by Gary Mintchell | Jul 24, 2015 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Data Management, Industrial Computers, Internet of Things, Operations Management, Technology
Representatives of National Instruments (NI) and IBM recently discussed their collaboration on a test bed demonstrating the possibilities for using Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for taking companies from Condition Monitoring to Predictive Maintenance.
Chris O’Connor, IBM General Manager of IoT who works with divisions such as Maximo told me this is a new business unit that is built around IoT. There are about 6,000 clients. The explosion of data coming from devices means that industry must change from data centers to IoT. “For us, this entails the analysis of sensors information, aggregating the information, then constructing lifecycles. This will help world adopt IoT.”
The collaboration from condition monitoring and analytics changes questions manufacturers can answer such as, can I gain competitive advantage, can I offer better warranty, change frequency of maintenance.
Jamie Smith, NI’s Director of Embedded Systems, said the test bed project will roll out in multiple phases. It demonstrates the interoperability between two industry leaders including edge computing capability from NI to IBM’s cloud technology and analytics. Therefore, users can progress from condition monitoring to predictive maintenance.
The test bed consists of a motor and a couple of fans. Various failure modes are introduced. The first go consists of NI CompactRIO communicating via MQTT to IBM. Now that the proof has been completed, other companies in the Industrial Internet Consortium have been invited to join the collaboration. “All they need to do is contribute time and resources to it,” added Smith.
The next step according to Smith is insuring that it’s end to end secure. They are working with IIC to do security assessment. They will then look at more robust assets—most likely power generation assets—hoping to work with someone with large turbines or pumps to continue to demonstrate the technology and benefits.
Following is a description from the statement on the Web.
The Condition Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance Testbed (CM/PM) will demonstrate the value and benefits of continuously monitoring industrial equipment to detect early signs of performance degradation or failure. CM/PM will also use modern analytical technologies to allow organizations to not only detect problems but proactively recommend actions for operations and maintenance personnel to correct the problem.
Condition Monitoring (CM) is the use of sensors in equipment to gather data and enable users to centrally monitor the data in real-time. Predictive Maintenance (PM) applies analytical models and rules against the data to proactively predict an impending issue; then deliver recommendations to operations, maintenance and IT departments to address the issue.
These capabilities enable new ways to monitor the operation of the equipment – such as turbines and generators – and processes and to adopt proactive maintenance and repair procedures rather than fixed schedule-based procedures, potentially saving money on maintenance and repair, and saving cost and lost productivity of downtime caused by equipment failures.
Furthermore, combining sensor data from multiple pieces of equipment and/or multiple processes can provide deeper insight into the overall impact of faulty or sub-optimal equipment, allowing organizations to identify and resolve problems before they impact operations and improve the quality and efficiency of industrial processes.
Through this testbed, the testbed leaders IBM and National Instruments will explore the application of a variety of analytics technologies for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. The testbed application will initially be deployed to a power plant facility where performance and progress will be reported on, additional energy equipment will be added and new models will be developed. It will then be expanded to adjacent, as yet to be determined, industries.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 23, 2015 | Automation, Internet of Things, Operations Management
Tim Sowell, Schneider Electric (Wonderware) vp and fellow, has been writing a weekly blog that I report on for a while now. His Operations Management Systems Evolution blog is always thoughtful and informative.
Recently, I have discovered another Schneider Electric blog, this one by someone whom I do not know (I think)–Gregory Conary.
Each take a look at the Industrial Internet of Things in these posts.
Conary’s recent post discussed the “business opportunities we are seeing emerge from this megatrend.”
He cites information compiled by LNS Research, in its eBook Smart Connected Operations: Capturing the Business Value of the Industrial IoT. 47 per cent of respondents to its Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) online survey indicated that they did not expect to invest in IoT technologies in the “foreseeable future”. A further 19 per cent indicated that they did not expect to invest in IoT technologies in the next 12 months.
