PAS Musings

The Grand Canyon & Integrity

Just last week, my wife informed me that she made reservations at Phantom Ranch, down at the bottom of th e Grand Canyon for November 28.

Biking, not hiking, is more my sport – but since she was gracious enough to join me for a 4-day bike ride through Germany, Austria & Switzerland this summer, I cannot now refuse her invitation for a 2-day stroll down the Grand Canyon.

Hiking the Grand Canyon requires preparation.  The nearly one mile of elevation change is akin to climbing three times the height of America's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, in a single day.

And since the plan is to hike the more strenuous Kaibab Trail, some preparation is in order…  hiking boots, walking, gym time and more gym time… whatever it takes to get in as best a shape as I can in the flatlands of Houston…

Facing the Grand Canyon, I face two choices – ignore or prepare.

Control engineers across our customer base face the same two choices - ignore or prepare - each day regarding the protection and backup of their automation systems.

And, based on recent participation by PAS on various industry panels, most control engineers favor the “ignore” option when it comes to managing change and/or backing up their automation systems.

It's just more fun to build new control schemes...

Although their IT counterparts are all over change management and backups for the company’s business systems (people need to get paid, they say), the control engineers by and large say that they have no daily change management or backup process for the automation systems for which they are responsible (even plant production may be jeopardized by their failure).

The control engineer’s attitude is like me assuming that I can ignore any preparation for hiking the Grand Canyon – which of course if obviously foolish and only asking for trouble.

So… as much as my body may not want to prepare, I will force myself to do so – by telling myself again and again that the time invested in exercise and preparation is necessary to avoid both disaster and embarrassment (the latter being especially important since my wife already hikes 2-3 miles per day on the mountain near our home in Phoenix).

Similarly… our control engineer friends need to remind themselves of the danger of not enforcing a daily change management and backup process for their automation assets.  Not doing so can lead to disaster and embarrassment.

Although nobody disagrees with the need, it just seems so hard to do – after all, backups and change management are the LEAST exciting part of the job, right?

Which is exactly why we at PAS have developed the Integrity Change Management software – to allow the control engineer to automate the backup and change management processes for any automation assets, and focus on the more exciting bits of the job – increasing production with new control schemes and more.

Jokingly, we have introduced the control engineer’s hero as Super IntegrityMan.

Now if only there was a way to still satisfy my wife’s requirement of my hiking with her and not have to endure all that preparation and pain.

Super CanyonMan – are you out there??

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Ghouls, goblins and ghost tags…

In America, many people will celebrate Halloween this week.

They’ll dress up and go to costume parties, visit scary places and take their children around the neighborhood to ask for candy.

A strange observance to be sure.

Joining in the Halloween theme this year is Captain Integrity – super-hero of the automation industries.

Captain Integrity and his powerful namesake software, will be out there helping control engineers and other plant professionals find the ghouls, goblins and ghost tags that may be lurking in their automation assets.

Most control systems, real-time databases and even advanced applications that have been implemented across the process industries have had little or no change management process applied to them over the years.

The result?  Plenty of ghouls, goblins and ghost tags running around the automation system – consuming extra slots, spare memory and computing capability across the plant’s real-time infrastructure.

Sure, most of these are friendly old ghosts – remnants of applications, calculations and control schemes left for dead across the infrastructure like the dead and drying leaves blowing across the otherwise well-maintained landscape.

While most cause little problem for anyone in particular, they can raise their ugly heads when it comes time for troubleshooting, upgrading or migration, bringing countless hours of extra work for engineers and others as they have to turn over every leaf to see what exactly needs doing to meet their goal.

The solution?  Call in our Ghostbuster friend and every engineer’s hero, Captain Integrity.

Captain Integrity and his namesake software – the Integrity Configuration Management software – are there chase off all ghouls, goblins & ghost tags, and make the control engineer’s life much easier by automating backups, managing change and exposing a complete map of the entire real-time infrastructure across any plant.

This year, call Captain Integrity as your super-hero of choice.

You’ll be glad you did.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Whatever is Integrity anyway?

With PAS now pushing sales of the Integrity software into new markets, we get the same response from customers who haven’t yet heard of or seen the Integrity software…

>> What is it?

>> Why do I need it?

>> What value does it provide?

