Web User Interface and Content Marketplace for Process Industry

Web-based user interfaces for applications is becoming an expected part of the package these days. Even though the PR people who wrote the release for this announcement wrote as if this is revolutionary and new, everyone knows what a browser is and expects a Web interface.

That said, it is good the AspenTech has added Web-interface to its package. Significantly more interesting to me is the addition of a content marketplace. This is an idea that has sprouted over the past couple of years. I'd hope that AspenTech continues to develop this idea and find innovative ways to build on the foundation. Listed below are highlights of the company's product enhancements.

Aspen Technology Inc. kicked off its OPTIMIZE 2013 user conference with the launch of industry innovations for process manufacturing and significant enhancements to the company’s Engineering and Manufacturing and Supply Chain products. The V8.2 release of aspenONE software features:

aspenONE. A web-based user interface allows process industry professionals to work with aspenONE software anytime, anywhere. Enterprises can now empower the broadest range of users to tap AspenTech software--without specialized product training or desktop installation.

aspenONE Exchange. This process industry content marketplace provides a one-stop shop for engineers to source equipment data, third-party content, and AspenTech resources directly from Aspen Plus and Aspen HYSYS for faster, more accurate process design. Using aspenONE Exchange’s search capability, engineers now have one location to search to find the right information at the right time to build more detailed models earlier in the design process. By providing content in aspenONE Exchange, equipment manufacturers and third-party developers can directly reach the industry’s largest cross section of process engineers.

Aspen PIMS Platinum. Aspen PIMS Platinum software provides refinery planners with an intuitive, web-based interface that allows planners to evaluate multiple scenarios quickly. Version 8.2 of Aspen PIMS Platinum adds the ability to run planning cases and modify data directly in flowsheet views to easily identify market opportunities. Planners can now visualize constraints, evaluate economics, and see the immediate impact of adjustments to the plan to make more profitable decisions.

Advances in aspenONE Engineering software. The latest product enhancements include expanded solids modeling capabilities in Aspen Plus software for specialty chemicals and agro-chemicals industries; new “Plant View” functionality to allow engineers to select specific real-time information and visualize how those plant variables have performed over time for better decision support and troubleshooting; and enhancements to Aspen Economic Evaluation software that allow engineers to ensure designs comply with API RP 14C safety requirements for more accurate economic evaluation of oil and gas assets from conceptual design to detailed cost estimation.

Watch for the launch of The Manufacturing Connection coming soon. "Connecting things, data and people in a digital world promoting manufacturing excellence."

Google Glass In Your Future

Google GlassThe tech world is buzzing with speculation about Google Glass. Robert Scoble, who made a name for himself (and probably got a big head from it) by first popularizing Twitter years ago, proclaims he'll never take them off. OK, his wife says that there are times he'd better.

If you have been living a sheltered life for the past few months, Google Glass is another one of those famous Google beta projects. It has been released only to developers and a select few tech pundits. It connects to your (Android) smartphone and projects a screen that you can see by looking slightly up.

There are two interfaces. You can push on the side bar. You can say, "OK Glass" and then give it a command. Presently the best thing going for it is the ability to take pictures easily. We'll know more when developers start figuring out things to do with it.

Old idea

I wrote about this idea around the year 2000 when I saw a concept of a pair of glasses that could project screens for the user. I remember seeing a prototype where a maintenance technician could see the pdf of a drawing superimposed over the machine he was working on. Don't think I heard anything more about it. But the concept was fascinating.

Now I'm wondering how we could use those in manufacturing and production.

What would you tell a developer that you could use Google Glass for? Better yet, are any readers actually developers? I personally know several who are. What could you develop with a wearable, hands-free, Internet-connected device? Thoughts?

MESA White Paper On Semantic Models for Industrial Operations

A key purpose of an industry association is to educate the community about the different facets of its technology and best practices. MESA International (Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association) has an extensive white paper library available to members and offers a special case here.

MESA White Paper #42: The Role of Semantic Models in Smarter Industrial Operations has just been released.

The paper investiages the application of semantic model design and technology in industrial operations integration and the evolving role of Semantic Computing in operations management. Semantic (data) modeling as a core component of application architecture is compared to more familiar architectural integration patterns. As operations functions are described, the value of semantic models is illustrated through a series of examples that should be familiar to the reader.

Manufacturing best practices only match what is driven by competition; so to compete by differentiating its performance, each company must judiciously apply leading practices. Semantic Computing now has sufficient industrial application to be considered a leading practice. As such, various ways in which Semantic Computing supplements legacy technologies and possible longer term enhancements are suggested to facilitate operations safety and data integrity.

Three critical elements are often described in discussions around smarter plant solutions, of which semantic concepts are a key element. These three critical elements, the three "I"s as they are sometimes labeled, are "Instrumented," "Intelligent" and "Interconnected." These elements support the idea that much data are collected from the world around us and if we use the three "I"s to federate the data, operations intelligence is derived and with that we drive timely communication, response, and optimization around critical business tasks.

Important in this approach is the ability to interpret data for timely analysis and to derive understanding from a wide variety of sources in a wide range of formats and contexts. With Semantic Computing, the calculations and analysis are generalized to apply them to all instances of similar objects.

Data in the real world are subject to constant change. Therefore, structures need to be self-adapting and not rigidly predefined. This difference is referred to as the "Open World" versus the "Closed World." Semantic modeling and its technology identify changes in underlying data and the potential interactions of those changes.

However, for the most part, the role of semantics is to alert a human promptly and in the appropriate context so that responses to those changes can be identified and appropriately acted upon.

