The transformation and upgrading of the digital factory is a Tianmen array, and it is everywhere the "non-death and injury". For example, IT and OT (Operation Technology) must work together. However, historically, information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) teams have largely worked independently of each other.
Today, the status quo is breaking. The rise of interconnected factories and digital transformation, especially the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) project, has forced manufacturers to rethink traditional isolated operations. Thanks to IIoT, operational data is more readily available than ever, providing companies with unprecedented operational clarity to improve decision making, efficiency and performance with tremendous potential value. Due to fierce competition and severe economic and regulatory requirements, these advantages of IIoT are very attractive to manufacturers, and the expenditure of the Internet of Things in 2018 is expected to be as high as $189 billion.
But unlike installing device sensors and upgrading software, effectively deploying IIoT in an industrial environment is a very complex task that requires a cautious and strategic approach. But companies are showing a return on investment (ROI) in the short term, and the pressure to continue to expand their business to maintain a competitive advantage is great. The key step in getting the most out of the shortest amount of time is to coordinate and collaborate across multiple departments and combine IT with OT.
"If you want to go quickly, go alone, but if you want to go very far, you have to be with everyone." This principle is also particularly suitable for manufacturing, because efficient production requires precise coordination of various moving parts. However, historically, it has not extended to the scope of the entire industrial operation. To integrate IT and OT, many obstacles still need to be overcome. The technical challenge is only part of it, and the attention of IT-OT organization coordination is very small, even if this collaborative work structure is very important for the integration of IT and OT, and the success of Industrial Internet of Things IIoT.
Historical and current stages have successful examples of cross-functional collaboration, but combining two essentially different organizations is not easy. The rift between IT and OT is far deeper than independent executive leadership. According to a recent survey, 57% of professionals who actively participate in the IIoT project say that “cultural barriers and organizational silos†are the biggest obstacles to achieving alliances.
Figure | Challenges of IT and OT integration
Other common reasons are who is responsible for what, not familiar with how each other works, lack of systematic organization.
Different missions, cultures, and educational backgrounds are just some of the reasons why the IT and OT organizations are completely different world views and the relationship is broken. Given the large differences in intangible assets between different companies, there is no uniform guidance for the relationship between IT and OT, and significant differences in hardware, software, and operating environment can create gaps between departments.
In addition to the differences in technology needs of companies, the roles and responsibilities of IT in different manufacturing organizations vary. Typical IT responsibilities include supporting business and administrative functions, providing network access and connectivity. They focus on the digital environment and focus on issues such as data processing speed, system reliability and security. Therefore, IT must embrace rapid innovation and change to keep up with evolving technologies.
Because OT activities focus on the production environment and the real world interaction, these often touch the bottom line of the company. The reliability and service life of the company's key business assets are the main concerns of managers, especially the output targets. Equipment costs can be as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars, but even under harsh environmental conditions, it can continue to operate for decades. Automation and control systems tend to operate independently, corresponding to a single specific machine and/or manufacturer. And OT, which maintains long-term stable operation on a wide range of devices combined with unique or custom systems, is more resistant to change and becomes a late-stage technology adopter.
Table | IT-OT Overview
Despite this, the cooperation between IT and OT is not unprecedented. Over the years, many manufacturers have started projects on and off, blurring the boundaries of IT-OT. These projects typically focus on meeting IT elements in industrial environments—such as Ethernet and programmable logic controllers (PLCs)—and address security issues. These groundbreaking efforts have led to breakthroughs in IT-OT collaboration, paving the way for a prosperous joint venture brought about by subsequent technological advances.
The penetration of "smart" devices has also led some manufacturers to establish technical departments within the OT organization to implement IT functions. This approach is very effective at promoting sector upgrades at the departmental level. Introducing IT perspectives into OT helps bridge the cultural divide. However, it is inefficient across the company and makes large-scale implementations very cumbersome due to the need for redundant personnel and resources.
The birth of IT-OT is derived from demand. In order to effectively seize the new opportunities brought about by technological development, manufacturers must continue to move forward. Take a proactive IT-OT coordination approach to leverage the full potential of IIoT – helping industrial companies stay ahead of the curve, avoiding technology disruptions and gaining competitive advantage.
The convergence of IT-OT In recent years, the rapid expansion of machine interconnection has enabled IT elements to be steadily injected into the OT department. These growing digital assets provide the foundation for IIoT development and access to previously unavailable data. But deploying new technologies is only part of the overall flag.
Once IIoT reached a strategic importance across the company, a true digital transformation began. The company began to realize that it needed to go beyond the traditional business approach and rethink the company's structure. In the future, we will explore how to use the data of operating equipment and other data sources and business systems to open up new roads and comprehensively evaluate the possibilities.
