Inspire. Educate. Innovate. · First Solar looks to cloud as future data platform 15 Scalable MES increases speed to smart manufacturing 16 Predictive services turn big data into

Caption

Inspire. Educate. Innovate.Highlights of Rockwell Automation TechED 2017 June 11-16, 2017Orlando, Florida, USA

2

TABLE OF CONTENTSFocus on outcomes driving Rockwell Automation offering 3

Time-to-value: Key metric for IIoT implementation 4

IaaS underpins The Connected Enterprise 5

Land O’Lakes modernization goes smooth as butter 7

The connected enterprise keeps eye on safety, security 9

Winemaker digitalizes with The Connected Enterprise 11

What makes for better batch management? 12

Rockwell Automation, ManpowerGroup team to upskill veterans 13

First Solar looks to cloud as future data platform 15

Scalable MES increases speed to smart manufacturing 16

Predictive services turn big data into reliability 18

FactoryTalk Analytics makes machine builders smarter 20

Lessons to be learned from ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ 22

Jack Daniel’s gets on The Connected Enterprise with CPwE 24

Connect dots among data sources to improve operations 26

Say goodbye to manual asset management 28

Flavor-maker sweet on thin-client flexibility 30

Out of the dark ages: How data can transform industrial safety 32

Live from Rockwell Automation TechED 2017

FOCUS ON OUTCOMES DRIVING ROCKWELL AUTOMATION OFFERING

Keith Larson

While Rockwell Automation continues to offer industry-leading hardware, software and services to the industrial marketplace,

that portfolio is increasingly shaped not by the mere vision of The Connected Enterprise, but by the effi-cient and scaleable delivery of specific, measurable out-comes to its global customer base.

Indeed, the themes of application specificity, easy implementation, ready scalability and speedy time-to-value underscored Rockwell Automation President and CEO Blake Moret’s opening keynote address to a re-cord 2,200 delegates assembled in Orlando this week for the company’s 20th anniversary Rockwell Automa-ton TechED event.

Among the recent outcomes claimed on behalf of Rockwell Automation customers: the elimination of 2,500 hours of manual data collection at Agropur Dairy Cooperation, the real-time management of more than 2 million product variations at Ford, and a 20-fold in-crease in production data accessibility at BHP Billiton.

“Our focus is not just on potential but on outcomes,” Moret said. “It’s the combination of technology and depth of applications expertise that brings The Con-nected Enterprise to life.”

Since taking the role of CEO just over a year ago, Moret has seen Rockwell Automation benefit from strong tailwinds in the global economy. And despite some challenges, he believes the company is well posi-tioned to grow in the years to come.

Among the favorable market drivers is the continued growth of the middle class in emerging markets around the world. Beyond essential infrastructure spending on clean water and power, “More people than ever are looking for choices in food, in automobiles, in life sciences and other consumer-facing industries where Rockwell Automation is particularly strong,” Moret said.

The aging industrial workforce—and widening skills gap—remains a challenge, as does the organizational disruption brought about by the accelerating conver-gence of operational and information technologies. De-spite these potential stumbling blocks, a broad range of government initiatives around smart manufacturing and the Industrial Internet of Things attest to the continued importance of manufacturing around the world.

“We can’t bring The Connected Enterprise to life unless we can address specific opportunities to save time and money.” Blake Moret, president and CEO of Rockwell Automation, discussed the tactical implications required to achieve a vision of digital transformation.

http://rockwell.lookbookhq.com/ra-teched-2017-promo


And as Rockwell Automation seeks to help its cus-tomers realize tangible outcomes enabled by digital transformation, it must acknowledge that its customers are at varying levels of digital maturity and often have older, legacy equipment they must bring forward.

“Security is their first and last question; we must bring them defense-in-depth strategies,” Moret said. “We can’t bring The Connected Enterprise to life un-less we can address specific opportunities to save time and money.”

In conclusion, Moret recommended that TechED at-tendees consider a five-step, incremental process to ad-vance their digital transformation journeys. “First, un-derstand your main opportunities: where are you losing

money? Only then can you identify the best opportu-nities.”

Second, he recommended getting an outside per-spective, even if it’s from within one’s own broader or-ganization. The third steps is to assemble the team, ac-cording to Moret.

“Assembling the right team, which often spans mul-tiple functions, is absolutely essential, yet often over-looked—especially when it comes to project manage-ment.”

Next, implement a pilot program to demonstrate the benefits.

Finally, step back and adjust, and only then look to scale across the enterprise.”

A ttendees of this week’s Rockwell Automation TechED event are no strangers to the Indus-trial Internet of Things (IIoT). Indeed, au-

tomation and controls professionals represent “where the IIoT rubber meets the manufacturing road,” said Frank Kulaszewicz, senior vice president architecture and software, in his keynote address to a packed house of more than 2,200 at the Rosen Shingle Creek resort and conference center in Orlando, Fla.

Control devices, sensors and networks—the world that TechED attendees inhabit every day—are the source of the data that feeds the IIoT. “What that data needs is contextualization and analytics to turn it into information, which in turn can be used to make data-driven decisions,” Kulaszewicz said.

The Rockwell Automation approach to the Indus-trial IoT increasingly centers on providing its custom-ers the ability to turn that data access, contextualiza-

tion and analytics into business value as quickly and easily as possible, according to Kulaszewicz.

From the standpoint of data and information flows, this means channeling data from smart connected as-sets up through the company’s scalable, Integrated Architecture platform and into a flexible information solutions environment, “an open, scalable ecosystem for our applications and those from our partners and customers, too,” Kulaszewicz explained.

One way that Rockwell Automation is accelerating time-to-value is with tools that literally stand them-selves up through automated discovery of assets and zero-configuration dashboards. Another is through increased scalability, which means users can quickly deploy fit-for-purpose applications such as for execu-tion or analytics in the cloud, on-premise or at the edge. “The whole purpose of fit-to-purpose applica-tions is to provide faster implementation, faster time-

TIME-TO-VALUE: KEY METRIC FOR IIOT IMPLEMENTATIONKeith Larson

http://rockwell.lookbookhq.com/ra-teched-2017-promo/


“You are where the IIoT rubber meets the manufacturing road.” Rockwell Automation’s Frank Kulaszewicz to attendees of the company’s TechED event this week in Orlando.

For all their high-flying, big-shot advantages, ev-ery kind of software and industrial network must still run on servers, cables, switches or other

hardware somewhere in the physical world. Because the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the cloud and other types of data digitization must have a solid foundation, Rockwell Automation developed and launched its Infra-structure as a Service (IaaS) program several years ago.

IaaS also supports the company’s customers in their efforts to join The Connected Enterprise, and

can help reduce and spread out what would other-wise be costly capital expenditures over several years. IaaS can similarly minimize the financial burdens of maintenance, administration, warranty and software license management.

“We do complete, turnkey solutions that include hardware, software, factory assembly, onsite configu-ration and documentation,” said Christopher Di Bi-ase, senior architect for visualization in the Network and Security Services division at Rockwell Automa-

IAAS UNDERPINS THE CONNECTED ENTERPRISEInfrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) helps industrial organizations to convert capital investments in servers, switches, cables and other network components into a more readily manageed operating expense. Jim Montague

to-value for our customers,” Kulaszewicz said. For example, the company’s FactoryTalk Produc-

tionCentre applications can be deployed quickly and incrementally to fit a particular customer’s needs. Kulaszewicz pointed to a recent project for Andersen Windows, which needed to quickly boost real-time visibility into its material consumption patterns, and in so doing was able to boost production throughput and quality as well. And at Metso, a provider of min-ing machinery, which needed improved visibility into crusher operations to head off unplanned down-time. A pilot implementation proved successful, and in short order the application was rolled out to other types of machines and to other customers.

“There are many opportunities to positively im-pact operational productivity, asset reliability and maintenance, as well as risk management,” Kulasze-wicz said. “The IIoT is bringing us into a new world.”

http://rockwell.lookbookhq.com/ra-teched-2017-promo/MI_InfoSolutions_eBook


tion. “We try to do more pre-assembly now, so we can do simpler plugging in onsite. Pre-engineered solu-tions also help us do build-outs more quickly. We also jointly test equipment, so it will work the way it’s de-signed and expected by customers.”

Rockwell Automation is offering innovative ap-proaches for manufacturers and equipment builders including on-premise or cloud.

To give its IaaS program the widest possible scope and capabilities, Di Biase added that Rockwell Auto-mation collaborates close with many of its well-known partners, including Cisco, Microsoft, VMware, Pan-duit and Dell EMC. Di Biase presented “IaaS: optimiz-ing your capital with pre-engineered solutions” this week at the Rockwell Automation TechED event in Orlando, Fla.

“IaaS also reduces the costs of downtime with more and better monitoring,” added Di Biase. “This is es-pecially important because the total, worldwide cost of unscheduled downtime is about $20 billion, which includes 8% on figuring that problems are real, 21% on diagnosing problems, and 47% on finding the re-sources to fix problems. This adds up to 76% spent on problems before any actual fixing event starts.”

This is where IaaS can deliver its most substantial benefits, according to Di Biase. “If we know that an industrial infrastructure can identify KPIs for itself, and monitor those points, then we can also do pre-dictive maintenance on them,” added Di Biase. “This cuts out a lot of the time that it usually takes to find problems.”

Di Biase explained that taking a longer-term view of implementing and maintaining networks, software and related devices allows them to become regularly scheduled costs, rather than huge, one-time expenses. Many of the IaaS projects are typically paid for over five years, much like the software as a service (SaaS) or other subscription-style programs that are well-known in the IT and consumer service fields.

“Rockwell Automation still owns the switches and servers, but we deliver them to our customers just like any other service provider,” said Di Biase. “The dif-

ference is we also treat this as an on-premise service with 24/7 monitoring and diagnostics. I think the most special thing we do is remote administrative ser-vices, which are staffed by career IT administrators and solutions integrators. They’re able to respond to alerts and alarms faster than traditional IT staffs, and have eyes on processes in our customers’ manufactur-ing environments.

