by Gary Mintchell | Feb 26, 2021 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
Executives at software companies have been explaining their roles in “IT/OT Convergence” for at least 20 years. I hope to lead a banning of that term. It’s actually a bit of nonsense.
Permit me an analogy. Sometimes in a soccer match a hard foul occurs. Suddenly opposing players are in each other’s faces. The referee pops in the middle and has a word (or more). Often the situation ends with the players grudgingly slapping hands in a bit of a handshake, and the game continues.
I think that some software supplier executives, both on the operations side and on the enterprise side, thought they would play the role of that referee, bringing the OT and IT teams together. It was never going to happen this way. Neither would it happen by various management efforts to merge the departments. Each team has a critical, but different, role in a manufacturing organization. What concerns us is the intersection of these roles.
This intersection lies in the realm of data. OT requires data from the processes, assets, materials to fulfil its role of efficiently and profitably producing products. IT requires much of the same data for its enterprise management requirements. This is where we should look.
I am beginning to interview people at companies tackling the issue from this point-of-view. Enter Element Analytics and an interview I recently had under the cover of the ARC Industry Forum with Steve Beamer, VP.
The essential focus of Element Analytics is data connection. It uses drag & drop coding, is source agnostic, and utilizes knowledge graph model. Beamer says Element Analytics is tackling one of the most critical gaps in Industrial IoT — the fact that 95% of data across the Industrial Enterprise is unusable because it’s fragmented and disconnected. Element Unify breaks through the data silos by bringing IT and OT data together on a single solution. With Element Unify, IT and OT teams can collaboratively make data-driven operational and business decisions around rich, contextualized metadata, while ensuring scale, reliability and security.
This allows IT and OT teams to work collaboratively to build rich data context at scale with no-code, automated data pipelines. The end result is a single federated, contextualized source of data from which users can establish their own single version of the truth, all with a powerful governance engine ensuring data integrity across the enterprise.
By aligning and scaling critical OT/IT data, the value of data is unlocked, enabling the delivery of high impact, enterprise-wide analytics that improve core business performance outcomes like asset flexibility, security, reliability, safety, and cost.
This lets them serve their OT partners better, helping satisfy OT business analytical application requirements, all while delivering the enterprise scale, reliability, security, and adaptability enterprise IT applications require.
Value to IT
Add meaningful value to the OT data domain by delivering a single IT/OT data management solution that satisfies the OT analytical application requirements. Additionally, no “rip and replace” — Element Unify easily snaps into IaaS Cloud systems and IoT services.
Value to OT
Enabling a layered process in which every team continues to add to the overall enterprise data model by providing their perspective. This drives an increasingly rich, more contextual view of the assets — and corresponding metadata — informing the manufacturing process.
For example, here is a glimpse at a use case we discussed.
Evonik is one of the world’s leading specialty chemical companies. When plant managers from two production sites in Mobile, AL, discovered that emergency maintenance for pumps and compressors represented nearly 75% of corrective maintenance costs, they decided to take action.
To avoid equipment failure and increase uptime, the team wanted to leverage condition-based monitoring, predictive maintenance, and root cause analytics. While the plants had a variety of data available from systems like GoPlant and Emerson EMS, the production data was messy. Data scientists spent 50-70% of their time on data cleanup — leading to slower realization of analytics benefits.
Arpan Seth, Senior Data Scientist and Process Engineer, turned to Element Unify
to produce clean, contextualized asset data models that integrate metadata from source systems and ultimately enable dashboards in Microsoft Power BI-providing a 360-degree view of the plant’s pumps and compressors.
In just eight weeks, Evonik was able to deploy two asset data models for 464 pieces of rotating equipment at both plants. The results? The plant operations team is now able to predict equipment failure and make informed maintenance decisions using Power BI dashboards. Plant managers estimate a potential savings of $2M over five years, based on the ability to prevent four pump failures per year from just one analytic at one plant.
Going forward, the team will be able to rapidly scale these analytics to other plants, as well as test and validate new AI and machine learning technologies at speed thanks to Element Unify.
