Engineering a System of Systems (SoS)

"Everything affects everything else in one way or another. Whether you are aware of that or not does not change the fact that this is what is happening. That's why I say a business is a system ... any action will reverberate throughout the entire company."  - John Woods (Work in Progress)

The evolution of an enterprise resembles the evolution of any other type of organism. Processes become more complex as the enterprise grows; job requirements become more compartmentalized. Over time, complex and varied systems are developed or implemented to help personnel perform their very specific sets of tasks. Many enterprises today are composed of many of these separate silos of activity that do not share information with each other - and when they do it is not in real time.

This organizational model has served us well, generally helping to improve operational efficiency, increasing productivity, and providing better tools for people to do their jobs. Now, as we enter the era of connected devices and the IoT (Internet of Things), it is becoming more apparent that these old models that were designed to make things more efficient are actually serving as obstacles to taking the next step.

Before now, these separate silos of activity allowed people to focus more specifically on the task at hand without worrying about any other tasks. Today’s reality is that an enterprise truly operates as more of a continuum. All of these separate systems must work in concert to ensure the health of the organism as a whole.

Imagine your own personal organism. How would your lungs work correctly without information from your circulatory system? And how could your circulatory system deal with injuries without information from your nervous system? Our brains, hearts, lungs, stomachs, kidneys and livers must be in constant communication with one another at all times. And any one of these systems can be impacted at any time but new information pulled in from outside through our senses. A healthy organism is not one where each individual system performs its specific tasks as efficiently as possible. A healthy organism is one in which every system is constantly striving to ensure the greater good of the entire organism. 

Many enterprises are discovering today that they need to implement a system of systems.  

Implementing a system that encompasses all of your existing systems can increase your capacity for management, analysis, and understanding of underlying business problems and opportunities. Gain real-time insight into how altering just one component of a process can impact all other processes. For instance, witness in real time how a change to a maintenance schedule effects productivity and asset performance. Discover opportunities to reduce energy consumption or create greater coordination between your production schedule and your supply chain. 

A system of systems can promote greater high-level situational awareness, increase your capacity for interdepartmental collaboration, and allow for entirely new models of analysis and automation. Imagine the following scenario: a plant floor machine's throughput drops below what's expected; immediately, an alarm notification is sent and the machine is automatically shut down for maintenance. Another task is triggered to generate a work order; the work order is automatically assigned to the technician who is closest and best able to perform the work (the technician is notified in real time on his smart phone or tablet). While the maintenance is performed, all of the day's numbers related to production, profit, warehousing, shipping, etc. are automatically adjusted to accommodate the downtime. Meanwhile, the technician is able to perform the maintenance, test the machine, and update the work order right there on the spot (on his phone, for instance). All other systems are automatically aware of the work order's completion in real-time and everything is adjusted again accordingly. 

Imagine creating custom interfaces for each role in your organization. Depending on an individual's job responsibilities, he/she could have real-time access to all data necessary to do their jobs - regardless of where that data was generated or where it is stored.

With a little imagination, there is a seemingly endless number of possibilities revealed when all of your data systems and personnel are working in a network of continuous communication. And the best part is that implementing an SoS does not require removing or replacing any of your existing systems. The software application or suite can be installed as a sort of top layer that ties all of your systems together. Keep your SCADA/DCS system. Keep your CMMS, your ERP, and any of the other useful systems in which you have already invested enormous amounts of time and money. They will still provide value. Your SoS is not intended to replace these systems, but to weave them together into a single fabric of continual intelligence and agility. 

Are Farmers Leading the Way to the IoT?

We have all heard the banging of drums declaring the Internet of Things to be the next great technological revolution. The IoT is expected to make production processes more efficient, reduce waste and resource consumption, improve customer service, and provide a wide array of new products and services that will change the way we all live and work.

It is already impacting manufacturing, retail, utilities, and myriad other industries all looking to get a jump on the next big thing.

It may come as a surprise to some, but of all the many industries investing in and adopting IoT (Internet of Things) technology, the most prolific may in fact be the agriculture industry. Farmers have been very eager to adopt the IoT, and have already had a significant amount of success.

There are a number of reasons for this:

Ease of Deployment

Inexpensive sensors placed in various parts of a cultivated field can quickly yield very useful actionable data – whereas in an industrial environment adoption would require modifying or disrupting existing networks and software systems.

Instant Value

Pre-existing metrics of precision agriculture can be applied more easily, maximizing the already-known benefits of established practices (knowing what types of crops to plant when, knowing when and how much to water, etc.). Farmers have also had success safely and naturally controlling pests through the intelligent release of pheremones. Of course, there is the obvious and very tangible benefit of decreased resource consumption and increased yield.