Implemented semantic models can federate data from any connected data store into an agile, adaptive, fit-for-purpose model that leverages and extends industry standards and ontologies. When semantic models are coupled with applications that perform analysis, logic, reports, views, etc., which are easily and consistently applied and adapted, manufacturers are truly evolving to an global environment in which business and operations personnel are directly in control of their data, business and operations rules, and business and operations processes.This evolution is refered to as the "evolving ubiquitous computing model," since computing power has become highly distributed and pervasive.

Industrial architectures must be designed to handle ever-changing, disparate data and implied, actual relationships between the data. Data sources include structured and unstructured data, sensor data (current value and historical), images, audio, and video. In addition, interactions of proposed data changes must be identified so that coordinated change is the rule and discovery is minimized. Not only does current data handling not fit well into standard relational persistence structures, but there is also the challenge to make sense of this data in context and adapt to additions, deletions, and changes with validation but without undue complexity.

This paper was produced as part of the MESA/ISA-95 Best Practices Working Group through an international peer review process involving 5 or more subject matter reviewers. This MESA White Paper is also be published in the methodology best practices collection, The MOM Chronicles: ISA-95 Best Practices Book 3.0 (Published by ISA, February 2013).

Authors:
Dave Noller, IBM
Tim Hanis, IBM
Michael Feldman, Savigent Software
Charlie Gifford, 21st Century Manufacturing Solutions LLC

Contributing Editors:
Jimmy Asher, Savigent Software
Bill Bosler, P.E., Texas Consultants, Inc.
Eyad A. Buhulaiga, Saudi Aramco

By the way, the "three I's" fits perfectly into the direction I'm going with The Manufacturing Connection. You can sign up for email notification when the site goes live (soon, if I get my act together).

HART Plant of the Year

I hope the people in my session at MARTS 2013 see this. Yes, using HART diagnostics does help maintenance and reliability people, as well as operations.

The HART Communication Foundation announced that the Monsanto chemical manufacturing plant located in Muscatine, Iowa, USA,  was selected as recipient of the 2012 HART Plant of the Year Award. The award showcases end users who have demonstrated ingenuity in the application of HART Communication for real-time operational improvements.

Monsanto engineers used the full capabilities of HART Communication to “get connected” and integrate the intelligent information from more than 600 HART-enabled devices into their control systems, CMMS (SAP) and daily work processes. Using the intelligent device information significantly reduced costs and improved plant operations as it enabled the transition from reactive to proactive and predictive maintenance.

“By implementing conditioned based monitoring techniques, we can effectively identify, diagnose, troubleshoot, and ultimately repair issues prior to their effects negatively impacting production,” says Joel Holmes, Monsanto Site Electrical Reliability Engineer. “We were able to identify the bad actors (devices) and save the operation between 800 thousand and $1.6 million dollars in cost avoidance per year through our reliability program efforts.”

According to Holmes, HART Communication helped them realize benefits and savings throughout plant operations:
 

• Embraced the asset optimization process in assigning criticality measures to over 14,000 pieces of equipment and instrumentation encompassing the plant.
• Incorporated an asset management system into their site reliability workflow practices, to leverage and share reliability results and document return on investment (ROI).
• Analyzed their data to quantify predictive versus reactive work by generating a “bad actor” list that shows how much “cost avoidance” the reliability program is providing.

“HART-enabled devices (measurement devices and smart valve positioners) are at the core of this achievement. I consider the asset management system to be a smart handheld on steroids!” says Holmes. “Now management is asking the reliability group to identify what we want to do next.”

Monsanto is expanding its use of HART Communication through the application of WirelessHART® technology. WirelessHART is currently installed at their waste treatment facility and was recently added to one of their Acetanilide herbicide manufacturing units with the addition of six level instruments for pump seal pots. Five additional WirelessHART gateways have been purchased for installation in the near future and will provide WirelessHART network coverage for the entire facility.

Monsanto Muscatine is home to eight operating units on 150-plus acres, employing 450+ personnel. The plant produces over 70% of North America’s Roundup Herbicide in addition to 100% of the company’s Acetanilide Select Chemistry products, including Harness Xtra, Degree Xtra, and Warrant.

The HART Plant of the Year award is given annually to recognize the people, companies and plant sites around the world using the advanced capabilities of HART Communication in real-time applications to improve operations, lower costs and increase availability. Previous recipients are Shell Scotford (Canada); MOL Danube Refinery (Hungary); Mitsubishi Chemical (Japan); Petropiar PVSDA (Venezuela); StatoilHydro (Norway); BP Canada Energy (Canada); Sasol Solvents (South Africa); BP Cooper River (USA) and Clariant (Germany); Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (USA); and Dupont (USA).

The HART Communication Foundation is an international, not-for-profit, membership organization supported by more than 280 companies worldwide. Founded in 1993, the Foundation is the technology owner, standards setting body and central authority on the HART Protocol and provides global support for application of the HART technology. The Foundation establishes and maintains the HART Communication standards including new developments and technology enhancements that benefit and support the needs of the industry. The HART Communication Protocol is the leading communication technology for intelligent process measurement and control field devices and systems with more than 40 million devices installed worldwide.

SAP Reaches for the Cloud

Sometimes we don't want companies to change. We're comfortable with our definition of the company, and it is difficult to see what a company is up to when they change.

I wrote last Thursday about SAP and some of its new initiatives. This week is its annual SAPphire conference. I'm not there. I could be in four places, but I wound up in Cleveland at another conference. But I still see the news.

SAP began moving to the cloud with its HANNA technology. News from its conference is that it is continuing its push to cloud-based services. This includes extended mobile application support.

Manufacturing companies are still working to realize all the benefits promised with an SAP implementation. Meanwhile, the company is moving to assure its platform stays up with the latest technologies.

It will be interesting to see how practitioners exploit these technologies in the coming months.