Challenges
- Connecting and integrating disparate sources of asset data
- Time and expertise needed for data cleanup and preparation
Solution
- Connect to Aspen InfoPlus.21, SAP and Emerson EMS using Element Unify, to automate data extraction and cleanup
- Purpose-built IT/OT data management solution for data scientists; 360-degree view of equipment for plant operations teams
Results
- 80% less time to build asset models
- 40% less analytics deployment work
- Potential savings of $550K over 5 years, from one analytic at one
plant
- Improved data accessibility, enabling future analytics and AI/ML initiatives
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 25, 2021 | Automation, Networking, Standards
Whatever happened to Time Sensitive Networking (TSN)? I had been pondering the relative disappearance of several technologies creating buzz in 2020—TSN, Arduino, Raspberry Pi. Then came buried within the OPC Foundation discussion with us at the 25th ARC Industry Forum this month word of TSN.
This appears to be the last of the updates I received at ARC this year. OPCF president Stefan Hoppe began with a photo of the unusual amount of snow around his house in Germany (as I was contemplating my yard in my new house in the Chicago suburbs with about 2 feet of snow blanketing the area. Meaning—none of us were in Florida this year).
I wrote last month about the Field Level Communications standard work. In this, 300 experts from 60 major companies published a Technical Paper and completed Initial Release Candidate. OPCF continues work on the networking side with this FLC specification along with work on the “Advanced Physical Layer”, which is a new Ethernet cabling standard. Hoppe stated the mission, “…in order to drive industrial interoperability from field to cloud (and vice versa) and to support IT/OT convergence.”
Work has also started on identifying and creating facets and profiles that define the mandatory feature sets for the various types of automation components which is essential to reach a high level of cross-vendor interoperability.
Hoppe continued, “Ethernet APL and TSN are important enablers, which allow OPC UA to further penetrate new application areas in process and factory automation. The OPC Foundation’s Field Level Communications Initiative bundles these activities and acts as a global center of gravity for a unified OPC UA-based industrial interoperability solution harmonized between the process industry and factory automation.”
Peter Lutz, Director of the FLC Initiative, said, “The initial release candidate, which was completed in November 2020, is a major achievement because it facilitates the long-awaited standardization of Controller-to-Controller (C2C) connectivity. The specifications are used not only to build prototypes, they are also used to create test specifications that will be converted to corresponding test cases for the OPC UA certification tool (CTT). Furthermore, it lays the foundation for specification enhancements, covering the Controller-to-Device (C2D) and Device-to-Device (D2D) use cases in the next step.”
The initial release candidate (RC1), which focuses on Controller-to-Controller (C2C), consists of four parts (Parts 80-83) that specify how automation controllers exchange process data and configuration data using OPC UA Client/Server and PubSub extensions in combination with peer-to-peer connections and basic diagnostics.
These parts are extensions to the OPC UA framework and are labelled with OPC UA FX (Field eXchange):
- Part 80 (OPC UA FX 10000-80) provides an overview and introduces the basic concepts of using OPC UA for Field eXchange.
- Part 81 (OPC UA FX 10000-81) specifies the base information model and the communication concepts to meet the various use cases and requirements of Factory and Process Automation.
- Part 82 (OPC UA FX 10000-82) describes networking services, such as topology discovery and time synchronization.
- Part 83 (OPC UA FX 10000-83) describes the data structures for sharing information required for Offline Engineering using descriptors and descriptor packages.
In addition, a 40-page technical paper was published that explains the overall vision and the technical approach.
Since the Advanced Physical Layer (APL) and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) are key technologies for the OPC Foundation’s strategy to bring OPC UA down to the field in discrete and process industries, different cooperation strategies have been established:
- The OPC Foundation has joined the Advanced Physical Layer Project Group (APL) to support the development and promotion of the Advanced Physical Layer (APL) for Industrial Ethernet, suitable for use in demanding applications and hazardous locations in the process industry.
- The OPC Foundation has established liaisons with IEC SC65C as well as IEEE 802.1 in order to support and align with the IEC/IEEE 60802 TSN Profile for Industrial Automation, which is essential in building converged industrial automation networks in which multiple IT and OT protocols share a common network infrastructure.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 24, 2021 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Workforce
GE Digital presented to us during the ARC Industry Forum press and media conference this month. It introduced an enhanced remote operations solution for oil & gas and chemical industries.
