Peter G Martin discusses the major industrial issues associated with information management and the role of service-oriented architecture The effective application and operation of industrial automation technology should be one of the most valuable investments a process manufacturer can make to improve industrial plants. Unfortunately, the number of automation projects, especially for mid-sized organisations, in which there is a recognised economic benefit is surprisingly small. The problem is not the lack of potential of the technologies, rather, it is the slack approach the industry has been employing with respect to the application of automation technology. Most automation projects are funded out of capital budgets. In most companies, the rule for securing capital for any project is to determine a return on the proposed capital investment that exceeds some internal threshold limit the company has established. Project teams who understand what the threshold limit is are good at justifying projects by showing a return that exceeds the specified limit. The unfortunate aspect of this is that after the project is complete very few industrial companies take the time to go back and determine whether the project actually realised the projected results. Without verification of the results, automation projects end up being viewed primarily as a cost to the company, with no real business benefit. This issue initially seems to be quite simple to solve. After an automation project has been completed the project team should be able to go to the accounting department to determine the economic value the project has generated.  Identifying the Problems Trying this approach just once will reveal that the accounting department cannot determine the value because the accounting systems are not set up with the information necessary to enable such calculations. This is a huge dilemma for both the automation industry and plant engineers, since the implication typically end up being viewed as costs without value.One way to analyse this issues is to use the classic lifecycle capital economic profile. This model shows the cost and benefit flow of a typical capital project. The cost over time is represented by the bar chart while the benefit is represented by the dashed line chart. Return on investment (RoI) is calculated by subtracting the cumulated cost from the cumulated value. The RoI of every possible capital project has to be projected to determine which projects get funding.
With respect to automation systems, the lifecycle costs associated with the investment are fairly well measured, while the lifecycle benefits are not. Because of this, the economics of automation technologies are often termed as costs without benefits. From an accounting perspective, if an investment has a cost but no measurable benefit there is no RoI and future investments are reduced. This is a fundamental issue that must be resolved in order to recognise the true value of automation projects. The first step in correcting the misconception about the value of automation systems is to make the benefit side of the lifecycle economic profile visibly measurable. Operations managers and engineers within industrial plants have been trying to solve this issue for decades, developing a set of operational measures—typically called key performance indicators (KPIs)—to reveal the impact of any operational change, including the deployment of automation systems. Although KPIs can be very effective, they typically have no credibility with plant accountants. It is the plant accountants who are responsible for measuring the return on all capital investments. If they see no value, no matter what the truth is, there is no credited value. Engineers and operations managers have to come to grips with the role of accounting in industrial operations and instead of trying to develop their own measurement systems apart from the accounting systems’,they should help the accounting systems expand to include the information required to demonstrate value. Today’s accounting systems have two primary deficiencies in the information stored that prevent them from measuring the RoI of automation systems correctly. First, the time frame for the plant data in the accounting systems is too long, often daily, weekly or monthly. Second, the scope of the accounting calculations is too broad—they are often plant-wide. Automation systems typically provide benefits in process areas or even units, and plant-wide measures do not provide visibility to the benefit that has been created on a sub-plant level. Realising Real-time Potential Real-time accounting means extending the plant accounting systems down to the unit level and calculating the accounting measures in real time. This can be a solution to the problem. One interesting aspect of creating a real-time accounting system is that it requires an automation system. Calculating accounting measures in real time requires a real-time database that contains the basic information needed to feed the accounting models. The instrumentation in an industrial plant provides such a database. Deriving the accounting calculations from the plant accountants and using an engineering expertise system to model the accounting equations in automation systems is the key to developing a comprehensive realtime accounting system. The same approach can also be used to model the KPIs in real time. With both accounting models and KPIs being calculated in real time in the automation system, value measures are available to discern the business and operational value being created when any performance improvement is executed within an industrial environment.
