Report Applications–What is the Market and Where Do They Fit the Industrial Software Ecosystem

Report Applications–What is the Market and Where Do They Fit the Industrial Software Ecosystem

I don’t really think about report tools that much, to be honest. Maybe because most people seem to default to Microsoft Excel to draw information from their operations information system.

Roy Kok has been VP of sales and marketing for Ocean Data Systems / Dream Report for some time now. He’s an industry veteran whom I’ve known for probably 20 years. We’ve had occasion to chat about his product several times over the past few months. So, I had to ask, just what do you do and what kind of market is there—really?

[Note: He’s a new sponsor of the site, trying us out for a while. I don’t actively go out and sell ads, but I certainly appreciate the companies that do—hint. I actually probed about the market before he decided to buy.]

I guess I never thought about a custom report writer in the same genre as dashboards and other visibility tools. I stand corrected.

Kok tells me, “I believe Dream Report to be the number one product of this type in the world.  We are currently shipping in the thousands per year. As you can imagine, this is giving us great market penetration and visibility, but Dream Report is not a very expensive product, so our company is still relatively small at 18 employees. Dream Report is all that we do, so from that perspective, we are a significant scale for a single product company. I believe we hold 5% or so market share. 85% market share is held by business products being applied to industrial applications.  These products include Crystal Reports, Microsoft SSRS and Excel. That would leave 10% for the plethora of other tools, vertical market solutions, and smaller competitors.”

Why did this market become so dominated by business tools? “One simple word – History,” added Kok.  “In the late 80s and early 90s, HMI/SCADA was still in its infancy and competition was tremendous. Vendor focus was on reliability and capability of HMI/SCADA. There was another invention at that same time – ODBC – in the business world. ODBC was the way third party products could interact with databases of all types. Also in the late 80s, Crystal Reports came on the market and in the early 90s, Microsoft delivered SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services). Excel was also available and leveraged ODBC. The result of all these developments was that HMI/SCADA vendors chose to enhance their products with ODBC and could thus leverage the variety of business tools on the market. That set the path for most of the industrial market. To be fair, some HMI/SCADA vendors dabbled in report generation, typically focused on connectivity too their own products.”

This becomes part of the IT / OT situation. Part of the continual divide between the organizations lies in the tools each use. Both thrive on information, but the type of information and its format is different between the two areas. Often business tools are much more expensive, since the cost can be spread over a much larger application framework. Kok posits that OT people have been hesitant to look at report applications from fear of cost and complexity. Therefore, the benefit of his product.

Adds Kok, “Our challenge is to re-educate the world that reports are easy to create and are actually your shortest path to continuous improvement. A report (or dashboard) can be fast and easy to create. It can then be scheduled for automatic generation and delivery. We argue that the step after installing a historian, should be the installation of a report and dashboard solution like Dream Report. Then, when KPIs go askew, you can use Dream Report analytics or other advanced tools to better understand the root cause. Dream Report can actually bridge the gap and help to justify advanced analytics like those from Seeq, Falkonry, TrendMiner, Tableau, Pentaho, and others.

And that, I think, is the next step forward—how to integrate advanced analytics into OT in a sensible and useful way. We keep talking about predictive maintenance. And have been for many years. Maybe that one really begins hitting. And we’ll watch for which application strikes next.

Ocean Data Systems has been growing organically since 2006. Major OEMs private labelling and reselling Dream Report include Schneider Electric, Wonderware, GE, Eurotherm, Indusoft.) Here is a short video.

 

Real-Time OEE Performance Management

Real-Time OEE Performance Management

One of my customers back in the 90s established an OEE office and placed an OEE engineer in each plant. OEE, of course is the popular abbreviation for Overall Equipment Effectiveness—a sum of ratios that places a numerical value on “true” productivity. I’ve always harbored some reservations about OEE, especially as a comparative metric, because of the inherent variability of inputs. Automated data collection and modern data base analytics are a solution.

A press release and email conversation with Parsec came my way this week. It sets the stage by pointing to the pressure to increase quality and quantity, while reducing costs, leading manufacturers to seek a deeper understanding of trends and patterns and new ways to drive efficiency. The very nature of OEE is to identify the percentage of manufacturing time that is truly productive. It is the key metric for measuring the performance of an operation, but many companies measure it incorrectly, or don’t measure it at all.

In the latest example of its efforts to help manufacturers maximize performance while reducing costs and complexity, Parsec launched its real-time Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) Performance Management solution.

