Industry 4.0 Provides a Framework for Agile Manufacturing/ both Discrete and Process

Industry 4.0 is a relevant and significant shift in how industrial automation and operations management software is implemented and used to deliver significant business improvements.  However, it is too simplistic to directly apply the Industry 4.0 concepts to all manufacturing industries, or without considering industrial requirements which are not addressed by this activity.  The following is a set of viewpoints which are discussed in this white paper:

• Industry 4.0 is about the transformation from controlling focusing on process to “controlling the product/ order” and the “product/ order being self aware”.
• Industry 4.0 is about operations transformation, not about technology.
• Industry 4.0 provides a practical strategic framework for “lean” and “agile” industrial operations.
• Industry 4.0 addresses the needs of discrete and batch manufacturing, but it needs some adaptation for the heavy process and infrastructure industries.

Cloud computing and IT/OT convergence are often linked to implementing Industry 4.0, but these needs some adaptation to address “trustworthiness” of the architectures.  One emerging topic is Fog computing.

The functions and requirements of automation and operation management technology are even more relevant than before (contrary to some of the recent vendor claims).

Information standards such as IEC 61850/ISO9506, ISA-95/ISO62264, PRODML etc. are even more relevant than before .

Industry 4.0 is about the transformation from controlling focusing on process to “controlling the product/ order” and the “product/ order being self-aware”

See the full blog on:
http://operationalevolution.blogspot.com/

Blog : Shifted to New Location http://operationalevolution.blogspot.com/

You may have been wondering what has happened to blog.
They switched it to a new location, but many people seem to not have as access, or awareness.

So where is the new link: http://operationalevolution.blogspot.com/

Sorry for the confusion.

ISA-95 and Operations Transformation

Tyhe questions around S95 where and how to use continue to grow, especially as the guidance for operational system alignment, we though it was time to give an update.

The ISA-95 standard has been in place for over 20 years, and recent progress in operations management transformation and Cloud adoption have triggered questions about this standard.  The author offers an observation:

·         ISA-95 is essential for higher performing operations who are implementing sustainable improvements, in conjunction with best practices such as lean.

Higher performing operations often have the capability to achieve and sustain best practices which directly produce best business performance.  A key enabler to this improvement is exchanging operations knowledge in more detail and more frequently.  Examples include:

•          Tracking of containers in high-volume continuous food cooking, so that successfully cooked containers can be recovered after a machinery failure with compliant tracking and reporting.
•          Assessment and tracking of ore grades in mining from the pit to the port, including in the stock piles and in the rail cars, so that yields and prices can be optimized.
•          Assessment and tracking of chemical components in petroleum refining and petrochemical manufacturing, so that yields and costs can be optimized.
•          Detailed and accelerated distribution of new manufacturing instruction in consumer-packaged goods, food and beverage and discrete/aerospace manufacturing, so that new products can be introduced much faster.

Each of the above examples depend upon exchanging “insight” in great detail throughout the manufacturing/processing and its associated supply chain.  Lean principles can be reliably applied, including eliminating wasted work; specialists can reduce time spent on producing useful information and focus on continuous improvement.

ISA-95 provides an information exchange model, and standardizes how activities are defined and relate to each other, such as quality, inventory, maintenance, production and the notion of “work”.  Sets of information are exchanged as “events”, and the relationships between activities and events are standardized.  Without this information exchange model, knowledge workers don’t have a sustainable operations management system, and as a result, the organization doesn’t have sufficiently useful information.

How can architecture decisions be made?  Consider the following information model in light of the 3 implementation options summarized above:

Wherever these functions are implemented in different locations (with or without Cloud), what mechanisms are necessary for requirements such as “business continuity”, “access control” etc.?  How much context must be exchanged between sites and the Cloud to recover from network and Cloud outages?  Only an appropriately detailed and standardized information model can help.

ISA-95 focuses on the functions of operations management; it is independent of the implementation, including technology and location.  It is the foundation of high performance operations management transformation.

Operations Innovation & Transformation – Flexible Teams

The 4 quadrants described in the article “Operations Innovation & Transformation – the 4 Types” positions the lower right quadrant as a strategy for using a team of human assets in a new way.

In this quadrant, teams of specialists (with the same or different areas of specialization) are grouped to provide value improvement to a group of physical assets, and the group of physical assets can be used as a “fleet” or as a “chain”.  This is much more than a passive “help desk”.  One example is where specialists use real-time benchmarking and other tools, working with new business processes with the physical assets and the dedicated workers, to unlock value of themselves and the physical assets.

In the following diagrams, a team is located in different sites at the moment.  This example has 4 physical assets, A through D, and specialist 1 is mobile (working from a hotel, home or in an office within the enterprise), and specialist 3 is in an operations center.  In the left-hand diagram, specialist 1 is supporting or improving the performance of physical assets A and B, and specialist 3 handles the physical assets C and D.  In the right-hand diagram, a change in performance in asset B triggers a workflow and specialist 2, who is on call or is assigned by the team supervisor, handles asset B.  Specialist 1 does not receive workflows for asset B unless the team supervisor changes the assignments.  Overlapping assignments are also used, especially when multiple disciplines or specializations are involved.  Both use the same integrated and federated information, and these specialists become champions to help all like operations and equipment improve performance.

In the following diagram, a workflow “brings the work to the worker”, using the same integrated and federated information, on-line performance applications, and human workflow.  The supervisor(s) can easily change assignments, and the workflow can include escalation, which can be guided by the performance applications’ output compared to thresholds (simple calculations of time to reach a threshold).