Conary states, “Frankly I’m not surprised. IIoT seems to bring with it the hype of something that will take a long time to adopt. In some cases I think this can be true. And while we are unclear on what time frame is meant by the term ‘foreseeable future’ referenced above, I believe there are business opportunities that can be capitalized on now and in the medium term. IIoT is more prevalent than we imagine. There are examples and business practices that we often don’t even recognize as being enabled by IIoT – things like increasing industrial performance and augmenting operators are two of the opportunities which can make a difference to your business now.”
Increased industrial performance
“Using data to improve industrial performance by connecting things to each other – this is happening now. How is it happening? Through wireless technologies, low cost sensors and using advanced analytics. In practice, this is a decision support system for complex manufacturing operations.”
I agree with Conary. We’ve had the foundation and platform for the Industrial Internet of Things for a long time. It just continues becoming more robust. As better data analytics algorithms are developed and better ways to communicate and display information are devised, then usefulness to manufacturing operators, maintenance technicians, engineers, and managers will increase dramatically.
Tim Sowell riffed off an article in Wired. “As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues its run as one of the most popular technology buzzwords of the year, the discussion has turned from what it is, to how to drive value from it, to the tactical: how to make it work.
We need to improve the speed and accuracy of big data analysis in order for IoT to live up to its promise. If we don’t, the consequences could be disastrous and could range from the annoying – like home appliances that don’t work together as advertised – to the life-threatening – pacemakers malfunctioning or hundred car pileups.”
Sowell adds this analysis, “This follows on from my discussion 2 weeks ago around the need to avoid just gathering data, vs gaining the proportional amount of knowledge and wisdom, which brings in a term you hear a lot ‘machine learning’.”
From Wired, “The realization of IoT depends on being able to gain the insights hidden in the vast and growing seas of data available. Since current approaches don’t scale to IoT volumes, the future realization of IoT’s promise is dependent on machine learning to find the patterns, correlations and anomalies that have the potential of enabling improvements in almost every facet of our daily lives.”
Sowell concludes, “In the industrial world this more applicable than nearly all industries, and in many cases we are already applying “machine levels” at different levels. A key part in the shift from ‘Information’ to ‘knowledge’ is having the tools to drill into historians based on events and to discover learnings and patterns. Once validated and discovered these are turned into ‘self-monitoring’ conditions to understand the current state of the device, and predict / recognize conditions well before they happen. Providing the ‘insight’ to make awareness and decisions where the machines/ devices are telling you where the opportunities are. But a key part of machine learning is that this knowledge in not a once off step, it is a continuous evolution leveraging the gathering history data and developing increased amounts of knowledge.”
Final thought
Both Conary and Sowell point directly to the new reality and to new challenges. We can now gather much more data than we can make sense of. As soon as we have those tools, we will provide better tools to operations and maintenance to improve plant performance.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 16, 2015 | Automation, Wireless
I’ve just been talking about startups, and here is news from a startup within an established engineering company. Wunderlich-Malec Engineering Inc. (WM) is an engineering services company that had built a handy little maintenance tool for itself and some clients.
A new business development director entered the company and asked why didn’t they turn it into a product and sell it. After some further development work, WM VIP Services was created. VIP stands for Virtual Information Portal.
This mobile app for iPad and Microsoft tablets has been designed to improve efficiency and increase productivity by serving information to a maintenance technician, engineer, or manager who might happen to be out in the plant and need some contextual information served quickly.
“For over 33 years, WM’s success has been built around our strong customer commitment. VIP Services® solidifies this commitment by helping our customers reduce unscheduled downtime and increase productivity.” says Neal Wunderlich, President WM.
Here are some features gleaned from the press release.
Reducing Downtime – Time is often lost when technicians leave the work area to find resources, such as schematics, procedures or other data to complete a task.
VIP Services – Links all equipment to all its relevant data and information resources. It provides specific and accurate information for the technician at the equipment where needed information is time critical.
Improving Communication for Quicker Decision Making – Communications about production downtime issues and their resolution using traditional channels (email or phone) is often unclear or delayed until the correct resource can come onsite and ‘see’ the issue in real time.
