by Gary Mintchell | Sep 12, 2022 | Business, Commentary, News, Sensors
As surely as security has been a significant 2022 trend, so also has sustainability. Since early June, I’ve been in several conversations regarding work technology firms are accomplishing in this arena. I’ve talked in the past about Emerson and hydrogen. This Emerson news concerns sensing technologies for emissions monitoring.
New Scotland-based center will develop and provide training for next-generation gas sensing technologies used for emissions monitoring, process control and safety.
For those interested in what we can do on a personal level about this important work, check out the work of hundreds of volunteers of The Carbon Almanac.
Emerson announced August 29, 2022 the opening of a facility in Cumbernauld, Scotland, equipped with engineering, development and manufacturing resources for sensor, mechanical, electronics and software design for the company’s gas analysis portfolio. Spurred by demand to reduce the environmental impact of industrial process facilities, the new gas analysis solutions center will produce more than 10 different sensing technologies that can measure more than 60 different gas components, delivering on Emerson’s commitment to supporting customers’ decarbonization efforts.
As a global hub for the production and distribution of gas sensing technologies, the 62,000-square-foot facility will engineer and manufacture Emerson’s Rosemount continuous gas analyzers and gas chromatographs, which are used to improve emissions monitoring, plant safety, quality control and operational efficiency. These tools are critical to helping process plants meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations and ensuring process control in hydrogen, biofuel, food and beverage, pharmaceutical and aerosol manufacturing, as well as reducing waste and scrappage to foster sustainability.
The center includes a training space and offers training options for customers, including classroom, onsite and web-based courses, giving Emerson greater ability to demonstrate how the latest gas analysis technologies can help customers run their operations reliably, safely and efficiently. It is certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and complements Emerson’s global network of facilities certified by ISO standards for quality, occupational health and safety, and environmental management systems.
The facility is also equipped with a gas extraction system, an environmental chamber and an external gas storage to facilitate gas analyzer testing and application research and development. Combined with calibration capabilities, a dedicated area for performing factory acceptance testing, and a customer collaboration space, these capabilities will help assure product performance and integrity and streamline the customer experience.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 9, 2022 | Automation, Process Control, Security, Technology
At the start of the Ukraine conflict, CISA issued a “Shields Up” alert to all critical infrastructure in an effort to stave off potential cyber attacks from Russia. 6 months later, the proverbial “shields” are still up but is the U.S. critical infrastructure more secure because of it?
I was wondering if I should have more security than I have being a manufacturing and industrial site. Indeed I saw a sharp peak of hits from Russia and Ukraine at the outset of the war. But it was only a blip. But what if I weren’t a media site but a critical infrastructure site?
Security information comes at me faster than to my friend Greg Hale who specializes on the subject at Industrial Safety and Security Source. Recently I talked with Ron Fabela, CTO of critical infrastructure cybersecurity firm, SynSaber. This company is working directly with operators across oil & gas, electric, water infrastructure and nuclear to maintain a “Shields Up” posture.
More than six months has passed since the initial flurry of war and increased cyber attacks in the US. I wondered what the state of “Shields Up” was these days. Have we kept up the urgency? Or have we learned to live with it?
Rob suggested that astute executives should have used the directives to get some much needed budget. He pointed out that one cannot sustain a high alert indefinitely. And that IT and security executives should not over hype the situation. Still, when attention is suddenly focused on a risk area, it makes sense to lay a plan and ask for budget to implement strategies. Plus, sometimes the government brings money with its directives, something that is always a big help.
Expanding on the topic, like its peers, SynSaber initiated a study to discover what reported Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) could tell us from the 681 CVEs reported via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ICS Advisories in the first half of 2022.
Breaking up the reported CVEs into remediation categories (i.e., can it be patched with software, a firmware update, or something more complex requiring protocol or whole system changes) or taking a look at attack vector requirements can provide critical insights for teams to assess these and future CVEs as they are reported.
We hope that by analyzing and counting these vulnerabilities with new methods, this context can be used by all industrial security teams to better understand and remediate future vulnerabilities.