“As a result, potential users need to ask themselves if their IT response team is going to be able to meet their OT needs. The IT departments at some pharma-ceutical clients really get what OT needs, but others have no onsite IT or they’ve outsourced it to larger or-ganizations that don’t realize that mission-critical ap-plications exist outside of their data center.”

Di Biase concluded that IaaS is really a marriage of former remote monitoring and administration services with pre-engineered solutions and techni-cal support. “We combined administration with the hardware that goes with it,” said Di Biase. “To real-ize The Connected Enterprise, we’re bringing com-plex IT products and services to the plant f loor, and Rockwell Automation provides the care and feeding of that equipment.”



LAND O’LAKES MODERNIZATION GOES SMOOTH AS BUTTERDairy processing plant updated with complete code rewrite, minimal downtimePaul Studebaker

Along with patchwork programming, outdated servers and process invisibility, Land O Lakes’ cheese and dairy proteins production facility in

Melrose, Minn. was faced in 2015 with imminent obso-lescence of the controls it relies on for production.

“Our PLC-5s were nearly 100% full, slow and outdated. We were using physical servers on the plant floor, which were slow, outdated and running Windows Server 2003. Software was not updated. Components were taking two weeks to find, and we had too much downtime,” said Niko-las Paris, maintenance manager, Land O’Lakes, during his session, “Land O’Lakes Modernizes with Complete Code Rewrite, Minimal Downtime,” co-presented with Mark Visness, engineering manager at control systems in-tegrator Cybertrol Engineering, Minneapolis, at Rockwell Automation TechED, this week in Orlando, Fla.

A previous upgrade by a different system integrator had failed, mostly because of a “network incompatibility that was beyond their scope,” Paris said. “Code had been de-veloped by various vendors with entirely different struc-tures. We couldn’t troubleshoot or add anything – no one could read the code.

“We needed process data and visualization to bring us into the current millennium, not reading gauges on the plant floor and entering data on a clipboard.”

Refreshing the hardwareReplacing the existing control and information systems began in 2015, when the plant upgraded from physical to virtual servers, and updated the network infrastruc-ture, operating system and software. Additions were also

made to improve visibility and support.A new VMware virtual server infrastructure gave high

availability with shared storage and scheduled backups. “Virtualization lets you run multiple virtual computers on a single physical machine, with multiple operating sys-tems and different software,” said Visness. Redundancy and failover capabilities give high availability, and users can move a virtual machine (VM) to a second server to al-low updates while running. Snapshots can be scheduled, for example, every 15 minutes for backup. In case of a fail-ure, you can switch to the backup and be back online in minutes.

“We needed process data and visualization to bring us into the current millennium, not reading gauges on the plant floor and entering data on clipboards.” Nikolas Paris, maintenance manager, Land O’Lakes on the company’s modernized control and information system.




Different virtual servers handle different functions. For example, FactoryTalk Directory, FactoryTalk View SE HMI, RSLinx Enterprise I/O server, FactoryTalk View client terminal server, FactoryTalk Historian SE, FactoryTalk Batch, FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI re-porting, domain controllers, engineering servers and backup servers each run on its own virtual server. “In this case, we have 14 virtual servers running on two physical machines,” Visness said.

In 2016, the plant made the move from Allen-Brad-ley PLC-5 controllers to Allen-Bradley ControlLogix control systems. RSView32 HMI was replaced by Fac-toryTalk View SE, with a complete code rewrite and ad-ditions to improve reporting and information visibility. The change to the ControlLogix control systems had to be done in less than 48 hours. “Cows keep giving milk,” said Visness. “A longer shutdown would require diverting milk to other plants. We held the shutdown to 32 hours.”

Keys to the rapid migration included: • Using conversion modules to convert 1771 I/O to

ControlLogix I/O modules on the 14 PLC-5 racks. “We can change out an entire rack with no rewiring. We started at 6 a.m. and completed the hardware conversion by noon.”

• Converting the PLC-5 code as-is, to verify operation on the new processor.

• Spot-checking the I/OThe next 24 hours was used to run the plant on water

to verify production operations. The plant was up and running again in 32 hours.

Commissioning new codeWriting and commissioning the new code took longer, and was done by unit operation: milk receiving, pas-teurization, ultrafiltration, evaporation, etc. The existing code was undocumented. Much of it was bad, obsolete and/or irrelevant to current equipment and operations, in short, “We had difficult-to-edit code for equipment that didn’t exist anymore,” Visness said.

The process for writing new code included extensive observation of operations and discussion with operators, Visness added. “We’d ask about some code and they’d

tell us that acid reclaim tank is now a caustic reclaim tank, and we reclaim acid in that old milk silo over there.”

Bringing in the operators early was crucial to the proj-ect’s success. Engaging the operators in writing the new code and training them on the new system ahead of time “pared down the punch list and streamlined the com-missioning process,” Paris said.

For each unit operation, all-new PLC/HMI code was written and installed alongside the existing code, but not activated immediately. At end of a daily production or clean-in-place (CIP) run, new code was activated and commissioned using toggle bytes to increment the acti-vation. “We activated new screens as we reached them,” Visness said.

A unit was upgraded every two to four weeks. “After the initial shutdown for hardware replacement, there were no further interruptions to production,” Visness said. “Operators had time to adjust to the new screens and other operational changes.” The hardware cutover was done at the end of March 2016, and the software mi-gration was completed in January 2017.

“This approach allowed us to upgrade and recommis-sion a system with nearly 1,000 I/O points and several different unit operations in a systematic way,” said Vis-ness. “We were able to do this with a smaller commis-sioning team. What might require 12 people was done with a team of four – two on day shift, two on night shift.”

Upgraded performanceAlong with solving problems posed by obsolescence, parts availability, and support, the upgrades have made a material improvement to operations by reducing down-time and making information visible. For example, CIP program documentation was not up to date, with many changes over the years, dead code and no reporting be-yond a circular chart at the end of the day. A new rec-ipe-based CIP system now uses downloadable sequence charts for control, with CIP steps easy to view and edit by the sanitation manager, and reports show real-time plus event-based data.

“Users can change steps and equipment, set start and end times, review all the CIP procedures and reports,”

http://ab.rockwellautomation.com/programmable-controllers/controllogix?utm_source=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017_ShowDaily_Day_1&utm_campaign=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017


http://ab.rockwellautomation.com/IO/Chassis-Based/1756-ControlLogix-IO?utm_source=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017_ShowDaily_Day_1&utm_campaign=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017


Paris said. They can see who ran it, and see temperature, flow and conductivity trends, time-stamped CIP steps, and summaries including exceptions, alarms, events and operator comments.

Future plans include taking advantage of increased visibility of production and energy information. For example, cheese powder dryers are major energy con-

sumers. “Operators now have access to data on uptime/downtime, pounds per hour vs. target, and moisture level throughout the day as they run the shift,” Paris said. ““Information on natural gas usage, water flow and us-age, efficiency and runtime are reported automatically at the end of each shift. We can correlate that, identify the causes of anomalies, and improve our performance.”

For all the advantages offered to manufacturers by The Connected Enterprise, none are more important than improved risk management and

business continuity. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies help executives

secure assets, business systems, and employees. When problems arise, preventive actions occur immediately and long-term solutions are implemented — quickly and cost-effectively.

Enhance SecurityIn our experience, executives considering the an im-plementation of The Connected Enterprise sometimes worry that it will increase their company’s risk of cyber-attack. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Why? Because at many manufacturers, legacy con-trols and sensors already deliver data to unprotected op-erations technologies (OT) — many of which don’t meet current Internet security protocols.

At best, these legacy systems often incorrectly capture and share data, leading to flawed operations informa-tion going to corporate offices, customers, stakeholders and regulators. At worst, these antiquated systems put

information technology (IT) security at risk, threaten-ing the very survival of the business.

Even more problematic, as the use of hand-held de-vices in plants increases, so does the number of entry points for hackers. These malefactors can endanger not just corporate and customer data, but production pro-cesses as well — with the ability to remotely alter prod-uct specifications, shut down production, or worse.

Fortunately, more and more leaders are recognizing the ability of The Connected Enterprise to enhance se-curity. A quarter of executives report that their compa-nies’ IoT technologies will improve the security of busi-ness systems and information, while another 69 percent see no adverse effects.

They know that applying standard Internet and Eth-ernet protocols like EtherNet/IP (CIP version) can help securely integrate operations data with the rest of the en-terprise.

A typical first step is to assess and document problems with current devices and the OT/IT network, and then leverage more advanced technologies (e.g., state-of-the-art controls, business analytics systems, cloud-comput-ing capabilities).

THE CONNECTED ENTERPRISE KEEPS EYE ON SAFETY, SECURITY

Beth Parkinson, Market Development Director, Connected Enterprise, Rockwell Automation

http://mpi-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IoT-Summary2016.pdf


In other words, risk to your enterprise is increasing. The smart move is to mitigate those risks and take ad-vantage of performance enhancements.

Help to Better Manage SafetyIoT technologies digitize the lean concept of jidoka — automation with a human touch — in ways that help to prevent improper operation and injury, while alerting management to problems and near-misses.

Self-aware equipment can monitor its own perfor-mance (e.g., vibrations, energy consumption, product variability, failure parameters) and signal maintenance staff before safety, compliance or asset problems arise.

In addition, with IoT-enabled networks, mobile-con-nected operators can take their human-machine inter-face (HMI) with them and make real-time adjustments to remote applications on equipment. Mobile terminals also are effective for machine setup and maintenance tasks, keeping employees a safe distance away from equipment.

These IoT safety investments are typically more than offset by operational cost decreases (e.g., lower insurance premiums, worker compensation costs, and mainte-nance costs) and longer equipment life within the plant.

Yet there may be even more benefit outside the plant, as embedded intelligence in products and packaging al-

lows customers to track delivery and then usage. These capabilities help minimize potential for counterfeit goods, improve customer safety, reduce recalls and war-ranty costs, and delight customers with added value.

Security and safety are the foundations upon which The Connected Enterprise is built. Isn’t it time you laid the IoT cornerstone?