For example, the OT team is not only focused on monitoring a single device, but is working with other stakeholders to find opportunities to collaborate with IT to collect and analyze data for all connected devices. This cross-functional effort provides companies with a more comprehensive view of low-efficiency aspects and maximizes ROI goals such as reduced downtime, optimized performance, and extended life.
As companies realize that data is becoming more valuable, business units and operations teams have implemented an amazing number of IIoT projects on their own devices, focusing on solving specific small problems.
For example, IT departments may prototype sensors and software to track and manage computers, network device inventory, or push software updates to mobile devices. At the same time, OT may focus on failure warning systems, and when critical plant equipment fails, it may affect the ability to alert the manager in time for normal production.
Often the work that many of these isolated people object to ends up with scrap accumulation due to lack of scalability or non-compliance with organizational priorities. Companies that have had the privilege of surviving are also relatively unknown, because there is no tangible return on investment. This is not the ideal result, manufacturers can work hard to change the fate of failure. Trying to find out these unapproved small projects can be a long treasure hunt. Then find a legalization method to get the necessary funds and get support from the corporate strategy.
Analyzing the different manufacturers' IIoT initiatives found that companies that succeeded at the most efficient time often established a cross-functional team that represented the interests of all stakeholders from the start. Supervisory organizations take many forms – such as steering committees, centers of excellence, digital transformation units, or digital innovation centers.
Similarly, its composition and goals will be different, although at the top level, the same IT-OT activities are unified to simplify IIoT, review all ongoing projects, and identify synergies.
Executive awareness and support are essential. Often the company will designate a competent C-level person to lead these projects—common titles such as Chief Digital Officer, Chief IIoT Officer, and Chief Information Officer. In addition to guiding IT-OT integration, the leader must also focus on the strategy, motivation, and general goals of technology (especially IIoT) from a corporate perspective. Well-planned organizational structures and strong leadership also help to balance limited resources and seemingly unlimited revenue potential. This is important because as long as managers realize what IIoT can do for their department, everyone wants their own measures to solve their problems. It is unrealistic to start all of these projects at the same time. A mature IT-OT organization can develop a roadmap to examine these needs from a strategic and financial perspective. So how can companies achieve this?
The manufacturing plant achieves IT-OT synchronization by maximizing the use of IIoT ROI. The steps are:
Management's Peace of Mind Project Most of the successful IT and OT operations, as well as the active expansion of any large-scale IIoT application, one of the most important elements is the support of the upper management. IIoT must be a strategic initiative to ensure the company's top-down collaboration and boundaries. Management must clearly state that the benefits of this work for the company enable all stakeholders to agree on a common implementation.
Creating a department dedicated to IIoT In many companies, as well as in many industries, a typical sign of the success of investing in IIoT solutions is the existence of a clear cross-organizational department to manage the implementation of the entire IIoT project. For IT-OT combined solutions - continuous improvement is also a key factor, continuous monitoring, maintenance and innovation is to ensure that the IIoT solution can continue to meet the internal and external needs of manufacturers. Representatives of the Steering Committee and cross-functional departments are best suited to understand the challenges that may arise, to find a balance between operational efficiency, standards and technical solutions, and to give the most pertinent evaluations to existing systems and solutions. Some companies have even created new management positions, such as chief digital officers. In any case, the active IIoT solution needs to be part of the company's own internal improvements, not a simple branch, or as an existing cost center.
Setting clear strategic goals Once management support and leadership teams are in place, defining strategic goals is an essential step in driving change. This is a good time to discuss all the possibilities, jumping out of the basic framework of the company to think about various possibilities, such as how to use IIoT at the supply chain level, integration with other departments, or from raw materials to after-sales customers. Relationship, consider whether the existing supply chain is reasonable and the partner or any point of interest or interest in this new value chain.
Developing a Data Management Plan Pre-planning data management is very necessary in the early stages of project development. One of the benefits of IIoT is that it provides an opportunity to set rules, boundaries, and different data perspectives. Companies can establish data sharing control mechanisms to determine which information is public without involving sensitive materials.
Engaging stakeholder engagement When these factors come together, it is an important part of bringing the entire company's stakeholders. Colleagues from the legal, marketing, support, and maintenance organizations can help guide the setting of privacy policies and deepen their understanding of the company's new strategy and potential business models. The Digital Transformation or IIoT project has the ability to generate a completely new business asset – the company's data. This increased resource may be the most valuable tool for companies to build competitive advantage. At the same time, if data is abused, it will also pose an equally serious competitive disadvantage. An important caveat is that although companies can increase their wealth through successful deployment of IIoT, the lack of guidance around data privacy policies has led to problems with data sharing faced by OT and other business units. Fortunately, the gap in this standard will undoubtedly disappear in the near future, as more IT and OT organizations converge and deploy more successful IIoT applications. During this time, the rules for maintaining the company's security and privacy must be closely linked to the IIoT plan and actively carried out until the relevant guidelines appear and deployment becomes easier.
