14 minute read
PERSPECTIVES
Managing Operations Technology with IT
By David Greenfield
Editor-In-Chief/Director of Content
It’s no secret that the worlds of OT (operations technology) and IT (information technology) are becoming ever closer. The growing connection of plant floor devices to enterprise networks for Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things initiatives is driving this convergence of OT and IT. That’s why these two technology groups cannot remain isolated from each other in a world that increasingly requires operations visibility across supply chains for manufacturers to stay competitive.
To better understand how IT and OT are merging, and the kinds of technologies enabling this, we connected with James Destro of ServiceNow, a supplier of digital workflow software to connect people, functions and systems across organizations, and Carey Blunt of Fujitsu, one of the world’s largest IT services providers, for a recent episode of the “Automation World Gets Your Questions Answered” podcast series (awgo.to/1246).
Beginning with an exploration of how OT devices can be discovered, secured, and managed with the same kinds of tools used by IT, we focused on the core plant floor issues of asset management and security to understand why it benefits a manufacturer or processing company to secure and manage operations technology in a similar fashion to IT.
“Companies are starting to look at how they can have a proactive stance toward plant floor technologies that typically have been air gapped or disconnected from the enterprise network,” said Destro. To e ectively manage this connection, companies are “looking for a better way to find and understand the current topology of OT systems on their network and be able to manage them proactively to respond to vulnerabilities and security incidents. IT tools have a long-standing framework of doing just that for cloud systems and servers in data centers, as well as laptops and distributed devices. This leveraging of IT best practices on the OT side promises a lot of strength and value for industry.”
Explaining how this process of connecting IT and OT can best be started, Blunt said, “When you're trying to get standardization between your IT and your OT teams, you’re really focusing on getting your processes, your people, and your technology working in the same way. Most of our customers approach this by focusing on the technology and process parts first—integrating a little bit at the network level to find out what assets exist on the OT network, linking those assets in the same place, and keeping them there.”
As you discover assets on the network, store them in a database, and map their relationships, you need a tool that can help with your security responses and with predictive and proactive maintenance for those assets. “When you’re pulling these data points into your IT structure, that's where workflow technologies like those o ered by ServiceNow are important,” said Blunt, “because they've got the CMDB (configuration management database) and the capability to exercise the workflow for both the IT and OT worlds.”
Relationship mapping
In both IT and OT, relationship mapping is considered one of the fundamental pillars to understanding how IT and OT systems can be impacted by network changes, incidents, or a vulnerability in any of these systems.
“Relationship mapping happens across two different vectors,” explained Destro. “The first vector involves understanding the data and communication relationships of the actual OT system. This could mean an HMI (human machine interface) managing a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system or a SCADA system controlling a PLC (programmable logic controller) or exchanging data with a historian. The second type of relationship mapping is understanding the context of the operational technology as it's used for manufacturing. This means that we not only need to understand if we’re dealing with a SCADA system, a PLC, an HMI, or historian, but also automating the process of how we interact with these technologies in the manufacturing facility. This provides an overarching context—what we call a manufacturing system dependency—so that whenever we're changing configurations, doing configuration compliance, change management, or incident management, we can understand the potential impacts of these actions on other operational technologies, as well as what the potential impacts could be to the actual production process.”
Beyond asset management, Destro noted that relationship mapping is also an important aspect of cybersecurity. “Relationship mapping is critical to cybersecurity, especially around vulnerability response, incident response, and understanding how things are connected to the network, what relationships they should have by default, and what relationships might be established if an incident occurs,” he said. “This knowledge helps identify what systems may need to be taken o ine when applying a patch, for example.”
Getty Images
Predictive outage avoidance
As the concept of predictive maintenance—where sensors on equipment feed data into analytics software to provide advance warning of failures so that unplanned downtimes are mitigated— gains ground across manufacturing and processing companies, it’s application predominantly applies in the OT arena. But when OT assets are connected to IT systems, you can also apply the IT concept of predictive outage avoidance.
Blunt explained that once an asset is connected to the enterprise network and you have access to operational data about that asset and how it’s interacting with other devices, that data—like event and error messages—can be used to see patterns. These patterns “give you something more thorough than a time-based prediction of roughly when these components are going to wear out.”
Acting on data
Transferring asset data into action on the plant floor is the core function of field service management applications, which helps direct engineers to the right place at the right time with the right parts, said Blunt. “Field service management is about making a better experience for the engineers, because their time is used more productively, and it provides a better experience for the operations team because downtime is reduced and they're able to plan better,” he said. “Ultimately, this translates into a better experience for the company’s customers, employees, and board because you have fewer outages and your production time is working to its optimum efficiency.”