WINEMAKER DIGITALIZES WITH THE CONNECTED ENTERPRISE Australian winemaker boosts inventory accuracy and reduces downtimeJim Montague

Know thyself is still critical—even in the digital age. Digitalization and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) allow faster, smarter decisions

and lots of other benefits. However, users must be cer-

tain of what they want to do, so they can prioritize which data to seek and what solutions to install from among the endless varieties available.

An Australian winemaker was reminded of this es-


“The challenge was to integrate the plant’s MES with ControlLogix to boost inventory accuracy and reduce downtime, and we were able to increase inventory accuracy to almost 100%.” Nukon’s Geoff Nunan on a successful control system modernization and MES implementation at an Australian winemaker.

sential truth when it recently added a fourth high-speed production line to its bottling and packaging facility. The company’s 10-year-old manufacturing execution system (MES) was becoming a challenge due to limited insight, control and collaboration, as well as no upgrade path, so it undertook an 18-month project to integrate ControlLogix controllers and updated MES solutions from Rockwell Automaton.

“The challenge was to integrate its MES with Control-Logix to boost inventory accuracy and reduce downtime, and we were able to increase inventory accuracy to almost 100%,” said Geoff Nunan, principal consultant for digital transformation at Nukon, a CSIA-certified system inte-grator in Melbourne, said during his presentation at Rock-well Automation TechED in Orlando, Fla.

“In this case, digital transformation was about improv-ing quality, inventory and downtime, which the com-pany needed because it has to deal with a lot of competi-tion on price.”

“Once you’ve gone digital, you can enable automated flows of data, and then route instructions to production lines for execution,” explained Nunan. “Once you’re au-tomated, you can separate what’s happening from what needs to be there. And, when you can visualize and get context for what’s happening on a line, then you can per-form remote services, and analyze big data for predictive maintenance and other purposes.”

Nunan reported that our Australian winemaker’s paper-to-digital journey and metamorphosis began with a model for digitalization that included the bulk liquids coming into the plant, tank levels, bottling equipment, in-line sys-tems, scheduling and data collection to make sure its out-put was accurate and within specifications. “With about 600 SKUs, these production lines have many short runs, and must balance a lot of inventory, such as what they’re making now versus what they’ll be making next week,” said Numan. “To automate these processes, the operators needed a live view of their inventory and products. Previ-ously, production schedule changes were updated in SAP

software, and instructions were given to the planners and then to the plant supervisors.”

To develop and design its new MES and Control-Logixsolution, Nunan added that the winemaker also assembled a team who aided its six staffers handling project management, solutions architecture, configu-ration and text, and training and support in Australia. This CPG MES application consists of Rockwell Auto-mation’s FactoryTalk ProductionCentre software with added CPG modules, which can perform flying change-overs that start working on subsequent changeovers be-fore prior ones are finished.

Khris Kammer, program manager at Rockwell Auto-mation, added that FactoryTalk Production Centre is a scalable MES solution that can serve at each of the controller/gateway, edge, production and performance levels of an automation architecture. This enables its scalable analytics capabilities for machines and devices, which increased production in Rockwell Software ap-plications by improving optimization, data orchestra-



http://rockwell.lookbookhq.com/ra-teched-2017-promo/scalable_mes_blog


After more than 20 years in the batch manage-ment industries, I’ve seen many companies at-tempt to force-fit fixed batch control systems

onto their batch processes. Guess what? It hardly ever works to the benefit of the batch.

Creating a batch to fit fixed technology is like build-ing a baseball team based on what size uniforms are left in the locker room from last season. It is stringent and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Imagine a whiskey producer, whose nuances of fla-vor and color represent its brand, try to perform with the manufacturing velocity required to meet customer-driven demand with purpose-built control sitting on dedicated equipment.

Imagine a cookie manufacturer limiting the possibil-ities for its recipes to accommodate the response time of a traditional batch server.

Most producers – and even consumers – slightly cringe at leaving what so deliciously tantalizes the taste buds up to technology decisions. Yet, this is what batch manufacturing has been dealing with for decades.

Until now…Modern batch management changes the philosophy

because it puts the batch first. It’s about understanding the need of the batch and applying the right technology rather than starting with a technology and trying to use it for all solutions.

For example, facilities that are constrained by rigid batch control systems can’t adapt to changing equip-ment conditions over time, nor can they take advantage of common workflows as they scale procedures from pi-lot areas to volume production.

Whereas, a scalable and distributed solution can in-tegrate the batch management system with local skids and controllers using a distributed ISA-88 model.

This integration results in a more responsive and highly reliable system that’s focused on improving op-erator effectiveness and higher throughput. The batch processing system can easily grow from single-unit in-stances into larger enterprise-wide deployments.

I’ve found craft brewers to be some of the most selective batchers on the planet. They often refuse to relinquish control over flavor or quality or recipe to accommodate technology. Modern batch management allows us all to harness our inner craft brewers and put the batch first!

Modern batch management incorporates: • A scalable batch processing system

WHAT MAKES FOR BETTER BATCH MANAGEMENT?Dan UpDyke, Batch Product Manager, Rockwell Automation

tion and presentation, machine performance and device health. He reported that FactoryTalk Analytics for Ma-chines and FactoryTalk Analytics for Devices will be re-leased in June.

“They monitor the health of Rockwell Automa-tion devices, improve mean time to repair (MTTR), and notify us about device anomalies,” said Kammer. “They also give us simple, immediate, corrective ac-tions we can take, and provide system-level health and

diagnostics to help solve hard-to-discover issues.” After its fourth production line went live with its new

MES and ControlLogix control systems in March 2016, Nunan added the winemaker began looking at cutting over its three existing lines to the new system. He re-ported that the team is able to cutover on a Saturday, and be ready for production on Sunday. “The steps after that will include further work on quality, and more operator engagement,” added Nunan.



• Intuitive experiences enabled for enterprise systems • Faster and more reliable control • Secured information enabled for enterprise systemsIt helps batch processors overcome some of the hur-

dles they face, such as rigid systems, purpose-built con-trol, information extraction, and the changing expec-tations of today’s workforce. This modern approach not only addresses challenges with technical capabilities, but does so while maintaining the security, integrity and reliability of the production system.

Indeed, organizations that embrace today’s rapidly ad-vancing technologies and modern batch management ap-proaches stand to uncover new competitive advantages.

For more information on modern batch, please read “A Modern Batch Solution: Rethink What You Should Expect from Your System.”

ROCKWELL AUTOMATION, MANPOWERGROUP TEAM TO UPSKILL VETERANSIndustry leaders launch partnership to upskill 1,000 military veterans annually for leading-edge digital manufacturing roles

America’s military veterans will play a pivotal role in powering the next generation of advanced digital manufacturing, providing much-needed

talent for rapidly transforming high-tech roles. A ground-breaking new partnership announced yesterday between industry leaders Rockwell Automation and Manpower-Group will upskill 1,000 veterans per year by 2018, invest-ing in the future workforce and creating a pool of certi-fied talent for in-demand advanced manufacturing roles across the United States.

The U.S. manufacturing sector is estimated to produce up to 3.5 million new jobs over the next decade. But with

close to 2.5 million manufacturing workers set to retire by 2025 and ongoing skill shortages, up to 2 million of those new jobs could go unfilled. The United States needs to rapidly upskill its manufacturing workforce and the thou-sands of veterans exiting the military every year represent a talented, skilled and underutilized source to fill these emerging roles.

“By bringing together the expertise and experience of the world’s largest company devoted exclusively to in-dustrial productivity with the world leader in innovative workforce solutions, we’ve been able to develop a truly groundbreaking program that will help solve a challenge

http://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/wp/proces-wp017_-en-p.pdf

http://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/wp/proces-wp017_-en-p.pdf

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/global/news/workforce-availability-article.page?&utm_source=Marketing&utm_medium=Public_Relations&utm_content=Show_Daily_Day_2&utm_campaign=EventsRSTechED_Global_XX_EN_2017


critical to fueling the future growth of the manufacturing sector,” said Blake Moret president and CEO of Rockwell Automation. “Military veterans possess a unique combi-nation of technical savvy and core work skills that makes them well-positioned for careers in today’s advanced man-ufacturing environments.”

“We are seeing the emergence of a Skills Revolution to-day—where helping people upskill and adapt to this fast-changing world of work will be the defining challenge of our time,” said Jonas Prising, chairman & CEO of Man-powerGroup. “This initiative is a great example of very intense workforce development. We’re using proven train-ing programs and adapting them for talented veterans who bring valuable skills and experience to the workplace. In return, we’re equipping them for sustainable careers in a fast-growing industry and increasing their earning poten-tial at the same time. It’s a winning formula.”

A recent global survey by ManpowerGroup found that most U.S. employers think automation will increase, not decrease, headcount in manufacturing, but at a higher skill level. This new and innovative technical retraining program will address this need, rapidly upskilling and placing veterans in high-demand roles in as little as four months. Through the program announced today, veter-ans will learn advanced manufacturing processes, ac-quiring skills that will significantly increase their earning potential, and set them up for sustainable jobs at the fore-front of advanced manufacturing.

The effort expands the long-standing Rockwell Au-tomation Engineer-in-Training (EIT) program, which

combines classroom learning with hands-on laboratory experience, producing hundreds of graduates annually. It is also part of ManpowerGroup’s MyPath program fo-cused on closing the skills gap by building the talent and skills that clients need while providing people with the guidance and access to jobs that enhance their em-ployability.

The program the deep domain knowledge of Rockwell Automation in advanced manufacturing, together with ManpowerGroup’s global insight into changing skills needs and workforce solutions to power the future of man-ufacturing in the United States.

FIRST SOLAR LOOKS TO CLOUD AS FUTURE DATA PLATFORMSolar cell maker gates data directly from control to cloudPaul Studebaker

The roomful of industrial automation profession-als appeared stunned to silence at the conclu-sion of a presentation by Allen Blackmore, ar-

chitect, enterprise data, First Solar, at the Rockwell Automation TechED conference this week in Orlando. It wasn’t because of what he said First Solar was in the

http://www.manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/5943478f-69d4-4512-83d8-36bfa6308f1b/MG_Skills_Revolution_FINAL.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=5943478f-69d4-4512-83d8-36bfa6308f1b

http://www.manpower.com/mypath


“It’s our future data platform.” First Solar’s Allen Blackmore predicts that enterprise, maintenance, supply chain and other systems will move to the cloud.

midst of doing, but how they are doing it. And it’s just a logical trajectory for information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) convergence—when viewed from above.

