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