Engineers, IT unite for success

If a company wants to succeed today it needs all departments to join forces to capitalize on all strengths and eliminate any weaknesses.
Just ask Rob Schlafer, director of engineering, PepsiAmericas. The second largest Pepsi bottler in the world, the company’s mission was to be the best suppler of fun food and products in the world.
“Convergence for us was supported by IT,” Schlafer said during the Manufacturing Perspectives event at Rockwell Automation’s Automation Fair in Nashville, Tenn. “Our organization is designed where there is a gatekeeper between our organization and IT.”
The company also wanted to achieve greater profitability and sustainability.
“If we can utilize our technology to become more predictable, it will continue to make us more profitable,” Schlafer said.
Jim Wetzel, director, control and information systems, General Mills, agreed. His company has been at the convergence thing since 1994, only they didn’t call it convergence. They just did it.
“We adopted IS standards in 1994 and in 1996 we formed a new department and integrated IT and engineering. In 2001, engineering had a seat at the IS table.”
That meant the company was on its way to standardizing across the board.
“At General Mills we believe in the power of one. When it gets to business processes we standardize as one. The business demanded it and the technology enabled it,” he said.
Open systems were also a major part of the equation.
“Common off the shelf products helped out,” Wetzel said. “That meant all people were using the same technology. Our challenge was to educate our IT friends what mission critical meant.”

Rockwell: Convergence is the word

The goal moving forward is to squeeze as much profit out of the plant floor as possible. To do that, it will mean change and that will necessitate converging plant floor technologies and know how with IT’s expertise.
“A tough environment like this is where leaders separate from the pack,” said Keith Nosbusch, chairman and chief executive of Rockwell Automation, during his keynote address Wednesday at Automation Fair.
Rockwell’s message during this year’s Fair is all about convergence. The company feels if the plant floor and the IT department unite into a team, there will be far greater overall advantages.
“We do have an opportunity during this downside to be leaders of the pack,” said Paul McNab, vice president of enterprise and mid-market solutions marketing at Cisco, during his portion of the keynote. “Information has changed from just data to data, voice and video. This is an opportunity to not only analyze the data, but to put it in context.”
McNab went on to say the PDA, his information vehicle of choice, can do just about anything he needs to get his job done. The technology loaded onto the PDA is able to put everything in context, he said.
That is change that manufacturing can adopt, he added.
“We are going through massive unprecedented change, with regulations, globalization and virtualization. The big issue ends up being what is the threat and what is the opportunity?
He went on to say, the combining of the plant floor and IT is going to happen whether people like it or not, so it might be wise to embrace it.
“It is your choice, you can be the disrupted or the disruptor.”

Connect-and-Pack standard strives for recognition, users, followers

“If you tell the customer that the packaging machine they’re buying is ISA88 compliant, they like that, they understand that, they respect that,” said Mike Lumping to a gathering of OMAC users at 2008 Pack Expo International Tuesday.
The problem is the users would have to be from the process side of the business.
ISA88 and its newly incorporated technology the Connect-and-Pack standard (including Pack and PackTags) does not resonate as well with the packaging crowd gathered for this event in Chicago.
The ISA88 standard provides a software model for effective operations and control at the process cell and master recipe level.
Lumping is technology leader at Proctor & Gamble. He has led the PackML group for several years.
PackML is an implementation that enables Connect-and-Pack.
Connect-and-Pack standards make packaging operations more effective by simplifying customization and integration, which enables world-class packaging operations.
When implemented, packaging companies and their partners gain a competitive advantage as they leverage an integrated supply chain to optimize operations.
The OMAC Packaging Workgroup (OPW) is here at Pack Expo to spread the word and gather a following.
They have demonstrations from six different companies that highlight the ease of integrating the various packaging line functions (control, HMI, MES) when utilizing the Connect-and-Pack standards.
The companies participating with the deomonstration units include B&R Automation, Elau, GE Fanuc, Rockwell Automation, Wago, and Wonderware.
Each HMI (human machine interface) and MES (manufacturing execution systems) function in the demonstrations can communicate with every controller in the demonstrations using the PackTags specification.
All of the PackTags communication takes place over Ethernet using OPC (OLE for process control). Some of the functions implemented in this integrated demonstration include controlling the machine states and modes, tracking production and reliability (including OEE), and alarm monitoring.
The just approved ISA88 Technical Report on Machine and Unit States documenting how PackML and PackTags follow the ISA88 standard is available on the ISA standards website (www.isa.org/standards).
OMAC is Organization for Machine Automation and Control and it supports the machine automation and operational needs of manufacturing.
-- Nicholas Sheble