Blackmore defines IT as, “The use of computing in-frastructure and services to manage electronic data.” OT is, “The monitoring and control of physical de-vices/processes in an industrial setting.”

“I’m from IT, where we deal with servers, applica-tions and end users complaining about their applica-tions not being up,” Blackmore said. “You are in OT, where you have to keep the plant running to make products safely. The convergence of OT and IT is an opportunity to modernize.”

At First Solar, “A bar code is read every 15 seconds as a solar panel goes down the line,” Blackmore said. Some 15,000 transactions run every 10 to 30 seconds per manufacturing unit, with a total of 400,000 tags. Data is collected from PLCs via RSLinx and put it in a FactoryTalk Transaction Manager (FTTM) data-base. “A custom .NET process retrieves data from the FTTM database and places it into our production da-tabase,” Blackmore said. From there, it’s batch-loaded to an SQL reporting database and made available to global services. “Data goes through multiple handoffs before arriving at its final destination,” he said.

First Solar’s objectives are to simplify the data collec-tion process, and to increase scale and reduce costs us-ing secure cloud infrastructure.

To that end, the company is moving to a standard-ized Rockwell Automation control infrastructure with the FactoryTalk Cloud framework. The change is elim-inating back-up servers and is expected to cut IT costs by millions of dollars while improving insight to mini-mize downtime.

The cloud platform bypasses FTTM, ingesting data directly from robots, machines, PLCs and other con-nected devices. It can broker the data and deliver it to applications for analysis and storage, then make it avail-able to, for example, Azure IoT Event Hub, Kafka, and

relational database management and file systems. “The cloud platform may already be embedded in

your Rockwell Automation solutions,” Blackmore said.

The cloud decisionConnecting automation to the cloud raises concerns in the IT as well as OT worlds. “The cloud – is it just a buzzword? My first experience was not so good,” Black-more said. “It’s been better the second time around.”

The cloud enables a “pay-as-you-grow” model, elim-inating capital spend and depreciation expense. It simplifies infrastructure, eliminates manual server builds, takes over time-consuming backup tasks, and “allows your resources to focus on higher value under-takings,” Blackmore said, with less focus on custom-ization and more on configuration, less on upgrades/patches and more on execution.

The cloud can save users millions of dollars while en-abling powerful analytics. “ROI is coming from cloud-based services,” Blackmore said. “It’s pay as you go, not capital-based. And it simplifies infrastructure – from the perspective of an IT guy, getting an on-premises server takes a while, and more than a day is too long.”

At the same time, the cloud is “much more a la




carte. You may have to use five or six or seven different cloud services to get the equivalent of one on-premises package,” Blackmore said, “but my budget can’t handle 10,000 new servers to support analytics. The cloud can.

“You’ll see enterprise, maintenance, supply chain…everything in the cloud. It’s our future data platform.”

What about security?“Every device we collect from is an Internet of Things (IoT) device, whether it’s a machine on the floor, a customer, or a solar panel,” Blackmore said. “We want to push the data as fast as we can instead of schedul-ing batch loads, to get real-time visibility with real-time results.”

Cloud data is then streamed into its final destination, and inspected in-flight for deviations or exceptions. If cloud connectivity is interrupted, the sender buffers.

“The cloud takes security seriously. It uses encryp-tion, with a 40-plus character key, and Active Directory authentication as well as IP address filtering,” Black-more said. A secondary key can be rotated in if the pri-mary needs to be regenerated, data is encrypted at rest, and connectivity is initiated from on-premise. “Is that enough? You decide,” Blackmore said. “In the long run, each of us have a different risk profile.”

What about cost?There is, of course, a cost associated with scaling services. At First Solar, Cloud service costs about 20% more than its current blend of on-premise plus cloud services. Other levels of cloud service, such as Mi-crosoft Azure Data Lake Store, geo-redundant storage (GRS) hot, and GRS cold cost from 64% to 84% less than the current blend.

“Look at the value proposition of services that are not available on-premises, and ones that are,” Blackmore said. “Cloud is not always cheaper.”

At this point in time, First Solar has success-fully streamed more than 100 million messages in the past month to their IoT Hub using .NET code. “We’ve demonstrated clear performance improve-ments that come with cloud scaling,” Blackmore said. The company has partnered with Rockwell Automa-tion. They’ve held an on-site training session, and have maintained their cloud spend “well below budget by actively managing services.

“Our vision is one of simplicity. The FactoryTalk Cloud enables a converged landscape, promotes flex-ibility via extensibility, enables business logic closer to the manufacturing systems, and permits direct-to-cloud transfer.”

SCALABLE MES INCREASES SPEED TO SMART MANUFACTURINGFit-for-purpose functionality and thin-client interfaces accelerate implementation time for manufacturing companies.Greg Schmidt, Information Solutions Sales Executive, Heavy Industry and Automotive Segment Manager,

Rockwell Automation

It’s a common dilemma. Manufacturing execution systems (MES) can help companies better under-stand their operations and get more out of their work-

force, equipment and materials. However, traditional MES is often an all-in, enterprise-wide investment.

Manufacturers across industries and of all sizes grap-ple with tough challenges. They must balance produc-tion with cost and quality, manage a changing work-force, and learn to better access and put to use real-time data. All of this must be done while striving to reduce


downtime and improve throughput.More and more customers are eager to leverage MES

and link business systems like enterprise resource plan-ning (ERP) with real-time, operational, plant-control systems.

In doing so, they create an information-driven manu-facturing process that can help trigger actions or execute operations, activities, rules and more. And, now, there is more than one way to accomplish these goals.

Automotive manufacturer scales upOne such customer, Tata Motors, successfully upgraded an existing MES system in its Prune, India plant. Plant managers and engineers at the automotive manufactur-ing facility recognized that their six-year-old MES was beginning to show symptoms of aging. They were facing system-availability issues stemming from sporadic server failures. If those continued or became worse, it would prove difficult to meet the high-availability expectations of users.

Tata Motors also needed consistent quality. They needed an MES system with automated, real-time, in-formation-sharing capabilities through quality gates.

If a defect was detected, corrective actions needed to be taken quickly. They needed this to happen with auto-mated alerts and traceable communications.

By transitioning to the FactoryTalk ProductionCen-tre MES from Rockwell Automation, the team strength-ened operational consistencies and visibility for decision support within the plant. Plus, they could also help en-able smart manufacturing by integrating three plants and standardizing communications, applications, pro-cesses and technology.

Start small to address specific challengesScalable MES solutions are flexible enough to sustain projects large and small. Unlike Tata Motors, many manufacturers are new to MES and are starting small to address specific manufacturing challenges like qual-ity, machine performance or track/trace, and genealogy.

They’re implementing a scalable MES application at the machine or work area level, knowing that they can

add other applications to scale to an integrated MES as they realize ROI.

These manufacturers are reducing the IT infrastruc-ture cost typically associated with MES by implement-ing applications on thin clients. They add these appli-cations to the existing framework to help protect their current investments while realizing additional benefits.

At the same time, they’re also taking advantage of information provided by smart assets. By connecting through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), this in-formation is used to improve overall equipment opera-tion and product quality, analyze data and comply with regulatory requirements.

Implementing scalable solutionsBefore beginning to build an MES system one applica-tion at a time, an integration plan must be in place that ensures all the pieces eventually connect. The benefits increase exponentially once fit-for-purpose systems are talking to each other and utilizing data across systems.

For example, take a fit-for-purpose, quality-manage-ment application. Instead of modeling and applying a proof-of-concept solution thinly across an entire opera-tion, a modular, quality-management application can be rolled out at the machine level. This offers specific, qual-


ity data collection and eliminates paper-based reporting. The solution can alert a plant operator if a quality

check is needed via laptop, tablet or smartphone. If the check fails, a configurable, escalation workflow drives operations into additional quality sampling and correc-tive action plans, creating the potential to salvage prod-uct still on the line. This also gives plant and operations managers insight into the total number of completed, suspected and wasted batches.

It’s a full, quality-management solution that can more quickly address the specific quality concerns in an op-eration and deliver ROI. However, without considering how quality management will connect with other fo-cused applications in the future, integration challenges can pile up quickly. To ensure these scalable applica-tions can evolve into a fully functioning MES, manufac-turers need to plan: • Step One: In a standardization plan, it is key to select

products and vendors that comply with ISA 95. This allows manufacturers to pick functionality from dif-ferent vendors while ensuring the products work to-gether. Just realize that cross-vendor integration will

never be as smooth as single-vendor integration. • Step Two: Next is to consider system design. For ex-

ample, if a production-management application is added to a system that already has quality manage-ment, data can be pulled from several systems to improve operational procedures without the addi-tional cost of data collection. So, start with applica-tions that share similar context for the best insights.

Many smart manufacturers are looking to their part-ners like Rockwell Automation to help them leverage technologies, such as Software as a Service and indus-trial data centers. Emerging technologies like cloud, scalable analytics and IIOT can make it significantly easier to get started.

At Rockwell Automation, we’re actively engaged with companies who are pushing the bar and investing in manufacturing intelligence and MES to gain competi-tive advantages and enhance their operations.

While the task of connecting systems seems daunting, there is now a simple starting point with an application-based approach. Before jumping in, have a plan in place. Foresight will save headaches in the future.

PREDICTIVE SERVICES TURN BIG DATA INTO RELIABILITYAnalytics take the form of anomaly and failure agents to notify users of necessary actions.Paul Studebaker

Maintenance and reliability professionals are fa-miliar with the hierarchy of corrective (break-down), preventive (time- or use-based) and

predictive maintenance, and know the best way – really the only way -- to maintain high-value and critical equip-ment is to monitor its condition to predict incipient fail-ures, then take action so those failures never occur.