The strength of these workflow is to help specialists intervene early enough, using standardized and trustworthy data, focused on trends.  This processing of information is automated as much as possible.

The specialists spend most of their time working on improvements instead of processing data and analyzing previous performance problems, and their decisions.  As a result, major overhauls are safely and reliably delayed, equipment performance is improved, and operators trust the equipment more to help increase performance at each physical asset.

Why is the (Level 2-3) platform key to the future state?

I seem to end up in many discussions between IT/OT, the convergence that is required in order to achieve today’s agility. It is really is the transition of existing operational / business systems from “open Loop” to “Closed Loop”. For many of us from the control world this is just extending the “closed loop” control approaches to the supervisory/ operational architectures, but with longer periods.

As stated many times we have 4 pillars of change occurring:

•        Demand Driven supply driving agility
•        Changing work force to a Dynamic/ collaborative workforce
•        Changing Workspace and process “way of working”
•        Changing technologies with Big data/ Internet of things

Driving the creation of integrated, flexible platform that bridges knowledge management, and information / decision support, while naturally absorbing change through Model Driven Architectures.

The key is applications, and capabilities will constantly evolve, change, this should not restrict the agility of the system to adopt through a platform allows new processes and loops to be put in place, but easily adopted.

The shift to closed loops where a “process” is applied to reducing variation in the speed a decision is made vs the action that is taken, and that the execution of these processes can be monitored and tuned even if it just executed across humans. Correct action maybe improving the transfer of “knowledge” so people or systems involved in the process execution have the knowledge to make the decision and act in a timely manner.  

The required platform between automation/ and business must eliminate:

•        Silos of information and control/ elimination of disconnects.
•        Elimination of disconnects thru contextualization across systems so transparency of understanding can achieved across systems.
•        Elimination of delays thru aligned kpis and targets and decision across the different levels of business control. Removing isolation of decisions and actions through integrated bossiness and control loops.

This does not mean we replace existing automation and operational systems, it means we applying new technologies to federate systems where possible, into a hybrid solution thru standards, and managed processes that can be evolved over time. 

Holacracy a New Way of Work can it Apply in Industrial Operational Space

I have spent the weekend listening a reading more on Holacracy, (http://www.holacracy.org/) and attended a training two weeks ago. While the concepts are familiar to me in that it follows the AGILE Software thinking and approach to putting a framework in place that enable :

·         Agility through understanding where you are and what you have to do so you can make changes

·         That enables empowerment of the team, individuals

·         The distribution of authority to enable empowerment to execute

The whole approach makes total sense to the new operational transformation environment, and I believe could be applied to manufacturing. Providing a framework for the more efficient execution, planning of work across an organization.

If you look at the Agile case studies from John Deere where they applied agile , top to bottom the results speak for them selves:

While agile is applied in the software work, what we seeing in industrial operations, is not a transformation in technology (yes it is being enable by technology) but it really is a transformation in the way companies plan, execute, work. This work could be planned work from a business side, to work generated on the plant that needs to followed up a resolved, shifting workers from an average of 35% planned work in a day to greater than 70%.

Holacracy and Agile are systems that transform the way in which work is planned, and executed, with constant empowerment of people to change and evolve the system.

As I look into both frameworks and try to apply them in my own life, I cannot see why they would be a possibility for transformation of culture to achieve better work in the industrial work space.

It is important to note both systems are aligned and they are a framework, they require discipline and execution within the framework to enable the agility. Too often in manufacturing and the industrial space people put technology and systems in as “silver bullets” and expect them to solve everything. But they are only tools, there needs to be an operational cultural transformation as well and combined you gain real change.

If you have not heard about Holacracy and are looking at a transformation in the way your company works have a look at it.  http://www.holacracy.org/, there are many You tubes and discussions on it!

What kind of a “driver” should the front-line worker be in the factory of the future?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and it is valid question. With the change roles, changing scopes of responsibility, and changing demographic / way of working, certainly the generic roles of the past 20 years will not work.

But getting back to the “driver” type of the future no matter role. So many people say why not eliminate drivers and humans all together, nothing new this is “lights out manufacturing” but is it practical. I believe not and the reason is the demanding world of today which demands change. 

Certainly where we have consistent planned know execution automation makes the whole sense, but :

•         our product run sizes are reducing
•          product change overs are increasing
•          new product introduction is increasing
•          Agility is key

The ability to absorb and handle change in operations, products and personal is becoming foundational in our operational system of the future.

The above diagram shows the two sides of the thinking, but the key is you have change on the left, and in the pilot actually  is a combination of “automated and human” capability to provide the effectiveness. Most of the flying activities are automated, freeing up the pilot to work the strategy and situation to apply quick, situation-ally aware actions to control to combat the situation.

In manufacturing our productivity has been increasing significantly as seen below, for a period it tracked human compensation, but in 70’s this changed and productivity continue to rise, but not compensation. You might ask "as what do you mean" this curve is relative to team / role, what has happened in the 70s to 2000s we have increased automation, and increased the scope and work a worker covers for the same compensation. 

But this is going to take another step as the low hanging fruits have been taken, with DCS, robotics and PLCs etc. Now how can you increase alignment and decisions so you achieve that level 5 of automation levels that of “Manage by Exception”. This will require a new level of embedded knowledge, community collaboration, and augmented human interpretation.

Standby as we transition the “Driver” from Semi Manual to an Augmented Pilot, where we can easily move "pilots" between plans (plants) and not loose efficiency, and agility to absorb/ combat change!