A ‘Smart Start’ Can Be Crucial to the Success of Your Digital Initiatives

Summary

It’s reported that less than 30% of digital transformations are successful. That’s not surprising when you consider the cultural and technological challenges that come with these projects.
 
Workforce shortages combined with the demands of implementing new technologies can slow your digital initiative or stop it entirely. Also, if you can’t integrate smart technologies and unify their data to create a single version of the truth, not only is your start-up deadline at risk, but your entire digital initiative could be in jeopardy.
 
Technology is just one pillar of your digital transformation, along with people and processes. But it’s equally as critical as the other two pillars. Because the right technologies can do more than give you the information and connectivity you need to transform your business. They can reduce risks and ease every aspect of your digital initiative, from implementation to operation to sustainment.

Starting smart

When evaluating and specifying smart technologies for a digital initiative, keep a broad mindset and consider the many ways they can impact your business.
 
For example, how will a new technology integrate with other systems in your plant? How can it help ease upfront work, like configuration and commissioning, and long-term activities, like changeovers and even replacement? Can it help ease or even automate the process of converting raw data into useful intelligence for operators? And does it help strengthen your cybersecurity?
 
By thinking holistically about smart technologies before you purchase or deploy them, you can get more from your investments and be more intentional with your digital strategy.
 
Six tips to keep in mind as you make technology choices include:

1. Let your business goals guide you.
It should go without saying, but the results you want to achieve should drive your digital initiatives. You may want to improve a KPI like overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) or resolve a pain point in production like unexpected downtime.
 
Sometimes, you may know the specific problem you want to solve but need help understanding the best way to solve it.
 
In one case, a food and beverage manufacturer was experiencing an issue with customers receiving incomplete pallets of product. The manufacturer’s automation supplier worked to understand the process and identified gaps that could be causing the problem. The supplier also reviewed factors like the cost and frequency of incomplete pallets.
 
Then, the supplier was able to recommend a smart sensing solution that would help the manufacturer achieve what it considered an acceptable level of error, at the right price point.
 
Of course, you may have multiple issues you want to address with digital initiatives and just need help prioritizing them.
 
In these cases, an assessment can help. For example, you may want to use digital initiatives to modernize aging and obsolete equipment across your operations. By conducting an installed base evaluation, you can identify what assets you have, and the lifecycle risks associated with them. This can help you focus your initiatives based on need.

2. Use technology to simplify your deployments.
Smart technologies can help you achieve your desired business outcome–and they can reduce the work you need to do to get there.
 
Your network infrastructure is a good example. Your unified network architecture should leverage IT and OT technology and use a protocol like EtherNet/IP, which is based on standard, open Ethernet. This allows you to specify smart technologies that you know will integrate into your infrastructure and talk to each other.
 
Standardizing on one control platform can also help you take advantage of built-in integration capabilities that can greatly reduce programming and configuration work.
 
For example, a controller with “premier” integration allows programmers to use libraries to store, manage and reuse code for their projects. The controller can also automatically import profiles of smart devices. And during installation, the controller can alert you if a smart sensor was mis-wired or if a drive was connected to the wrong Ethernet port.
 
New data management software can also help you manage the considerable challenge of bringing together data from different sources to create actionable information. The software automates the collection, contextualization, and organization of data, and delivers it in a common information model to IT applications so staff can derive useful insights from it. This can reduce the time you spend on collecting and preparing data.
 
Another area where smart devices can ease deployment is by doing jobs that have historically required specialized skillsets. For example, smart servo drives with “load observer” and adaptive tuning technologies allow for tuning-less startups. This can help you simplify and speed up commissioning and reduce your reliance on tuning experts.

3. Consider the user experience.
Smart devices can help people across your organization work faster, smarter, and better.
 
Obviously, the information that a device provides is crucial. Today’s smart devices can deliver greater intelligence to help production staff not only know how an application is running but also how it’s trending. This can help you evolve from reactive to proactive maintenance strategies.
 
For example, smart drives with built-in predictive models can calculate the remaining lifespan of components. This can help staff get ahead of failures and prevent unplanned downtime. Smart overload relays can provide real-time motor diagnostic information to indicate when a motor is having a problem or even predict an estimated time to trip during an overload condition. Technicians can then start proactively troubleshooting and take corrective action to avoid a disruption.
 