But not every plant can provide on-site expertise for predictive technologies, or has the ability to apply to-

day’s data analytics to maximize their potential. So Rockwell Automation has stepped up and made

available Remote Monitoring and Analytics Services, “a scalable solution that has predictive capabilities, to help plants prevent failures and keep equipment run-ning as long and continuously as possible,” said Phil Bush, product manager, remote monitoring and analyt-ical services, Rockwell Automation, to attendees of the session, “Predictive Maintenance: No Time for Down-


“We’re not just talking about Rockwell Automation assets, but about any kind of asset where we can capture data and build on it using our neural network, machine learning and predictive algorithms.” Rockwell Automation Phil Bush explained the company’s Remote Monitoring and Analytics Services.

time,” co-presented with Amanda Krasowski, product specialist, Rockwell Automation, this week at Rockwell Automation TechED in Orlando, Fla.

The service works by connecting asset data and in-formation in existing databases with analytics and en-gineering teams. “Seventy-four percent of the cost of downtime is associated with the time it takes to figure out what the issue is and how to fix it,” Bush said. “We bring that information into the process as early as pos-sible to minimize the cost and downtime.”

Remote Monitoring and Analytics Services are de-signed to help plants: • Maximize the usage of automation assets by limit-

ing downtime • Optimize asset performance within applications • Reduce breadth of knowledge required of on-site

maintenance • Shorten/eliminate time between issue identifica-

tion and resolution • Move from preventive maintenance to prescribed • Scale maintenance and performance activities as

technology changes.It works with any kind of connected asset. “It’s agnos-

tic,” Bush said. “We’re not just talking about Rockwell Automation assets, but about any kind of asset where we can capture data and build on it using our neural network, machine learning and predictive algorithms. It’s best to start with historical data to build the models. If it doesn’t exist, that’s fine, but it will take more time to develop predictive algorithms.”

Cloud connectivityBefore describing how the analytics work, Bush empha-sized that assets must be connected to the cloud to pro-vide data for remote analysis. That’s not an issue thanks to the company’s constantly more comprehensive con-nected services architecture. “The cloud-enabled ser-vice architecture facilitates data collection with gate-way hardware and FactoryTalk Cloud, and connects it to

technical expertise,” said Krasowski. “It connects critical assets as well as cloud-enabled devices such as Rockwell Automation intelligent motor control (IMC) drives and third-party devices.”

It uses EtherNet/IP to a gateway that has secure socket layer (SSL) encryption and initiates one-way communi-cation to the FactoryTalk Cloud via cellular or through a corporate firewall. “There’s no VPN to configure or maintain,” Krasowski said. From the cloud, data can be accessed for predictive analytics.

The FactoryTalk Cloud is powered by Microsoft Azure, Krasowski said. “Azure’s abilities and security are well known.”

Services explainedWith Remote Monitoring and Analytics Services, “We’re delivering three core components: data analytics, work-flow automation and technical support,” said Bush. Data analytics bring software technology and machine learn-ing technology that traditionally was only available on-


site into the cloud. “Workflow automation turns predictions into actions,

by cutting a work order directly to your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to perform the work we’ve determined is required,” Bush said.

For technical support, “We have engineers who under-stand the applications and the predictive learning envi-ronment,” Bush said. “They determine which approaches have the most value, and are on the system 24/7 support-ing you remotely. If you discover a new failure mode, they’ll work with you to understand and predict it.”

To determine eligible assets, “Focus first on high-value, high-cost-of-downtime and critical equipment. Over time, move lower down,” Bush said.

Candidate equipment must be connected and have an associated set of data, preferably with a history. “Sensor data such as temperatures, pressures, voltages, humidity, vibration, etc. are the essential building blocks,” he said. “We like at least six months of data, a year is better, but we can do it with less or none. We marry this data to the maintenance records to find cor-relations and build predictions. If we have root cause analysis, we can tell what actions to take based on the predicted failures.”

The approach delivers value much faster than most predictive initiatives, Bush said, “In weeks, not years.”

Analytics and agentsThe analytics focus on identifying data patterns and cre-

ating “agents” to recognize them in real time. “An agent is a little block of code that looks for a specific pattern in the data and recognizes it as an indication that some-thing needs attention,” Bush said.

For example, an agent could recognize that the pres-sure drop across a filter is increasing, and trigger a work order: “Sometime in the next four weeks, when the ma-chine is down, change the oil filter.”

To create an agent, “We look at all the data and de-termine what is normal and what is not,” Bush said. “An abnormal pattern that we can associate with a fail-ure is a failure agent.” An anomaly agent notifies on anything that’s abnormal.

“We deploy both failure and anomaly agents, so for example, on a machine that has 10 failure modes, we deploy 11 agents,” Bush said.

The failure agents recognize known failure patterns so plants can take action before failure occurs. An anomaly alert requests an inspection. “If the cause is normal, we retrain the anomaly agent. If it’s a new fail-ure mode, we recognize a new failure pattern and build a failure agent for it. Then we try to refine the analysis to predict it earlier and prevent the failure.

“If you have a fleet of assets of the same type, if you find a pattern and train an agent on one of them, you can then deploy the agent across the entire fleet.”

Bush added that Remote Monitoring and Analytics Services are currently in pilot, and will become a stan-dard offering in six months.

FACTORYTALK ANALYTICS MAKES MACHINE BUILDERS SMARTERFactoryTalk Analytics for Machines helps OEMs differentiate their systems and provide incremental value for end users.Jim Montague

You can’t be intelligent without useful informa-tion, but the trick is securing the knowledge that will make you and your applications effec-

tive and wise. This is why everyone’s talking about how users can employ asset management software, network connections, cloud computing and other digital tools to


improve utilization for equipment at users’ facilities.With all this recent focus on users, however, many

machine builders are left wondering how they can make their devices smarter and contribute to their clients’ value propositions.

“The relationship between OEMs and end users is evolving into a partnership for production,” said Todd Smith, product manager for FactoryTalk Analytics for Machines, who presented “Performance and analytics cloud for machine builders” this week at the Rockwell Automation TechED 2017 conference in Orlando, Fla. “Creating differentiation is getting more difficult, and limited resources are constraining the capabilities of OEMs to deliver incremental value.”

Smith reported that other obstacles for machine build-ers include: • Lack of access to their machines after deployment • Scarce performance data to compare with client’s

original expectations • No easy way to help users prevent problems • Only called in after problems become panicked fire

drills • Lack of expert personnel to send to client sites to fix

problems“Fortunately, new enabling technologies like Facto-

ryTalk Cloud are perfect for matching up and connect-ing users and builders,” added Smith. “We’ve already had FactoryTalk software and metrics within the four walls of plants for many years, but customers have be-come more dispersed and builders are limited in how much presence they can have at each client. Now, Fac-toryTalk Cloud, running on Microsoft Azure, can bring together the client, server, gateway and controller levels to let users do remote machine monitoring and analysis of multiple machines from anywhere, learn about ma-chine performance and utilization, and improve ma-chine efficiency and throughput.”

This is accomplished by RAPID Equipment Inter-face add-on instructions (AOI) for auto-discovery and data gathering. These instructions are combined with an application’s existing ControlLogix control system programming. Using PackML state definition models, AOI populates FactoryTalk Cloud with the data speci-fied and expected by each user. This information can

include counter results, indicators and whatever other values are required to calculate overall equipment ef-fectiveness (OEE) or other parameters for that particu-lar equipment or application.

At the server level, FactoryTalk Cloud contextual-izes the acquired data to help provide insights before relaying it to associated cloud-based FactoryTalk Ana-lytics for Machines software. This information is then distributed via mobile devices, tablet PCs and other computers, which can be located anywhere thanks to web-based access. FactoryTalk Analytics for Machines performs data modeling, data storage and aggregation, computation, elasticity, gateway configuration, user management and access to the Rockwell Automation knowledge base.

In an on-screen demonstration, Smith showed how FactoryTalk Analytics for Machines can geo-locate a user’s machines to measure and display: • OEE, availability, performance and quality • Top five event types • Variables like material consumed, power used and

products produced • Process variable trends, such as speed and temper-

ature, compared to state changes


Jeff Skiles, copilot of now legendary U.S Airways Flight 1549, began his keynote address to attend-ees of the Rockwell Automation TechED event

this week in Orlando by placing them squarely in the cockpit jump seat the morning of January 15, 2009.

“To your left is Sully,” Skiles said, referring to the flight’s pilot, Chesley Burnett Sullenberger III, who he had just met some three days earlier. “To your right, is me,” Skiles said.

A pilot and copilot who had just met one another hardly seems a recipe for effective teamwork and com-munication, Skiles confessed, adding that he had just completed training on the Airbus A320 airplane the previous week. “The crew had started together in Pitts-burgh, then a turn in Charlotte. We had one more turn in New York, and we were done,” Skiles said.

“And New York’s LaGuardia airport is where we picked you up—one of 150 passengers on our full flight back.”

Practiced exchangesThe skies were clearing, but it was turning colder, as Sully taxied the airplane out to the runway. “He set the parking brake, and said ‘your plane,’ at which point I took control of the aircraft.” It was one of a series of

practiced, nearly reflexive exchanges between Skiles and Sully that continued as the plane accelerated down the runway and took off. “Positive rate, 80 [knots), 120 [knots], gear up—we do these same statements every time we fly,” Skiles said. These practiced procedures are why even two pilots who haven’t worked together before can communicate effectively, he explained.

“At 3,000 feet, I remember something catching my at-tention off to the right. Then Sully said ‘birds’ and we were upon them.” As Canada geese pounded the airplane like hail, a bird went through the core of each of the twin engines, knocking them both out of commission. “You could feel the sag, the deceleration,” Skiles said.

After a moment of shock, the more seasoned Sully said “my plane,” and an admittedly relieved Skiles im-mediately knew that his job had changed from pilot to troubleshooter. “It was a practiced transition; I immedi-ately knew my job was to get those engines restarted.” He quickly found the appropriate procedure, but found it was three pages long—clearly written for a restart at 30,000 feet, not 3,000.

