Reaction to my Blog on Windows 8!

Two weeks ago I discussed the fact that I believe the release of Windows 8 is a key milestone in the evolution of the Operational Experience.

There was a lot of reaction and debate as some people took this “as there will be a quick adoption of Windows 8 in the industrial environment”, which is not what was stated. The comment was relative to key milestone. Many people have gone to Windows 7, and it is a remarkably solid release, and will satisfy people for years.

Some people commented that Windows 8 will only be for the commercial market, e.g.| the “surface" tablet market, this will initially be true, but people also said with the IPAD people would not take it up. At a conference 2 weeks when Iooked around 90 % of people were on tablet devicse vs 2 year before everyone was taking notes doing email on laptop computers. We are all still doing the same “job" of taking notes and doing emails, but we have shifted to a new device due to the technology making my execution of job of taking notes and emails more efficient due to:

·         Size of the device it is easier to carry and handle at the conference

·         The speed at which it boots up, it is instant vs starting up.

·         I can see emails fast

·         I use mind manager for note taking this runs well as an app on the tablet

·         I can also draw diagrams easily that are captures as part of my notes

·         I can also take photos of diagrams, slides and whiteboard discussions and include these all as part of my notes.

People did not recognize this 2 years ago, but they now see the advantage and have evolved.

Looking at Windows 8 it provides significant new capability and paradigm change by going to “touch” that when combined with new devices, pcs coming from the hardware suppliers there will advantages people see in improving their “jobs" on the industrial floor. These advantages will only become fulling clear as people apply it.

But when combined with:

·         Gen Y’s expectation of “touch” experience

·         The natural requirement of collaboration over multiple interfaces in one system with personal or role base views to information

·         The whole methodology of jobs today, requiring evolution of the operational experience.      

Windows 8 is a potential key milestone, but that does not mean fast take up, that will probably come in Windows 9, as the story, situation, and advantages are well understood.

An example of the advantage of the “touch” world is the zoom by gesture it is natural to zoom, or expand out, and then swipe left and right for panning, these are far more natural than the taking a mouse a “clicking” on a location and dragging a zoom box over the area I want see in more detail. Watching my children struggle with mouse vs the touch screens of the IPAD they ask why we need to do this, they first go to the screen which is not “touch” enabled, but that is natural.

I will ask the same question I proposed 2 weeks ago:

“As you go to upgrade the industrial interfaces, would you not buy devices include these capabilities and come with Windows 8 vs the traditional PC, even if your HMI, Operational experience has not evolved yet?  

Time for “Off the Shelf” Operations/ MES Solution

As I sit on another plane heading across the Pacific from California, I have time to reflect on the discussions both this week, and over the last 6 months, with leading food and beverage and process companies.

The growing trend in the MES space, (which the dominate solution is “custom solutions”), is to replace these systems with “off the shelf” products, enabling companies to focus on the core business. This trend is similar to the ERP space in the 90s, and initially in the MES space in the late 90s, and 2000s, but MES solutions of this time did not deliver the complete solution, and the eventual solutions have become unsustainable for the “operational journey”. Thousands of sites have installed MES Products from Invensys and other vendors, that are  highly successfully having run for over decade delivering significant value, but this time around there is more functionality capability people want, the architecture is not just one plant but multiple, and tolerance for custom code has significantly dropped. So why? And why now?

Reflecting on the discussions across many industries from process, mining, food, beverage, and general manufacturing, there are some common threads to the demise of “custom MES”:

·    The customer MES solutions are functionally very rich exceeding the traditional functional definitions of MESA etc with inbuilt operational practices in code, often focused on only a plant’s needs. The pace of change in operations, and pressure for new capability is growing both in capability and time to deliver.

·    Opportunities have moved from one plant to multiple plant, in order to provide the consistency and agility across the industrial landscape. Requiring significant governance, and alignment both in execution and information.

·    There is a younger generation (Gen X born 1960 to 80s) at the CIO and engineering level that have grown up with “packaged software”, and know that it works and should be leveraged.

·     Rotating staff in all roles requires faster time to experience, requiring embedded operational practices across plants.

It is also necessary to note that the MES solutions on the market where developed from a level 3 point of view yet when applied they must interact with the plant automation systems, as well as the many workers across the plants.