VIP Services – Shows the problem, complete with all relevant process data and resources to the subject matter expert who can support the local technician with better communications for quicker problem resolution.
“We are very excited about our VIP Services Initiative. We feel that our new mobile application will greatly aide our customers in their pursuit to save time and money.” says Joel Gil, Director of Business Development, VIP Services Business Unit, WM.
Wunderlich-Malec has created a new VIP Services business unit headquartered in Houston, Texas. Our VIP Services Core Team will deliver complete turnkey VIP Services® Solutions.
The system works by printing and applying a “Point of Interest” QR code label at a POI—machine or unit or device. The services team can help accumulate all the relevant drawings and documentation about that POI and serve it up when the technician scans the QR code with the tablet camera.
Pretty elegant solution for not a lot of integration expense.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 10, 2015 | Data Management, News, Operations Management, Software
Here is some news from GE emphasizing one aspect of the Industrial Internet of Things—or the “Industrial Internet” as GE promotes it. This aspect lies in what you do with all the data supplied by those connected devices.
I wish I could figure GE out. It used to be so simple with GE Fanuc (now GE Intelligent Platforms) run like a division almost like a company and GE Sensing supplying sensors for the process industries. Now, there’s GE Software, GE Intelligent Platforms Software, GE Oil & Gas, and a myriad of other entities within the corporate structure. Titles are also increasingly difficult to fathom.
The interesting uptakes on this use of GE software by BP lies in the rejection by BP management of home-grown software and a move to “off-the-shelf” software. I had heard rumblings of BP perhaps moving to standards-based interoperability. It appears that it has settled on single point solution—at least for now.
Home-grown software inevitably leads to bringing in a plethora of integrators and programmers to make the software actually work. Evidently the hope is that by implementing commercial-off-the-shelf software, it can eliminate a huge cost. I’d really be interested to know say about a year down the road how well that paid off.
GE and BP Optimization Project
GE Intelligent Platforms Software announced a new production optimization project to connect all of BP’s oil wells globally to the Industrial Internet. Using GE’s data management software, BP field engineers will gain real-time access to common machine and operational data sets across all wells, arming them with information to make better decisions to improve efficiency, prevent failures and minimize costly downtime. The project will initially be deployed across 650 of BP’s wells, expanding to 4,000 wells across the world over the next several years.
“Based on industry averages, for each week a well is out of commission, operators experience revenue losses of more than $3 million for a subsea well. In today’s low price oil environment, it is increasingly important for customers to embrace Industrial Internet technologies to increase uptime and maximize production. GE understands that our customers want to get the most out of their existing assets, and more productivity leads to more profitability. To help them achieve that, our strategy is simple: Get Connected. Get Insights. Get Optimized,” said Kate Johnson, GE Intelligent Platforms Software CEO and GE Chief Commercial Officer. “By connecting BP’s oil wells around the world, we’re giving them access to better insights that can ultimately drive new efficiencies in their oil fields and increase oil production.”
“This project highlights BP’s commitment to deploying technology that can not only improve efficiency and reduce the complexity of our operations, but that also continuously make them safer and more reliable,” said Peter Griffiths, BP System Optimization Strategist. “In this case, we are delivering a solution on a standard platform that supports BP’s move away from bespoke solutions to-off-the-shelf industry solutions that integrate with our work processes, but without the long-term support costs that a bespoke approach often entails.”
BP’s decision to license this software was driven by its potential to drive efficiency and performance through increased standardization, improved oversight and decision-making. These solutions will allow BP to capture, store, contextualize and visualize data in real time, making it available to the right people at the right time so they can make informed decisions. GE will work closely with BP through the initial phase of this agreement, placing engineers onsite to work through the global implementation.
