by Gary Mintchell | Oct 27, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, News, Safety, Technology
Emerson Automation’s PlantWeb architecture has grown and morphed into a full blown Industrial Internet of Things platform. The redesigned and reinvigorated integrated architecture forms the foundation of Emerson’s new Operational Certainty initiative. This is the first of a few reports on the latest Emerson Automation news.
Steve Sonnenberg, recently elevated into the role of Chairman of Emerson Automation—the company formerly known as Emerson Process Management, introduced new Executive President Mike Train to the assembled customers and press at the 2016 edition of Emerson Global Users Exchange in Austin, Texas on Oct. 24. Train then introduced Operational Certainty.
The previous initiative was Project Certainty where the company strategists arrayed its existing and new products into a package that was designed to remove automation from the critical path of capital projects. These days capital projects are few and far between. Companies are scrambling to wring more profitability from existing assets. Therefore a new approach from Emerson that is obviously driven by its customers’ needs. Train says that this initiative will help wrest more than $1 trillion from operational losses globally.
Initiatives need benchmarks. Emerson introduced peer benchmarking on best practices to achieve Top Quartile performance in safety, reliability, production, and energy management. Top Quartile is defined as achieving operations and capital performance in the top 25 percent of peer companies.
The company is also launching a new Operational Certainty consulting practice plus expanded project execution methodologies and resources. Additionally, on October 24, the company will announce a new Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) digital ecosystem to provide the technology foundation for companies to securely implement Industrial IoT to achieve measurable business performance improvement.
A few examples of Emerson’s findings:
- In terms of safety, Top Quartile performers had one-third the number of safety incidents as compared to their average industry peers.
- In terms of asset reliability, Emerson found that Top Quartile performers spend half as much on maintenance compared with average performers and operate with an incremental 15 days of available production each year.
- In the domain of production, Top Quartile manufacturers spent 20 percent less on production-related expenses as compared to average producers.
- In the area of energy and emissions, the top 25 percent of producers spent one-third as much as the industry average on energy costs and had 30 percent less CO2 emissions.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 11, 2015 | Automation, Networking, Operations Management, Software
GE set up a conference call for a conversation with Matt Wells, general manager of automation software at GE Intelligent Platforms.
The impetus for the call was to flesh out the press release about the development of the Global Discovery Server (GDS) for OPC UA and the first implementation of it into GE’s Cimplicity HMI/SCADA software.
Wells said that GE is really embracing OPC UA as a core technology. Controllers have it embedded within, and in fact, GE actually evaluated it for inter-controller communication. That latter did not work out, but OPC UA remains core to GE’s connectivity program.
But, Wells continued, OPC UA is not always the easiest to implement. So GE worked with the OPC Foundation to define global discovery server to simplify management of systems.
The first advance concerns namespace. If GDS resides on the network, it will first register clients and servers then GDS provide list of namespace. And not only this, it can say who can talk to whom and it can also restrict who talks.
Secondly, GDS acts as certificate store. It is not a traffic manager, bu it checks for a certificate for all OPC devices and it then handles handshaking among them.
GDS is available as independent software that can be installed in an application. GE did Cimplicity first, partly to show it can be done and how useful it is.
GDS Agent, not part of spec, can act as proxy for existing UA that is not GDS enabled.
Using GDS in an OPC network enhancing usability and ease of implementation. This should increase the adoption of OPC UA.
When my contact set up this conversation, she also mentioned we could discuss something called, “automated operator decision support”. This intrigued me. Turns out this is an alternative phrase for automated or digitized workflow.
I’ve only talked with a few companies that have incorporated workflow. I talked with GE several years ago for the first time. This should be an important advance for manufacturing productivity.
Here are some notes about the workflow conversation.
Overall in HMI/SCADA
1-prevent mistakes so minimize abnormal situations
2-can’t always encode everything, so give advance notification, predictive analytics
3-cant predict everything, so enable operators to quickly ID issue and solve, give corrective action procedures
4-“phone a friend”, utilize mobile techs to call SMEs; We found highest adoption enabling support staff, contact experts, decrease downtime
Digitize SOP policy, workflow; work to encode workflows, as it executes SOP solicit feedback from operator, can coordinate acts of operators and people around them. Make every operator the best operator—baked in—originally sold as risk management mitigation tool. It is popular in pharma and water, especially areas where compliance is crucial.
First step, look at compliances and improving process – process
Take written manual–>encode–>provide checklist–>maybe write directly into system for records–>then after compliance, start looking at optimizing.
It is designed to layer over existing infrastructure (HMI/SCADA, WMS, etc.).
Have seen performance improvements of up to 30%.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 1, 2014 | Automation, Technology
“Gary, what are you hearing about PackML lately,” asked an acquaintance the other day. “I’m getting a lot of requests for it.” My friend is a software integrator working primarily in factory automation and MES.
Developed by a working group of engineers from companies that use packaging machines, companies that design and manufacture packaging machines, and suppliers of machine automation and control, PackML defines the various “states” of a machine and provides a common vocabulary of terms.
