by Gary Mintchell | Feb 16, 2015 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, News, Operations Management, Safety
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).
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 11, 2014 | Automation, Interoperability, News, Operations Management, Technology
I started another Website called Physical Asset Lifecycle last year to discuss interoperability.
Two things happened. The reason to have a separate Website evaporated into the vacuum of failed business ideas. I also ran out of time to maintain yet another Website.
So, I will be reposting the work I did there and then building upon that work as an Interoperability Series.
There are key technologies and thinking when it comes to interoperability. The foundation is that we want to break silos of people and technologies so that applications can interoperate and make life easier for operations, maintenance and engineering. This will also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. Much of the work so far is led by MIMOSA.
Interoperability demo
Two years ago, the foundation came together in a pilot demo at the ISA Automation Week conference of 2012. Here is the report from then.
After years of preparatory work, the OpenO&M Initiative participants organized a demonstration pilot project of information interoperability run like a real project building a debutanizer. It demonstrated the full lifecycle of the plant including all the facets of plant from design through construction to operations and management. The demonstration was held two days at the ISA Automation Week Sept. 25-26, 2012 in Orlando.
A panel of some of the people who worked on this project presented their work and showed live demonstrations.
One of the most important advances in the project was that now the three major design software suppliers–Aveva, Bentley, and Intergraph were all involved with enabling export of design data to a standard interface.
EPC for the project was Worley Parsons. Cormac Ryan, manager, Engineering Data Management, Americas, explained the development of the P&IDs using Intergraph’s Smart Plant P&ID generator. It produced a traditional P&ID. Not only a diagram, it is a database-driven tool containing lots of reports and data. The data was published in ISO 15926 format and made available to the rest of the team.
Jim Klein, Industry Solutions Consultant from Aveva, used a schema similar to the Intergraph one. It acted as a second EPC duplicating the data with the object-based database behind the drawing. It can store and link to an engineering database that contains much more data. For example, clicking on a pump diagram can show specifications and other important design information. This data was published out to instantiate the object in a maintenance management system or to create new data as it gets revised during the engineering process. Information can communicate to a “MIMOSA cloud” server.
George Grossmann, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Advanced Computing Research Centre, the University of South Australia, explained a transform engine using Bentley Open Plant received in 2 formats–owl and ecxml. These data go to iniSA 15926 transform engine. This engine takes input from all three suppliers, exports in ISO 15926 then to MIMOSA standard exports in CCOM XML.
Next up Ken Bever, with Assetricity and also CTO of MIMOSA discussed the transform from CCOM XML to the Assetricity iomog register, assuring that information was mapped to the asset and then sent to IBM’s IIC application in a standardized way. The information was then sent to OSIsoft PI historian. From PI, data is then accessible to maintenance management and operations management applications. All data references back to the ISO 15926 ontology.
Bruce Hyre, from IBM, explained how the IIC application is a standards-based platform that federates data and provides analytics. It takes CCOM, feeds it into a model server, which then provisions tags in OSI PI server. His demonstration showed the actual live P&ID from the EPC. He added, “But our focus is on the data supporting that P&ID–the tag list/model tree. You can subscribe to a tag, see information from the upstream systems.” Therefore the demonstration showed that data have gone end-to-end from design to the PI server to provision the tags with the live data from the design. 1092 tags were provisioned in this demonstration.
A video of the presentation can be found on the MIMOSA Website.
Program manager is Alan Johnston. Contact him for more information or to lend your expertise to the effort.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 12, 2014 | News, Operations Management, Software
MOM Chronicles: ISA95 Best Practices
The International Society of Automation (ISA) Publications Department has awarded Charlie Gifford the Thomas G. Fisher Award of Excellence for a Standards-Based Reference Publication. The book, which Gifford assembled and edited, is “The MOM Chronicles: ISA-95 Best Practices Book 3.0”.
I have the book and highly recommend it to all who are trying to understand and implement the ideas and models of ISA95—the international standard for the integration of enterprise and control systems. Charlie is an internationally respected practitioner and teacher on manufacturing operations management (MOM).
Charlie offers this comment on the honor, “I sincerely thank ISA for this prominent award named for a distinguished man, Tom Fisher. As Primary Contributing Author and Chief Editor, I accept this award for all 50 contributing expert authors and reviewers of the ISA-95 Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) Best Practices Working Group. This is the 2nd time the working group’s work products have been recognized for this award. In 2011, ‘When World Collide in Manufacturing Operations, Book 2.0’ was also selected. ISA continues to support the group’s work products of 23 applied technology white papers and 3 books. These documents enable manufacturing systems professionals worldwide to become a primary reference resource over the last 10 years.”
Here is a glimpse into MOM Chronicles:
- Chapter 1: Applying Global MOM Systems in a Manufacturing 2.0 Approach
- Chapter 2: The Role of Semantic Models in Smarter Industrial Operations
- Chapter 3: Applying Manufacturing Operations Models in a Discrete Hybrid Manufacturing Environment
- Chapter 4: Defining an Operations Systems Architecture
- Chapter 5: A Workflow-driven Approach to MOM
- Chapter 6: Scheduling Integration Using an ISA-95 Application in a Steel Plant
- Chapter 7: Intelligent Integration Interface: I3, A Real-world Application of ISA-95
Here’s a glimpse into When Worlds:
- Chapter 1: SOA for Manufacturing Overview
- Chapter 2: Data Architecture for MOM: The Manufacturing Master Data Approach
- Chapter 3: Building a Manufacturing Transformation Strategy with ISA-95 Methods
- Chapter 4: Work Process Management for Adaptive Manufacturing
- Chapter 5: B2MML, Integration Patterns, and Data Mapping
- Chapter 6: Integration of Manufacturing Intelligence with MOM
- Chapter 7: Lifecycle of Service Creation using the ISA-95 MOM
Charlie Gifford, PMP, is General Manager & Senior Advanced Manufacturing Consultant at Intelligent Manufacturing Institute, 21st Century Manufacturing Solutions LLC.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 30, 2014 | Automation, News, Operations Management
This is just a quick post to call out some recent apps (I have them on iPhone/iPad, not sure about Google Play).
Profibus/PI North America has an app that is news centric. You are greeted with blocks of news content relative to Profibus and Profinet technologies and applications.
ISA has a new magazine app named Intech Plus. I really like the interface. That reminds me of the interface of Productive magazine (which I highly recommend–that’s personal productivity, not production) which is easy to navigate and read. The interactivity embedded in the magazine is excellent.
Automation.Com known basically as a Web Portal for automation news (and also loosely affiliated with Intech) released Pulse, its iPhone (and I presume Android) app, as its venture into the world of online publishing. Once again, the interface is outstanding–not just the old “flip book” replica of a print magazine, but an attempt to make a truly digital product.
Check them out and let me know in the comments what you think. Do you like reading in that format for a “magazine”? Would you pitch print for that format? Or, do you like both? Or still just print?
While I’m asking questions–what do you think about subscription models? This blog is free. My friend Walt Boyes bought the Industrial Automation + Process Control Insider which is pretty much subscription-based. Anything that does go on the Web is posted after the newsletter goes out. What do you think?
