Some final thoughts from the ODVA meetings in March in Florida. I’ve been thinking for some time about complexity. Sometimes we get into the weeds with our technologies, building routine atop routines, solving a multitude of problems through creating others.
The thinking began with considering my reporting from the March 2022 ODVA meetings.
Paul Maurath, Technical Director—Process Automation from Procter & Gamble’s Central Engineering, presented the user’s view of automation. I will dispense with suspense. His conclusion, ”Help us manage complexity.”
Maurath told the story of setting up a test process cell in the lab. They used it to test and demonstrate Ethernet APL devices and the network. They discovered that APL worked, the controller didn’t see any issues. The discouraging discovery was the amount of configuration required and the complexity of setup. He referred to an E&I technician working the shift on a Sunday morning at 3 am. Call comes in. Device is down. With a regular HART / 4-20 mA device, the tech has the tools. But with an Ethernet device configuration can be a problem.
Conclusion:
- There is a need for new technology to deliver functionality and simplicity
- Standards are great
- Please keep end users in mind when developing standards and technology
A paper presented this year by Paul Brooks, Rockwell Automation, Wolfgang Hoeferlin, Endress+Hauser, Sean Vincent, FieldComm Group, and Joakim Wiberg, ODVA discussed the complexities and difficulties following the acquisition of FDT technology by FieldComm Group (FCG). They noted the industrial automation community has the opportunity to enhance our technologies to allow a single device integration standard to be used through discrete, hybrid and process automation disciplines. Double work on business logic and user interface for a device across different technologies and for use in different applications can be eliminated.
In this paper we outline the use cases that FCG – together with ODVA, PNO and OPC Foundation – wish to address. We will look at some of the initial technical assumptions that allow this work to dovetail into device description improvements already underway within ODVA. We will discuss the framework that will allow ODVA members to contribute to and benefit from this work.
Disclaimer: I have not written a line of code in years. As they discussed the details of configuring and programming and data amongst all these technologies, I was impressed by the complexity and the difficulty of the work.
Another end user paper was presented by former GM engineer Gary Workman laying out reasons for some specification changes to define a control network in EtherNet/IP. Similar to the talk by Maurath above, he began with a discussion of the complexity of installing and implementing not individual EtherNet/IP devices instead looking at the network as a whole. He pointed to the problems of electricians and maintenance workers working with a network. His ask was whether ODVA could consider adding guidance for implementing an entire EtherNet/IP control network to help workers on the factory floor.
Most of these meetings discuss the basic technologies and extensions of the product. Whether agreeable or not, the point of view of the end user always serves as a call to step back and consider the problem from their point of view. (Maybe a third of my career was product development—considering the user’s need while developing a product. I sympathize.)
Back to Maurath—complexity is a friction point to the application of technology. It should be the task of the technology provider to remove as much friction as possible.
