by Gary Mintchell | Oct 18, 2017 | Internet of Things, Operations Management, Software
There are two types of people in industry—operations technology and information technology. God forbid if they should actually talk with each other.
Everywhere I go there is talk of overcoming the OT/IT divide. Something just crossed my email stream where there was a survey about whether the departments have merged anywhere. They were shocked, shocked I say, that only about 1 in 10 companies have merged the two departments. I think the purveyors of that survey must have been on Mars for the past bunch of years.
These people just have different jobs to do. Different things they are measured on. Different ways they contribute to the common welfare of the corporation. However, the technologies they use are overlapping at an ever greater pace.
Here is a survey that once again reveals what is seemingly a disconnect between IT and OT. But I think that interfacing to ERP systems is non-trivial. I’m actually amazed and heartened by the progress we’ve made to date.
I’d take a look at this survey and consider how far we have come—and yet, how far we still need to go.
IFS has released a primary research study on how the Internet of Things (IoT) affects readiness for digital transformation in industrial companies.
According to survey of 200 IoT decision makers at industrial companies in North America, only 16 percent of respondents consume IoT data in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. That means 84 percent of industrial companies face a disconnect between data from connected devices and strategic decision making and operations, limiting the digital transformation potential of IoT.
The study posed questions about companies’ degree of IoT sophistication. The study also explores how well their enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise asset management (EAM) or field service management (FSM)software prepares them for digital transformation and to consume IoT data within enterprise software.
Respondents were divided into groups including IoT Leaders and IoT Laggards, depending on how well their enterprise software prepared them to consume IoT data—as well as Digital Transformation Leaders and Digital Transformation Laggards depending on how well their enterprise software prepared them for digital transformation.
The two Leaders groups overlapped, with 88 percent of Digital Transformation Leaders also qualifying as IoT Leaders, suggesting IoT is a technology that underpins the loose concept of digital transformation.
Digital Transformation Leaders made more complete use of IoT data than Digital Transformation Laggards; Leaders are almost three times as likely to use IoT data for corporate business intelligence or to monitor performance against service level agreements.
Digital Transformation Leaders were more likely than Digital Transformation Laggards to be able to access IoT data in applications used beyond the plant floor. They were more than four times as lilkely to have access to IoT data in enterprise asset management software, twice as likely than Digital Transformation Laggards to be able to access IoT data in high-value asset performance management software, and almost twice as likely to be able to be able to use IoT data in ERP.
The data suggests a real need for more IoT-enabled enterprise applications designed to put data from networks of connected devices into the context of the business.
In reviewing the findings, IFS Chief Technology Officer for North America, Rick Veague, commented, “Are your planning and maintenance systems robust enough to make real time decisions using IoT-sourced data? Many are facing the reality of having to answer ‘no.’ ”
“Study data suggest that the most common use case for IoT in these industrial settings is condition-based maintenance. The benefits go beyond operational improvements and maintenance cost avoidance,” said Ralph Rio, Vice President of Enterprise Software at ARC Advisory Group. “It increases uptime that provides additional capacity for increased revenue. It also avoids unplanned downtime that interrupts production schedules causing missed shipment dates and customer satisfaction issues. When married to demand and scheduling systems in ERP, IoT becomes a revenue-enhancement tool improving the top line.”
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 17, 2017 | Operations Management, Software
Schneider Electric Software boosts Asset Performance, pricing model, and cloud offering. They called it a Schneider Electric Software Innovation Summit in San Antonio a couple of weeks ago. But as we know, that part of Schneider Electric is moving over to the new AVEVA which will be 60% owned by Schneider Electric. So, is this the last Schneider Electric Software summit, or will all the new company be absorbed at the conclusion of the buyout period?
I had committed to another conference by the time Schneider announced its software one, so I was not there. They did send news releases and I also talked with a friend who was there in order to gauge a little bit of what was happening. One other thing I find interesting. On the process automation side, they are clearly branding the legacy Foxboro name. On this side, not so much talk about Wonderware and Avantis. So I guess there is still some branding flux on the software side of the business.
Key takeaways: Schneider evidently saw a weakness in its asset performance management offering and has partnered with a European leader to add strength to it. Answering the challenge of a newer competitor regarding pricing for software, Schneider announced expansion of its subscription pricing model. The third larger announcement reflects the growing importance (and acceptance) of the Cloud for IT structure.
Short view of the news:
- Extends Enterprise APM Offering through New Partnership with MaxGrip: Schneider Electric has partnered with leader in Asset Performance Management (APM) software, MaxGrip, to deliver a more comprehensive asset lifecycle management offering. This expanded offering will include assessment services and risk-based maintenance capabilities, helping customers define and execute APM strategies for maximum return on assets.