Meanwhile, air traffic control had redirected Sully for a return to LaGuardia, which lined the aircraft up with the Hudson River. Densely populated neighbor-

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM ‘MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON’Copilot Jeff Skiles believes training and procedures implemented as part of the airline industry’s maturing safety management systems played a major role that fateful day in January 2009.Keith Larson

• KPIs like average production rates, cycle times and cycle-time variance

• Counts for good and scrap parts • Mean time in state (MTIS) and mean time out of

state (MTOS)“FactoryTalk Analytics for Machines is all about

remote monitoring and analysis of machine perfor-

mance,” said Smith. “This means monitoring multiple machines from anywhere; learning about machine per-formance and utilization; and improving machine ef-ficiency and throughput. For the cost of a low, annual subscription, users don’t have to worry about mainte-nance, get support included, don’t have to buy any soft-ware, and have a fully scalable solution.”


hoods stood between them and a return to LaGuardia or diversion to Teterboro airport in New Jersey, and with the plane quickly losing altitude, Sully decided the river was their only option. Yet again, training kicked in: he grabbed the cabin phone and announced “brace for im-pact,” which in turn set the flight attendants on their own well-practiced course of action. “Brace, brace, head down, stay down,” they reiterated to the passen-gers. Only five and a half minutes had elapsed since take-off.

Five and a half minutesFortunately, the water was calm and there were no boats in the aircraft’s path. Nose up, it hit the water hard on the tail, settled, then water cascaded over the cockpit. ”That wasn’t so bad,” Skiles recalled thinking. But it was worse in back: the belly had been ripped out of the plane, and a structural member from below had pierced the calf of a flight attendant. The plane was quickly filling with icy water—but remarkably calm passengers filed out onto the wings where a flotilla of boats soon brought them to safety. “These were professional passengers,” Skiles said of the orderly evacuation. ”They all did their jobs. Some went straight back to airport, and caught the next flight to Charlotte.”

No one aboard Flight 1549 lost their lives that day. “But was it a miracle?” Skiles asked. “We weren’t alone that day. We were supported by all of the advances in airline safety management systems that had been made over the previous decade.”

He cited his own early days of piloting, when most safety efforts focused on the machines themselves—not on the people. “The airplanes became more reli-able, but pilot error as a cause of accidents remained.” Among the organizational obstacles to improving safety were a top-down, command-and-control culture that hearkened to the industry’s military roots. “It took a

number of years to change our engrained culture.”Training and standardized processes have contrib-

uted greatly to improved safety, but the airline industry has also cultivated a policy of sharing even non-conse-quential mistakes toward the greater goal of “combat-ting the adverse outcome,” Skiles said. “We self-report any mistake that we make, and if we do so we are assured immunity from retribution.” Flight deck observers reg-ularly ride along to observe adherence to processes and practices—and to document any mistakes that happen. The planes, too, can report mistakes through their own monitoring systems.

“We learn through our collective experiences. We identify the threats, define preventive procedures and implement training to prevent recurrence,” Skiles said. The last commercial aircraft fatality in the U.S. was more than 15 years ago, and Skiles gives much of the credit to progress made on the industry’s safety man-agement systems over past two decades. “It’s not impor-tant that mistakes are made, or that threats are iden-tified. What’s most important is how the organization responds.”

And on that cold January 15th in 2009, “Our train-ing, procedures and systems did not fail us,” Skiles said. “Communication did not break down.”

“Communication did not break down.” Jeff Skiles attributes a good deal of the credit for Flight 1549’s successful crash-landing to improvements in the airline industry’s safety management systems.


Old and new often mix like oil and water, but sometimes the right emulsifying influence can smooth their relationship and get them to

cooperate like whiskey and water.Speaking of which, legendary distiller Jack Daniel’s in

Lynchburg, Tenn., is well-known for its commitment to traditional manufacturing processes, which includes us-ing water from the same iron-free spring since its found-ing in 1866, making its own barrels and charcoal, and securing the highest-grade corn, rye and malted barley.

At the same time, many of these tried-and-true prac-tices are supported by more modern industrial controls, networks and other components on Jack Daniel’s six production lines for bottling, capping, labeling, packing and palletizing, which recently needed some revamping and reorganization to prevent downtime and other po-tential problems. Notably, powering off a main control panel had caused a multiple-line outage, which resulted in about 12 hours of downtime.

As a result, Jack Daniel’s enlisted Premier System In-tegrators, a CSIA-certified system integrator in Smyrna, Tenn., to conduct a network assessment, develop a se-cure solution and network documentation, and help pre-vent any future interruptions.

Scan and assess“We used SolarWinds’ Network Topology Mapper (NTM) to scan the network, and build the architecture where possible by leveraging Simple Network Manage-ment Protocol (SNMP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP),” explained Larry Grate, technology

director at Premier, who presented “CpWE helps Jack Daniel’s cut downtime, start The Connected Enterprise journey” this week at the Rockwell Automation TechED 2017 conference in Orlando, Fla.

“To get the most value, SNMP strings were recorded from all managed switches,” Grate continued. “When we scanned the production network and pulled wires, we found a lot of Ethernet that had just grown and

JACK DANIEL’S GETS ON THE CONNECTED ENTERPRISE WITH CPWE Legendary distiller upgrades its production network and reduces downtime with Converged Plantwide Ethernet strategy from Cisco and Rockwell Automation.Jim Montague




grown, but wasn’t well organized. We also researched peer-to-peer messaging to determine the risk of failure with the existing network topology.”

Premier also discovered that the network overseeing Jack Daniel’s six production lines had: • More than eight different manufacturers of man-

aged and unmanaged switches • Unmanaged switches that required physically walk-

ing down cabling or unplugging parts of the net-work and Internet protocol (IP) scanning using NTM or other tools

• Existing IP address schemes that wouldn’t scale well • Switches that weren’t consistently configured for

proper spanning-tree or Internet group manage-ment protocol (IGMP) management

• A majority of unmanaged switches • Multiple places where loss of power or maintenance

could cause cascading line outages“This existing network architecture made main-

tenance difficult,” added Grate. “Operators couldn’t power-off unscheduled equipment as it was in the criti-cal network path for running other equipment. Device failures caused multiple-line outages. Troubleshooting network issues was difficult due to a lack of consistency and switch-management functions.

“In addition, the network had been expanded with a convenient or lowest capital expenditure cost path, which increased operating costs. Existing network infra-structure wouldn’t support expansion or desired enter-prise connections. Programming changes on off-shifts weren’t always well-documented, causing production losses on later shifts. Finally, it was that one specific event causing more than 12 hours of downtime that was really the last straw.”

CPwE to the rescueTo revamp and reorganize Jack Daniel’s network, Premier recommended that the distillery adopt Converged Plant-wide Ethernet (CpWE) best practices. CpWE is a set of standards developed by Rockwell Automation and Cisco that network designers can use to securely connect opera-tions technology (OT) networks to information technol-ogy (IT) and enterprise networks, and help users advance their journeys to The Connected Enterprise.

To follow CpWE’s best practices in constructing its new network, Grate reported that Jack Daniel’s would need: • Scalable IP address scheme, separate VLAN for I/O,

HMI, and management traffic • Redundant communications such that no single

point of failure on the network should result in loss of communication to the pallet handling area

• A new fiber backbone • Fully managed switches employing Cisco IOS oper-

ating system • Time synchronization via NTP • Migration of PLC-5s for pallet handling to Control-

Logix control systems to allow use of device level ring (DLR) topology

• Switches capable of network address translation (NAT) to allow migration of individual lines with-out requiring site-wide IP readdressing

• FactoryTalk AssetCentre deployment for file, con-figuration management and disaster recovery

• FactoryTalk View SE with Stratix aspect-oriented programming (AOP) implementation

• Configured FactoryTalk View ME for line-level alarming and monitoring at each PanelView graphic terminal main control panel (MCP).

“We installed 20-port Stratix 5700 switches for each MCP that have 100-MB fiber uplinks to the core and 1-GB interfaces to access switches online,” said Grate. “We also designed for security with multiple VLANs, including separately defined CIP and management VLANs; separately defined I/O and HMI VLANs on each line; dynamic host control protocol (DHCP) via the HMI VLAN for local network access on each line; and administratively disabled unused ports.”

Grate added that Premier’s network was approved with several significant changes, including: • Use of Stratix 5400 at each MCP to allow for gigabit

access and uplink • The addition of Stratix wireless access points (WAP)

for use with Apple iPads as clients • Use of Rockwell Automation Intelligent Motor Con-

trol with its Connected Components Workbench software for VFD backup

• Additional drives that resulted in more required as-set licenses



FAT, deployment and benefits Grate added that Premier’s factory acceptance test (FAT) at Jack Daniel’s consisted of thoroughly testing all of the new networks to make sure they’d perform reliably now and in the future.

Grate added that Premier installed Jack Daniel’s new network during its usual weekend closures. “We installed the new core and virtual host server in a new, locked net-work room,” he added. “We upgraded pallet handling from PLC-5 to ControlLogix controllers, and installed the DLR with NAT to allow use of new IP addresses.

Premier upgraded additional lines the following week-end, and “then allowed operation for two weeks to gain confidence. In addition, we deployed FactoryTalk View SE for line monitoring and alarming, and used Stratix faceplates and situational awareness strategies. We also scheduled upgrades of the remaining lines on down weekends, and deployed FactoryTalk AssetCentre.”

As a result of all these network improvements, Grate reported that the distillery gained: • Line separation, so powering down one line does

not affect others • Documentation to understand how things are con-

nected for future upgrades • Standardized IP address assignments and network

infrastructure for when working with OEMs or cor-porate engineering

• Easier training, with only one switch to learn (in-stead of eight manufacturers as in the past)

• Better speed for troubleshooting, update rates of

data, as well as not getting knocked off line • No more random communication faults to I/O de-

vices, which had led to line downtime • Redundant structure preventing outages in the

event of hardware failure • FactoryTalk View SE and ME faceplates that im-

proved diagnostic speed to repair with faster loca-tion of failed devices

• Robustness of the network for additional functions, such as OEE, historical data and remote access

• Ability to easily troubleshoot from both local ports and the Electrical & Instrumentation office

• One location in FactoryTalk AssetCentre for all PLC, HMI, VFD and switch configuration files

“This really increased everyone’s peace of mind be-cause we’re no longer concerned if we have current VFD parameters or PLC programs,” added Grate. “Jack Daniel’s also has reporting to track changes to assets on the production floor.”