Move sustainability to plant floor

“Efficiency and the greening of manufacturing go hand-in-hand because they’re both about avoiding waste, stopping waste,” said Trevor Cusworth, director, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Cusworth gave a keynote at 2008 Pack Expo International in Chicago. He titled his talk “Sustainability in manufacturing: From boardroom to the break room.”
Deloitte and PMMI (Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute) have put a study together addressing the pressing issues facing the packaging industry.
Cusworth said C-level executives are very much on board with the trend toward sustainability and most see it as an opportunity and financial must. “The disconnect right now is between management and the plant floor. We need to move the culture to the operations level and get those folks on board, too.”
Deloitte uses the UN/Brundtland definition of sustainability to its analysis of sustainable manufacturing.
“Sustainability, in a general sense, is the capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely. In recent years, the concept has come to apply specifically to living organisms and systems. As applied to the human community, sustainability has been expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
It can be an idea, a property of living systems, a manufacturing method, or a way of life.
“Sustainability is a financial incentive, too,” Cusworth added. “Though, most of the drive is of a non financial nature now, including a company’s reputation and customer demand, we expect the incentives to become more financial in the future.”
Sustainability rests on a three-legged stool. The three pillars of the concept are economic, environmental, and social values.
Manufacturers can take three approaches to sustainability. They are:
• Do nothing, whereby one misses out on about 40% of the market that wants green
• To perform incremental gains in the area, which is to say sustainability takes place on an ad hoc basis and where it’s convenient but it’s not a corporate strategy
• To adopt a “significant gains scenario,” which ties sustainability to corporate strategy and it’s looked at first and throughout the process of manufacturing and product lifecycle
“This third strategy is much like the one that many manufacturers have been using for years as regards to safety. It’s the first and a constant concern,” Cusworth said.
Fundamentally, the consumer will get what he or she wants so education is enormous part of the sustainability process.
-- Nicholas Sheble

Sustainability or packaging madness

“Food-and-pharma producers face a tug-of-war when it comes to packaging their products,” said Betsy Cohen, vice president of sustainability at Nestle, during this morning’s keynote address at PACK EXPO 2008 International at the McCormick Center in Chicago.
“The marketing people want an exciting package that will move the consumer. The food safety people don’t want to change anything about the package that already serves its purpose and is safe and tamper proof. The corporate people want to a good margin and sales,” Cohen said.
She discussed the challenges, conflicts, and competing values packaging professionals face everyday and will deal with ever more intently in the future.
Cohen points to the data showing we can’t package and operate using the same model we presently have. World population is growing too fast and will be nine billion people in fifty years.
“We’d need three planets to support our present marketing and packaging ways,” she said, “there’s not enough water.”
Cohen’s expertise is sustainability. That means green, recyclable, recycled, nano-technological, biodegradable, even edible packaging.
Frankly, the choice on packaging rests with the consumer so education on environmentalism is paramount. “In the end, if the product doesn’t sell, we’re not in a good place,” Cohen said.
Sustainability (greening of packaging), containers & materials, upgrading operations, and brand protection (counterfeiting) are the primary concerns of the industry and the technical tracks at this enormous (1.2 million square feet) technology and exposition for 2008 Pack Expo International.
Sustainability was also the topic of Sunday’s day-one keynote by Amy Zettlemoyer-Lazar, packaging director of Sam’s Club and co-manager of the Wal-Mart Sustainability Value Network.
Wal-Mart introduced “the sustainability scorecard” in 2006. It is part of the company’s program to:
1. Be supplied by 100% renewable energy
2. Produce zero waste
3. Offer sustainable products to its customers
The tool is how Wal-Mart and its vendors, suppliers, and partners intend to improve the environmental friendliness of product packaging.
Zettlemoyer-Lazar said while it is hard to ask suppliers to innovate in research and development in these tough economic times, the global economy would eventually turn around.
“These social and environmental challenges will be here for decades,” she said. “It’s a social, economic, and environmental imperative that we continue with our efforts on the ‘scorecard.’ ”
-- Nicholas Sheble