Once we get engaged in describing and demonstrating the product, the answers generally become apparent and things fall into place, but depending on who’s doing the talking, this doesn’t always happen as easily or quickly as it should.

I mean, it all seems so obvious to us, but then we’re so close to the product and such a technical bunch that all-too-often we jump right into details without setting the stage on what need the overall solution fulfills.

I’m not going to try and provide a complete answer here, but it basically comes down to increasing engineering efficiency, safety and decision-making abiliies at the plant site.

My previous blog on the iPod analogy provides a reasonable intro to the product – the ability to bring the configuration data from all automation assets (PLC’s, DCS’s, real-time databases, spreadsheets, operator displays and advanced applications) into a single user view without requiring the user to “connect the dots” between various configurations and setups.

If you don’t understand that, just pick any data point in your real-time infrastructure and then go figure out where it is used, displayed, read, written, etc… 

With the advent of user-friendly interfaces for all types of systems, devices and applications across the plant site, the real-time infrastructure is being changed, modified, re-configured each and every day.

So it’s impossible to go to any single location to determine data flow through the plant site, without manually going to each system, device, application or operator interface.

So what is the Integrity software?

It is the tool that provides an up-to-date view of your real-time data flow in your plant. 

And from there, the uses and benefits are tremendous – and like a PC or Excel spreadsheet, how you use it is up to you. 

But if you’re like most users, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Attend one of our Integrity web seminars to learn more.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Summer Reading I: The World is Flat

One our finest at PAS, recommended a book that he had been intending to read for quite some time, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. 

If you’re in the business world today and plan to be there tomorrow, this book has some powerful insights that will pertain directly to your job as well.

In his book, Friedman shows how recent technological advances particularly in the areas of information technology have converged to create a global environment where resources and knowledge are able to connect as they never have before.  Globalization 3.0, he calls it.

Globalization 3.0 is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals like you and me, desktop freelancers and innovative companies – enabled by the technologies that connect us all.

Friedman’s premise is that the world has become so interconnected that it is flat!  And a flattening of the world is a good thing for business and people all over the globe. 

Many of the technologies we all use and I’ve referenced in this blog help make the world flat: Blogs (like this one), iPods (like our iPod analogy), Skype (where free is good), Google (raising the bar for web-based applications), and also the PAS software (with its web front-ends) all help make the world a flatter place.

Friedman is right – individuals like you and me, and innovative startups like PAS are helping make the world a flatter place.

Why just the other day, one of our customers voiced their satisfaction with how our Integrity product is helping to flatten their world and make them more nimble, reliable and profitable.

Flat is good.

This particular customer had our Integrity server software installed at their main IT office, with Integrity data collector nodes to interface to their automation systems (DCS, PI, APC, etc) deployed at their operating sites around the world. 

Now their engineers (or freelance consultants) can monitor the health of those systems from any network connection – anywhere in the world!

The world is indeed getting flatter…and PAS is proud to make it so!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Honeywell's new iPod?

This iPod idea for ease of use and integration of disparate data types really has some attraction to it.  Even (or should I say especially?) in the process industries…

Check out the recent decision by Honeywell to adopt the PAS Integrity product as an OEM product of their own. 

Automation Change Manager, they call it.

This is great news – for customers and for PAS.

Customers benefit because they can now capture all the great benefits that DOC3000 has given them since 1997 for all sorts of other automation assets, including all types of PLC’s, DCS’s, real-time databases, advanced controls and more…

PAS benefits because the significantly larger Honeywell sales force is now out there promoting and selling a PAS product. 

And, of course, Honeywell benefits too – having a solution that differentiates them from other DCS vendors and making them that much more attractive to those customers already using multiple brands of DCS.

Everyone wins - just the kind of story that we all like.  Yeay!!

But that’s not where it ends.

At PAS, we are already busy working with the other vendors of control systems, real-time databases and applications – all to broaden the “footprint” and increase the value of our Integrity product to customers.

Who knows?  Maybe our next OEM partner with Integrity (pun intended) will happen to be your most favorite DCS vendor....

Until then, Integrity is always available directly from PAS.

Integrity – the iPod for automation assets in the process industries….

Our Industry's Start to an iPod?

Last time, I paralleled the iPod to a vision we might set for systems & software used for automation in the process industries. 