Key Findings
● For the CVEs reported in 2022, 13% have no patch or remediation currently available from the vendor (and 34% require a firmware update)
● While 56% of the CVEs have been reported by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), 42% have been submitted by security vendors and independent researchers (remaining 2% were reported directly by an asset owner and a government CERT)
● 23% of the CVEs require local or physical access to the system in order to exploit
● Of the CVEs reported thus far in 2022, 41% can and should be prioritized and addressed first (with organization and vendor planning)
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 8, 2022 | Cloud, Data Management, Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
Steve Leeper, VP Systems Engineering and Marketing, and Carl D’Halluin, Chief Technology Officer of Datadobi, met with me recently to discuss data, unstructured data management, data migration, the company, and those poor little orphaned files and data left in storage long after they had useful life.
I’ve been writing about the company’s products for about two years. Datadobi is about to celebrate its 13th birthday. Organically funded, management expects it to be around for some time to come.
The occasion of this conversation was release 6.2 and an upgrade to the recently announced StorageMAP product—a multi-vendor, multi-cloud data management platform with the introduction of capabilities to discover and remediate orphaned data.
Orphaned data is owned by employees of a company that are inactive but still enabled on an organization’s network or systems. These datasets, which can amount to a significant part of a company’s total data stored, represent risk and cost to every organization. Any enterprise with a large employee base, normal to high attrition rates, or undertaking merger and acquisition (M&A) activities will be vulnerable to orphaned data. Orphaned data is mostly not of value to the organization and creates liability due to its unknown content. Eliminating orphaned data enables IT leaders to reduce cost, lower carbon footprint, and lower risk while maximizing value out of relevant unstructured data used by active users.
With the new capabilities, StorageMAP can identify data sets with high amounts of orphaned data, allowing IT leaders to group and organize the data independent of the business organization. The orphaned datasets can then be migrated, archived to a lower-cost platform, or deleted by StorageMAP. The platform provides an easy-to-read, granular report on the top users with orphaned data and for additional detail, a search function allows targeted searches to be executed across part of or the entire data estate.
The 6.2 release comes after Datadobi launched its StorageMAP platform earlier this year. StorageMAP provides a single pane of glass for organizations to manage unstructured data across their complete data storage estate on-premises and in the cloud. This latest update enables IT leaders to fully take control of orphaned data on their networks.
“Due to the scale and complexity of unstructured data in today’s heterogeneous storage environments, enterprises can easily lose track of orphaned data within networks and open themselves up to excess storage costs and risk,” said Carl D’Halluin, CTO, Datadobi. “StorageMAP’s new capabilities allow for a seamless experience identifying and taking the appropriate action on orphaned data to give IT leaders peace of mind.”
“As data proliferation continues, IT leaders are going to see more orphaned data on their networks. This is why it is so important that organizations turn to unstructured data management solutions like StorageMAP to find datasets associated with inactive users and take the appropriate action,” said Craig Ledo, IT Validation Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). “Combined with a high level of cross-vendor knowledge, years of real-life experience, and great customer support, enterprises can let StorageMAP do the heavy lifting when it comes to orphaned data.”
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 6, 2022 | News, Organizations, Technology
August was a month of collaboration news. After years of organizations aligning into opposing groups backing similar, but different, technologies, things are coming together. You cannot count this one on the fingers of one hand.
ISA100 WCI, NAMUR, ODVA, PI, VDMA, and ZVEI Plan to Partner with FieldComm Group and OPC Foundation to Collaboratively Develop the Process Automation Device Information Model Standard
The goal—something end users are asking for:
Collaboration promises to simplify integration of OT and IT systems by optimizing process automation end users’ management of data from field devices.
From the news release:
Major standards development and end user organizations serving the process automation industry announce August 23, 2022 ongoing collaboration work on the specification for a standardized Process Automation Device Information Model (PA-DIM). Participating organizations plan to share ownership of the specification and collaboratively participate in the PA-DIM working group, hosted at FieldComm Group, creating enhancements and extensions to the PA-DIM specification.
Expanding ownership to these organizations and their members will further solidify the adoption of the OPC UA-based standard model for core field device information in process automation plants today and new products going forward.