Companies that use such machines favored the development of PackML, because it would make user interfaces and machine operations standard. This makes operator training and machine operations easier and better. Nestle and P&G are examples of companies who have pushed hard for the development of the standard.
Thought models help not only the companies who use the machines, it should help the machine builders, too. By structuring not only the programming, but also the design of the machine, machine builders can both satisfy customers, perhaps with a unique capability, but also reduce future design cost and time-to-market.
PackML was developed by an organization composed of technology developers, machine builders and end user companies. The Organization for Machine Automation and Control (OMAC) Packaging Working Group developed the state model borrowing from the ISA88 standard (ISA88.05). The group itself has been quiet for the past few years, but according to my friend, companies are beginning to request it in the machines they procure.
Taking the thought process one step further, companies are beginning to look at their entire manufacturing enterprise by applying the ISA95 model to operations. Once companies understand operations and data movements, then they can begin applying information technology solutions from manufacturing execution systems (MES) suppliers.
If the machines are modeled, and operations are modeled, and data flows are defined, then connections can be made to automatically move real-time data from the machine into MES applications. These applications provide the contextualized information required to adequately manage manufacturing.
Machine builders who provide machines based on the state model that is understandable to their customers and at the same time provide pathways for information flow—such as built-in OPC servers—have a competitive advantage over their peers. Manufacturers who use these standards can benefit from using the information.
Research by LNS Research in collaboration with MESA has revealed that companies who use their MES applications have benefited from many annual performance improvements.
The recent report notes, “The average annual performance improvements listed below are each combinations of several different metrics and KPIs. The results shown are for manufacturers that indicated measuring each of the listed metrics. In some cases, such as in the financials category, up to 10 different variables were included in the calculation. This data shows improvements in those categories based on 2013 compared to 2012.”
Optimum asset performance
Add to the mix that all these standards aid interoperability of systems and data flow. When you can get data flowing from machines and processes into your management systems—MES, CMMS and EAM—then information about the state of the plant is at your fingertips.
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 6, 2014 | Data Management, Operations Management, Software
I have long known the benefits that are possible with the proper implementation of the Layer 3 software commonly known as manufacturing execution software or MES. The ISA 95 framework model calls the application Manufacturing Operations Management, or MOM.
At its best, implementing MOM makes manufacturing professionals think about their processes. The software collects data which managers and engineers can use to find problems that continuous improvement teams can attack. It gives the teams before and after data to show if improvements have been made. MOM should be a servant of operations managers, not the other way around.
The MESA International organization exists to promote such an intelligent application of its supplier-members’ software. This year its “Metrics that Matter” research is being conducted with the help of LNS Research. Although I think you can still participate in the survey, LNS has blogged some preliminary findings. They are interesting.
It notes that over 200 responses to the survey have been evaluated.
“One set of data we’re eager to highlight first is the average annual performance improvements across the eight different high-level KPI categories manufacturing professionals were asked about. These categories include financials, inventory, innovation, responsiveness, efficiency, quality, maintenance, and compliance.”
“The fact that each category below shows improvements is encouraging, and a positive sign for the manufacturing sector in general. In 2014, gaining market share in today’s competitive global economy will be a matter of building on the momentum of these improvements and finding ways to sustain and accelerate them.”
Please visit the blog to read the details, but here are teasers:
- Financial, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 8.6%
- Inventory, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 15.0%
- Innovation, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 7.8%
- Responsiveness, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 10.0%
- Efficiency, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 17.0%
- Quality, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 13.7%
- Maintenance, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 14.9%
- Compliance, Average Annual Performance Improvement: 18.5%
Check it out and let me know what you think.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 25, 2013 | Automation, M2M, Operations Management, Software, Technology
Are we seeing practical adoption of M2M technologies finally. Meridium points to that as a key feature of its latest release of its Asset Performance Management software. Enhanced support for work process also fits snugly within the trends of the past few years.
Version 3.5.1 of its Asset Performance Management (APM) software enhancements include new work process dashboards for the end-to-end management of performance improvement opportunities, expanded monitoring policies to address process excursions and enhanced integration capabilities to enable machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
“Every Meridium product release is a reflection of fulfilling customer needs,” said Bob DeMaria, Maintenance Engineering Technical Advisor at Dakota Gasification Co. “As a Meridium user, it amazes me how every release offers a new solution to our challenges. For example, in v3.5.1 they added a new analytical model, which allows us to ‘see’ the impact performing an inspection has on an asset’s risk ranking. This added functionality will provide huge efficiency gains by allowing us to optimize our inspection intervals.”
Meridium v3.5.1 Policy Manager boosts M2M integration with advanced analytics to drive the right actions from the wealth of information collected. This includes new monitoring capabilities to automatically trigger, close and analyze integrity operating window (IOW) excursions or other critical events. “Operation of assets outside the defined integrity operating window introduces unknown operating risk,” said Louise Pattison, Meridium Product Manager. “Conditions change, and if you are not tracking process excursions, you may be living under a veil of false security.”