The iPod allows anyone to easily manage videos, photos and music on a wonderfully-designed device made for easy use.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could manage process operations at a manufacturing site so easily?  The analogy might be stretching it a bit too far, but the point I want to make is that the iPod was designed for intuitive use by anyone, even for multiple data types from disparate sources.

At most operating facilities today, there is a disparate set of automation assets – Distributed Control Systems, real-time databases, advanced controls, etc. – which are designed for purpose around a specific technology and not always even for ease of use by the end-user. 

As the industry has leaned more heavily on technology over the years, significant benefit has been realized.  Systems, devices & advanced controls have all increased throughput. Real-time databases have provided a basis for spreadsheets, performance applications & business applications to optimize decision-making. 

Each of these investments has helped capture ever more profit. But each new investment requires its own care and feeding. 

And then we ended up with a tangled web of connectivity between many different automation assets, each with its own expert to keep it all running. 

And now how does the controls expert know that the range change he just made now invalidated a spreadsheet calculation used by the engineer to adjust unit operations? 

Or how does the real-time database administrator know that changing the name of a certain yield calculation means that the default value used in the business application is now leaving $125,000 of profit on the table?

Enter the iPod precursor… the Integrity software from PAS.

Integrity interconnects all automation assets at the configuration level to automatically generate and maintain a data map of all real-time data flow across the unit, plant or enterprise. 

Now the controls expert and database administrator can see the impact of their change – BEFORE they make it.  Similarly, engineers and businesspeople can be aware of any changes that impact their decision-making tools and applications BEFORE they act.

At the plant with Integrity, decisions are made on the right information. 

At the plant without Integrity decisions are made on the available information, but NOBODY KNOWS if that is still the right information.  In fact, they will never know until something goes seriously wrong or somebody takes the time to come up with the latest real-time data map. 

Integrity compensates for the jumble of mismatched systems, devices, databases, applications and real-time interconnectivity between them all – simplifying the management of all these disparate assets, just like an iPod simplifies management of music, photos and videos.

There isn’t yet an iPod for our situation and there may never be, but there sure is a pretty close precursor to that, and it’s called Integrity.

Think your plant doesn’t need Integrity?

Ask a summer student to map out the real-time data flow for your plant and see what kind of data mismatch and bad assumptions you have your plant.

Just try it.  And then email me to tell me what you find.

 

Where is our iPod?

Patent no. 200,521 was issued to Thomas Edison in 1878 for a phonograph.  For  the first time in history, man was able to record and replay sound. 

About 100 years later, in 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, a miniature portable cassette tape player, and forever changed the landscape of personal entertainment. 

And just over 20 years after that, Tony Fadell, Steve Jobs and the team at Apple  introduced the iPod, a portable digital media player to contain an entire collection of music and photo albums.  (A fascinating story – click here to read more.)

The automation sector of the process industries parallels the above.

The first industrial automatic controller is believed to have been invented in the 1870’s.  Electromechanical, pneumatic controllers and mainframe computers dominated the process control industry until 1975 when Honeywell introduced the first distributed control system (DCS).   

The greatest return on automation investments have come from advanced process control and the digitization of business work processes.  This has allowed companies to reduce operations staffing by unprecedented amounts.

An unintended consequence of these improvements has been an increasing information load for the remaining operations staff – which is manageable, provided all these new innovations were easy to use when taken all together…

Where the iPod design is beautiful and simple to use, even for disparate media types and sources, automation improvements to the process industry have been much less so.  Layered applications and compartmentalized focus on individual layers has led to a confusion of systems and applications – not always so easy to use for every operator… especially in times of crisis.

What is needed is the breakthrough to consolidate all best-in-class solutions from multiple vendors and technologies in a seamless environment with the goal to make changes and operator use as simple as adding or playing songs on an iPod.

That’s a great vision for our industry to shoot for … as simple as an iPod.  Steve Jobs had it right with his first Mac computer and has it right again!  As an industry, we should be taking note and following his lead.

While I’m proud to say that a number of our R&D investments at PAS are doing the iPod thing – making deployment simpler, reducing or eliminating ongoing maintenance requirements and making it all easier to use.  See my recent APC blog for an example…

But despite the best efforts of industry standard groups and vendors like PAS, there will always be multiple systems & devices with layers of databases & applications. 

And for that there’s Integrity – more to come on that later….