As manufacturers focus on the management and governance of OT systems, change management becomes a critical capability. It’s importance stems from the fact that having a managed workflow process for changes helps the manufacturing workforce better understand numerous applications—from attaching a new sensor to the system, upgrading or changing configurations and bridging these changes across the engineering network, to applying patches and ensuring that all the appropriate approvals to make any change have been received.
Having a comprehensive OT change management system— and all the metadata it provides about systems and their relationships—enables manufacturers to apply incident management. This occurs when there's an upset to a process, asset, or to the systems management technology itself.
Destro said incident management can come in two forms. “It could be one of the systems is not responding—due to a device or electrical failure—and in response we're driving workflows towards solving that particular challenge. Or it could be a security or operational incident that triggers security workflows—what we call a security incident response,” he explained. “Both of these are critical incidents that need to be handled in in di erent ways with particular workflows. One towards solving the problem and returning the system to normal, and the other towards mitigating the impact of this incident moving forward. In either case, the technology will help you determine which systems need to be isolated, what mitigation factors need to be put in place, and what actions need to be completed as part of the response workflow.”
%OMKNI
Connecting PLCs to an Enterprise Database
By David Greenfield, Editor-In-Chief/Director of Content
Michigan-based TranTek Automation designs and builds automated welding, material handling, inspection, and assembly systems. The company is known for its preconfi gured robotic welding cells, as well as robot transfer units, tip dressers for resistance welding, conveyors, and retractable locating pins.
One automation project the company recently secured required TranTek to develop a system consisting of six plasma cutting robots that could synchronously apply plasma torches to large, made-to-order steel structural parts using various production recipes. Plasma cutters cut metal by sending air or an inert gas through a plasma torch to spark an electrical arc. This forces the plasma through the torch tip to cut metal. The arc of a plasma cutter can reach temperatures of 45,000° F. While this application was straightforward enough for TranTek, one challenge for the company was fi guring out how to connect the machine controller to the customer’s IT system. This step was necessary because “all of the production data for the steel parts are stored in a large database within the customer’s central server,” said Je Ebert, senior controls engineer at TranTek Automation. “Creating an upward-level connection between the PLC (programmable logic controller) and server created a lot of challenges for us. We would have spent weeks just writing the code so the system could access and download the recipe fi les to the PLC.” This type of connection between controllers and enterprise-level databases has long been possible, but typically requires the development of custom code to connect the two systems. To avoid writing custom code for a one-o application, TranTek decided to use the tManager Enterprise Appliance Transaction Module from Softing. This device is
designed to “seamlessly connect” enterprise-level databases with PLCs, according to Softing. With tManager in place, TranTek Automation was able to deliver a plasma cutting robotic system that could communicate with its customer’s enterprise database without having to write any extra code. More importantly tManager addressed the reason why TranTek’s customer wanted to connect the system’s PLCs to their enterprise database—to download recipes and manufacturing instructions directly into the controller.
For this application of tManager at TranTek, ControlLogix and CompactLogix control platforms from Rockwell Automation were connected to the customer’s enterprise databases for downloading of recipe fi les. In addition to downloading daily recipes from the database to the ControlLogix platform, tManager is also used to upload production metrics from the ControlLogix platform back to the database to inform the enterprise system when production runs are complete. tManager can be used with a variety of enterprise databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, MySQL, AWS IoT SiteWise, and Azure Cloud. In addition, via the module’s front Ethernet port, drivers can connect tManager to PLCs from AllenBradley, Siemens, and Schneider Electric.
Ebert added that configuration of tManager is simplified because, once it’s installed into the ControlLogix rack, the transaction module automatically enumerates PLC and database tags and structures and can monitor tags without touching the PLC logic. “We also avoided the code maintenance headaches associated with custom software,” he said.
“Thanks to the bi-directional data exchange capability of tManager, our customer can now confirm and update shipping orders directly within the ERP system, enabling them to fulfill their orders for steel parts faster and speeding their time to market,” said Ebert.
An added benefi t of using the enterprise database to store complex production data instead of the PLC frees up “a ton of valuable resources in your PLC, such as memory, storage, and performance,” said Deane Horne, director of marketing at Softing. “You can also de-couple manufacturing line changes from PLC logic changes. For example, it's much easier and safer to update an SQL table than to edit PLC logic.”
“tManager enabled us to design a system that could seamlessly bring in the production data for thousands of steel parts—everything from how the steel has to be cut to where holes should be located along the axis,” Ebert said. After tManager downloads the manufacturing recipes from the database to the PLC, the plasma cutting robots can automatically adjust variables, such as amperage and gas fl ow.
Ebert also noted that the TranTek customer is so pleased with this system that they’ve “decided to move forward on a long-term plan to automate and upgrade their systems, and tManager has become a standard for all their installations.”