There were two areas of solution that contributed to the custom code:

Automation Layer Integartion:

Since the MES Products originated from level 3 specialized supplies (even if they are now apart of automation companies their origins came from standalone companies) the plant floor integration was external to MES  model using OPC etc, requiring significant custom code in the automation layer was to validate the event, and data. A sustainable solution requires  level 2 and 3 systems natively modeled, with minimal custom code as illustrated below.  The ability to configure (not code) a set of equipment templates, that model the equipment (entities) with built in supervisory capability as well as operational capability for such things as production data capture, quality sampling, utilization capture etc. Rolling these templates out over multiple sites, providing a consistent automated production event/ data capture.

Client, Human Interface:

The second area of significant coding on the first generation of MES solutions was at the client or user interface that captures manual data, at production event generation. The data  validation is required as close to source, requiring significant custom code that guides the data entry for the  user with constructive feedback. Also, the  job never seemed to finish with the operational practices continuing to change/ evolve as the companies operational practices evolved. In the above solution workflow combined with form generation and interaction, enables change and evolution in a sustainable manner.”Activity” specific interfaces and associated workflows will guide the user through the activity, and interface to MES capability capturing the required information.

The above approach is a full MES/ Operations architecture, that enables the configuration of embedded operational practices of a site and company, but in “off the shelf” products, faster solution delivery and in a more sustainable way. In many ways, this adding of realtime natural interface, combined with workflow for human interaction and embedded operational procedures extends the traditional MES capability as defined by “MESA or ISA 95” to be  a second generation that does have the opportunity to be adopted across 1000s of plants.  

Rotating Staff, Worker Retention becomes key Design Considerations

After 2 weeks in Asia, and the 2 weeks before travelling Australia and USA, the concern of worker retention, and the different attitude of the Gen  Y, rotating work force is of real concern.  In China they already shifted to an educated GenY late Gen x population of workers keen to learn, jump to experience rapidly. With this comes ambition to change, and experience so many discussions talked centered on worker retention.

This discussion will continue to grow as people realize the reality that people will take on roles for shorter times, rotating locations, or advancing the ladder, moving from company to the company as opportunities arise. In software; we saw this in the “.com” era, where we saw a 20% turn over, but with that we saw  evolution in the work environment.  The idea as attract and retain people, with both interesting work, and an environment which has services and facilities to make people want to stay.

The same is starting to happen in the industrial sector with the “Integrated Operational Center”, bringing operators and experts into environments that and better for families, and working, as well as enhancing  collaboration, increasing agility. As we go through the next 5 to 10 years in the transition from “Baby boomer” and Gen X to Gen Y, the learning of a role, situation must be different. It must enable:

·         Self-Education

·         The ability to Ask and learn, this means knowledge systems at the finger tips no matter what device, location, or situation.

·          To learn on the job, “Youtubes” and knowledge embedded into operational experience

·         The ability to access experience through collaboration with experts no matter where they.

As stated in earlier blogs; this must become a part of the design of Operational, process, maintenance and operational management experiences. Not an afterthought, but just a natural configuration as people do today with alarms, they should configure knowledge access. If you are sitting designing operational experiences at the moment, sit back and allow yourself time to understand how you will add the learning experience so that the user will be able to become experienced and capable in an efficient time.

The two countries I am seeing this change most pronounced are China and South Africa, as they both have an educated Gen Y coming through more rapidly than in most countries to fill a void of Baby boomer and Gen X. The demand for a new generation of experience will grow, and Advanced Process Graphics will help, but experience must be embedded.

Will Windows 8 be a turning point Industrial/ Manufacturing Operational Interface? Yes !

How influential will the launch of Windows 8 be in the industrial, manufacturing market?

I believe while it is not the first one with concepts (Apple did that) because of the size and market share in the Industrial Space, and the combination of other market, demographic factors (outlined below) that this is a significant mile stone in the Industrial Supervisory experience transformation.

 

In my original blog on the" operational experience transformation" (Perfect Storm), I outlined one of the transformations is the shift from " click" to "touch". (Referred also to as "multi touch" or "gesture" driven interfaces).

This transformation started with Apple iPhone, accelerating with the Ipad in the personal world. The real transformation is likely to happen over the next 3 years, as delivery of more devices, mobile, and desktop that adopt Windows 8, enabling people to redesign their supervisory application for Generation Y and the new operational team paradigm. 