In the future, Premier and Jack Daniel’s plan to: • Deploy an industrial demilitarized zone (iDMZ)

between the core Stratix switches and the enterprise • Work with the distillery’s corporate IT group to al-

low secure remote access to the iDMZ • Configure jump servers in the iDMZ to control ac-

cess to the process network • Deploy engineering servers on the process network

for remote management • Deploy an automated OEE solution to improve

maintenance and operations

Plants often have much of the information they need to reduce unplanned downtime, avoid qual-ity problems and improve management of people,

inventories and assets. But the data is hidden in siloed

databases, uncollected from smart instruments, uncorre-lated and left invisible, so it isn’t used.

“Lower the cost of ownership and get better utilization by using the information we have from different sources,”

CONNECT DOTS AMONG DATA SOURCES TO IMPROVE OPERATIONS Paul Studebaker


said Matt Giordano, learning consultant, competency team, Rockwell Automation. “Bring data out and relate it to other data, from sources like overall equipment ef-fectiveness (OEE), process variables, asset management systems – find the right data to relate, make it visible and use it to make better decisions.”

Giordano showed attendees of his session, “Gain Mean-ingful Insights to Production by Associating Multiple Data Sources,” at the Rockwell Automation TechED con-ference this week in Orlando, Fla., the kinds of improve-ments that can be made, and where to find useful data.

“Look at things from the past and things happening now,” Giordano said. “Use them to predict the future.”

For example, data from the automation system, opera-tions and raw materials may be associated with a machine failure. “If I see trends, and then see those trends happen-ing again, I can take a more proactive approach and pre-vent downtime,” Giordano said.

Consider the needs of different roles and responsibili-ties. Management needs to know production status so they can make adjustments and manage it to maximize prof-its. Operations tracks operators, materials and equipment to better use, maintain and improve utilization of assets. Maintenance needs to have the right people, resources and procedures to minimize unplanned downtime.

Seek data in contextOpportunities can be found in preventive maintenance (PM), safety, batch and clean-in-place (CIP) operations, inventory management and asset management.

OEE = Availability x Performance x Quality (APQ). Most facilities track it. Use it to see where there are oppor-tunities to improve it by looking at other data. Put OEE together with data from the PM scorecard, data from the lines, machines and their components.

“OEE of 85% is world-class,” Giordano said. “If 8% of the remaining 15% is planned downtime, let’s go after the other 7%--the unplanned downtime.” ARC research

shows that there’s $20 billion worth of unscheduled down-time every year in food & beverage alone. A study in the automotive industry placed value of a minute of down-time at $22,000.

To improve safety, take a similar approach with safety KPIs, alarms and events, and incident and compliance re-port data. For batch and CIP, correlate operations, line and batch scorecards with unit batch and CIP process data. Find the reasons for the “golden batch,” safety, qual-ity, productivity and water usage variations in the data.

Make better inventory decisions by putting together the materials, equipment, workforce and location data. “As orders are made, monitor the variables and assets,” Gior-dano said. “See what’s going out of spec and catch it in time.” Better manage raw materials and material utiliza-tion; back flush the business systems in real time to make better decisions.

For asset management, find out who is making changes to programs and components, and when. “I worked with an automaker on a frame welding machine,” Giordano said. “The company discovered a defect and needed to know when it had started to occur—we were able to de-termine that only three days of production were affected. We traced the cause to a faulty sensor. The sensor wasn’t available, so the technician had jumpered it out for three days until he could put in a new one.”

“Look at things from the past and things happening now, and use them to predict the future.” Rockwell Automation’s Matt Giordano discussed how to unearth and leverage the wealth of useful plant data that often goes unused.



Mine the right dataFind the right data, no matter the source, and bring it to-gether to be predictive and handle problems before they occur.

Almost every device has a wealth of information—speeds, faults, counts, etc. “Most of the tags are already in the PLC but not collected,” Giordano said. Collect them and make them visible.

Intelligent drives offer data on faults, speeds, voltage, current and utilization. Controllers record machine state, part counts, energy usage and alarms. Historians show trends. “Create reports and displays that combine infor-mation,” Giordano said.

“I worked with a bottler that bought a new wrapping machine,” Giordano said. “We collected data and no-ticed it had many little blips of downtime. The opera-tor hadn’t even noticed. When production sped up, the

wrapper would not keep up because the heating element in the first section wasn’t strong enough – it would have to pause to get back up to temperature. We had it re-placed with a bigger element.”

Five steps to get startedFirst, “There’s no need to go it alone,” Giordano said. “There’s a lot of expertise at Rockwell Automation and in our partner network.”

Second, define a well-scoped pilot with clear objec-tives, on one machine, “something you can do with a few kinds of data,” Giordano said.

Third, define a clear, short-term scope. “Get an early win,” said Giordano.

Fourth, show success. More ideas will be generated.Finally, find the right implementation partners, and go

forward with new applications.

Manufacturers going through a digital transfor-mation are uncovering new insights into their operations. Plant assets are getting smarter and

automation systems are increasingly connected, thanks to new and expanding integrated control and informa-tion solutions.

So why are many manufacturers still guessing when it comes to asset status? Even with smart assets that can send information across the line, plant and enterprise, many manufacturers still rely on manually identifying and inventorying their automation assets.

Digitized production environments can contain hun-dreds or even thousands of assets. By manually manag-ing the status, health and lifecycle of each and every one in the system, maintenance engineers become stretched

too thin. So, their focus remains only on critical assets, like controllers.

That time constraint has resulted in maintenance man-aging assets in two ways: check assets on a set schedule, or scramble after an issue such as unexpected downtime.

Luckily, manual asset identification is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Comprehensive, automated asset-man-agement programs are designed to help manufacturers im-prove decision-making across the lifecycle of devices.

So why should you consider migrating to an integrated, software-based asset-management system?

Centralize asset managementDocumenting the status of a few assets in a spreadsheet is pretty much the opposite of what employees need.

SAY GOODBYE TO MANUAL ASSET MANAGEMENT Scott Oakley, product manager, Rockwell Automation

http://rockwell.lookbookhq.com/ra-teched-2017-promo/FTAD_Value

http://rockwell.lookbookhq.com/factorytalk-assetcentre-pr/factorytalk_assetcentre_webinar



Real-time information on all assets helps keep mainte-nance aware of how their system is performing.

New, software-based asset-management programs tightly integrated with your control infrastructure can streamline the identification process by using auto-dis-covery to secure, track and report asset information across the production system with limited employee oversight.

Even the most basic assets can connect and convey in-formation about the health of your equipment. It’s sim-ply a matter of tapping into these capabilities. An asset-inventory agent will scan a network to discover hardware, firmware and software information for assets active in the facility. These devices are then tracked in an active asset inventory, which can be scheduled to scan for new assets at regular intervals or on demand.

Streamline lifecycle managementDuring a firmware update, engineers need to know how many devices are running legacy firmware. This is par-ticularly important for devices nearing end-of-life status, as they will need to be replaced or updated in the near future.

Manually identifying and inventorying every device is a time-consuming headache for even the most experi-enced engineers. When updates need to be made, it be-comes a chore to identify and locate the aging devices. With hundreds to thousands of devices in a single op-eration, accurately determining the number of necessary updates can be nearly impossible.

Simplifying lifecycle management into a single, soft-ware-based tool improves how a project scope is de-veloped. An asset-inventory agent will automatically discover all the current firmware, IP addresses and addi-tional data to define the scope of the project.

Secure your operationAs the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) expands, se-curity is top of mind. Asset-management programs have often focused on administering users and passwords, helping to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

The addition of automated asset discovery adds another layer of security. Ongoing tracking of updates lets you know if a system has changed, singling out potential haz-

ards like a workstation running unauthorized software. Perhaps most important for manufacturers going

through the digital transformation is that asset discov-ery can help patch security vulnerabilities. Say a vendor sends a notification that there is a vulnerability in their firmware. In a manual world, that would require engi-neers to walk out and check each device to determine risk and threat exposure.

An automated asset-management program simplifies the process. As soon as a vendor notifies the plant of a vulnerability, engineers can run an on-demand search. The program will quickly identify affected devices and help engineers to put a plan in place to mitigate the risk.

In case of emergencyUnexpected events can wreak havoc on an automation sys-tem. In situations such as a power outage, machines can lose configuration files. This leaves engineers and plant supervisors scrambling to restore the machine and reduce downtime. Without a backup plan in place, it could take hours to track down the proper configuration file.

In addition to automated discovery, integrated software asset-management solutions offer traditional capabilities like a control-system backup for easy, more reliable ac-


Industrial computers are so fast, capable and flexible these days that they can run almost anywhere. How-ever, some users have discovered that the best way to

apply their data processing power is to send thin-client interfaces into the field, and do the number crunching back at the ranch.

Chris Alexander, P.E., process controls engineer at Givaudan Flavors Corp. in Cincinatti, Ohio, reported that his company’s U.S. facilities have long used many different control systems and software, but it’s acquired so many smaller plant in recent years that it now has an even bigger and more varied patchwork of process controls, au-tomation systems and software packages. He presented “Flavor-maker boosts consistency with modern produc-tion systems, thin-client HMIs” this week at the Rockwell Automation’s TechED 2017 conference in Orlando, Fla.

“At five of our flavor plants in North America, we had five different situations,” said Alexander. “Givaudan had no global automation group, so each region had been left to its own devices.” These five facilities included: • Newest plant in Devon, Ky., was just 10 years old,

but nothing had been updated since its initial com-missioning;

• Oldest plant in Carthage, Ohio, was celebrating 100 years, but needed new HMIs because it was using retired computers with Microsoft XP;

• Largest plant in East Hanover, N.J., was an alphabet soup of control systems from Rockwell Automation, ABB, GE and Emerson;

• Smallest plant purchased just a few years ago in Itasca, Ill., had controls that were more than 20 years old; and,

• Small plant in Lakeland, Fla., with up-to-date Del-taV controls from Emerson.