GE Digital introduced Remote Operations for Oil & Gas and Chemical Industries, a software and appliance solution that provides remote / mobile employee access to essential equipment monitoring and control functions. GE Digital began offering Remote Operations earlier in 2020 in the Power Generation industry and already has many leading worldwide industrial customers using the solution.
With distant upstream facilities and harsh operating conditions, the Oil & Gas industry faces challenges in providing safe and cost-effective equipment monitoring, maintenance, and emergency response. At the refinery or plant, the global pandemic and economic pressures are triggering both Oil & Gas and Chemical companies to re-think their strategies regarding contingency operations, worker location flexibility, and on-site staffing. GE Digital Remote Operations solution, proven in power generation, addresses these, and other challenges faced by industrials.
Remote Operations provides remote and mobile workers with secure and managed access to equipment controls regardless of type. NERC-CIP and ISA 99/62443 compliant security, multi-factor authentication, and operational safeguards enable failsafe control flexibility and cooperation across all staff, on site and off site.
Typical use cases for Remote Operations in the Oil & Gas and Chemical industries include:
- Centralized monitoring of distant and dispersed equipment
- Lights-out operation of distant facilities
- Remote monitoring and controls over refinery or plant equipment
- Mobile controls and HQ collaboration for maintenance crew activities
- Anytime/anywhere access to experts to aid in equipment maintenance
- Remote/mobile monitoring and controls for in-house power generation facilities
“Our success in the Power Generation industry leads naturally to offering Remote Operations to Oil & Gas and Chemicals companies,” said Linda Rae, General Manager for GE Digital’s Power Generation and Oil & Gas business. “These and other industries are seeking the benefits of remote and centralized monitoring centers, worker location flexibility, and increased safety and productivity for mobile workers. We are here to serve that need with a proven product already road tested in the stringent environment of power generators.”
Remote Operations is available in three upwardly compatible packages, accommodating needs from urgent continuity to fault tolerant operations centers. All include the core end-to-end security and compliance features.
Remote Operations Response is a special packaged offer to rapidly enable remote monitoring and assistance. It is compatible with existing systems and requires only the addition of a preconfigured secure network appliance and firewall. Upon equipment arrival, installation can be done in a single working day with remote support from GE Digital. No operations shutdown is required.
Remote Operations Standard (limited availability) delivers enhanced remote / mobile functions guarded by permitting and policy controls. Central operators can control remote / mobile worker access by time, equipment type and more. An interactive interface ensures that remote, mobile, and on-site staff can work independently or together in a secure and compliant environment.
Remote Operations Advanced (limited availability) provides full remote / mobile controls and additional optional operating capabilities in a high availability configuration with failover. Remote Operations Advanced is the best choice for industrials adopting remote and distributed controls as a standard, failsafe operating model across a fleet of plants or equipment.
GE Digital’s Remote Operations for Oil & Gas and Chemical Industries is generally available.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 24, 2021 | Automation, Business, News, Technology
Schneider Electric presented a couple of news items to us at the ARC Industry Forum a couple of weeks ago. It continues to push its evangelization of software-defined control using IEC 61499. It also announced a strategic agreement with Wood plc. I just got off a Webcast billed as customers using Automation Expert. Instead, it was a deep dive into the product—which is OK.
Interesting note (to me, anyway) that the speaker called IEC 61499 a new standard written with Industry 4.0 in mind. I pulled a book from my library a couple of weeks ago that I reviewed in 2001, “Modeling Control Systems Using IEC 61499”. Anyway, this really is a step in the right direction. The Open Process Automation group uses this standard, among others. One last weird note—they call Automation Expert new, but they just released version 21.0?
Schneider Electric announced EcoStruxure Automation Expert version 21.0, the next in an ongoing series of updates and enhancements for the world’s first software-centric system.
Schneider Electric is implementing Agile software development methodology to deliver a new EcoStruxure Automation Expert release, based on direct customer feedback, every six months.
