Review of the Blog “A Look at Industrial Operational Management Environment in 2020!!”

Throughout 2013, this blog and the message it brings has generated a lot of discussions and thought, debate when it comes to technology, architectural and cultural decisions being made around industrial solutions. The traditional approach we have taken for the last 20 years in design even evolutionary design of solutions must change, as there are too many vectors arriving at single point in time around:

·         Culture

·         Operational Agility to enable survival

·         Digital native workers

·         Safety and environmental impact

·         Combined with operational practices transformation

·         Technology like the “Cloud” and “Internet of things” extending the scope of the traditional industrial solutions to a wider value chain

I have been asked a number of times what were the big changes in 2013, basically they are listed above. Really when you look at these in the context of “the industrial landscape in 2020”, the transformation and decisions in architectures are key. As stated last week the “internet” will be part of the backbone of the industrial solutions; we will have “on premise “ and “off premise” components of this solution, and the shift to “activities” that transverse devices, roles, and locations are a key turn in the design approach.

So as you wind down on the year and wind up for Xmas I thought it was a good thing to reflect on what I started with this year, the projected landscape in 2020 and the only change is that, in some parts of the world such as China, South Africa many of the characteristics apply today.

Lets face it 2020 is only 8 years away, look at 8 years ago: Facebook had barely launched; iPhone and iPad did not exist, the A380 Airbus had not flown, and there was no YouTube, Twitter had not taken. Yet today Facebook, Youtube and social media are a natural part of our culture and lifestyle. I phone has now past MS Outlook as the world's largest email client, and mobile devices outsell all PC sales, which shows the significant shift in everyday life to always connected with the mobile device, not just for calls, but a text, news, email. Imagine doing business today without a mobile being able to access the required information. So in 2020, what will be a natural part of the Industrial Operational Management/ Plant Operations “day in the life”.

Are we designing today's systems for the future, are we looking at work ethic of 5 to 8 years out when designing? The answer is probably not farther than 2 to 3 years this could be a mistake when all the factors are changing so much.

Over the holiday period in my reading,  I ran into an article “How we’ll do Business in 2012” by futurist Morris Miselowski, which provoked reflection on much of what this blog covered last year, and thoughts about reality at that point in time. During my last trip to UK, I visited a client whom I thought is coming to grip with their automation/ operation system design and planning, but looking into the period 2015 to 20, and defining the roles but most of all the “day in the life” of those roles in 2018/20. This is the correct way to go as it allows the thought and design pattern to shift to the new paradigm we will be facing in 2020.

So let’s set some facts down about the state of the world in 2020 from Mike Miselowski’s article:

• The 32^nd Olympic Games will be held.
• It will be a leap year.
• Baby Boomers will be older than 60
• One in five of us will be over 60 years of age.
• One in three employees will be working casual, part-time or project base vs career in a company.
• 40% of today’s senior leaders will have reached retirement age.
• Gen Y will account for 42% of the workforce.
• The average tenure in a jib / role will be 2.4 years
• One in four workers will be working remotely and virtually.

The last 5 points echo a lot of what we are starting to see in the market, especially in certain parts of the world e.g.| China and South Africa have both lost the Baby Boomer and the first half of Gen X generations. Gen Y is already a significant portion in their workforce, bringing with them real-time/ transient approaches to tasks with limited experience, they require solutions to absorb this work ethic vs challenge it. By 2020, we will all be in this mode, and it is the thought / and industry leaders who “embrace” this transitional work ethic so they can execute and grow the business by harnessing it that will be a leapfrogging the market.

Mike Miselowski made a comment on tomorrow’s workplace in business, but it applies to the operational space as well:

“The 2020 workplace will need to be adept at uniting a physically – present tribe of employees with a tribe of offsite, and often transient, staff. The latter will be specifically chosen for their ability to add value to the task or project, regardless of where they are on the globe.”