Windows 8 launch this week, is a paradigm shift for Microsoft, in many aspects bigger than the windows 3.11 to windows 95 (with the introduction of icons vs tree lists). Apple does not lead the industrial PC market with HMIs etc, it is Microsoft that dominates here, and it is this reason that will see this as the one of the defining milestones, dove tailed with multiple other transformational drivers:

1.   The expectation of being able to continue working, while walking in a roaming state

2.   The explosion of high performing, low powered, but rich, effective mobile devices.

3.       Generation y that has just swallowed up the " multi touch" experience the expectation of doing anything anywhere It is this market, landscape discontinuities that when lined up at once will drive on a large scale the transformation to "touch"

I have heard people this week say “it will be slow to adopt touch in industry” I think that is narrow minded.

As the “PC” suppliers deliver the touch desktops (which will still support mouse driven "click"), but with screens that enable the Multi Touch. Why purchase a new HMI PC that does not support both "touch" and "click"? Especially as Windows 8 does take the experience to a new level, while still supporting the classic windows 32 and "click" applications.

For a number of years, we have investigated multi touch relative to industrial landscape "day in the life", leveraging a Microsoft Surface Device.  Very positive reception  was  received when a scenario of collaboration situation, where analysis is being done and then results are “pushed” to remote workers for sharing and bring them in to virtual discussion. This lines up with the other transformational driver in the industrial world that of the operational team vs individual operations. When showing this to customers, and thought leaders it is surprising to see the acceptance and realization of the new dimension of value.

Invensys and others will accelerate the delivery of applications that leverage the Multi touch, for use in the Industrial market.

Remember it is not just up to us vendors, I mentioned earlier in the year in a blog that applications designed for " click" do not work well in "touch", but "touch" designed applications work well in "click". So as, you look forward and design your operational interfaces take this into consideration, example "pop ups" are a struggle in the "touch world".

So yes last week with windows 8 launch, I believe it is a significant milestone in the “industrial, operational” experience transformation, even if not for tomorrow but within the next 2 to 3 years.

Impact of the Gen Y on Automation/ Operational Systems!

The last 3 weeks I have been travelling North America and Australia supporting the upcoming 2012 R2 software releases from Invensys, and as I write this I am on a plane to China. Discussions with  end users, and engineering houses across many industries, and there are a number of discussion points that I will make topics over the next couple of weeks.

One is around theimpact of  incoming operational workers/ process engineers from the “Gen Y” generation that is people born 1980s to early 2000s, sometimes referred to as the “Millennial Generation”. Usually the conversation starts by people talking about the aging work force and the retiring “baby boomer” generation (born Post WW2 and before 1960, evolving to discussion on the  transitions from Baby Bommer to Gen Y, missing the majority of the Gen X (born 1960s and 1970s), who have gone into other professions away from the industrial world.  The story of the retiring of the workforce and impact has been around for 10 years, but the realization in many of the conversations is that Gen Y are not the same, and the bigger issue will be “RETENTION” of Gen Y.

I saw an article on the fact that one career for a life time has gone, to me that started to go in the Gen X world, when I even look at myself. Starting from an electrical engineer in a steel works, moving into control software, development and product management, across a long list of countries, not one role or location for a career. Gen Y will take this to a new level, as they handle problems, learning and tasks totally differently.
Do we go on training for being Facebook users? NO. So why do we need to have training on Operatinal HMIs on the plant, the system must lead the user, thetraining is expected to be in the system, not in a class room.
One person said do you remember:

·          Sitting in libraries and researching:  YES

·          Using a phone book to look a phone number :  Yes

Now ask would a Gen Y person remember or even consider this with the internet to search enabling access, and information and   filtering at their finger tips, and this ability to filter is huge. Phone numbers are in contact lists on phones, or face book. Example for our products ther are online manuals, Gen Y will not read them; they will expect short Youtubes (of no more than 7 minutes) on a subject, and wiki approach to support material.

The question of Gen Y retention is a monumental one, in the industrial, manufacturing space, when looking  at the operational experiences we designed they were for the Baby Boomer/ early Gen X. The products are also in many cases the same experience vintage, even if we have added many new capabilities. Is it exciting enough for GenY? Can they access information to make decisions in a form and experience aligned with experience they in personal life on internet, smart phones, and social community?  As industrial environment moves slowly we are behind, but the change is picking up, but my feeling and feedback from many people this operational experience will have to jump  in the next 5 years.