Wonderware: We need to empower front line workers

Everyone talks about empowering workers, and that is all fine and good, but do they really know how to allow for real time decision making?
“We are all part of a value chain,” said Sudipta Bhattacharya, president of Wonderware during this morning’s keynote address at WonderWorld Conference in Las Vegas. Talking about the financial value chain, Bhattacharya discussed the problems with the current banking crisis.
“There were people on the front line warning this was going to happen, but they were not empowered to do something about it.”
He then added this kind of thing should not happen in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
“United States manufacturing has done a tremendous job of competing globally. The challenge is still there. We need to do more as we are asked to do more.”
One of the ways Bhattacharya said manufacturers can remain out front is empower workers on the front line. “We need to bring intelligence closer to the execution level.”
Bringing decision making to the front line is one new approach, but Bhattacharya also said manufacturers have to rethink the ways they innovate.
“Most of the seeds of innovation will come from outside the company. We need to have a way to manage the flow of ideas. We need to realize the multiform decentralized interdependent collaboration community is the way of the future,” he said.
He talked about Wonderware’s ecosystem, which consists of partners, systems integrators, vendors, suppliers and customers. As an example he talked about the Microsoft platform. “They are well known, but what makes them successful is their ecosystem,” he said. They work with and learn from everyone.
Wonderware continues to learn from users as Frank Iger, MES group manager for Nestle talked about his company’s continuing MES applications.
“We needed to increase the visibility in our manufacturing environment,” he said. “We needed to get the right information to the right people at the right time.”
The technical objectives he looks for in a system are:
• Is it based on reusable code
• Flexible
• Repeatable
• Easy to sustain
• Scalable
• Modular
• Reliable
• Redundant
• Web client interoperable
When Nestle decides to install a MES system corporate wide, they are looking at 480 factories world wide so they want to standardized as many processes as possible to retain as much information as possible.
Danny Williams, of BP business information, has a similar problem because his company saw Baby Boomers beginning to walk out the door and take their knowledge with them. So, they need to capture as much information as possible. That is why he worked to install a mobile computing solution in three plants.
As they were about to install the system, he found the best way to have everyone work together and it all comes down to the front line.
“If you don’t have operators and users buying into the plan, it will fail,” he said. “It needs to be operator and user driven. They don’t like to be told what to do. Engineers can’t drive the plan.”
Another aspect to managing a project is to get leadership and a consistent message from management.
“These projects can’t move forward without the proper leadership,” Williams said. “Leadership needs to maintain the momentum and continue the support.”

A process can be simple

When it comes to the manufacturing environment, the process has to be efficient and effective. But that does not mean it has to be complex.
That is the message Wonderware pushed today at its WonderWorld Conference in Las Vegas.
“We have a tremendous amount of challenges going on right now; industry challenges, manufacturing challenges, organization challenges,” said Rashesh Mody, vice president of global product management at Wonderware during his keynote address this morning.
“We are being challenged to be more creative and innovative today and we can’t do that all alone,” said Mark Davidson, Wonderware vice president of global marketing. “We have to work together.”
Innovation is the key word and Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors talked during his keynote address this morning about how he was able to innovate and create an electric-powered sports car by using some simple level headed thinking.
“Fuel cells were hot in 2003 and everyone said we were in the hydrogen economy and we were all going to be driving fuel cell powered cars. But you had to think where the hydrogen came from. One important ingredient to make hydrogen is electricity.”
After analyzing the situation, Eberhard thought why not just go straight to the source and use electricity without creating a process on board the car to generate electricity.
He said with today’s solar energy technology, he can power his car and house and have some electricity left over. So why use a fuel cell to generate power, when you can do that at home to power your car and home.
His car, however, could not be just a typical looking “glorified golf cart.” It had to be cool looking. That is why he partnered with Lotus and created a sports car run on battery power.
That is where another innovation came in. That is the type of battery the car should use. Traditionally, electric cars used the acid based battery, but Eberhard wanted to use a lithium ion battery, the same product used in a laptop computer.
With that innovation, and quite of bit of trial and error, Tesla Motors is now out in front of all the major auto companies in producing and electric car.
Staying out in front of products is key in the industry today and Wonderware talked about its product roadmap for the next quarter and for the next two years.
“If you look at it, we have people, assets, processes and information,” Mody said. “We think those are four key things we need to address using software, hardware and innovation.”

Wireless will advance but never rule

There was a time when pneumatics technicians said, “I’ll never allow those 4-20 mA to run in this plant.”
There was a time when analog instrumentation people said, “We’ll never run that digital stuff on these wires.”
Now, and despite the promise from the ISA100 developers the new wireless standard will ensure that automation wireless signaling will be more reliable than hardwire digital transmission, the same refrain echoes.
There’s still distrust for the technology.
“We won’t be using wireless for critical control applications at our plant anytime soon,” said Jim Albert, a process engineer at Allston, Mass-based Genzyme Corp. “We’re just not comfortable with that.”
Albert had just received a wireless innovator’s award for his wireless application at the Emerson Global Users Exchange at National Harbor, Md. when he made this comment to the trade press.
His award was for the wireless monitoring of the temperature in vessels containing nitrogen. Genzyme is a biotechnology company that produces enzymes for treating rare diseases. Their customers and patients reside in 90 countries around the world.
Indeed, John Berra, chairman of Emerson Process Management, touted the coming of wireless during his keynote speech earlier this week. WirelessHART is probably the crown jewel of his legacy.
Berra predicts wireless will handle 20% of the measurements in plants and factories some day. “It’s a huge market,” he said.
In fact, there are analyst predictions that say the number is double that – 40%.
– Nicholas Sheble