Continual value

In agricultural IoT deployments, the same practices that provide instant value will continue to provide value for as long as they are employed. Conservation of water and waste reduction provide repeated value, as well as the increased yield brought on by precision farming.

Early adopters have primarily been large commercial farms, but smaller farms are finding ways to leverage sensor data and remote monitoring to make incremental improvements to their yields as well. In fact, the IoT may eventually serve as a sort of equalizing factor that allows smaller food producers to compete with the larger commercial growers.

So, not only is the IoT revitalizing an essential industry, it has the potential to solve some very serious problems related to food shortages and ever-increasing populations. This, of course, is in addition to reducing the environmental impact of farming and bringing the family-owned farm back into the global marketplace.

That’s not bad for technology that many people think is confusing and consider to be a bunch of “hype”, is it?

Industry 4.0 - The Industrial Revolution Continues

"In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

It is becoming a matter of common knowledge that we are in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution, alternatively referred to as the Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0. This circumstance resulted from the usual combination of capability and need, and as usual, participation will not be optional. In each previous period of revolution, companies that wished to remain competitive in the marketplace had little choice but to embrace the march of technology and leverage the same revolutionary tools employed by their competitors. In the late 18th or early 19th Century, when Jim's Widget Factory down the street bought a steam engine to power his production processes, how could you hope to keep your widget factory afloat? No clever re-organization of your business processes or motivated personnel could ever hope to compete with a steam engine. The reality is you had to get one too. The same holds true when you move into the next period of revolution (Industry 2.0), marked by the introduction of the moving assembly line and electrically-powered production. Obviously, it didn't happen overnight, but when your toughest competitors began to employ this new technology, there was no way to pretend your comparatively slow manual assembly line could ever hope to compete. The inevitably ubiquitous nature of these technological advances is exactly what made them "revolutionary". Flash forward to the advent of the microchip and personal computers - Industry 3.0 - and an obvious pattern emerges. Industrial revolutions don't just affect the few companies that have the resources to leverage the new technologies; they affect the entire industry. Whether you and your organization choose to embrace the revolution or ignore it, there is no way to stop it and there is no way to shield yourself from its influence on the marketplace. So, What is Industry 4.0? The latest industrial revolution centers around the new world of smart, connected objects. This is the realm of autonomous factories and self-healing machines. This is the world depicted in the science fiction of the mid-twentieth century. Through the convergent development of advanced computing power, sophisticated network technology, sensors, robotics, and analytic techniques, we are seeing the integration of systems both vertically and horizontally. We are seeing machines communicating with other machines and making decisions based on real-time data. We are entering a time when new rules are emerging and business processes are being evaluated anew. Much in the same way that previous revolutionary advances forced themselves into the awareness of business owners and managers, the time has come to face reality of the industrial internet. Of course, a unique thing about this fourth industrial revolution is that its benefits extend beyond the marketplace. Whereas previously advances were made by increasing the scale or speed of production, the new paradigm focuses on increasing efficiency, reducing resource consumption and eliminating waste to find opportunities for greater profit. The new industrial landscape of smart, connected devices will incidentally lead to a cleaner, safer, more sustainable planet. Industrial enterprises that have embraced the new paradigm have seen measurable results. Real-time consumer data is helping companies be more responsive to the needs and expectations of their customers, and helping to eliminate gaps between supply and demand. Predictive analysis is helping to reduce maintenance costs and incrementally improve production processes through systems of continual improvement. A plant floor machine can now be aware of its current condition and environment and make decisions about its operation - or even the operation of other machines. The fourth industrial revolution is every bit as revolutionary as the previous three, and the evidence surrounds us. We are living in a smarter, connected world full of "smart" cities full of "smart" buildings, and this is only the beginning. By 2020, what we now call Industry 4.0 will be known simply as 'industry'. Where will you and your business be?

OPC UA: The Communication Standard for the Internet of Things?

As we prepare ourselves for the expansion of the IoT (Internet of Things), many businesses today are looking ways to take advantage of the opportunities that are beginning to present themselves. Of course, as with anything new there are many questions and concerns.

Many organizations are struggling with interconnectivity. How do we get existing information systems to communicate with new information systems? If leveraging the IoT requires a wholly rebuilt information infrastructure and a complete reformatting of business processes - well, that's just not going to work for most people.