This concept aligns with the thoughts we have discussed in this blog around the transition from Applications – to – Roles – to – Activities, in the operational life. Many businesses are going away from offices to activity based workplaces where you choose you workplace (desk), location for the day based on the most efficient place to execute activities at hand. Compare this with the traditional office with family photos, and all your files. Now the workspace is clear with a power supply, internet connection (probably wireless) and all your files and information will be in the “cloud” or only local working space on your local device. Traditional automation solutions run a process with a specific layout for a PC or workstation which does not align with “activity” thinking, agility in users/ roles, the industrial operational work experience of tomorrow must allow activities to be chosen and the materials, information and procedures to execute all available no matter my location or device.

Tomorrow the “cloud” will be a natural part of the operational, automation world especially relative to information sharing, knowledge management, operational procedures consistently, and KPI consistently. The architectural landscape will be an “Industrial Enterprise landscape” across the value chain of the product, spanning plants, countries, cultures, automation systems, and vendors and companies. Yes,  the “federated” operational system delivering the product / service required to be “end to end” to the customer, with real-time awareness, and agility across the value chain, and this will span companies. The only way to compete is based upon service, requiring  responsiveness and agility.   

The average tenure will be 2.4 years, and if you consider 6 months to a year in today's terms is used in bringing a new person into the role to 100 % productivity. The approach to “time to performance” of new personal will need to change dramatically, and learning will natural, on the job, and self/ online training. Manuals will only be references, the learning and understanding will be You Tubes for short, focused skill absorption. The attitude of “why not”, and “what if” will prevail, and the system must explain or limit the “why not” and enable the “what if” question to be answered.

Systems will constantly evolving and changing, as changes in the “value chain of a product or service” evolve with different players, plants, supplies the ability to “plug and play” a new member of the value chain into flowing system will be key.

All the best for Xmas and New Year, and as you reflect on the year ahead I hope some of the comments above are forming some of the foundation for the themes for 2014, it will be a very exciting year, as the reality in the transformation of the industrial landscape takes shape initially from vendor offerings (Example this time last year the historians were “on premise” now two leading vendors have solutions for Tier2 (enterprise Historians) in the cloud) Invensys been one.

Applying New Technologies “Cloud/ Internet of Things” to Achieve addition “Jobs to be Done” vs Initially Applying to Existing Systems

Last week I was in Perth speaking with many people, and again it struck me that people were not looking a new opportunities for such technologies as the “cloud, or Internet of things” they were still in the traditional mindset.

As I have mentioned before I am a big believer in “The Outcome Driven Innovation” approach to looking at markets, opportunities. Providing a clear view into trends and focus on what is important.

So why are not people looking at the opportunities beyond the traditional industrial space of automation systems, to extend the scope and alignment of complete value chain. Example was with Invensys’s recent release of a “cloud based historian” the initial people you talk to are struggling on the benefit vs just a “tier 2 / Enterprise historian”. This is not surprising when “the conversation continued”, they were applying the technology to solve an existing “Job” problem which was well satisfied vs reviewing opportunities to add value that just are not served today.

But when I asked the question about their 1000’s of small auxiliary plants with low manning (if any),  for water, substations etc, and the opportunity to have 10 to 100 points coming up into a “managed  historian like service” so no need to: host, setup, manage a historian, and no need buy an over sized historian as now the small points from one plant can be included in a historian capability used by others (multi tenant). On the realization that we could actually extend the reach of the existing system, and therefore the opportunity optimize and tune these less visible plants, providing transparency and potentially interaction, people “sparked” up, and now the “Cloud” had some real additional value.

