The IIoT Evolution: Rip and replace or wrap and re-use?

The much discussed IIoT is not so much a revolution, as an evolution of existing technologies and systems.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is often described as a revolution that is changing the face of the manufacturing industry in a profound manner. However, in reality it is more of an evolution that has its origins in technologies and functionalities developed by visionary automation suppliers more than 15 years ago. As the industry and necessary global standards further mature, it may well take another 15 years to realise its full potential.

With over two billion connected internet users today and an expected 507.5 ZB of information produced by IoT devices by 2019 alone, changes to the industry will certainly be far-reaching. The potential lies in using the correct solutions to link automation systems with enterprise planning, scheduling and product lifecycle systems.The good news is that end users and machine builders can now leverage their existing investments in technology and people while taking advantage of available new technologies. This means introducing IIoT solutions using a ‘wrap and re-use’ approach, rather than a ‘rip and replace’ approach, is the best way for Australian companies to adapt to significant changes and avoid complete overhauls of systems.

The emergence of the IIoT megatrend has created both hope and confusion among stakeholders responsible for operating industrial plants. Some changes can be implemented in the short to medium term — others will require a gradual evolution with end users and OEMs incrementally adding functionality to their existing legacy systems as new international IIoT standards are established.

Barriers such as standardisation, cybersecurity and worker competencies may challenge companies looking to adopt the technology but can be overcome with a full understanding of two key aspects:

• The operational environments that will set the stage for smart manufacturing.
• The impact on automation architectures.

Smart manufacturing

A significant enabling factor for the potential to wrap and re-use existing control assets is that the emerging technologies underpinning the IIoT evolution are fundamentally based on the same IT standards and technologies that have driven a convergence of IT and OT systems over the past 10 years, the most significant of which has been the adoption of both wired and wireless IP technologies by operational systems.

This has allowed systems to evolve at a rate required by businesses in a sustainable and secure way. When considering smart manufacturing enterprise there are three main considerations: smart enterprise control, asset performance management and augmented operators.

Smart enterprise control

One of the biggest potential benefits of next-generation IIoT systems is the breakdown of enterprise silos. The technologies will allow for closer integration of production systems and ERP systems, product lifecycle management systems (PLM), supply chain management and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Today these systems are managed somewhat independently of each other, which prohibits a holistic view of the enterprise. It is believed such a holistic approach could facilitate an enormous efficiency gain of up to 26% for enterprises.

Tighter integration will allow enterprises to not only be more efficient, but also more profitable thanks to greater flexibility and responsiveness to volatile market conditions. The notion of control will expand from the real-time control of a physical parameter to the right-time control of the whole business, including both physical and non-physical parameters. Benefits will include the ability to enhance protection against cyber threats, to increase innovation and to better manage safety, performance and environmental impacts.

Examples of real-time business control include enabling ‘batch size 1’ production systems; improving product quality outcomes; and changing supply chain and production schedules on the fly to optimise commercial results based on environmental, raw material, equipment availability and market considerations.

For companies looking to adopt IIoT technology, smart enterprise control does not mean replacing current automation systems with completely new systems. Instead, it is possible to connect current automation systems with enterprise, lifecycle and value chain systems. This optimises the entire manufacturing enterprise and enables a much greater degree of business control.

Asset performance management

Asset performance management applications such as energy management and predictive maintenance are not new to industry, but have had limited uptake due to the cost of implementation. Physical connectivity — such as the cost of cabling to the sensors — and logical connectivity — like integration with existing systems — have been the most cost-prohibitive. Wireless IP connectivity and cloud-based architectures now overcome these cost barriers. In addition, a new generation of simple, small and low-cost sensors is emerging. As a result, next-generation IIoT systems will deliver innovative solutions in the area of asset performance.

The legacy of limited connectivity and closed proprietary industrial systems has traditionally made it difficult and expensive for companies to access the data required to implement these types of asset management and optimisation systems. However, these new technological approaches and lower costs allow manufacturing companies to build on pre-existing systems and connect them in a way that could not have been achieved previously. Most industrial automation suppliers have built sophisticated tools and techniques to upgrade systems and products in a staged way.

Consider the example of condition-based monitoring and predictive maintenance. A lot of money can be wasted maintaining equipment that doesn’t really require it, or by neglecting equipment that subsequently fails and causes unanticipated production downtime. Solutions such as condition-based monitoring do exist today, but uptake has been limited by these aforementioned costs. These tools allow data to be easily gathered from the field and converted into actionable information in real time. This will result in better business decisions and forward-looking decision-making processes.

Augmented operators

Future employees will use mobile devices, data analytics, augmented reality and transparent connectivity to increase productivity. As fewer skilled workers are left behind to man core operations due to a rapid increase in baby-boomer retirement, younger replacement plant workers will need information at their fingertips. That information will be delivered in a real-time format that is familiar to them. Thus the manufacturing plant evolves to be more user-centric and less machine-centric.