The combination of real-time accounting and KPI data provides a comprehensive view of the business performance of any industrial operation. This data can be used to empower every person in the operation through a contextualised view of how their activities drive business value to the bottom line of the operation. It is very important that only the most critical data points are presented to each person in the operation, in order of strategic importance to their positions. This is accomplished by developing a strategic filter for the combined realtime accounting and KPI data that can be used to prioritise the data to the person’s function. By doing this, only the most important data points associated with each person’s job will be presented on their dashboard in order of strategic importance. This combination results in a real-time business guidance system for every person in the operation. In doing this, each person can immediately determine the impact of their activities on operations and business. Experience has shown that, over time the plant operations, maintenance, engineering and management personnel learn how to drive value from the plant assets in an effective manner.  With a real-time business measurement and guidance system in place, the value of any performance improvement initiative or activity within the plant operation becomes visible and inherent in the system. Plant engineers, managers, operators and maintenance professionals can team up to drive continually improving business value from their operations. Experience has demonstrated that the value of the improvements tends to be much greater than most would initially expect. Effectively applied to drive business value, automation technologies create huge returns and ongoing positive cash flows for most industrial operations. This provokes the question: why aren’t more industrial operations moving in this direction? There are multiple facets to the answer, but one of the most common is that the installed automation and information systems present such a barrier to developing a plant-wide real-time performance environment that most manufacturers give up on it before getting started. The Roadblock The nature of the barrier to implementation tends to be fairly consistent across industrial operations. Most large industrial facilities have acquired different vintage automation and information systems and technologies from different vendors over the past couple of decades. Many of the previously acquired technologies and systems have useful life left, but getting them to interoperate requires a huge cost in terms of capital, time and people. This cost is the barrier.
Implementing a performancebased automation and information system requires a common compute space across all of the different technologies in a plant and across an industrial enterprise. Building a common compute space of this type has typically proven to be too costly—until now. Technological advancements over the past few years have provided the means to overcome the barriers to the implementation of a performance-based automation environment. It has been researched and determined that developing an enterprise-wide compute space would only be viable if the traditional connection costs between different automation and information domains could be reduced. Otherwise the cost of connection would be prohibitive. The Solution Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been designed specifically for industrial operations to develop an enterprise-wide computation network. The concept of a SOA has been a driving force within software design communities for years, but had never before been extended to industrial operations. An SOA is a software environment that provides the equivalent of standard operating system and application services across multiple computer domains, essentially converting multiple systems into a single system. For example, IPS has defined over twenty services that could extend the Microsoft.NET software to become an industrial SOA (iSOA) which is know as ArchestrA. ArchestrA can provide the platform to integrate leading software and systems within the IPS portfolio into a single enterprise systems domain called InFusion. The InFusion enterprise control system (ECS) essentially provides a superset of all the IPS capability in a single system environment. This new software and system platform provides the best aspects of each of the original technologies from a single system perspective.
 Looking Ahead The availability of ECS in the industrial marketplace has resulted in integration of all the automation and information assets preinstalled in an industrial enterprise, regardless of vintage or vendor, into a single enterprise computer space. This enterprise compute space enables the implementation of the valuebased business solutions previously discussed. The primary benefit of enterprise control system is that it reinforces the fact that automation and information technology has progressed to the point at which it does not provide anymore barriers to the implementation of business solutions. Rather, it has finally become the enabling technology that the industry has been expecting for four decades, since the first computers were introduced into industrial operations. With ECS, engineers and managers can focus their efforts and intellectual properties on business solutions that drive bottom line value from industrial operations. There are no more barriers to implementing realtime accounting systems or real-time KPI systems. There are no more barriers to empowering every person in the industrial operation—from the process operator to the CEO—with the contextualised real-time information each of them requires to perform their duties in a manner that drives increased business value from the operation. There are no more barriers to multiple process unit control strategies. There are no more barriers to enterprise control strategies. Constraints on business performance improvements are no longer provided by technological barriers—they are only limited by the imagination and capability of those who deploy and utilise the technology. The days of driving bottomline value through enterprise control have finally arrived.
The author is VP and GM, Performance Management, Invensys Process Systems |