The same discussion happened over dinner with the “Internet of things” where again people were thinking of applying within the existing plants, vs extending the scope of control, visibility to a less well served segment of the value chain. Really the initial opportunity is to extend the unified system, and to remote devices and empower the roaming staff. Example is the “cold supply chain” in the distribution of food, where leaving the plant you have a series of refrigerated trucks and distribution centers. In order to achieve positive release of product and end to end full history the products. The “internet of things” provides the opportunity of each of the devices, plants (trucks) can be connected the temperatures of the products recorded as well as what products are in the truck. In a geographically distributed solutions, the concepts of isolated, remote assets, roaming value assets such as wells, trucks, and roaming people the logical is to have them all connected, the ability todo analysis and notification, react faster etc. Extending the traditional landscape/ scope of the automation system, with the technology step very minor if you have a 3G/ 4G approach and a tiered /Hybrid architecture. The hybrid architecture provides data integrity, with store forward etc,  addressing possible disconnects, but with the bandwidth management now available on data systems is key. This is only one example the if we look at other roaming equipment such as mine trucks and trains, wells and roaming drill rigs etc. Why now is because the technology, infrastructure and requirement exist, combining these provides a new level operational value. The move to supporting EDGE/ GPRS interfaces will become a natural part of industrial solutions, with self discovery capability.

Another discussion last week that stands out in my mind was around a customer who considered the cloud as unsafe from a security point of view. Then someone decided to really test this unsafe assumption and had an internal review of their security exposure vs the cloud solution, and it became very clear that their own “on premise” architecture was significantly more exposed than the cloud solution. This study was a good example of the ignorance of the new architectures; this customer is now shifting their architectural landscape to a hybrid architecture including “on and off” premise components.

It is clear that “Internet” will be part of the backbone of industrial automation and operations solutions. Especially as the market drives for more accountability End to End and decisions in the NOW, no matter where the key decision person is independent of device.

Globalization vs Continentalization, the world is shifting to Continentalization

Listening to a discussion on supply chain logistics panel, then follow the debate with some leading logistic thinkers and companies, and then stepping back you start to see a change to focusing from Global outlook to a Continental outlook, and networks of supply chain. When you listen to logistics thinkers, the cost of fuel, and changing climate conditions with increased storms, and the increased requirement for speed and reliability of delivery to end users is driving change in thinking to how to build efficient continental value networks.

Brand loyalty is decreasing, while convenience of consumption increases in buying behavior. The fact that I need to consume a product now and the ease buying, plus price will lead me to alternative products. In the 2000’s, we had a change to Globalization this is still happening in companies acquiring other companies and will increase, as people change to consume, buy online, but now comes the challenge of fulfillment in a timely and cost effective manner. Sourcing in low cost countries is becoming risky and costly due to transport costs, and distance, and since 2006 we continued to see a rise in transport costs, and environmental responsibility that adds to cost.

To address this, we seeing a move gradually to a continental value chain reducing distance some reducing time and uncertainly/ risk of delivery.  Also reducing cost through short distances, and fewer segment changes. These Value supply chains do cross borders.

Increasingly the complexity and value of the return of Global value delivers less value, vs a tighter and more agile continental value chain. New product integration can fit the market; changes in that market are absorbed and adjusted to faster. So information networks, and operational landscapes that enable transparent view and action across the continental chain, awareness of situation and state, the ability interact faster and adjust is key. Already in the smart grid discussions you starting to see the ASEAN Grid a distributed / collaborative grid for the nations of ASEAN.  In the food / CPG industries, primary production will happen centrally in one or few places in the continent, with packaging and final end product manufacturing happening locally servicing the language vs country. The Business System, Product Life Cycle Management, Asset management, and value chain planning and scheduling done across multi value sites in a logically ONE production landscape.

From an industrial / manufacturing system point of view this shift still a holistic view, where a set of value generating assets and their systems, assets and people will be interlinked across set of interconnected service buses to satisfy the needs within a continent. The uniqueness of each site, will be maintained, but the alignment will now exist through this “loosely coupled but aligned approach”, with operational management cross the borders and taking this continental view. The scope of the projects should be more contained than a global view. Combine this with the creation of dynamic operational community with cultural boundaries within the continent, the education requirement reducing “time to experience/ performance of staff can scope to the continent, which will reduce time zone miss alignment, as well.

