Sum of many parts
Shift to total plant automation spans integration, services, and expanded apps
By Dan Sussman, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/1/2003 12:00:00 AM
Listen carefully. Do you hear that low rumbling coming from Lake Forest, Calif., the home of Wonderware; from Rockwell Automation's offices in Milwaukee; or from the executive offices at GE Fanuc Automation in Charlottesville, Va.? That's the sound of a tectonic shift going on in the way that these and other industrial automation heavyweights are doing business these days.
Virtually all of plant automation's leading vendors are attempting to transform themselves from sellers of products to something much more akin to manufacturing consultancies that can help their customers define problems, then bring a host of applications and services to bear on them.
Sound like a familiar song? Perhaps. Vendors have been using words like "solutions" and "partnering with our customers" for years as shorthand for plant-integration projects that too often end up over-promised and under-delivered. This time, however, the promise may be more closely aligned with reality.
Rockwell, Invensys (the Foxboro, Mass.-based parent of Wonderware), GE Fanuc, as well as Siemens Energy & Automation, Alpharetta, Ga., and ABB, Wickliffe, Ohio, have been investing heavily to expand their software sets. They also are rolling out new architectures based on emerging industry standards that they promise will enable users to more easily integrate the multiplicity of systems and applications at the plant level with enterprise information.
For example, Invensys recently introduced its ArchestrA architecture, which the vendor says will act as the plant "backbone" by providing a single set of services that allow multiple systems to share data. Similarly, Rockwell's FactoryTalk acts as a common infrastructure for manufacturing systems, and as a means of providing information to suppliers and customers. Siemens touts its Simatic IT framework, and ABB, its Industrial IT framework, to achieve similar ends.
Where will it all end? It's too early in the emergence of the new system architectures to declare victory over the integration problem, but for the near-term, expanded application footprints and services already are bringing benefits to manufacturers.
Services focus
One of the most noticeable trends among industrial automation software vendors is consolidation. Most recently, GE Fanuc's acquisition of Intellution expanded GE Fanuc's reach and applications in batch/process manufacturing. But the big plant automation vendors also have been buying up services capabilities.
For example, in February, Rockwell acquired Interwave Technology, an Exton, Pa.-based integration consultancy. Well before this, Rockwell created its Global Manufacturing Solutions Group, which offers plant asset management, equipment reliability, and automation engineering services. Applications from the company's Rockwell Software unit are brought to bear in some of these engagements. The Interwave acquisition is seen as giving Rockwell greater expertise in implementation of manufacturing execution solutions.
Interwave has the kind of "solutions" focus that Rockwell is seeking to strengthen, says Rockwell Software President Rich Ryan. Interwave points to its work with Chesterfield, Mo.-based Maverick Tubing Corp., a manufacturer of oilfield pipeline and structural piping. To better track and manage its production, the company made a decision to use supervisory control systems and integrate them with its enterprise resources planning (ERP) system. But with limited experience in integration projects and industrial automation systems, Maverick called in Interwave, says Scott Harris, Maverick's manager of manufacturing systems.
Interwave mapped the best way to meet Maverick's goals, says Harris. "They helped us get over the hump of understanding the enterprise and manufacturing sides of the applications we were working with, and getting comfortable with a layer that we were building to," he says.
Harris says the resulting solution is managing critical plant-level issues. "We wanted to be able to capture data on downtime and quality, and do it in a way that was familiar to our plant-floor personnel," says Harris.
Of course, software acquisitions and alliances are marching on, even while the services focus increases. Rockwell has expanded into higher-level applications, including factory scheduling. In addition to Interwave, Rockwell last year acquired the batch automation and integration capabilities of Sequencia, and Propack Data, a manufacturing execution system provider for pharmaceutical and other regulated industries. On the alliance front, Siemens recently established a relationship with IndX Software Corp., an Alisa Viejo, Calif.-based supplier of visualization and performance optimization software.
Why the shift?
Industrial automation executives like Rockwell's Ryan point to the ability of eXtensible markup language (XML) to simplify data integration, as well as the emerging ANSI/ISA S95 standard for enterprise control system integration, as enabling standards for integrated business processes.
According to Mark Davidson, an Invensys company vice president, there is nothing new about integrating a plant's systems, but only recently has technology caught up to the concept.
"In the past, an Invensys distributed control system would pump real-time data into a SAP ERP system," says Davidson. "We'd update materials management modules, reconcile inventories, and trigger work orders. But each one of those interfaces was a separate piece of software that had to manage the integration. Now we're seeing many of the functions required by multiple applications need a common set of software services, so instead of solving each integration task individually, we're solving them through a single set of services."
Steve Vandivort, vice president of integration with Phoenix-based integrator TMV Systems Engineering, bears out that contention. TMV recently began implementing an ArchestrA-based supervisory system for control of pumping stations in Pima County, Ariz.'s wastewater collection system.
