by Gary Mintchell | Sep 29, 2015 | Data Management, Manufacturing IT, Software
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.
To 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.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 31, 2015 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
Tim Sowell writes weekly on operations management. His last blog post refers back to one of mine (thank you) and then adds a deep insight.
My post concerned adoption of cloud and the movement toward private clouds. A survey revealed that manufacturing leads the way in cloud adoption.
Tim says:
The above learnings and results do not surprise me, based upon my own engagements in the field, and observing the increased realization that speed of change is important, and tradition large projects are going out the door. Replaced by rapid projects leveraging existing expertise in the industry and adding through own operational process value to differentiate.
How does the cloud help us? As a major component of new platform technologies it enables speed of change, flexibility, collecting existing expertise.
These are important whether you are in engineering, operations, or maintenance. In fact, these disciplines continue to blend, don’t they? The new platforms building on all these new technologies will force management teams to reformulate their department silos and achieve greater results through cross-fertilization of expertise of teams.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 23, 2015 | Automation, Internet of Things, Operations Management
Tim Sowell, Schneider Electric (Wonderware) vp and fellow, has been writing a weekly blog that I report on for a while now. His Operations Management Systems Evolution blog is always thoughtful and informative.
Recently, I have discovered another Schneider Electric blog, this one by someone whom I do not know (I think)–Gregory Conary.
Each take a look at the Industrial Internet of Things in these posts.
Conary’s recent post discussed the “business opportunities we are seeing emerge from this megatrend.”
He cites information compiled by LNS Research, in its eBook Smart Connected Operations: Capturing the Business Value of the Industrial IoT. 47 per cent of respondents to its Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) online survey indicated that they did not expect to invest in IoT technologies in the “foreseeable future”. A further 19 per cent indicated that they did not expect to invest in IoT technologies in the next 12 months.
Conary states, “Frankly I’m not surprised. IIoT seems to bring with it the hype of something that will take a long time to adopt. In some cases I think this can be true. And while we are unclear on what time frame is meant by the term ‘foreseeable future’ referenced above, I believe there are business opportunities that can be capitalized on now and in the medium term. IIoT is more prevalent than we imagine. There are examples and business practices that we often don’t even recognize as being enabled by IIoT – things like increasing industrial performance and augmenting operators are two of the opportunities which can make a difference to your business now.”
Increased industrial performance
“Using data to improve industrial performance by connecting things to each other – this is happening now. How is it happening? Through wireless technologies, low cost sensors and using advanced analytics. In practice, this is a decision support system for complex manufacturing operations.”
I agree with Conary. We’ve had the foundation and platform for the Industrial Internet of Things for a long time. It just continues becoming more robust. As better data analytics algorithms are developed and better ways to communicate and display information are devised, then usefulness to manufacturing operators, maintenance technicians, engineers, and managers will increase dramatically.
Tim Sowell riffed off an article in Wired. “As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues its run as one of the most popular technology buzzwords of the year, the discussion has turned from what it is, to how to drive value from it, to the tactical: how to make it work.
We need to improve the speed and accuracy of big data analysis in order for IoT to live up to its promise. If we don’t, the consequences could be disastrous and could range from the annoying – like home appliances that don’t work together as advertised – to the life-threatening – pacemakers malfunctioning or hundred car pileups.”
Sowell adds this analysis, “This follows on from my discussion 2 weeks ago around the need to avoid just gathering data, vs gaining the proportional amount of knowledge and wisdom, which brings in a term you hear a lot ‘machine learning’.”
From Wired, “The realization of IoT depends on being able to gain the insights hidden in the vast and growing seas of data available. Since current approaches don’t scale to IoT volumes, the future realization of IoT’s promise is dependent on machine learning to find the patterns, correlations and anomalies that have the potential of enabling improvements in almost every facet of our daily lives.”
Sowell concludes, “In the industrial world this more applicable than nearly all industries, and in many cases we are already applying “machine levels” at different levels. A key part in the shift from ‘Information’ to ‘knowledge’ is having the tools to drill into historians based on events and to discover learnings and patterns. Once validated and discovered these are turned into ‘self-monitoring’ conditions to understand the current state of the device, and predict / recognize conditions well before they happen. Providing the ‘insight’ to make awareness and decisions where the machines/ devices are telling you where the opportunities are. But a key part of machine learning is that this knowledge in not a once off step, it is a continuous evolution leveraging the gathering history data and developing increased amounts of knowledge.”