The Biggest Transformational Opportunity for Industry is the “Distributed and Collaborative” architecture IoT

Over the last couple of months, people have me what is the biggest change to the future I see as the shift to a distributed yet collaborative world of interconnected devices, applications, people assets and system. Yes, this is referred to as the “internet of Things” IoT others call it the Internet of Everything”, but the key is smart devices providing information, be able to interact with each other.

Some people look at change since 1993 when the internet was introduced the biggest thing to happen, but I believe the value, and paradigm step in the way we work, and do things in the industrial world and at home as we move to Internet of Things concepts will be a far more dramatic transformation. Key is the world will be distributed in action; vs centralized, yet things will collaborate and interact for faster decisions, and awareness.

“ARC Advisory Group uses the term Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) to refer to the emerging practice of connecting intelligent physical entities, such as sensors, devices, machines, assets, and products, to each other, to internet services, and to applications. Industrial companies can use information from these connected devices to lower costs, optimize processes, and transform their applications, services, or business models.”

 To be honest, this is not a new idea I remember working on some R & D developments 12 years ago around putting web servers into instruments, the concept was to expose information easily and in a standard way. It was too early for the rest of the infrastructure was not there. Today that it is different, with wireless now a normal concept in an industrial plant, the advancement of cellular networks from a data point of view with 3G and 4G especially in geographically distributed, providing the backbone for ability of devices to realistically connect with enough bandwidth. Combine this with the SOA “service orientated architectures and applications, and the rise embedded intelligence within devices, and mobile devices the opportunity is here!

“But is it a matter of just exposing everything to the internet and we have changed the world?”

NO, the issues around security who can see, who can interact with your devices, is key, this is still maturing and evolving in techniques and practices, but reality is closer than most people seem to realize. The next is context, and intelligence, while smart devices and instruments are reality for new installations these do not apply to existing plants which is the majority of the world. So how do you “intelligence enable” existing devices, assets and processes in the industrial world?

We seeing people increasing use the PLCs and controllers to add intelligence around devices like motors and pumps, conveyors etc. But also there is work happening in what people call “stranded assets” where electronic manual rounds that managed and planned now bring back regular data from these stranded assets, as well intelligent platforms coming into play, putting a layer of intelligent objects that add intelligence and “self awareness” to unintelligent devices. The key is that information from a devices transforms to deliver increased value through context, validation, and “situational awareness”.

ARC is referring to this as CBM (Connected Device Management) platform I suspect their definition is more narrow than mine, as I believe the Internet of Things is no just about information, but the action as well, but never the less it provides a foundation.

“Connected Device Management (CDM) platforms are emerging as pivotal, value-added components of the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture. These software entities -- used to manage intelligent connected products, devices,machines, and other assets -- reside between connected products or devices and the Big Data, analytics, cloud platforms, and other applications that reside at higher levels of the IoT architecture. “

 

The Key is that there is a layer needed between the analysis applications, and larger business/ operational decision makers and applications, and the devices of the industrial world. This layer needs to take devices from just information to “exception based” notification, and “self aware” devices to avoid overwhelming the Enterprise applications. But it is not just up, it is also across devices, in order to make a “self ware” notification, and intelligent device will have to talk to another device or devices to understand the full context of process etc. This introduces the concept of Internet of Things not just applying to devices but all to operational processes and their state, as well.

I saw an interesting application of this concept in the “Smart Grid” world of power that we needed to model and has as “living things” such things as “storms, fires, tides etc” these living entities need generate alarms, notifications etc. So key to this platform is that these intelligent objects are not data structures they are "living" entities providing data context, intelligent alarm, events and notifications and awareness of state relative to situation and surroundings.