- Extends Subscription Access Across Industrial Software Portfolio: Schneider Electric has expanded its subscription license model, enabling customers to purchase software licenses a la carte, providing greater value, new benefits and access to more industrial software applications than ever before. Subscription Access is now available when purchasing Engineering, Planning, Operations and Asset Performance, as well as Control and Information software solutions.
- Expands Cloud Platform with New Performance Module: Schneider Electric has announced the continued expansion of its Insight cloud platform, powered by Wonderware Online. The new Insight Performance Module provides Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) monitoring, asset utilization analysis and downtime tracking in the cloud to enable operational efficiency improvement while reducing total cost of ownership.
- Enhances Manufacturing Operations Management Offering for Mining Industry: Schneider Electric announced enhancements to its Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) solution for the Mining industry. By introducing real-time production accounting and inventory management, the enhanced solution will improve decision support, planning and reporting capabilities for mining companies, enabling them to meet their digital transformation goals.
- Powers Roy Hill’s Remote Operations Center to Drive Digital Strategy: Schneider Electric announced the success achieved at independent iron ore operation in Western Australia – Roy Hill. By implementing Schneider Electric’s Mining industry software solution, Roy Hill has been able to consolidate end-to-end operational visibility and optimize its mining value chain.
- Drives Digital Transformation in Food & Beverage with New Industry Solutions: Schneider Electric announced three new solutions – Energy Performance, Advanced Process Control and Label Assurance – all aimed at solving industry challenges from growing environmental and sustainability regulations, higher energy costs, consumer demands and product quality and safety standards. The solutions empower F&B manufacturers to simultaneously improve efficiency, quality and performance by delivering real-time visibility, control and intelligence across operations and functional areas.
APM Offering
Schneider Electric announced a new partnership with MaxGrip that will enable a more comprehensive asset lifecycle management offering that includes assessment services and risk-based maintenance capabilities. This expanded offering will be available as part of Schneider Electric’s Enterprise Asset Performance Management (APM) solution.
This solution delivers a comprehensive view of asset health as a first step of an asset reliability strategy that takes into account business context to benchmark current performance and identify areas for improvement. Expert consultants will address a number of key areas of evaluation such as HSE (health, safety and environment), cost control, resource allocation, use of OT/IT systems and asset utilization. These insights will be translated into a pragmatic action plan to optimize production and improve margins while ensuring regulatory compliance.
As a result of this partnership, Schneider Electric can offer enhanced APM capabilities that allow customers to better strategize and optimize maintenance execution according to asset criticality for optimal business results. Risk analysis, what if analysis and asset management strategic review can provide detailed insight into asset reliability and performance, facilitating long-term strategic planning. Users can optimize operations by eliminating reoccurring incidents with root cause analysis, inventory management and strategy simulations to identify hidden inefficiency and drive value across the enterprise. An extensive library of asset reliability data and templates allows up to 90% faster time to deployment.
Subscription Access Across Industrial Software Portfolio
An expansion of the company’s subscription license model – Subscription Access – includes greater value, new benefits and access to more industrial software applications. Customers choosing this offering can benefit from reduced upfront costs, ease of license fee management, access to exclusive products, bundled capabilities and a lower total cost of ownership. Subscription Access is now available when purchasing Engineering, Planning, Operations and Asset Performance, as well as Control and Information software solutions.
Expands Cloud Platform with New Performance Module
Continued expansion of its cloud platform, Insight, powered by Wonderware Online, with new Insight Performance module that provides Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) monitoring, asset utilization analysis and downtime tracking in the cloud.
This Software as a Service (SaaS) offering offers the following capabilities:
- Light-weight applications that are easier to install, configure and maintain
- Virtually no on-premise servers or hardware requirement
Enhances Manufacturing Operations Management Offering for Mining Industry
The company announced enhancements to its Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) solution for the Mining industry. This initiative can help optimize the mining supply chain, drive efficiency and maximize utilization of all operating assets, resulting in better profitability.
This data, when made available to domain-specific decision support tools and integrated with supply chain and enterprise resource planning systems, unlocks new levels of intelligence to drive continuous improvement. Eliminating manually entered production values while breaking down pervasive operational data silos can minimize time, errors and costs associated with manual and duplicate data-entry, further enhancing agility and efficiency.