Final thought
Both Conary and Sowell point directly to the new reality and to new challenges. We can now gather much more data than we can make sense of. As soon as we have those tools, we will provide better tools to operations and maintenance to improve plant performance.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 10, 2015 | Automation, Operations Management, Software, Technology
Tim Sowell, VP and Fellow at Schneider Electric Software, always writes thoughtful and forward-looking blogs about the state of manufacturing software. In this one, he discusses taking a lead from the human body “with reducing risk through an enterprise nervous system for industrial architectures.”
He says, “If we think about it – the human nervous system has over a billion neurons spread throughout the body to help control its various functions. If the brain had to deal constantly with a billion signals, it would “crash” the system. Thus, nature has designed a system where functions are layered in an architecture that helps create a robust sense-and-response mechanism.”
I’ve added a few books for your intellectual broadening about brain science. More and more, those of us in the more “physical” systems business are getting metaphors from biological systems. The human system is a great metaphor.
On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm)
Decartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio
The Feeling of What Happens, Antonio Damasio
And while I’m at it, Loosely Coupled, Doug Kaye, regarding Sowell’s later statements.
Sowell has lately been asked about flat vs. layered architecture, and a similar question around one platform vs. multiple platforms. Here are his points:
• Layers allow me to contain change
• Layers allow me to manage complexity, divide and conquer
• Inter-operable layers reduce technology lock-in and increase options for clients
• Federated means lower level has autonomy but cannot violate higher level rules and principles .
He continues, “The world is made up of layers of information, interaction, and decisions . It is important to optimize across a layer, so interaction with the “things” at that layer is focused, efficient, and in context of that layer in content and time. As you transverse layers so does the context of information, the interaction between different “things” and complexity or focus change.”
Further, “In the industrial automation/ operations control has it’s layers of executing with the different equipment components in the process unit, requiring speed and tight coupling. As we go up the layers to supervisory then MES and Information, the context changes, responsibility for decisions increases, but time context changes. The “things” interacting change, combined with more complex messages with more context.”
And here is Sowell’s conclusion. This is very much in tune with what I see as the direction software is going. Interoperability being the key.
“Autonomous functions (layers) which have Interoperability is key for fast relevant actionable decisions to take place with the most efficiency. So why do we ask about one, when we should design in layers but understand the layers the context, things, and actions. But understand how the layers must be “loosely coupled but aligned” so that operational execution aligns with business strategy in near real time.”
by Gary Mintchell | Mar 17, 2015 | Automation, Operations Management, Software, Technology
Tim Sowell, VP and Fellow at Schneider Electric Software, always writes thoughtful and forward-looking blogs about the state of manufacturing software. In this one, he discusses taking a lead from the human body “with reducing risk through an enterprise nervous system for industrial architectures.”
He says, “If we think about it – the human nervous system has over a billion neurons spread throughout the body to help control its various functions. If the brain had to deal constantly with a billion signals, it would “crash” the system. Thus, nature has designed a system where functions are layered in an architecture that helps create a robust sense-and-response mechanism.”
I’ve added a few books for your intellectual broadening about brain science. More and more, those of us in the more “physical” systems business are getting metaphors from biological systems. The human system is a great metaphor.
On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm)
Decartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio
The Feeling of What Happens, Antonio Damasio
And while I’m at it, Loosely Coupled, Doug Kaye, regarding Sowell’s later statements.
Sowell has lately been asked about flat vs. layered architecture, and a similar question around one platform vs. multiple platforms. Here are his points:
• Layers allow me to contain change
• Layers allow me to manage complexity, divide and conquer
• Inter-operable layers reduce technology lock-in and increase options for clients
• Federated means lower level has autonomy but cannot violate higher level rules and principles .
He continues, “The world is made up of layers of information, interaction, and decisions . It is important to optimize across a layer, so interaction with the “things” at that layer is focused, efficient, and in context of that layer in content and time. As you transverse layers so does the context of information, the interaction between different “things” and complexity or focus change.”
Further, “In the industrial automation/ operations control has it’s layers of executing with the different equipment components in the process unit, requiring speed and tight coupling. As we go up the layers to supervisory then MES and Information, the context changes, responsibility for decisions increases, but time context changes. The “things” interacting change, combined with more complex messages with more context.”
And here is Sowell’s conclusion. This is very much in tune with what I see as the direction software is going. Interoperability being the key.
“Autonomous functions (layers) which have Interoperability is key for fast relevant actionable decisions to take place with the most efficiency. So why do we ask about one, when we should design in layers but understand the layers the context, things, and actions. But understand how the layers must be “loosely coupled but aligned” so that operational execution aligns with business strategy in near real time.”