Many companies have not evolved the experience, why because they added new capability, but their thinking the actor / user is a Baby Boomer/ early Gen X ( these generations where more aligned)  not the  Gen Y which is paradigm shift. The real revolution in operational experience has happened in the commercial since 2000, due to Apple, Facebook, Twiiter, Wiki etc. During this time, many companies have being executing the integration between systems, ERP systems, plant floor, evolving the control, improving the supply chain. Not many have evolved the User Interfaces or Operational control rooms; if they have they have upgraded the technology, maybe gone from control rooms to line side kiosks and unified operational experiences over multiple control systems. Not seriously addressing a new level operational experience required to be agile and responsive in today’s world, and enable the Gen Y to perform at most effective.

In some of the new Operational Centers we seeing shift with the introduction of collberation (but in many applications), and common knowledge systems, but really the need for situational awareness, rapid learning, intuitive systems (faster time to performance) are key. The whole method, filtering, discovering of Gen Y is totally different to “Baby Boomer” , expect frustration if they can not satisfy the hunger for rapid information, and decision the work in their personnel lives.  

So in these discussions people eyes open, with realization, that both products that they build automation and operations solutions on as well, as well as the design of the Operational experience will need to fundamentally change. This is why I talk about this as the “Perfect Storm” as the operational experience and the way people have to work as a team, access and make decisions for:

·          Addressing the global agility required today and future

·          Sustain the working practices of Gen Y generation

·          Address the changing Operational practices of the flexible operational team

Many people ask me why we are spending  so much investment in time and energy in the new operational experiences, but when you consider just discussion there is no choice, and the time has being coming, will you be ready?

Modularization Standards enable Fast Deployment and Minised Risk

This week I have met with many engineers from different companies in a number of industries. It is nice to see innovation and people pushing the limits. A company I met built modular solar power plants, and rolled them out over many sites. Due to this modular approach, like the physical plant, they just assemble these plant control, and operational systems. How can this be done with traditional automation systems with tags?

Standards have been talked about in the past, yet I continue to talk with people, and they really do not fully understand them, and value, but also the governance and culture which must go with them. This customer was different, and it was “breath of fresh air”, they saw value, they applied governance, and management.

Standards provide the advantages of:

·          Application reuse

·          Faster project time to Value

·          Reduced risk and errors

·          Reduced commissioning time

·          Provide consistency of experience, operations, control etc across applications

·          Ability to manage evolutionary functionality over multiple sites

 

So what “governance/ culture” is needed? Firstly sitting down and really mapping out the common denominator on the templates what people require, it is better having fewer templates and fewer levels of derivation, but understanding the level, and how it will be applied. This customer has spent time defining and constantly understanding the role of template, the impact of change as they have now rolled this library out over 10 + sites and will roll it over many more, but since they are EPC where they deliver projects to different sites. They are constantly refining the standards, but understanding how they will rollout and impact existing sites, this requires a good capture of thinking why particular functions where added and how they have been used. Sound familiar as it is more a “product culture” than “application culture”! What I mean is that building an initial product and standard is one thing, but as soon as you start installing you have legacy and comes with this responsibility of evolving the existing and new applications. Too many people do not take this into account there are needs for a culture of capturing the requirements for enhancing a standard, from many sites, and then planning version up grades to the standard, the same as a product.

The diagram below shows how Kumba mining has derived their standards:

They have a clear tree understanding the derived impact, alos when they built the core standards they tried to reduce the amount of types. We are now looking at how set up standards in a polymorphic manner that will have has many functions as needed in the base template, but the user has the ability to select the required functions, there by turning on the required capability and adding it to the template. This means as the standard evolves functions are at core, highest level, avoiding lots of different yet very similar standards. The reason for this might not initially be apparent, but as you rollout with many variations understanding the impact across sites, it will be hard if you do not control the amount of standards and variations. A basic rule should be “once something is added it should be sustained” this core principle of object orientated systems. Freedom is not always the best advantage, and putting in place a culture of someone owning the standards who then listens to the requirements and decides if that capability will be added at the highest level or what level is key. As we develop a “Corperate Standards Management” capability to ArchestrA, initially people have asked for a product, yes we will provide a capability to help manage standards across sites, but I am becoming less convinced that it should be a product vs a “Software as Service”, where the service is providing the product management skill as a service. This especially become important when you consider standards are not just automation objects or control strategies, as you move to managed operational system they will involve many types of standards, like reports, layouts, symbols, KPIS, materials, reason  codes etc.

Having one culture, one approach over all products and standards, will enable sustainability. So do companies and sites expect to have this expertise and culture, or will this “outsourced” even if the standards repository is maintained within the company, certainly we have seen this happen on some initial multi site systems.

I would be interest in your feedback.

 

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.