Select improvements of Schneider Electric Software’s MOM solution for the Mining industry include:
- User selectable point in time feature for ‘Inventory data reprocessing’
- Data reprocessing has improved performance by 4X
- New “Calculated Inventory” feature to define custom calculations on captured inventory data
- Ampla Planner, Gantt Chart usability and user experience enhancements
- Client response times has improved performance by 2X
- Wonderware Online InSight connectivity
Powers Roy Hill’s Remote Operations Center
The company announced the success achieved at Roy Hill, an independent iron ore operation in Western Australia. Roy Hill implemented a Schneider Electric Mining industry software solution to consolidate end-to-end operational visibility and optimize their mining value chain.
Roy Hill built a greenfield iron ore mine and mine process plant in the Pilbara region, a heavy haul railway system from mine-to-port, new port facilities in Port Hedland, and a Remote Operations Center (ROC) in Perth. Each of these infrastructure components were designed to meet its capacity of 55 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of iron ore.
Most leading mining companies have historically evolved with organizational silos, usually between mines, processing facilities and logistics. In the age of increasing automation, data, and digitalization, these silos often prevent end-to-end visibility and optimization opportunities to realize resource to market potential. Through its efforts, as no small accomplishment, Roy Hill has been able to avoid these pitfalls with the help of its ecosystem partners, including Schneider Electric.
Roy Hill implemented Schneider Electric’s industrial software offering tailored for the mining industry, which included the following specific solutions:
- Demand Chain Planning and Scheduling (DCPS)
- Inventory Tracking and Quality Management (ITQM)
- Delay Accounting (DA)
- Capacity Simulation Model (Pre-CAPEX Analysis)
Drives Digital Transformation in Food & Beverage
Three new Food and Beverage manufacturing solutions were announced as part of the company’s ongoing effort to drive operational excellence, efficiency and performance while enabling regulatory and food safety compliance.
Food and Beverage and Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturers face a number of challenges, which are potentially impacting profitability. Growing environmental and sustainability related regulations are resulting in higher energy costs. Product yields must continually be improved to meet an increasingly diverse set of consumer demands. Each of these industry challenges must be addressed while maintaining product quality and safety standards to avoid product recalls and ensure continued consumer trust and confidence.
Three new industry solutions from Schneider Electric can help manufacturers to address these challenges:
- Energy Performance – provides improved visibility into energy usage, enabling opportunities to reduce consumption and costs
- Advanced Process Control (APC) – allows manufacturers to improve yield and product quality by minimizing unpredictable variations in the drying process
- Label Assurance – ensures compliance through 100% label inspection checks; reduces recalls
These solutions empower Food and Beverage manufacturers to simultaneously improve efficiency, quality and performance by delivering real-time visibility, control and intelligence across all operations and functional areas.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 20, 2017 | Operations Management, Software
Forgoing a couple of vacation days, I headed out to Folsom (Sacramento), California this week to attend the gathering of SCADA geeks known as the Inductive Automation Ignition Community Conference.
This was the fifth conference for the company and my third. This is the second straight sell out. The venue was packed, energy level high, networking intense.
I remember meeting Founder/Owner/CEO Steve Hechtman about 14 years ago at a trade show. He explained a new way to build SCADA and a new business model that would upset the current dominant competitors. He emphasized building from the ground up with IT friendly technology.
He did it. From a small building in Sacramento to 22,000 square feet of rented office space (where they positioned people near aisles to make the space look more packed only five years ago) to a building down the street that they’ve gutted and rebuilt to give their 56,000 square feet. Looks like they’re doing well.
Emphasis of all the keynote speakers was on Ignition (Inductive Automation’s product) as a platform.
Don Pearson, chief strategy officer, talked digital disruption. He cited a survey that reported 84% of business leaders expect disruption, yet only 7% have a strategy, “sitting on the fence is not an option.”
Inductive is a proponent of Open Process Automation Forum making this the second straight conference I’ve attended with OPAF as a sub theme.
- Pearson cited these Success factors for the company:
- Decouple devices from applications—use a publish/subscribe approach
- Superior OT solution, meet operations requirements first
- Single source of truth—make devices the source of tags
- Plug and Play functionality
- Eliminate cutovers (taking software down and booting up new and hoping)
- Scale with unlimited licensing
Ignition is “perfectly poised for IIoT.”
Two questions I had:
It’s still just SCADA, but what is it really these days. What is it that makes it still exciting. After talking with many people, I figured out these things:
- Extend to enterprise
- Exponentially larger
- Mobile
- Visualization smoothly from device to device
Hearing once again about OPAF, I wondered:
Will it just be another OMAC?
On the other hand, some innovative small companies are moving in who just might change the direction of industry.
Big push on community. Don, “The community is our North Star.”