There are also organizations who will have questions about how to make use of the unstructured data coming in real time from any number of different sources. How can they create the context to translate this endless stream of raw data into useful information?

And what about the scalability and flexibiilty needed to deal with growth and change. After all, if the changes implemented today need to be undone in order to keep up with the future needs of your organization, then is it really worth it?  

Another common concern is that of security. Are we going to push sensitive information up to the cloud, where it may be exposed to any number of potential threats ranging from cyber-terrorism to corporate espionage? And even if our sensitive data is not being broadcast over the internet, how do we protect these interconnected systems from internal threats? How can we ensure that our employees and contractors have access to all of the information they need to do their jobs and nothing more? 

These and many other questions are preventing some organizations from realizing the many benefits of the IoT. Some think it will be too difficult or expensive to implement; others may question the value of it. Fortunately for us all, these questions have been asked for several years, and there are answers.

The communication protocol often cited as the best fit for IoT applications has already been developed, tested and deployed in live environments around the world since it was fully released in 2009.

OPC Unified Architecture (UA) is platform-independent, service-oriented architecture developed and maintained by the OPC Foundation. As the interoperability standard for industrial automation, OPC has become an integral part of most SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems. As data systems expand beyond their traditional roles to include more sensor data and consolidate data from multiple systems, it makes sense that the OPC Foundation has remained at the forefront of the standardization process and and have developed a communication standard that has been embraced by proponents of Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things - companies like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, GE, and many others, 

OPC UA is universally embraced because it directly addresses the obstacles faced by organizations involved in IoT implementation projects. The problem of interconnectivity, for example, is exactly the problem that the communication standard was developed to address. Today, OPC drivers exist for thousands of different devices, and many devices today are manufactured with embedded OPC servers to allow for exactly this type of interoperability with other devices and systems.

The concerns about the usefulness of multi-system data is addressed by information modeling. The OPC UA information modeling framework turns data into actionable information. With complete object-oriented capabilities, even the most complex multi-level structures can be modeled and extended. Information modeling also makes an OPC UA-based system significantly more customizable and extensible. As virtual representations of actual systems, information models can be modified or expanded to meet the changing needs of a modern company.

Of course, one of the most important considerations when choosing a communication technology is security, which is one of the great benefits of OPC UA. Security is provided in a number of ways, including: Session Encryption, Message Signing, Authentication, User Control, and Auditing of User Activity.

While it is difficult to say that there is anything "standard" about the Internet of Things, OPC UA is the closest thing we have to a communication standard, and every day it is becoming more widely accepted and adopted. To learn more about the synergy between OPC UA and Industrial IoT applications, read the following whitepaper: https://opcfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/OPC-UA-Interoperability-For-Industrie4-and-IoT-EN.pdf

** B-Scada's IoT software is built on OPC UA and leverages the full power of these capabilities to provide fully customizable and extensible applications that consolidate and organize data from disparate sources for secure real-time visualization on any device. Learn more at http://scada.com

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Are We There Yet?

The cat is no longer in the bag. In fact, she's already rummaging through businesses and homes in your hometown - maybe in your neighborhood. Before our eyes, the Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved from a nice idea to a measured experiment with tangible results. As expected, early adopters are primarily large enterprises with significant resources to dedicate to new technology, but the IoT does not always require a substantial investment. Sometimes, it is as simple as finding a better way to use your current technology and associated data. Some industrial enterprises have already seen the benefits of machine intelligence and the marriage of people and processes. Other organizations are using the IoT to provide better customer service and more targeted marketing.  Is it safe to say the experiment is over? Have we burst through the hype bubble to arrive at a practical understanding of what's at stake?