Uphill HMI upgradeAlexander reported that he and his colleagues at Givau-dan began their HMI upgrade journey in the liquids de-partment at the Carthage plant, but retiring its 13 com-puters running XP and upgrading their existing GE Cimplicity software to an operating system newer than XP was going to cost $80,000, plus another $80,000 for implementation and proprietary software.

“The IT department would maintain the computer in the HMI panel because they owned the material consumption and SAP software, but the HMIs were all

FLAVOR-MAKER SWEET ON THIN-CLIENT FLEXIBILITYGivaudan upgrades a former patchwork of HMIs with thin-client interfaces, giving it the freedom of quick reboots, simplified soft-ware maintenance, and shared displays for better collaboration and troubleshooting among managers, engineers and operatorsJim Montague

cess to the verified, control-system configuration files. In events that require disaster recovery, files are immediately available for engineers and plant managers to restore the operation.

Looking for more information about how to improve your operation? Remove the guesswork from asset man-agement and check out our webinar to learn more about how to effectively manage your automation investment.

http://www.givaudan.com



hosted on the same machine,” explained Alexander. “Operators complained that the HMI would take up to two days to get back up and running once IT received a ticket. IT would also provide a standard build, but then the local controls engineer have to go out to the floor, in-stall the GE software and licensing, and also had to fight network issues to get it to reconnect to the PLC.

“In addition, the Carthage plant was averaging about one failure per quarter, which translates to about a three-year lifespan for PCs and an average of 20-30 man-hours per year to replace them. Also, there would be software issue that would make the PC unavailable, and require IT to reboot or possibly troubleshoot application issues with new software revisions.”

Even though the plant was spending more than $23,000 per year on labor, hardware and software to keep its existing HMIs running, Alexander added the only cost initially considered was the $500 PC for new PCs. “It’s hard to put a price tag on operator frustration.”

Getting thinConsequently, Alexander added that he and personnel at the Carthage plant employed ThinManager’s ROI calcu-lator, and modified their upgrade plan to possibly use thin-client HMIs as a pilot project. Recently acquired by Rock-well Automation, ThinManager is defined as a “computer replacement and management tool” with ThinReady in-terfaces. At Givaudan, they run on Arista Microboxes in the field, which display but don’t run software, and can be rebooted and reconnected in a couple of minutes. They can also share operating display using a remote Shadow feature, which makes it far easier for engineers and man-agers to collaborate on troubleshooting tasks with their operators in different applications and facilities.

The Carthage plant replaced the 13 PCs in its liquids department with thin clients in 2013, while the East Hanover plant got thin clients as part of its DCS up-

grade in 2013-14. Thin clients were implemented at the Devon facility as part of its blender upgrade, which also included industrial PCs from Rockwell Automation. Fi-nally, the Itasca plant added thin clients in 2016 along with its PLC upgrade. Back at Carthage, the 13 HMIs running RSView 32 software were also replaced.

Alexander added that system integrator Interstates Con-trol Systems Inc. (www.interstates.com), Sioux Falls, S.D., has helped Givaudan with many of its thin-client projects.

Big access, flexibility, gains Since it started upgrading to ThinManager, Alexander reported that Givaudan has been making gains on all operational fronts.

“We’ve increased uptime compared to our previous PCs. In fact, we’ve only had one failed thin client out of 80 operating over the past four years,” said Alexander. “However, probably the biggest help has come from ThinManager’s remote Shadow feature that lets us see displays from anywhere in the world. For example, when a spray dryer goes down at 2 a.m., its operators can show on-screen exactly what they’re doing. This puts the engineers on the same page as the operators, lets the engineers remotely operate the HMI, and walk the operators through the solution. This makes many problems much easier to solve.”

“Probably the biggest help has come from ThinManager’s remote Shadow feature that lets us see displays from anywhere in the world.” Givaudan Flavors’ Chris Alexander appreciates ThinManager’s ability to help with remote troubleshooting.

http://thinmanager.com/

http://www.interstates.com


Other gains at Givaudan’s facilities include: • Built-in uptime and reboot reporting with Thin-

Manager; • Low power consumption of less than 40 watts per

thin-client unit, compared to the 130 watts typically used by a PC. This results in savings of about 788 kilo-watt hours annually, or about $100 per year per PC;

• Ability to view multiple HMIs, and then integrate CMS SAP software into one HMI station; and,

• Automatic reboot after any power failures or net-work losses.

“In addition, thin clients make it easier for us to add another HMI anywhere in the plant later, and see any-

thing from a single point,” said Alexander. “Our IT de-partment also accepts this technology, and prefers to maintain a virtual machine (VM) rather than a PC on the production plant floor. When the Wannacry ransom-ware cyberattack showed up recently, we were able to use thin-client capability to remotely check all the screens at our plants to make sure they we’re unaffected.”

Alexander added that Givaudan is already planning to host more than 30 thin clients in the second half of 2017 at one of its greenfield plants in India. “In 2018, we’re going to implement thin clients in China, and in 2020, more thin clients will go in, including extending them to smart phones and other mobile devices.”

There’s a distinct disparity between how data is be-ing used for production versus safety.

Production teams are diving head-first into the infor-mation age. They can scoop up data from almost any point in the production process, analyze it and trans-late it into actionable intelligence to make informed decisions.

Many safety teams, in comparison, are stuck in the dark ages. That’s because they still rely on antiquated data-collection and reporting techniques. Too often, they must manually enter safety data for audits, training, inspections, incident reports and other processes. And in most cases, the systems aren’t connected to produc-tion systems.

Fortunately, The Connected Enterprise provides an opportunity to close this disparity – and revolutionize industrial safety through the use of safety data.

Laying the groundworkIf you’re a safety professional, you may not be as familiar with the concept of The Connected Enterprise as your production counterparts.

In short, The Connected Enterprise creates the foun-dation for seamless connectivity, data collection and in-formation sharing. It converges IT and industrial net-works, which have long been separate, into a single and secure network architecture. It also uses key enabling technologies, including Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices, analytics software, and wireless and mo-bility technologies.

This approach is already helping many industrial com-panies gain deeper visibility into processes, uncover new ways to improve operational efficiencies, improve quality management and much more.

And it can work similar wonders for process and ma-chine safety.

OUT OF THE DARK AGES: HOW DATA CAN TRANSFORM INDUSTRIAL SAFETYGeorge Schuster, TÜV-certified functional safety expert (FSExp), certified functional safety engineer (CFSE),

Rockwell Automation


Putting safety data to workA smarter approach to safety begins with using contem-porary safety technologies that combine machinery con-trol and safety control into one platform. These systems are less susceptible to nuisance shutdowns than hard-wired safety systems, which can help you improve pro-ductivity and profitability.

But they also offer another key benefit: access to safety-system data. This data can include stoppage codes, er-ror and fault codes, device statuses, event sequences, and more. By harvesting this data and converting it into meaningful information, you can transform how safety is monitored and managed in your operations.

Some key ways your safety-system data can help you include:

Monitor safeguard use, and misuse: Safety-device data can be used to identify and mitigate instances of misuse.

E-stops, for example, are intended for emergencies only but are often used for other purposes, such as to clear jams. This misuse can increase both scrap and downtime. And the fact that these misuse instances can’t be captured in most plants today only perpetuates the problem.

In a Connected Enterprise, an e-stop activation’s time stamp, downtime duration, and line and shift details all can be recorded. Stoppage reason codes can also log and indicate why a machine was stopped. Safety profession-als can review this information and investigate the is-sue’s root cause, such as insufficient SOPs or improper machine design. Other safety devices yield equally rel-evant insight into system use and misuse.

Better understand safety risks: Risk-assessments find-ings are rarely reviewed after machine commissioning. In The Connected Enterprise however, risk-assessment data can be utilized in the form of a risk calculator.

The idea is simple: Safety professionals can enter an-ticipated use frequency of a particular safety function from the risk assessment. This data serves as the baseline for safety demand rates and performance. From there, they can compare the data against the machine’s actual use frequency data, indicating any variance from the de-sign expectations

The result is an unprecedented ability to measure

changes in demand and risk for each machine access point or safety function.

Enhance safety: Greater data and connectivity in The Connected Enterprise create many opportunities to enhance worker and environmental safety and improve productivity.

Remote monitoring of dispersed or hard-to-reach op-erations, for example, can reduce worker travel demands and exposure to hazards. Visibility into process states, environmental conditions and other factors can help prevent the release of hazardous materials into the en-vironment.

There also are opportunities to transform operations to make them inherently safer. In oil and gas operations, for example, Ethernet-connected subsea platforms re-duce the need for manned off-shore platforms, which can be vulnerable to potentially catastrophic events. And autonomous technologies can reduce the number of workers needed to transport mined materials from pit to port.

As impressive as all of this sounds, it’s only scratching the surface. For more information on safety in The Con-nected Enterprise, including guidance on how to imple-ment it, check out our white paper, “Reimagining Safety in The Connected Enterprise.”

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/global/capabilities/industrial-safety-solutions/overview.page?pagetitle=Safety-in-the-Age-of-IIoT&docid=3e8279925612d71e831fc5355efea1d8

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/global/capabilities/industrial-safety-solutions/overview.page?pagetitle=Safety-in-the-Age-of-IIoT&docid=3e8279925612d71e831fc5355efea1d8


SAVE THE DATE! Automation Fair returns to Houston in 2017

Join us November 13-14 for the Process Solutions Users Group and November 15-16 for Automation Fair. Both will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, Texas, USA

TechED 2018 to Be Held in San Diego Rockwell Automation TechED 2018 will be held June 10-15, 2018, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, Calif., USA

Documents

Inspire. Educate. Innovate. · First Solar looks to cloud as future data platform 15 Scalable MES increases speed to smart manufacturing 16 Predictive services turn big data into