This is the only company in this technology area currently exhibiting growth, enthusiasm, and new technologies. Do competitors write off SCADA as an old market? Well, in this era of the Internet of Things, that will be a mistake–much to the benefit of Inductive Automation.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 11, 2017 | Automation
In this era of magazine and media transitions, here is an automation magazine that has published its 400th issue, which translates in its case to more than 36 years. In Italian, it’s Automazione Oggi. In English, Automation Today.
When I was yet the editor of Automation World and I was trying to put the “world” in the magazine, I swung deals with writers in Asia, Germany, and Italy. I wrote a column from Automation World for their publications and they wrote a column for me. Well, I’ve been gone for four years, and the Asian and German partnerships went away. I am still writing a column in Automazione Oggi, though.
The link goes to information about the 400th issue. You can find my column on the site. I didn’t realize it, but they translate it to Italian. I don’t speak or read Italian. I have no idea what I said—just kidding. I’m sure the article I wrote in English is rendered in excellent Italian.
I’ve also begun writing a column in Maintenance Technology magazine beginning with the October issue. My automation column there ran for several years before it stopped maybe three years ago. I’ll be looking at automation and other technology from a point of view of not only maintenance and reliability but also about how that group along with the other key plant groups such as operations, engineering, and IT need to come together to improve plant profitability.
For me it’s all about improving plant performance through the intelligent application of technology. Remember, not all problems require technology, but when they do we need to do it correctly.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 7, 2017 | Automation, Networking, News, Process Control
Here is some news regarding control and networking. Bedrock Automation is a recent entrant into the control and automation space, while Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) holds great potential to be a disruptive force.
Control
I seldom write about automation company “wins”, but this one shows some direction for a new company. Bedrock Automation is a young automation company that has built a new control platform from the ground up for not only the latest in control but also for security.
My curiosity has focused on where it would find a market. I don’t see it displacing Rockwell Automation and Siemens any time soon, but the platform is robust and adaptable. This looks like a perfect application.
Pinnacle Midstream, a Houston-based supplier of storage and processing services for the oil and gas industry, has selected the Bedrock control system as the automation platform for its crude oil receipt and delivery points. The Bedrock system will coordinate flow of product from partners, through the Pinnacle processing facilities and onto refiners and shippers. Pinnacle chose Bedrock system for its scalability, ease of engineering, ruggedness, cost efficiencies and intrinsic cyber security.
“We are expanding to the meet the growing need for midstream services and need a secure way to centralize control of flow amongst our facilities. The Bedrock system provides an economical solution in a small, easy-to-implement system that can coordinate edge control today, while also scaling easily and economically to the full DCS functionality we expect to need in the future. We also liked the rugged Bedrock housing, which will resist the dust that gets into everything around here,” said Mike Hillerman, VP of Engineering and Operations for Pinnacle Midstream.
Networking
Avnu Alliance, the industry consortium driving open standards-based deterministic networking through certification, is co-hosting the 2017 Time Sensitive Networks and Applications (TSN/A) Conference with WEKA FACHMEDIEN on September 20-21 at the Mövenpick Hotel Stuttgart Airport in Germany.
The TSN/A Conference is a combination of the “TSNA Conference” and the “Industrial Ethernet TSN Kongress” and offers attendees insights into Time-Sensitive Networks and usage in applications for Automotive, Industrial, Professional Audio/Video and more. The conference spans two days of technical sessions, panel discussions, vendor demonstrations, and participant networking.
“We are excited to bring together experts and thought leaders from around the world to the TSN/A Conference in Germany this year” said Kevin Stanton, Avnu Alliance Chairman, who will also deliver a conference presentation on Time Synchronization on Wired and Wireless Infrastructure. “It’s been a pleasure to join forces with WEKA FACHMEDIEN as the speakers present both the technology of TSN and its implications across our industries.”
On Wednesday, September 20, the first day of the conference, programming will feature two keynotes from Avnu Alliance members. Wolfgang Schenk of Hirschmann Automation and Control will present on “Time-Sensitive Networking: Enabling Technology for the Automation Model of the Future,” analyzing the transformation of the automation pyramid towards an automation pillar and discussing why TSN is the enabling technology for this transformation. Avnu Alliance Member BMW representative Dr. Kirsten Matheus will give a keynote on the “Use of AVB and TSN in the Automotive Industry.” Specifically, the presentation will describe the results of two workshops that Avnu Alliance held to gauge the need in the automotive industry for different Audio Video Bridging (AVB)/TSN functions.
I am happy to see momentum building for the technology. Can’t wait to see applications.