Most OEE measurement systems capture data from a single source and offer reports that may be visually appealing but actually contain very little substance. Other OEE systems capture lots of data but fail to give operators the necessary tools to act on that data. The TrakSYS OEE Performance Management solution collects and aggregates data from multiple sources, leveraging existing assets, resources and infrastructure, and provides insight into areas of the operation that need improvement with the tools to take action.

“We are challenging manufacturers to go beyond OEE measurement and to begin thinking about performance management,” said Gregory Newman, Parsec vice president of marketing. “Our TrakSYS OEE Performance Management solution pinpoints the root causes of poor performance and closes the loop by providing actionable intelligence and the tools necessary to fix the bottlenecks and improve productivity.”

 

The Power to Perform

When designing the TrakSYS OEE Performance Management solution, Parsec took into account three key criteria for measuring OEE: Availability, Performance and Quality. Availability, or downtime loss, encompasses changeovers, sanitation/cleaning, breakdowns, startup/shutdown, facility problems, etc. Performance, or speed loss, includes running a production system at a speed lower than the theoretical run rate, and short stop failures such as jams and overloads. Quality, or defect loss, is defined as production and startup rejects, process defects, reduction in yield, and products that need to be reworked to conform to quality standards. As part of the solution, Parsec created a variety of standard dashboards and reports as well as the ability to customize reports through powerful web-based configuration tools.

“Our goal is to empower manufacturers to unlock unseen potential with their existing infrastructure,” added Newman. “Even small tweaks can save a plant millions of dollars each year.”

TrakSYS is an integrated platform that contains all of the functionality of a full manufacturing execution system (MES) in one package. The modular nature of TrakSYS brings flexibility to deploy only the functions that are required, without a major software upgrade. TrakSYS business solutions include OEE, SPC, e-records, maintenance, traceability, workflow, batch processing, sustainability, labor, and more.

 

www.parsec-corp.com

Workforce and Productivity Discussed At Safety Conference

Workforce and Productivity Discussed At Safety Conference

Rockwell Machine Safety Maturity ModelI’m wrapping up my coverage of the EHS Today Safety Leadership Conference held last week in Greenville, SC. I covered the Technology Track sponsored by Rockwell Automation.

Steve Ludwig, safety program manager at Rockwell Automation, presented on the impact of the evolving workforce on safety.

Workforce changes

“We are facing a shortage of skilled workforce, and it is a global issue,” began Ludwig. “The average age of skilled worker is 56,  and this demographic is prone not to delay retirement. Add to this the fact that birth rates have declined for the last 35 years, so we do not have the usual situation of increasing population to fuel economic growth.

There are now more inexperienced workers who are more at risk. This is not just a situation for your plant, but also for the plants of all your suppliers. Businesses face supply chain interruption, reputational / brand risk. Businesses face not only an aging workforce that may be prone to injury, but also a younger, less experience workforce that tend to have more frequent acute injuries.

When Ludwig asked attendees, “How do we improve with a changing workforce?” most responded that they were proactively going out to schools to recruit and evangelize manufacturing. They were also assuming much responsibility for helping train young people.

Connected enterprise for safety

Jeff Winter of system integrator Grantek discussed connecting the enterprise for safety. He noted a problem that continues to exist is that dashboards rely on manual data collection and input.

There are three “Eras” of safety technology–initially just preventing access; then detecting access (something that increased both safety and productivity); today controlling access (integrated safety into machine, about as productive as you can get).

“EHS must get a chair at the table when data collection and analysis are being discussed in the plant or company,” he concluded. Winter continued with this advice, “Ask for data on actions such as emergency stops, intrusions, shut downs.”

Beyond lockout, tagout

Turning to electrical safety specifically, Jimi Michalscheck business development manager for safety looked at going beyond Lockout Tagout (LOTO). His point was how to balance safety with production. He posited a system of engineered safety control, which he called a new way of addressing LOTO.

“If you haven’t designed an alternative, then you must use LOTO (OSHA). To prevent unexpected restart of the equipment during service from causing harm to employees.”

Engineering safe alternatives. Think of your machine as simple components. For example, a case packer. Notorious for frequent need for getting into it, so also for citations. Using Alternative Protective Measure (APM), design the machine in components. Task specific, area specific, documented (know that the service area is protected for the reach of the worker). APM developed must provide the same or greater level of protection as LOTO in order to comply with CFR1910.147.

Report Applications–What is the Market and Where Do They Fit the Industrial Software Ecosystem

HMI SCADA At the High End

I’m still pondering the whole HMI/SCADA market and technologies. I’m still getting a few updates after the Inductive Automation conference I attended in California and the Wonderware conference in Dallas that I missed.