This is an exciting topic of distributed, but collaborative “things” enabling faster real time decisions and actions across assets, process and people will provide the next level of opportunity. Aligning with many of the concepts of the “Third Industrial Revolution” with distributed micro power generation, with the interconnected intelligence across consumption, supply, storage in an economic growing structure, it too is the Internet of things concepts applied to change the world we live in.

Food for thought, and a good thread of thought for a series of blogs.  

 

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.

Is the day of I/O as the valid size measure of an Industrial Supervisory System coming to an end?

I would state "yes" to the end of I/O as a valid size of system between the controllers (DCS, PLCs smart devices) and the supervisory layer both operational control and information, historian.

No doubt some people are gasping when I say this, and this is a normal reaction from the tradition industrial market, but take a deep breath and step back and look at the modern world.

I/o is being commoditized by the fact that devices are becoming smarter, which means a factor increase in information coming from these devices to enable more effective operational management.

Examples:

·         Motor has gone from 5 to 10 I/O traditionally to now 100 +

·         Gas wells were a 2 years look at 50 points, I saw that same well logging 680 points

The list can go on, but in order to drive operational excellence devices will get smarter and more real time in context information is required. As we move into "Internet of things" in the industrial world where smart devices, processes etc. and linking into the system, talking to each other is key, again information is key.

So how can we say I/O is accurate or even a “ball park " metric for sizing a system. In many cases, companies are not increasing their assets that run their plants they are just increasing the amount information coming from existing assets.

So where is the value it is in the delivery of content, information, and enablement of effective decisions and actions to run the plant in the optimum way? Empowering system, people and applications to take a decision and action in a timely manner.

With the changing operational paradigm in from connected desktops to workers using a number of devices at once in the execution of the daily tasks where content can be displayed and interacted independently of the device. There is also a transformation in client applications e.g. traditional HMI (human man interface) to “Roles” and now the real shift to Operational Systems designed around "activities".

 

Yes, the world is changing and so must the industries metrics for licensing evolve to align with today's customer value indicators!

“Staying Evergreen” key to Cyber Security Strategy!!!

This week I spoke at SCADA Australia conference, where many of the leading companies in the SCADA, geographical industry, such as water, power distribution, rail etc. While the increased awareness of the empowering real-time analysis and decisions was discussed. The major discussions were around Cyber Security strategies and threats and virtualization. The surprise to me was the fact that the debates did not link these two discussions, and there was very gradual take up on virtualization.

This is very different to what we have seen elsewhere in the world especially North America and Western Europe where virtualization has become the default approach to the industrial architecture. People discussed the reason why people go to virtualization is a cost of servers, yes this is a factor but in most cases this is only a side benefit. The big advantage is the abstraction of the software application from the hardware and infrastructure.

Speaking with customers the linkage between Cyber Security and the need to stay current, not just patching etc, is becoming a main stay of their “sustaining” strategy. Many of the security fixes and improvements do not happen in patches,  but in point and major releases, this is with infrastructure software such as Operating Systems, and databases, as well as industrial software. So many leading companies are looking at architectures and deployments that enable their systems to stay “evergreen” eg on the current releases. The advantages happen in security but also in general cost of sustaining the system so you do not end up with major application jumps.

So I ask myself why you would not employ standard architectures on a virtualized platform, allowing hardware to evolved and for high availability architectures to allow upgrades of software and minimal time to switch over from the running version to new version, plus providing an environment for testing. Many of you will say that is what we doing, but within the last 6 weeks in eastern / central Europe, ASEAN and Australia I have seen a reluctance to adopt virtualization this I would understand if we turned back the clock 4 to 5 years ago, but the technology is very mature today, and well proven.

The other trend happening is the move away from customization and everything to configured, using standard tools and capability. This is key to enabling applications to stay evergreen, the advantage of customization vs cost to sustain is just not worth it. A solution architecture decision should not an event, it must be a journey, with the key consideration of operational continuity will be sustained which maintaining the systems in an “evergreen” state.