New co-owners of the PA-DIM specification include ISA100 WCI, ODVA, PROFIBUS/PROFINET International, NAMUR, VDMA, and ZVEI.
Following are all the requisite statements of support from each of the affected organizations along with a description of them all.
Andre Ristaino, Managing Director of ISA100 WCI: “As a standards-driven organization, the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute has been supporting the ISA100 Wireless (IEC 62734) standard with its core mission of assuring device interoperability. The PA-DIM specification fits into our mission and we have adopted it as the foundation for standardized data exchange in our ISA100 Wireless ecosystem.”
Ted Masters, President & CEO FieldComm Group: “PA-DIM helps bridge the gap between IT and OT systems in a protocol agnostic way. This coupled with the extensive use of semantic identifiers provides an ideal solution to allow end users to access instrumentation data from both the installed base and newly installed instruments. We are delighted that the major standards bodies and end user organizations in the process automation industry have agreed to collaborate on this important standard.”
Michael Pelz, Vice President, Christine Oro Saveedra, General Manager, NAMUR (User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries):
“NAMUR bundles end-user competencies for automation and digitalization within the process industry to enable more efficient, sustainable, and secure processes. NAMUR Open Architecture (NOA) aims to make stranded production data easily and securely accessible and more importantly usable for plant and asset monitoring as well as optimization. NOA enables this without compromising the availability or OT-Infrastructure of a production facility. In order to use NOA effectively, standardized information models are essential. For this reason, NAMUR, in cooperation with ZVEI, supported the PA-DIM activities at a very early stage in order to develop a common data model as an interoperable, non-proprietary interface. It is a great signal that the future development of PA-DIM is now supported and adapted by further organizations. A signal that with this broadly supported standard, investment-safe (NOA) projects can be realized in the long term.”
Dr. Al Beydoun, President & Executive Director of ODVA: “ODVA is pleased to support the PA-DIM profile to enable greater information standardization within process automation, which will allow for more seamless data analysis and prognostics. End users of EtherNet/IP networks will be able to leverage PA-DIM to move data from the field to the cloud and to realize improved data standardization across networks.”
Stefan Hoppe, OPCF President & Executive Director: “Digitization needs a secure transfer of globally accepted information models across industries, technologies, and applications. No single organization can achieve this alone! OPCF, as a co-owner from the beginning, welcomes to extend the ownership of PA-DIM to ensure this necessary global acceptance. OPC UA over MQTT is the only accepted field-to-multi-cloud solution – the combination with PA-DIM plus 70+ additional information models is unique.”
Karsten Schneider, Chairman PROFIBUS & PROFINET International: “For us at PI, standardized information models like PA-DIM are a key enabler for the digital transformation. Since PROFINET is based on standard Ethernet, it can be used as the infrastructure in plants for all data exchange needs. With OPC UA being a perfect match for vertical communication in addition to PROFINET’s powerful and rich feature set, your automation solution will be ready for Industry 4.0.”
Andreas Faath, VDMA Head of Machine Information Interoperability: “Interoperability is one of the major pillars for intelligent production. The VDMA’s vision is to achieve interoperability not only within the machine building industry but also across industries. VDMA will support the PA-DIM standard with its experience out of 60+ released or in development domain-specific and cross-domain harmonized OPC UA-based information models, including models for the area of process industry, for example, pumps and motors. We like to share this knowledge and are delighted to be part of PA-DIM and to support this new collaboration between mechanical engineering and process industry.”
Felix Seibl, ZVEI Managing Director: “Automation and Process Automation are the Key enablers to face the Major Challenges of the Future: Sustainable, efficient, and interoperable production. By creating and introducing smart digitalization concepts, for example NOA (NAMUR Open Architecture), together with the end users of NAMUR, ZVEI and its member companies help process and discrete industries to master these challenges. We are happy and feel privileged to become a co-owner of PA-DIM, which is a great basis for our digitalization efforts.”