The two have traditionally been referred to in trade publications together.

Today, I think three or four things are blending. Things are getting interesting.

SCADA is “supervisory control and data acquisition.” The supervisory control part has blended into the higher ends of human-machine interface. Data Acquisition software technology is a key platform for what we are today calling the “Industrial Internet of Things.” I’ve heard one technologist predict that soon we’ll just say “Internet.”

Data acquisition itself is a system that involves a variety of inputs including sensors, signal analyzers, and networks. The software part brings it all under control and provides a format for passing data to the next level.

HMI also involves a system these days. Evolving from operator interface into sophisticated software that includes the “supervisory control” part of the system.

Some applications also blend in MES and Manufacturing Intelligence. These applications, often engineered solutions atop the software platforms, strive to make sense of the data moving from HMI/SCADA either using it for manufacturing control or as a feed to enterprise systems.

Wonderware has been an historical force in these areas. Its original competitor was Intellution which is now subsumed into GE’s Proficy suite. The other strong competitor is Rockwell Automation. All three sell on a traditional sales model of “seats” and/or “tags.”

Inductive Automation built from enterprise grade database technology and has a completely different sales model. It is driving the cost of HMI/SCADA, and in some ways MES, down.

Competitors can meet that competition by either pursuing a race to the bottom or through redefining a higher niche. The winner of the race to the bottom becomes the company built from the ground up for low individual sales price.

Wonderware announcements

All of that was just an analyst prologue to a couple of items that have popped up from Schneider Electric Software (Wonderware) over the past couple of days.

timSowellTo my mind, Tim Sowell is addressing how some customers are taking these platforms to a new level.   Writing in his blog last weekend, Sowell notes, “For the last couple of years we have seen the changing supervisory solutions emerging, that will require a rethink of the underlying systems, and how they implemented and the traditional HMI, Control architectures will not satisfy! Certainly in upstream Oil and Gas, Power, Mining, Water and Smart Cities we have seen a significant growth in the Integrated Operational Center (IOC) concept. Where multiple sites control comes back into one room, where planning and operations can collaborate in real-time.”

I have seen examples of this Integrated Operations Center featuring such roles as operations, planning, engineering, and maintenance. But this is more than technology—it requires organizing, training, and equipping humans.

Sowell, “When you start peeling back the ‘day in the life of operations’ the IOC is only the ‘quarterback’ in a flexible operational team of different roles, contributing different levels of operational. Combined with dynamic operational landscape, where the operational span of control of operational assets, is dynamically changing all the time. The question is what does the system look like, do the traditional approaches apply?”

Tying things together, Sowell writes, “Traditionally companies have used isolated (siloed) HMI, DCS workstation controls at the facilities, and then others at the regional operational centers and then others at the central IOC, and stitched them together. Now you add the dynamic nature of the business with changing assets, and now a mobile workforce we have addition operational stations that of the mobile (roaming worker). All must see the same state, with scope to their span of control, and accountability to control.”

The initial conclusion, “We need one system, but multiple operational points, and layouts, awareness so the OPERATIONAL TEAM can operate in unison, enabling effective operational work.”

Intelligence

Here is a little more detail about the latest revision of Wonderware Intelligence to which I referred last week and above.The newest version collects, calculates and contextualizes data and metrics from multiple sources across the manufacturing operation, puts it into a centralized storage and updates it all in near-real time. Because it is optimized for retrieval, the information can then be used to monitor KPIs via customizable dashboards, as well as for drill-down analysis and insights into operating and overall business performance.

“Wonderware Intelligence is an easy-to-use, non-disruptive solution that improves how our customers visualize and analyze industrial Big Data,” said Graeme Welton, director of Advansys (Pty) Ltd., a South African company that provides specialized industrial automation, manufacturing systems and business intelligence consulting and project implementation services. “It allows our customers to build their own interactive dashboards that can capture, visualize and analyze key performance indicators and other operating data. Not only is it more user-friendly, it has better query cycle times, it’s faster and it has simpler administration rights. It’s an innovative tool that continues to drive quality and value.”

Wonderware Intelligence visual analytics and dashboards allow everyone in the operation to see the same version of the truth drawn from a single data warehouse. The interactive and visual nature of the dashboards significantly increases the speed and confidence of the users’ decision making.

Workforce and Productivity Discussed At Safety Conference

Significant Increases to Asset Management Portfolio At Bentley

Asset management, analytics, modeling, safety—some of the significant trends highlighted at last week’s ARC Industry in Transition Forum in Orlando—all popped up at the Bentley Systems press conference session. Highlights were acquisition of C3global and its Amulet Operational Analytics, acquisition of Acute3D and its reality modeling solution, and added process safety and risk management capabilities.