If a failure does occur, smart devices can also help staff accelerate the replacement process to minimize downtime.
 
Smart sensors, for instance, can guide an operator to where the fault occurred. Then, electronic bill-of-material information like device vendor and part number enable a fast replacement. And finally, the sensor can use automatic device configuration, which allows its configuration parameters to be downloaded and implemented in milliseconds.
 
Changeovers are another area where smart devices can help your staff work more efficiently. When you use smart sensors, you can store multiple profiles in your controller. This allows you to download the right profile to the right sensor for each new production run, saving significant time and reducing the risk of human error compared to operators manually reconfiguring sensors.

4. Rethink support.
Digital initiatives can be an opportunity to completely reimagine aspects of your operations. This is especially true when it comes to servicing and supporting production assets.
 
Today, as companies contend with strained workforces and more data to manage, many are using remote support centers to monitor asset performance, provide expert support and more.
 
Remote support offers considerable advantages over traditional support models. If a production asset breaks down, for example, an on-site technician can get on the phone with a remote support engineer who can review asset data in real time. This can speed up troubleshooting and diagnosis compared to the on-site technician trying to explain what happened over the phone.
 
The savings are especially great when you prevent a support engineer from having to travel to your facility to help resolve the issue. You recoup not only the cost of the support engineer’s travel expenses but also potentially days of lost production time.
 
Remote support can also benefit you in other ways. Perhaps your OEM–who knows your machines better than anyone–has never been involved in your continuous improvement efforts. With remote support, you can give them access to your machine’s historical data. They can review the data with you and help identify opportunities to improve performance.

5. Always look for ways to strengthen security.
When it comes to making sure any smart devices you deploy as part of your digital initiative are as secure as possible, there are a few steps you can take.
 
First, you can confirm that the device or its manufacturer is certified to international security standards like the ISA/IEC 62443 standard series. A growing number of products are certified to the standard series. And some suppliers have certified aspects of their operations to the series, like their development lifecycle.
 
You can also use products that incorporate cybersecurity measures.
 
If you’re adding remote connections to your machines, for example, you should use a remote access solution that incorporates robust security capabilities, like multi-factor authentication and encrypted protocols. The solution should also give on-site staff control of remote connections, so they can be enabled and disabled locally as needed.
 
More smart devices are also being released with CIP Security, which can help secure devices and the data they transmit. CIP Security is an extension to the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP), which is the application-layer protocol for EtherNet/IP. Devices that are CIP Security capable help defend against cyberattacks by preventing unauthorized device connections, data modifications and data viewing.
 
You can also review how your technology suppliers address potential vulnerabilities in their products. Do they have a standards-aligned process for handling vulnerabilities and disclosures? Do they work with outside researchers as part of this process? And do they have their own team of researchers working to look for flaws in products?

6. Smart and safe go hand in hand.
Digital technology is helping dispel the notion that safety and productivity are always at odds with each other.
 
For instance, when your machine or line experiences a functional stop, can you answer questions like: Which gate was opened? Who opened it? Why was it opened? How long was the line stopped?
 
Smart safety devices can help you answer these and other questions.
 
The devices can give you visibility into your operations and help you understand process states, environmental conditions and other factors that affect safety and productivity. Using this data, you can then make changes – to your machine design, process, or training program – to improve safety compliance and productivity.
 
Safety devices like light curtains are also now available with CIP Safety, which like CIP Security is an extension to CIP. The addition of CIP Safety can give you expanded access to diagnostic data in your applications.
 
For example, you can identify which specific beams tripped on the light curtain to investigate the cause of a downtime event. Or you can take a sample of a light screen every 100 milliseconds to track profiles of products running through it. This can help you identify potential quality issues.

Make the most of your investments

There’s obviously a lot to keep in mind as you plan your digital initiatives. That’s why it’s important to remember that digitalization is a journey–one that can start small and scale up over time. As you progress through your journey, just keep in mind even the smallest investment can have a broad impact on your people and your business.
 
For more information, visit: Smart Manufacturing | Rockwell Automation United States