Since 2017, FieldComm Group and OPC Foundation, as original co-owners and co-developers, have collaborated with standards organizations and users to create the PA-DIM specification to address end user use cases and requirements as outlined in NAMUR’s recommendations (NE 175, NE 176), also known as the NAMUR Open Architecture. The first version of the specification was published on 31 March 2020 and includes an information model and semantic identifiers for common process automation instrument types including pressure, differential pressure, temperature, level, flow, and valve positioners. Current activity within the working group is focused on extending the model to include process analyzers.
Benefits of PA-DIM
The Process Automation Device Information Model is a specification that allows for protocol agnostic communication of common process automation instrument parameters, including semantic IDs as defined by IEC 61987, using OPC UA information modeling techniques. Eliminating automation protocol dependencies simplifies the integration of IT and OT systems. Including semantic device information enables unambiguous machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. Fieldbus-specific implementations are converted into the address space of the PA-DIM Information Model.
Products using PA-DIM can easily support the NAMUR Open Architecture (NOA) use cases including automated as built, unique identification, device dimensioning, multivariable possibility check, read multivariable process values, device life cycle backup, health monitoring, and diagnosis.
About ISA100 WCI
ISA100 Wireless (IEC 62734) is an international industrial wireless network standard designed to meet the field needs of the process automation field. ISA100 Wireless is open and interoperable, enabling multi-vendors to build highly reliable large-scale wireless networks. The ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute promotes ISA100 Wireless technology, provides technical support, and performs conformance testing services to ensure interoperability among ISA100 Wireless certified technology.
Contact: Andre Ristaino, [email protected]
About FieldComm Group
The FieldComm Group is a global standards-based organization consisting of leading process end users, manufacturers, universities, and research organizations that work together to direct the development, incorporation, and implementation of new and overlapping technologies and serves as the source for FDI technology. FieldComm Group’s mission is to develop, manage, and promote global standards for integrating digital devices to on-site, mobile, and cloud-based systems; provide services for standards conformance and implementation of process automation devices and systems that enable and improve reliability and multi-vendor interoperability; lead the development of a unified information model of process automation field devices while building upon industry investment in the HART®, FOUNDATION™ Fieldbus, and FDI® standards. Membership is open to anyone interested in the use of the technologies.
Contact: Paul Sereiko, [email protected]
About NAMUR
NAMUR, the “User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries”, is an international association of user companies (established in 1949) and represents their interests concerning automation technology. NAMUR has over 170 member companies. The achievement of added value through automation engineering is at the forefront in all NAMUR member company activities.
NAMUR represents several thousand process control technology specialists, with around 300 participating in almost 40 working groups involved in all areas regarding the process industry.
Contact: Christine Oro Saavedra, General Manager, [email protected]
About ODVA
ODVA is an international standards development and trade organization with members from the world’s leading automation suppliers. ODVA’s mission is to advance open, interoperable information and communication technologies for industrial automation. Its standards include the Common Industrial Protocol or “CIP™,” ODVA’s media independent network protocol – and industrial communication technologies including EtherNet/IP, DeviceNet, and others. For interoperability of production systems and their integration with other systems, ODVA embraces the adoption of commercial-off-the-shelf, standard Internet, and Ethernet technologies as a guiding principle. This principle is exemplified by EtherNet/IP – today’s leading industrial Ethernet network.
Contact: Steve Fales, [email protected]
About The OPC Foundation
Since 1996, the OPC Foundation has facilitated the development and adoption of the OPC information exchange standards. As both advocate and custodian of these specifications, the Foundation’s mission is to help industry vendors, end-users, and software developers maintain interoperability in their manufacturing and automation assets. The OPC Foundation is dedicated to providing the best specifications, technology, process, and certification to achieve multivendor, multiplatform, secure, reliable, interoperability for moving data and information from the embedded world to the enterprise cloud. The Foundation serves over 880 members worldwide in the Industrial Automation, IT, IoT, IIoT, M2M, Industrie 4.0, Building Automation, machine tools, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, oil & gas, water treatment, and Smart Energy sectors.