“Keeping pace with rapid innovation while still maintaining the capability to be 100% future proof is a key benefit of EcoStruxure Automation Expert for our customers,” said Fabrice Jadot, senior vice president, next generation automation, Schneider Electric. “In the space of a couple months we’ve added features and functions that will enhance the user experience and directly address high-demand customer needs. Our best-in-class implementation of agile mode project delivery¾along with an overall agile mindset¾helps us provide an always-current experience for our users.”
IEC 61499 adoption
EcoStruxure Automation Expert, first launched to the public in November 2020, is the world’s first universal automation offer, based on the IEC61499 standard for interoperability and portability.
Early interest in this new category of industrial automation is strong. The company reports that its integrator partners see enormous benefit in being able to add value beyond traditional PLC control. Early adopters are innovating to provide comprehensive, more capable solutions by combining technologies for their customers.
“This is not the same automation platform from 30 or 40 years ago, so there’s an initial learning curve for adjusting to IEC61499-based technology,” said Jadot. “But we’re finding that once customers and partners dive into the technology, they see real returns in flexibility and speed of engineering unlike anything they’ve experienced before. When users realize the full value of EcoStruxure Automation Expert, the most common response is, ‘This is a game changer.’”
EcoStruxure Automation Expert is particularly drawing interest from businesses in the consumer packaged goods and logistics sectors where the added flexibility is needed to react quickly to changing market dynamics, take advantage of new opportunities, or rapidly mitigate potential risk.
Next-generation technology
Enhancements in EcoStruxure Automation Expert V21.0 include:
- EtherNet/IP scanner for software programmable automation controller
- ASi-5 gateway
- Position control with Lexium 32 servo drives
and updates include:
- Common function library improvements
- Improved user interface
- Ability to define supported function blocks in logical devices
- Physical view enhancements
- Other quality, performance, security and usability enhancements
Universal automation
Universal automation is the world of plug and produce automation software components based on the IEC61499 standard that solve specific customer problems in a proven way. Adoption of a universal automation layer, common across vendors, will provide limitless opportunities for growth and modernization across industry.
By greatly extending the capabilities of existing IEC61131-based systems and enabling an app-store-like model for automation software components, the advancements possible in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be fully realized. As its benefits become visible, Schneider Electric believes other vendors will adopt universal automation, and end users will soon begin to demand it from their automation suppliers and ecosystem.
Schneider Electric and Wood Forge Strategic Agreement
Schneider Electric has formed a strategic relationship with Wood, a global leader in delivering automation solutions for projects, operations and consulting services to energy, industrial, and several other vertical markets, to make open and interoperable automation a reality for customers.
The memorandum of understanding agreement provides Wood’s automation and control group access to Schneider Electric’s IEC61499-based software, helping them deliver open, standards-based automation solutions to their global energy and industrial customers. Using object-oriented, event-based programming, where hardware and software lifecycles are decoupled and engineering efficiency is optimized, Schneider Electric and Wood are now able to provide mutual clients with next-generation, open automation and control, which can deliver step-change operational improvements today while also simplifying upgrades in the future.
“With closed systems, the full potential of Industry 4.0 remains untapped,” said Fabrice Jadot, Senior Vice President, Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric. “To accelerate industrial digital transformation, we must prioritize portability of automation applications. Today, agility and resilience are paramount. The IEC61499 standard delivers that needed interoperability and that’s why it is fundamental to the shift towards more flexible automation. We are delighted to be working with Wood, an industry innovator that has been leveraging the benefits of IEC61499, to deliver the next-generation automation solutions that end users need to thrive in the digital economy.”
“By combining our diverse capabilities and domain expertise in automation with the IEC61499 technology, we can unlock unprecedented innovation for our customers,” said Bridget Fitzpatrick, Global Process Automation Authority, Wood. “The siloed nature of industry is holding us all back. We agree that collaboration is essential to next-generation industries, and IEC61499 is the enabler. We look forward to continuing to bring greater value to our customers’ projects and welcoming a new era of open automation.”