The Industrial IoT promises more efficient production processes, reduced resource consumption and waste, safer workplaces, and more empowered employees. There are many success stories already, and more are sure to come.  Honda Manufacturing of Alabama Honda's largest light truck production facility in the world - a 3.7 million square foot plant - was faced with a problem all too common to large manufacturing facilities. Over the years, a number of different automation systems were introduced to help streamline production. With operations including blanking, stamping, welding, painting, injection molding, and many other processes involved in producing up to 360,000 vehicles and engines per year, it is not surprising that they found themselves struggling to integrate PLCs from multiple manufacturers, multiple MES systems, analytic systems, and database software from different vendors. Of course, on top of these legacy systems, Honda continued to layer an array of smart devices on the plant floor and embed IT devices in plant equipment. The complexity introduced by this array of automation systems turned out to be slowing down the operations they were intended to streamline. After reorganizing their business structure to merge IT and plant floor operations into a single department, Honda proceeded to deploy a new automation software platform that enabled them to bring together PLC data with the data coming from MES and ERP systems into a common interface that allowed the entire enterprise to be managed through a single system. This also allowed Honda to manage and analyze much larger data sets that revealed new opportunities for further optimization. While this reorganization required a significant investment of resources, they were able realize benefits immediately, and ultimately positioned themselves to maintain a competitive edge through the next decade or more. ABB As one the world's foremost suppliers of industrial robots and modular manufacturing systems, ABB has had their finger on the pulse of industrial technology for years. As the IIoT emerged, ABB was quick to find ways to take advantage of the opportunities presented. The company has installed more than 250,000 robots in numerous industries worldwide: plastics, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, and many more.  Before the IIoT, in order to provide service ABB needed to dispatch technicians to remote sites to perform diagnosis. Today, a small operations team in a centralized Control Center are able to monitor in real-time precise and reliable information about each robot's current status and activity. This has not only enabled ABB to substantially reduce the cost of their maintenance and operations, but the data collected has allowed them to develop a set of predictive KPIs to anticipate problems before they occur, helping their customers benefit from less downtime and increased productivity. Kennametal Kennametal was able to increase the productivity of their discrete manufacturing operations by using machine tool data and complex event processing. Whereas the traditional approach to increasing productivity was to reduce downtime, Kennametal focused on improving productivity by reducing cycle time. The solution employs complex event processing software that gathers and analyzes production data in real-time. Kennametal was able to understand which operators out-perform the production plan and guide less-experienced operators toward improvement. As an example: in one machining operation it was determined that taking a fast, shallow cut reduced cycle time by 16% over the slower, deeper cut the production plan called for. Best practices of this sort have been shown to reduce Kennametal's cycle time by 20-40%.  The examples provided by Honda, ABB, and Kennametal are just a few of the hundreds of different IIoT success stories that can be found on the internet. Companies like GE, Ford, Intel, and dozens more are pouring literally billions of dollars into IIoT technologies this year alone. This is not an investment in possibility and hope. The IIoT is very real and it is happening right now. Of course, as with anything new there will be plenty of hurdles and blind alleyways, but many of the initial obstacles have been discovered and overcome. The foundation is in place and the arrow is pointing up. Companies are no longer asking: Should we? They are asking: How can we and how quickly?

**B-Scada has provided best-of-breed data visualization solutions since 2003, providing industrial and commercial customers the tools they need to transform their processes and empower their personnel to maximize efficiency, productivity, and safety. Learn more at http://scada.com.

The Many Faces of Data Visualization

Data Visualization has become one of the common "buzz" phrases swirling around the internet these days. With all of the promises of Big Data and the IoT (Internet of Things), more organizations are making an effort to get more value from the voluminous data they generate. This frequently involves complex analysis - both real time and historical - combined with automation. 

A key factor in translating this data into actionable information, and thusly into informed action, is the means by which this data is visualized. Will it be seen in real time? And by whom? Will it be displayed in colorful bubble charts and trend graphs? Or will it be embedded in high-detail 3D graphics? What is the goal of the visualization? Is it to share information? Enable collaboration? Empower decision-making? Data visualization might be a popular concept, but we don't all have the same idea about what it means.

For many organizations, effective data visualization is an important part of doing business. It can even be a matter of life and death (think healthcare and military applications). Data visualization (or information visualization) is an integral part of some scientific research. From particle physics to sociology, creating concise but powerful visualizations of research data can help researchers quickly identify patterns or anomalies, and can maybe sometimes inspire that warm and fuzzy feeling we get when we feel like we've finally wrapped our head around something. Today's Visual Culture  We live in a world today that seems to be generating new information at a pace that can be overwhelming. With television, the Web, roadside billboards, and more all vying for our increasingly-fragmented attention, the media and corporate America are forced to find new ways of getting their messages through the noise and into our perception. More often than not - when possible - the medium chosen to share the message is visual. Whether it's through an image, a video, a fancy infographic or a simple icon, we have all become very adept at processing information visually.  It's a busy world with many things about which we feel a need to be informed. While we all receive information in numerous ways throughout the course of any given day, only certain portions of that information will have any real effect on the way we think and act as we go about our normal lives. The power of effective data visualization is that it can distill those actionable details from large sets of data simply by putting it in the proper context. Well-planned data visualization executed in a visually-appealing way can lead to faster, more confident decisions. It can shed light on past failures and reveal new opportunities. It can provide a tool for collaboration, planning, and training. It is becoming a necessity for many organizations who hope to compete in the marketplace, and those who do it well will distinguish themselves.