In the last year, GE has significantly increased its portfolio of Industrial Internet tools for the oil and gas sector to help increase production in a low oil price environment. “Enabling efficiency is the top priority for our customers in the current low oil price environment”, said Lorenzo Simonelli, President & CEO of GE Oil and Gas. “We are pleased to see that customers like BP have welcomed our Industrial Internet solutions as a unique way to tackle this in order to increase production, manage costs and reduce downtime. The combination of tangible infrastructure knowledge and Industrial Internet expertise places us in a unique position to continue to grow this offering in a way which truly delivers for our customers.”
GE has been working closely with BP since 2008, driving data analysis and instrumentation to improve operational reliability at sites including Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the UK, Norwegian sectors of the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caspian Sea and Angola.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 8, 2015 | Automation, Data Management, Events, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management, Process Control, Security
Here is the official wrap of the recent Honeywell Users Group (HUG) Americas symposium. It was the 40th anniversary celebrated with the theme “40 Years of Innovation.” Officially “more than 1,200 people” attended the event.
I have written a couple of times during the week here and here. This information comes from a press release issued last week. Along with some executive quotes is a note that Honeywell Process Solutions has been developing and implementing technologies for the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) for many years.
During the event, Honeywell announced a collaboration with Intel Security McAfee which will expand its industrial cyber security capabilities to help defend customers from the increasing threat of cyber attacks.
“The process manufacturing industries are facing a critical time in history due to a convergence of factors such as security threats, a shrinking workforce and lower oil prices, among others,” said Vimal Kapur, president of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS). “These factors are driving a greater need for our technologies and services because they’re designed to help companies conduct operations more efficiently, and with less risk.”
The conference revolved around three core technology themes directly impacting companies’ abilities to successfully adapt to changing market conditions: digital transformation and smart operations, system evolution and risk reduction, and smart instrumentation with smart integration. Throughout the week, Honeywell executives, technology experts and customers explained how these core areas can turn technology buzzwords like Big Data and Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) into practical applications.
“HPS has been leveraging the concepts and technologies behind the Industrial IoT as part of the vision that we have been evolving towards for several years,” Bruce Calder, HPS chief technology officer told general session attendees. “In order to run a reliable operation that continues to improve performance and business results, you will need to install smarter field devices, achieve more connectivity, collect more data and find ways to use that data to run a smarter operation.”
Calder also gave attendees a first look at HPS’ first native app for mobile devices and tablets that connects to different sources and applications across the company’s portfolio to create a more-intuitive mobile experience for plant workers. Mobility is part of the initiative to introduce a suite of apps that, along with new cloud functionalities, will enhance existing solutions to deliver better business efficiencies.
The conference agenda included a wide range of presentations from Honeywell customers ExxonMobil, Chevron, Reliance, DuPont, Great River Energy, Syngenta, Genentech, Valero and others. These presentations – covering everything from wireless applications and cost-effective control system migrations, to alarm management and energy conservation – highlighted how real-world manufacturers have used Honeywell technology to streamline their businesses by generating and analyzing the most-meaningful data from their operations.
In addition to these presentations, attendees received a first-hand look at some of Honeywell’s newest technologies designed to change the way their enterprises work, generate the right data to inform decisions, and reduce overall risks. Highlighted technologies included:
- UniSim Competency Suite – the newest addition to the UniSim family of training technology, which now includes 3D virtual environment capabilities to provide realistic experiences.
- DynAMo Alarm and Operations Suite – software that leverages more than 20 years of alarm management experience in the process industries to help users reduce overall alarm count by as much as 80 percent, identify maintenance issues and increase visibility of critical alarms that require urgent attention.
- Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security Risk Manager – the first digital dashboard designed to proactively monitor, measure and manage cyber security risk for process control systems.
- SmartLine Level Transmitter – the newest addition to Honeywell’s line of modular, smart field instrumentation designed to integrate with control systems to provide benefits such as extended diagnostics, maintenance status displays, transmitter messaging and more.
- The EC 350 PTZ Gas Volume Corrector – the first member of a new line of high-performance electronic volume correctors (EVCs) that more accurately measure natural gas delivered to industrial customers, helping them meet government and industrial standards.