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 24, 2021 | Commentary, News
Manufacturing contraction lower than expected at 3.9%, driven by 1.9% growth in China
- Korea also leading the pack, but Germany falters
- Rubber and plastics machinery sector gains new significance in the light of the pandemic
- Semiconductors and electronics machinery sector emerges virtually unscathed
Market numbers and analysis from Interact Analysis are the ones I prefer. I’ve discussed methodology with executives and remain impressed with the rigor. Plus, they work with ITR Economics, a firm I’ve worked with (and miss reading Alan Beaulieu’s monthly column I sourced for another magazine). 2020 was a tough year everywhere but manufacturing for the most part surprisingly maintained output.
The latest quarterly update to the Manufacturing Industry Output (MIO) Tracker from Interact Analysis reveals unexpectedly strong overall global manufacturing performance.This is an upward revision on the previous MIO updates. At our most pessimistic point, we forecast a -4% contraction in industrial output for China. But the country’s rigorous suppression of the virus meant that production was back on track by May 2020, and the region is now posting 1.9% growth.
The Chinese recovery has had a significant impact on global growth, but it still represents considerable overall lost growth, putting China among the four global loss-leaders, along with India, Japan, and the USA, who have together racked up in excess of $200bn in lost MIO potential. Korea’s track-and-trace strategy has been hugely effective, and the country has seen strong growth in the electronics and components sectors resulting in overall negative growth of only -2.4% for 2020.
In Europe, Germany’s economy in particular has suffered, and recovery will be sluggish. Key factors here are the country’s huge reliance on export markets in Eastern Europe and globally, notably in the automotive and metals sectors which have both fared badly in the pandemic.
Where industrial machinery is concerned, one of the biggest casualties globally has been the machine tools sector, which has been hit hard by the major slow-down in the transportation industries. In Germany, machine tools is down 30% and this is reflected in weak performance in other European countries too, such as the UK where we also predict the machine tools market to be down over 30%. And Europe is not alone: few of the major regions are likely to return to 2019 levels in the next 6 years.
COVID-19 has driven, and will continue to drive, the demand for plastic and rubber medical supplies and personal protective equipment. However, the rubber and plastics machinery sector did experience a decline in demand in 2020 with Korea, India and the UK seeing contractions of the order of -15.8%, -13.9% and -13.4% respectively. However, all the top 10 regions are expected to recover to 2019 levels by 2023 at the latest. Strong APAC performance will bolster a growth that will see production values rise from $49.6bn in 2020 to $53.4bn in 2021.
Adrian Lloyd, CEO at Interact Analysis, says: “The semiconductor and electronics machinery sector is one of the few sectors to have come through the pandemic untouched. Most major regions are forecast to grow past 2019 levels in 2020, with global growth forecast at 9.9%. The few who don’t will be back up and running at a stronger level than 2019 by 2021. Growth will likely be slightly slower in 2022 and 2023 but will remain positive. APAC is the leading producer of semiconductor and electronics machinery. We forecast a 5-year CAGR for Korea of 9.1%. It’s a good sector to be in. But some regions really need to play catch-up.”
About the MIO
Our team of analysts works in close conjunction with ITR Economics, a renowned and reliable team of economists who help inform our macroeconomics forecasts. Our rigorous data collection, some of it anonymised confidential material from individual manufacturers and end-users gathered during hours of interviews either face to face or by phone, and some of it gleaned from the public domain, notably government policy and financial documents, means we have significant monthly data to pull on. With almost a full year’s worth of indicators available, it allows us to test our forecast of several scenarios and predict the overall yearly growth for 2020 and beyond more accurately.
About Interact Analysis
Interact Analysis is an international provider of market research for the Intelligent Automation sector. Our team of experienced industry analysts delivers research into three core sectors: industrial automation, robotics and warehouse automation, and commercial vehicles. Intelligent Automation – which is the integration of artificial intelligence and automation – will change virtually every industry imaginable. This combination enables greater efficiencies, productivity, convenience, and scale. It has the potential to drastically alter the outlook for many traditional industries such as manufacturing, healthcare and automotive as well as to lead to the emergence of entirely new industries.
