Industrial Transformation Blog

"THESE are the times that try men's souls." With all that's happening today in the world, from the coronavirus pandemic to the Saudi-Russian oil price war, to the continuing threat of cyber attacks, Thomas Paine's words seem appropriate. How should we, particularly those of us in industry, put this situation in perspective, and what should we be doing about it?

In my new ebook, “Asset Performance Management and Risk Management,” I argue the case for a more comprehensive approach to Asset Performance Management (APM) that goes beyond reliability. In particular, I stress that reliability is not just about maintaining mechanical and process integrity for the sake of plant performance, but is, in fact, integral to Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS), Operational Excellence (OE), overall risk management extending to sustainable and responsible operations. LNS research into what makes companies Industrial Transformation (IX) leaders, those companies that we call IX Exemplars, reveals four key characteristics

Every year LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of asset performance management (APM), our 2019 forecast focused on the impact of Digital Twins on a company’s strategy, go-to-market, business models, and on the direction of process automation.

Every year LNS Research puts forth predictions around the key trends in the Industrial Transformation (IX) topics where we focus our research. In the case of asset performance management (APM), our 2019 forecast focused on the impact of Digital Twins on a company’s strategy, go-to-market, business models, and on the direction of process automation.

This year’s AVEVA World 2019 North America users conference was held in Orlando with over 1100 customer and partner attendees from a diverse set of industries plus 300 from AVEVA. The conference was kicked off by Steen Lomholt-Thomsen, Chief Revenue Officer, who introduced Christine Harding, the new Head of the Americas. Lomholt-Thomsen’s opening keynote highlighted AVEVA’s renewed focus on their core industries – oil and gas, chemicals, F&B, Smart Cities – and customers are successfully expanding across the applications portfolio – starting with MES and moving to APM as highlighted on stage as well as with examples from AVEVA clients. Guest keynotes from Lisa Bodell, CEO of FutureThink who spoke about the workplace complexity that is killing organizations' ability to be agile, fast and innovative, and Keller Rinaudo, whose company Zipline uses autonomous drones to deliver medical supplies in war-torn 3rd world countries, also set an encouraging tone for the conference.

This year’s Bentley Systems “Year in Infrastructure“ users conference was held in Singapore with over 1,400 attendees from 45 countries, including Bentley staff and about 130 media and analysts from 25 countries. This year’s theme was Advancing BIM through Digital Twins. No matter where you went, the message was digital twins, twins, and more twins across the entire asset lifecycle and every industry segment from roads, bridges, and buildings to transportation, utilities, and the process industry. BIM stands for Building Information Modeling, but isn’t just for buildings, but for all physical structures and assets as they are planned, designed, constructed, operated and maintained. Digital twins are digital representations of physical assets and their engineering information that allow users to understand and model their performance in the real world over their lifecycle. In effect, Bentley says “evergreen” digital twins advance BIM and GIS through 4D.

Siemens announced on September 16, 2019 that they have agreed to acquire Process Systems Enterprise (PSE) according to Eckard Eberle, CEO of Business Unit Process Automation. Siemens plans to purchase 100 percent of the share capital of PSE and to integrate its business into the Business Unit Process Automation, which is part of Siemens Digital Industries. Siemens has now followed through on their June 2018 long-term collaboration agreement to bring the power of PSE’s gPROMS APM technology to Siemens automation and digitalization offerings for the process industries. Under the original agreement, the companies promised to bring to market a new set of solutions for long-term equipment and health monitoring, soft-sensing, prediction of future process performance, real-time optimization, and operator training incorporating high-fidelity models. The agreement aimed to extend Siemens’ capabilities in the process industries and would result in the close linkage of Comos, Simatic PCS 7 and Simit with PSE’s gPROMS.

In mid-September 2019, GE Digital (GED) held its reconstituted User Conference in Austin, Texas. Unlike past Minds & Machines mega-events, this event was smaller and more focused, with approximately 300+ attendees, of which 100 were GED, and the balance being 150+ customers and 45 channel partners from a variety of industries and global locations. GE Digital’s new CEO, Patrick Byrne, keynoted with a renewed commitment to serving customers with deep domain knowledge, long-time asset and process operating experience, digital solutions and services, and the ability to support customers globally. This message seemed well-received as many customers had previously voiced concerns about GE’s viability and continuity in the market.

The relationship between asset performance and operational performance are well known and pervasive. All too often, however, companies manage them in sub-optimized in silos. Recent discussions with clients clearly reinforced our insight that operating in silos is counter-productive to industrial transformation (IX). It doesn't matter if the company is an asset-intensive business and the most critical metrics are uptime and reliability, or a product-centric manufacturer where quality and efficiency are most critical. If the organization doesn't manage these things holistically, it will lose ground to competitors.

In a previous article, Three Reasons Why Digital Transformations is So Hard, I did a deep dive into what transformation means compared to just evolutionary change. Two of the three reasons explored in that post deal with the idea that businesses have rarely approached a level of change that qualifies as transformative. The focus needs to be on the business processes and not the digital technology underlying its processes. Industrial Transformation (IX) is the path businesses need to pursue, emphasizing the results, not the technology used to drive those results. But looking back historically this raises the question “is business transformation the same as IX?”