**B-Scada has provided best-of-breed data visualization solutions since 2003, providing industrial and commercial customers the tools they need to transform their processes and empower their personnel to maximize efficiency, productivity, and safety. Learn more at http://scada.com.

From BIM to Facility Management

BIM (Building Information Modeling) has become an essential tool in building architecture and construction. Creating a logical, structured model of all information related to a building project can help the project move seamlessly from one phase to the next.BIM helps keep building projects on schedule and on budget. It helps ensure regulatory compliance. It helps facilitate the necessary collaboration that must occur between a project's planning and eventual construction. A quality BIM also helps keep stakeholders involved in the process, adding a kind of transparency that inspires trust and confidence.

A typical BIM will include not only detailed renderings of the planned building, but also specific information related to the engineering, construction, and operation of the building. This information can include designs, architectural specifications, site information, material sheets, budgets, schedules, personnel and more. BIM is not only useful in the design and construction of a building, but can also be very helpful in the management of the building once construction is complete.   

For most people, the notion of a Building Information Model implies a detailed 3-dimensional rendering of a building. With the 3D imaging and design software technology available today, it is true that designers and architects are enjoying powerful new tools to do their jobs, and these 3D models are in fact a big part of BIM. They are not, however, what BIM is all about.


COBie

In 2007, a pilot standard was developed by Bill East of the United States Army Corps of Engineers for the delivery of building information that is essential to the operations, maintenance, and asset management of a building once construction is complete. COBie (Construction Operations Building Information Exchange) was accepted by the National Institute of Building Sciences in December 2011 as part of its National Building Information Model (NBIMS-US) standard.

COBie is used to capture and record essential project data at the point of origin, including: product data sheets, spare parts lists, warranties, and preventive maintenance schedules. COBie's popularity is increasing, and in September 2014 it was included in a code of practice issued as a British standard (BS 1192-4:2014 "Collaborative production of information Part 4: Fulfilling employer’s information exchange requirements using COBie – Code of practice"). This standard will require contractors involved in the construction of government buildings to comply with COBie when delivering facility information to the building owner after construction is completed.

While this expectation in Britain is controversial, and it has been characterized as "unrealistic", it is becoming increasingly clear that the information involved in Building Information Models can, should, and will be used to aid in the maintenance and management of the building after its construction. This is where BIM becomes facility management, and this is where some enterprising software developers are creating a new market for themselves.

Some developers of BIM software have expanded their product portfolios by including Facility Management products that transfer the information from BIMs into a useful format for operating and maintaining the constructed building. This seems to be a natural extension of BIM, and these companies will benefit greatly by placing themselves ahead of their competition in what is nearly certain to become a large and lucrative market.

What does this have to do with SCADA?

In the space between BIM and Facility Management, there is often a need for greater automation. The exchange of building information today frequently requires a tremendous amount of labor - an amount of labor described in man-years. 

Often, facility managers are provided several large boxes of paper documents, from which they must manually retrieve asset information and maintenance schedules to be entered into Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). This process usually involves pallets of boxes full of paper of operations and maintenance manuals and drawings. Imagine the time required to create, review and transcribe hundreds of pages of documents, validate the transcriptions, and manually enter data, assuming a system like a CMMS is even used.

Even if a CMMS is used, maintenance technicians often still need to search for information in these paper boxes to complete many of their jobs. As time passes, documents can be moved or lost, increasing the cost of maintenance activities and potentially increasing downtime in mission-critical facilities. A study in 2011 suggested that 8% of annual maintenance budgets could be eliminated if open-standard electronic information were made available to technicians before starting complex work orders.

This is where some BIM software developers are finding a new market by providing the tools to painlessly transfer BIM information into a facility management system. This is also where there are still many who would benefit from an open software platform that allows users to consolidate and organize disparate information, making it available for real-time visualization on any device.

An open platform like B-Scada's Status Enterprise can provide this type of value to a number of different stakeholders: 
 

• BIM software developers who would like a customized, branded software solution for facility management they can use to extend their own products or to add as another product in their portfolios.
• Facility owners who have received a BIM related to their newly-built facilities and are looking for a way to remotely monitor and manage their new assets.
• Facility managers charged with operating and maintaining multiple facilities, and who would benefit greatly from a remote monitoring solution that allows them to automate processes and monitor real-time activity from anywhere at any time on any device with a web browser.  

 

To learn more about how Status Enterprise can help you reach your facility management goals, visitwww.scada.com.