The use of mobile HMI technologies such as smartphones, tablets and wearables, combined with IP access to data and information (analytics and augmented reality), will transform the way operators work. Portable wireless devices will expand their capabilities and technologies such as dynamic QR codes will improve the operator experience and render the ‘augmented’ operator more productive.

Today, operators only have access to information from automation systems. Tomorrow, augmented operators will access information from all of the needed enterprise systems and will manage not just process performance and efficiency, but also process profitability.

We’ve already seen the ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) trend emerge in Australia, transforming the way we share information and how we approach work overall. These connections already exist — the task now is putting in place the right framework to ensure we are sharing such information to and from worker devices effectively.

Impact on automation architectures

Once the possibilities of a wrap and re-use approach have been considered for the elements of a smart manufacturing enterprise, it is time to switch up thinking to its impact on automation architectures.

Of these impacts, information-driven architectures, centralised versus distributed control, and networked automation architectures stand out as the most significant factors for consideration in a wrap and re-use approach.

Information-driven architectures

As forward-thinking manufacturing enterprises start implementing smart manufacturing, automation vendors will respond by helping to build connectivity among pre-existing technology and implementing IIoT at all levels of the automation hierarchy.This will allow easy integration with next-generation IIoT systems.

In addition, with the increasing power of embedded electronics, connected intelligence will migrate down to the lower levels of the automation hierarchy — to the control level and to the sensors and actuators. As a result, OT systems will merge with IT systems and the automation hierarchy will evolve to be a much flatter and more information-driven architecture. Since the future implications of this are still unclear, the technologies and architectures employed must be flexible and adaptable to change.

Low-cost, highly connected instrumentation and actuation systems that enable decentralised control of individual equipment function are driving assets to be aware of their operational function. They are also responsible for their individual control and optimisation of local operational parameters.

Sounds like the revolutionary future of control? Perhaps not. Consider the pump curve optimisation functions found in modern drive systems. They effectively transform a simple mechanical device into a highly optimised, highly connected asset ready for integration into an IIoT cloud through a wrap and re-use model.

More examples of this type of IIoT evolution will become available as the market integrates increased process capability and network connectivity into low-cost instruments and actuators.

Centralised versus distributed control

The arguments for highly centralised redundant control systems versus highly distributed control systems have gone on for many years. The advent of IIoT does not resolve this long-standing debate. On the one hand, the use of cost-effective embedded electronics in field devices argues for more distribution of intelligence and control. On the other hand, the high-speed IP connectivity of field devices enables a more centralised architecture where all the sensors and actuators are connected to a highly redundant and powerful multicore processor located in a secure on-premise data centre.

Today, an application is programmed with a particular hardware target in mind: for example, a PLC. Tomorrow, an application will be programmed independently of the underlying automation hardware, and the system will distribute the application transparently to the hardware, configuring all communication mechanisms automatically. This approach will allow users to choose either a highly centralised or distributed architecture, or a hybrid approach based on their specific requirements and concerns.

From this, architectures will likely split into a hybrid centralised or decentralised model. Low costs along with highly connected instrumentation and actuation systems enable decentralised control of individual equipment function. At the same time, centralised automation systems provide supervisory coordination and process safety control across multiple assets.

So while we can expect the distribution of control responsibility to change, the control strategies and methodologies that have worked in the past do not necessarily have to be rewritten. For example, the overall control algorithm for running an aeration system at a wastewater treatment plant will not fundamentally change, but will instead wrap smart connected assets such as blowers and instruments into an existing control philosophy.

Networked automation architectures

Networks will see an exponential increase in the number of smart connected devices. These devices will exploit a time-sensitive IIoT/Ethernet backbone to interoperate with each other and with devices residing in other enterprise systems.

Implementing such large networked systems with today’s classical automation techniques is complex. Tomorrow’s IIoT-based automation systems will require a new approach to simplify the design, the management and the maintenance of networked automation architectures. Starting from scratch could be the most straightforward way to achieve complete operational efficiency, but as this is not possible for many companies, clever solutions that work across new and older machinery become vital.

Conclusion

While the interest in IIoT has reached fever pitch, there are several reasons IIoT should be seen as an evolution rather than a revolution. End users have invested hundreds of millions in industrial automation and control systems, and aren’t always willing to invest hundreds of millions more to replace those systems with new technologies. Even if a valid business case could be made for a rip-and-replace system due to the benefits of IIoT, end users would still resist the change because of the increased risk of downtime and associated costs.

The good news is that we have substantial technological maturity that allows businesses and enterprises to introduce IIoT solutions by phasing in new technologies that shift their physical infrastructure base over time. This is where the wrap and re-use approach is of the most value. The cost of connected sensors is dropping rapidly, open IP-based protocols are gaining traction at an accelerating rate and the adoption of cloud-based solutions is becoming a reality.

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