Contact: Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director, [email protected]
About PROFIBUS & PROFINET International
Over 30 years ago, the PROFIBUS Nutzerorganisation e.V. (PNO) initiated the foundation of a large, global community which has come together under the PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI) umbrella organization. With 25 regional user organizations in every international market, around 1,700 member companies and many thousands of different products, PI is the largest interest group for industrial automation technology. Its global network includes most manufacturers and users from every industry. The technologies cover every key market of industrial automation, from production automation to process automation to motion control and safety applications. PROFIBUS, the leading fieldbus – PROFINET, the leading Ethernet standard – IO-Link, the leading sensor/actuator communication system – and omlox, the open and interoperable standard for real-time locating – are available automation technologies with future potential enabling production in the “Industry 4.0” generation.
Contact: Barbara Weber, [email protected]
About VDMA
The VDMA represents around 3,500 German and European mechanical and plant engineering companies. The industry stands for innovation, export orientation and medium-sized businesses. The companies employ around four million people in Europe, more than one million of them in Germany alone. Mechanical and plant engineering represents a European turnover volume of around 800 billion euros. In the entire manufacturing sector, it contributes the highest share to the European gross domestic product with a value added of around 270 billion euros.
Contact: Andreas Faath, [email protected]
About ZVEI
The ZVEI promotes the industry’s joint economic, technological and environmental policy interests on a national, European and global level. The association has more than 1,100 member companies, and 170 employees work in the ZVEI Group.
The sector has about 879,000 employees in Germany (July 2022). In 2021 the turnover was Euro 200 billion.
The electro and digital industry is the most innovative industry sector in Germany. One-third of the industry’s sales are based on new products. Every third innovation in Germany´s manufacturing sector stems from solutions of this sector. More than 20 percent of all industrial R+D spending comes from this industry. Every year, the industry spends 20 billion euros on R+D, more than 6 billion euros on investments and two billion euros on training and further education.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 6, 2022 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
This news has been out a little while. I was holding off for an interview, but we could not connect. Through a long and torturous history over the past 15 years, AVEVA’s software cloak has been pieced together from many cloths. I have met executives from a few companies in the past who assured me bringing all their software acquisitions was easy. It’s not. This release discusses how AVEVA is progressing on its journey of integrating all of its industrial software.
AVEVA, a global leader in industrial software, driving digital transformation and sustainability, has launched the 2023 release of its operations control software, the first major coordinated release of its HMI/SCADA software portfolio, available in both perpetual and subscription purchases. The new release further supports the delivery of AVEVA Operations Control, a flexible, subscription-based solution of integrated capabilities that promotes greater efficiency and workforce collaboration at the scale that best suits the business.
And, just what is Operations Control? Sounds like something from a vision I heard many years ago at a previous iteration of the company.
AVEVA Operations Control simplifies day-to-day routines of teams by aligning workers around common digital threads of information. It includes visualization technologies, analytics and development tools deployed within a hybrid cloud and on-premises environment. Not only can critical information be retrieved faster, but inbuilt flexibility provides greater scaling – of data, users, or routes to revealing the correct decision.
“Digital technologies now comprise the beating heart of industrial enterprises. But operations teams do not yet have the ability to contextualize decisions within a cohesive and sustainable framework. AVEVA Operations Control leverages this information environment with a comprehensive set of applications that empowers users from edge to enterprise with real-time visibility of critical processes in every industry,” says Rashesh Mody, Executive Vice President – Operations Business, AVEVA.
This release consists of updates in the following offerings: AVEVA System Platform 2023, AVEVA InTouch HMI 2023, AVEVA Edge 2023, AVEVA Plant SCADA 2023, AVEVA Historian 2023, AVEVA Communication Drivers 2023, AVEVA Reports for Operations 2023, AVEVA Development Studio, and AVEVA Teamwork.
The 2023 operations control software release is available through several procurement methods, including AVEVA Flex, the advanced industrial software subscription program. Customers can choose individual software offers within the operations control portfolio or realize new transformational value with end to end visibility across operations by subscribing to AVEVA’s broad portfolio through AVEVA Operations Control. AVEVA Operations Control removes traditional limitations on implementation by including unlimited software usage (measured by the number of users) and offering maximum commercial flexibility.