Initially, TMV had planned the project for what Vandivort refers to as a "classic Wonderware InTouch" application in which each control point has to be handled by a separate script. Since the wastewater system will eventually have almost 50 pumping stations, each with approximately 20 input/output points, two to three days of configuration would have been required to bring each station online, he says. However, he adds, ArchestrA allows TMV to create templates that will "build" each pump station automatically and bring each station online in a few hours.
Plant automation vendors also are responding to increasing customer demand for broader support from fewer vendors, executives say. "Our customers are getting smarter, and their budgets are tighter," says Kevin Roach, vice president of GE Fanuc's Global Solutions business. "How do you get competitive advantage in that situation? You shift from buying components to thinking about the nature of the problem."
Invensys' Davidson believes the level of integration sophistication demanded by customers is much higher than it's been in the past. "The scope of what customers expect automation applications to do has grown from wanting to monitor what's going on in the plant to wanting to model plant processes in applications, collect information, and integrate that information into maintenance systems, scheduling, and other systems."
Karsten Newbury, North American business manager for Siemens' manufacturing execution systems, also notes that global customers want to drive down their costs by standardizing systems. "That can be a huge source of productivity for them," he says. "Being able to get support in a similar way drives down the cost of support."
If plants around the world are able to establish uniformity in their use of data, it becomes easier to benchmark those facilities, to measure them against common key performance indicators, and to share best practices, Newbury adds.
Another driver behind the shift in plant automation: vendors must expand into new areas as many of their bread-and-butter control hardware products mature. Most automation industry executives, however, are taking this in stride. "Take HMI [human machine interface software]," says Roach. "Twenty years ago, HMI was sold to customers as a project. But as technology advanced, companies started selling HMI as a shrink-wrapped product, so we have to continually reinvent ourselves to deliver more value."
Davidson notes that customers aren't looking to replace the automation systems they've invested so heavily in over the years. Instead, they're looking to gain more value from those systems by building a common layer across those systems that allows them to implement best operating practices.
Part of the value proposition, it seems, is to provide frameworks for greater productivity in assembling systems, not just integration. "If I have five product developments going on, and they all appear on the same machines or production lines, I'd better be using the same technologies, integration, and support tools, otherwise, I'm going to drive my customers, as well as my own organization, crazy," says Ryan.
Some challenges
While there's no lack of enthusiasm among industrial automation companies for delivering plant integration architectures and solutions, there are plenty of challenges, not least of which is customer skepticism. Bill Swanton, a vice president with Boston-based analyst firm AMR Research, recently noted that during the go-go 1990s, many users made large investments in automation that didn't deliver as promised. As a result, companies aren't interested in buying technology on faith; they want real solutions to their problems and predictable return on their investments.
Automation vendors, however, believe that new applications, as well as improvement in how they execute as vendors, will suit the needs of the market.
Siemens' Newbury foresees business modeling as a space ripe for development. "It's going to allow the customer to start with business processes, see how they should interact, and they have the IT department follow business strategy—instead of the other way around," he says. Vendors also will need to focus on developing industry-specific solutions, particularly in light of growing regulatory demands in fields such as pharmaceuticals.
Another challenge facing vendors is bringing the direct and indirect sales and service channels up to speed on the cultural changes. Roach says GE Fanuc is merging its distributor and integrator networks with that of newly acquired Intellution. "You'll also see things like project management certifications coming up, [that demonstrate] the attainable and quantifiable measures of our delivery capacities," he says.
Invensys' Davidson believes vendors' integration and productivity frameworks will need to incorporate new technologies easily. "Customers want to know, for example, what happens two years from now when a new version of Windows comes out," he says. "They want to be assured that their existing systems' value is preserved."
Elements of the total automation trend
| Integration frameworks | More than just a newfangled means of integration, some of these frameworks also promise greater productivity in building apps, and reusing intellectual property. |
| Greater services focus | Once focused on control hardware products, the automation giants have created services groups, and in some cases, acquired systems integrators. |
| Broader software footprint | In the 1990s, HMI and supervisory control software were areas of innovation. More recently, vendors have expanded into scheduling and plant intelligence. |
| Partnerships and acquisitions march on | GE Fanuc acquires Intellution; ABB, Microsoft, Intel, and Accenture form alliance; Rockwell acquires Propack Data, Sequencia, and Interwave Technology |
| Source: MSI | |
| Who's inside | ||
| ABB: www.abb.com | GE Fanuc Automation: www.geindustrial.com | IndX Software Corp.: www.indxhq.com |
| Invensys: www.invensys.com | Rockwell Automation: www.rockwellautomation.com | Siemens Energy & Automation: www.siemens.com |
| Wonderware: www.wonderware.com | ||