Building strong partnerships to overcome weaknesses Companies must recognize that IIoT involves a wide range of knowledge. Similarly, it must remain humble in areas other than its core competencies. Introducing partners, you can use the internal IIoT team and relevant experts to work closely together to decide how and where to deploy the right technology. In these projects, the goal is the key to success, so don't deploy technology for technical purposes. Instead, set clear business goals and establish indicators to measure success.
Trouble-free operation of the machine is one of the biggest challenges driving the deployment of IIoT, according to Bsquare's recent survey of manufacturing IIoT maturity. The most interesting applications include predictive analytics that help flag potential failure conditions, which can result in expensive unplanned downtime. Device status assessments are also introduced to clarify equipment maintenance cycles to reduce equipment downtime and increase equipment life.
Achieving these goals for a single department or cluster of equipment is a good start, but achieving this goal is a high requirement throughout the production process without the joint efforts of the IT team and the OT team. This cross-functional collaboration also helps to unify the company's vision and direction. At the same time, with the launch of networked devices, it provides unprecedented real-time operational insight to improve decision making.
Through the alliance, the IT team and the OT team can eliminate redundancy to reduce costs and simplify operations. In fact, IDC predicts that 35% of the world's large manufacturers with intelligent manufacturing capabilities will integrate the benefits of these two organizations to achieve efficiency and response time in 2019. The alliance also enables the IIoT feature to help optimize production and logistics, which is another application among respondents.
For example, an IIoT system can learn the steps and functions required to shut down a production line or a new production task configuration. The system does not require a human operator to change the machine settings, and the system is a configuration that automatically modifies all the devices needed for a new task. This rapid reconfiguration can significantly increase throughput and efficiency, resulting in more economical use of plant space and reduced operating time. As the system ingests more internal and external inputs, such as parts repair applications, the it-ot team can continue to evaluate other business areas, generating insights that can be improved from improved equipment to optimize business processes for better product quality. .
In many cases, the pilot program has proven to be successful, and the IIoT project encountered obstacles in expanding its business scope pilot. This shows the importance of maintaining the ongoing cooperation of it-ot. Building a system for a small set of assets in a limited scope and environment is fairly straightforward. However, as more and more devices come online, each additional device generates a large amount of data that needs to be analyzed to achieve the best results. This kind of information overload makes it easy to misconfigure the device and push it to the point of collapse.
For the greatest commercial benefit, the it-ot team must work together to make the equipment of the IIoT system leap. If the access volume of the previous project is not millions of terminal nodes, it is necessary to consider achieving this level of scaling at the beginning of the plan. Sex and corresponding security, which is crucial for the subsequent extension of the platform, because transformation is not an option – manufacturers must consider late growth from the start. As the IIoT platform solution becomes more secure and effective. The flexibility, agility and functional requirements of the solution are guaranteed, as well as tools and support to ensure reliable long-term use.
In fact, these systems can take advantage of the data collected by existing plant systems and combine them with other real-time machine data and upstream and downstream data sources to provide true scalability and support for multiple beneficial use cases.
In addition, IIoT vendors can provide added value in providing industry knowledge in the areas of data collection, management and analysis. Thanks to the advantages of the top design, this advantage can be provided to the appropriate experts, and IIoT has the added ability to focus the company's resources on its core competencies. Finally, the internal it-ot and IIoT expert team alliances and cross-functional stakeholders enable continuous improvement of manufacturing processes, which will enable the system to continuously increase its own level, automation and overall business value.
One of the editors was doing the project discovery in Shenzhen. Since the company did not form a unified strategic thinking of intelligent manufacturing, the CEO of the company did not have strong support, and it was difficult to implement. Despite the establishment of the Smart Manufacturing Planning Office, it is only under the Vice President of Institutional Manufacturing, and the Vice President of Manufacturing, regardless of IT, cannot mobilize other departments. Employees in the enterprise think that OT is a manufacturing center, and IT is an information center. This involves very complex interests and hinders synergy and intelligent development. On the roots, it is the fault of OT and IT.
When IT and OT are combined, it's easy to focus on digital transformations such as technology, hardware, software or sensors. After all, these form the core of each organization's mission statement. But it is equally vital to effectively work with IT-OT through operations and manpower management, effectively optimizing ROI through the IIoT initiative.
Manufacturers with the right management and organizational structure, goal setting and planning, skills awareness and technical solutions can change plant operations in a relatively short period of time. Whether accelerating the ability to quickly reconfigure production lines or establish contact points with end customers, IIoT is an affordable technology that should be measurable within a year. The success of one or two initial projects will be the starting point for the next project.
The ongoing IT-OT collaboration is the key to success, and IIoT is part of a digital transformation initiative. With organizational and leadership harmonization, IIoT technology can unlock the potential of new revenue sources.
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