Building the Connected Plant: Honeywell on improving production efficiency, operational reliability, and supply chain performance.
05/04/2017 Honeywell Process Solutions
By Ben Blanchette, Business Development Manager - Digital Transformation, Honeywell Process SolutionsThe industrial Internet of things (IIoT) is transforming industry and the process and controls that drive it. Organizations worldwide are connecting as many technologies as possible within their plants. Smarter field devices, sensors and controls, industrial systems - all are being connected to central systems, and each other, via the internet. The benefits of running a connected plant are numerous. Leveraging smart, connected technologies, services, and domain expertise can improve all aspects of industrial operations. Production efficiency, operational reliability, and supply chain performance can all be enhanced and ultimately the bottom line improved.
At the heart of these improvements is data. Connecting a plant gives access to potentially thousands more points, each of which can provide information on how individual components and an industrial site as a whole is operating. Data can be used for everything from predicting when a specific control might fail to determining how processes might be made more efficient.
Data fuels the Connected Plant
Today, manufacturers and other industrial firms are contemplating the next step to effectively manage and exploit data at single sites or in enterprise-wide operations. Business success demands that the right decisions are made at the right time with the right information.
A connected plant underpinned by the IIoT is the next big evolution in performance and operations, employing existing technologies such as machine learning, Big Data, intelligent sensors, and mobility applications helps turn data into actionable knowledge. A successful Connected Plant strategy uses this technology to consolidate data from multiple disparate systems, while utilizing advanced analytics and experts who often work remotely from the site. With predictive analytic solutions especially, work processes are transformed from manual and reactive to automatic and proactive, minimizing downtime and improving plant performance and safety. Businesses are better able to communicate with disparate assets in the plant, even at remote locations, and turn that communication into results.
Developing an effective Connected Plant
The real power of the Connected Plant comes from its ability to network and centralize data sources, while integrating the applications necessary to digest and process this information. Rather than a central control system, applications can be deployed in the cloud - eliminating on-site maintenance requirements and ensuring employees can access data and communicate directly with the plant and each other remotely. These applications often include advanced process control (APC) monitoring, condition-based monitoring (CBM), enterprise data historian, mobility solutions, and planning and scheduling.
Open integration and communication technologies like OPC Unified Architecture (UA) are essential to the Connected Plant. These technologies support existing communications protocols, so installed equipment is integrated in a secure way.
Empowering people
The true promise of the Connected Plant is its people. Those organizations that connect people first, and then connect things, will lead in efforts to optimize plant operations.
The Connected Plant enables smart collaboration across an organization, blurring the lines between operations, maintenance, reliability and supply chain management. If an implementation plan doesn't include changes in how functional groups work and communicate together, then it needs to be reconsidered.
A major opportunity for the Connected Plant is to embrace collaboration with third-party experts. Building in-house expertise is increasingly difficult, as older engineers retire and younger engineers struggle to fill the gap. But with a Connected Plant, sites can securely tap the domain expertise of a whole ecosystem of partners in the cloud, where the added expertise of process licensors, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other experts can help solve specific problems. This approach can also extend to a company's internal resources across the globe.
Knowledge and experience of OEMs and process licensors can have the greatest impact on the reliability of plant equipment and process operations. A Connected Plant is therefore not just about monitoring, but better communicating the diagnostic know-how of subject matter experts and embedding it in applications to predict and prevent failures.
Getting started with a Connected Plant
Regardless of implementation strategy, companies new to the idea of a Connected Plant and the IIoT should be willing to "fail fast" so they can get up to speed quickly. In other words, start small so unsuccessful initial projects won't have a major impact on the business, but they will provide lessons to help guide future investments.
Now, more than ever, manufacturers need to exploit the power of the industrial Internet to realize operational and business benefits beyond what has been achievable until now. The Connected Plant can unite people and systems on the plant floor with those at the enterprise level, and enable users to get the most value from their automation systems without being constrained.
To ensure successful deployment of the IIoT and get started building a Connected Plant, industrial organizations must be willing to embrace change. This includes developing a comprehensive framework that supports collaborative work processes and communication across functional lines, as well as between internal and external resources.
For more information, please visit: www.honeywellprocess.com
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