Operational Analytics

Bentley Systems has acquired U.K.-based C3global, provider of web-based Amulet software for operational analytics. Bentley’s AssetWise platform, which serves configuration management, asset health monitoring, inspection, maintenance, and compliance for infrastructure assets, can now deliver additional actionable insights as asset performance management is extended, through AssetWise Amulet, for asset performance modeling. AssetWise Amulet offers unique value in applying predictive and prescriptive analytics that are easily configurable at industrial scale to leverage just-in-time data for improved operational efficiencies.

Gartner recognizes C3global as part of the industrial analytics transformation helping digital businesses (as noted in Gartner’s “Industrial Analytics Revolutionizes Big Data in the Digital Business” report [G00264728], published August 19, 2014). Among the many infrastructure owner-operators benefiting from Amulet operational analytics are water utilities, oil and gas, and power transmission grids. User organizations include Babcock, BP, Chevron, Danfoss, Emerson, MWH, National Grid, South Australian Water, and Total.

AssetWise Amulet can be readily configured to build sophisticated applications tailored to infrastructure operations needs without having to know a programming language. It bridges the gap between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), enabling advanced analytics to be an integral part of all aspects of the business process. Through AssetWise Amulet’s interactive and easily configurable operational dashboards, owner-operators are provided with the context they need to be confident in their decisions and are afforded an easy method of measuring and managing the outcomes.

AssetWise Amulet is designed to integrate and analyze “big data” generated by a wide range of external applications and systems – from SQL or Oracle databases to enterprise data warehouses, industrial data historians, and control systems, as well as maintenance and work order management systems. The data can be structured or unstructured and include systems data, photos, video, log books, Microsoft Excel files, event failures, scanned notes, witnessed events, and more.

Once data from the IT and OT systems has been captured and aggregated, the software applies the users’ business rules, models, and knowledge to provide an improved view and understanding of operational performance for decision support. In conjunction with AssetWise-certified integrations to SAP EAM, IBM Maximo, and Oracle eAM, AssetWise Amulet will help drive the right actions at the right time, reducing operational risks and improving operational efficiency.

Reality Modeling

Bentley Systems also announced that it has acquired France-based Acute3D, provider of Smart3DCapture software for reality modeling. Through reality modeling, observations of existing conditions are processed into representations for contextual alignment within design modeling and construction modeling environments. Rapid technology advancements in scanning and photography – and especially the burgeoning application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for these purposes – are making the capture of such observations broadly and continuously affordable in sustaining infrastructure.

Acute3D software automates the generation of high-resolution, fully-3D representations from digital photographs taken with any camera, whether highly specialized or embedded in a smartphone. Scalable from site to city, and with precision limited only by the quantity and quality of photography, Acute3D technology can assure that existing conditions are contemporaneously considered throughout the architecture, engineering, construction, and operations of any infrastructure asset. Now that photo sequences from UAVs are likely to become the most feasible source for surveying, construction monitoring, and inspection workflows, Acute3D’s industrial-level accuracy and unlimited scalability are making it a preferred technology for UAV manufacturers and professionals around the world.

Process Safety and Risk Management

AssetWise APM V7.3 the enhanced version of Bentley’s asset performance management (APM) offering – an all-in-one analysis and information management software platform for asset reliability and asset integrity – now also advances process safety.

Alan Kiraly, Bentley senior vice president, server products, said, “Our AssetWise APM V7.3 meets the demanding requirements of reliability, integrity, safety, and maintenance managers and engineers in industries ranging from oil and gas, petrochemical, and mining and metals to power generation and other utilities. The software ensures assets are safe and reliable and that they are inspected and maintained to reduce or eliminate risk. Users further benefit from the elimination of unexpected downtime, increased asset availability and utilization, reduced maintenance costs, and support for regulations and safety standards, including ISA 84, IEC 61511, IEC 61508, and IEC 61882.”

AssetWise APM V7.3’s new process safety features help users manage the integrity of safety systems and hazardous processes, thereby preventing failures and catastrophic incidents and keeping people, assets, and the environment safer. Capabilities include safety instrumented function (SIF) analysis, safety instrumented systems (SIS), safety integrity level (SIL) and safety provisions, overrides, and incidents. AssetWise APM V7.3 also provides version control and approval, the analysis of loss of containment scenarios, and the identification and assessment of risks at the system level, as well as for related assets (risk matrix).

 

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