual team we need to have a “trusted information” system, where the data / information is a consistent context. Yes the concept is possible we seeing companies use the ArchestrA system Platform as this contextual approach and standards management.

But the above concept is real, and is valid with leading companies currently implementing. I will expand in the coming weeks, as these "virtual expert teams" are key concet in the "virtual sistuation room". This was confirmed last week in Asia when I attended a sales kick off many discussions within our teams showed that this concept is an area of great interest. 

We often hear of the aging workforce as a big problem, and certainly it is due to fact that it is not a evolutionary transition it is leap to a new generation, and in most cases due to market the realization of the true situation was not understood.

But what we seeing in the market is some innovative approaches to solving this existing experiencing and the transfer, and it is through the use of “Virtual Experts Teams”. So what is this concept?