YOU DESIGNED, TESTED, PRODUCED.
WE’LL PROTECT IT FROM HERE.
Your focus is your business. What’s ours? Solutions that get your product to your customers efficiently and well protected. Working with us means spending less time on transit packaging and more time perfecting your products. Discover Signode’s integrated packaging system, PackPoint, at
PACK EXPO 2021, Booth C-5022, Las Vegas Convention Center.
T�e tate of ndustry . Adoption
By David Miller, Senior Technical Writer
With interest in end-to-end connectivity booming, Industry 4.0 has been at the center of discussions pertaining to automation technology and business strategy for several years now. However, despite all the buzz, actual Industry 4.0 implementations are far from ubiquitous, and many hurdles remain for their broader adoption.
In 2019, a survey from industry analyst firm LNS research reported that digital transformation initiatives had already been undertaken by 45% of respondents and another 23% were expecting to begin initiatives within one year. A similar report published by Deloitte in 2018 found that the biggest remaining barrier to mass adoption had less to do with technology and more to do with strategic and operational business issues.
This year, industrial electronics and connectivity technology supplier Molex released an update to its “State of Industry 4.0” survey. The report—part of a series of Molex industry surveys conducted in collaboration with independent research firm Dimensional Research—found that while some progress has been made, many of the key challenges facing Industry 4.0 remain the same.
On the whole, 51% of respondents to the survey indicated that their companies have well-defined Industry 4.0 strategies, marking a modest increase over the findings of LNS Research’s 2019 report. Moreover, Molex’s survey found that executives were significantly more likely to describe their companies’ Industry 4.0 initiatives as well-defined than managers and operations technology (OT) personnel, indicating a continuing disconnect between plant-level operators and enterprise-level planners.
Business expectations
When it comes to what they would like to achieve through their Industry 4.0 initiatives, 69% of respondents want to build better products, 58% want to reduce overall manufacturing costs, 53% want to increase revenues, 35% want to offer products at a lower price, and 35% want to decrease time-to-market. This is noteworthy from a profitability perspective because it mirrors
observations from Deloitte’s 2018 report, which found that while 94% of respondents said the need for digital transformation was an imperative for their business, only 68% expected it to increase profitability. In the case of Molex’s survey, “defensive” interests such as keeping their products competitive similarly take precedence over driving revenue growth.
Regarding implementation timelines, 49% of respondents say they have already achieved major success with Industry 4.0 projects, and 53% believe they will see them within the next two years. However, when asked whether or not the projects will pay o in the next five years or will take more time, responses were split 50-50, indicating that those surveyed have mixed feelings about whether Industry 4.0 investments can be profitable in the shortterm, or are merely mandatory changes required for long-term survival.
Challenges and barriers
Barriers to adoption cited in the report can be broken down into three primary categories: Cultural challenges, business model challenges, and technology challenges. When asked which type is the most severe, 44% of respondents chose organizational and cultural issues, 33% chose business model issues, and 22% chose technology issues.
On the cultural front, 96% of respondents reported that their customers face challenges that hold back Industry 4.0 implementations, with the biggest being that leadership is more comfortable with traditional approaches and doesn’t advocate for change. In addition, difficulty hiring personnel with the needed data and analytical skills was also cited.
Regarding business model issues, the most prominent was that change is very costly and requires di cult funding decisions. Furthermore, many reported that the large upfront investments required by Industry 4.0 initiatives make achieving a return-on-investment challenging. The prevalence of these concerns may be partially responsible for the explosion in as-a-service and pay-for-performance arrangements increasingly being offered by technology suppliers.
The top technology concerns include separation between information technology (IT) and OT infrastructure, closed or proprietary communication protocols that complicate data transmission, and a lack of cybersecurity protection.
Such barriers aside, 88% of those surveyed reported being positive about the potential of their Industry 4.0 initiatives going forward. Perhaps even more revealingly, 100% of respondents reported that their organization would benefit from additional Industry 4.0 capabilities, indicating that, even as challenges remain for practical implementation, the idea of Industry 4.0 has been firmly embraced.
Compact & robust housing
Faster. Precise. Wider coverage. Industry-leading distances.
Easy adjustments
Easy to set Light-ON / Dark-ON Anti-interference mode allowing side-by-side installations
Simply spot on!
Industryleading sensing distance The continual evolution of photoelectric technology has renewed interest in this cost- effective detection method. Some applications previously not ideal for photoelectric sensors are now achievable. The NEW line from Telemecanique Sensors detects targets farther away, faster, and over wider coverage areas!
The NEW XUM detects at up to an industry-leading 30m distance. Even in very bright environments, the XUM will detect targets as fast as every half millisecond. It’s antiinterference mode allows side-by-side installations for coverage of wide areas.
