For years, digital transformation has been considered a new frontier for manufacturing and industrial operations. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the series of subsequent supply chain struggles, it’s becoming apparent that digital transformation is no longer the next frontier; it’s the next normal. However, it is also a journey rather than a destination. As with any journey, you need to know where you are departing from, not simply where you intend to go.

The 2021 State of Manufacturing report by Fictiv identified that the pandemic has accelerated interest and investment in digital transformation. 91 per cent of manufacturing business leaders increased their investments into digital transformation in the past year, with 77 per cent reporting to have done so substantially. Beyond the 91 per cent that have already ramped up investment, an additional four per cent agreed that digital transformation is essential to future success.

There are many possible reasons for why the extra four per cent have not increased their investments. One of the most common reasons that we encounter is uncertainty:  where to invest, what the benefit could be or whether the implementation will align with longer-term objectives. In many cases, it’s a reflection of business leaders not knowing their level of digital maturity or where they are in the digital transformation cycle.

Assessing your level of digital maturity and readiness is an essential step prior to undertaking any digitalisation project. Although they sound similar, digital maturity and digital readiness are distinct; the former focusses on technological deployments, whereas the latter encompasses a review of enterprise-wide processes, skills and staff.

Most manufacturers tend to focus on digital maturity as the sole measurement. This impedes the effectiveness of digital transformation initiatives. However, it is still an important metric to track.

Many manufacturers that Novotek encounters are around level two in the digital maturity index but set their project objectives on leaping to levels four and beyond. This leads to expensive, ineffectual system deployments that could be avoided with an accurate view of digital maturity and proper consultation. It is important that business leaders think of the index as an elevator; they must ascend one level at a time.

Digital readiness

Transformation does not happen in isolation. Assessing digital readiness involves looking at each aspect of a business to determine whether the foundations are in place for the next level of digital investment to be successful.

There are five assessment areas for digital readiness:

Whether assessing digital readiness or maturity, the most important factor is the honesty of the organisation. Assessments should be conducted on as much tangible, observable evidence and data as possible to produce an accurate reflection of its current state. In many cases, involving a specialist as a neutral third party is advantageous at this stage because it limits biases or accidental omissions and oversights.

Digital transformation appears to be an essential aspect of the next normal for manufacturers. Business leaders must be able to embrace it effectively to recover from and adapt to a post-COVID world.

In the past 12 months, the food industry has been forced to re-evaluate and re-assess its operational priorities. For years, many manufacturers focussed on flexible production to enable diverse product lines and mass customisation, in line with shifting consumer demands. In 2020, this was forced to change, and production efficiency and operational adaptability became the focus. Once more, automation and digital technologies came to the forefront of food manufacturing priorities.

Digitalisation is a word that has been banded around a lot in industrial markets for the past few years, serving as a catch-all phrase encompassing everything that generates, records and communicates data. Unfortunately, as with most amorphous phrases, this leads to confusion among managers about how to introduce these technologies, which causes costly errors in implementation, such as overlapping data collection systems or introduction of technologies that do not serve a strategic purpose.

For food manufacturers at the beginning of their digitalisation journey, the first step is to define an agreed and important goal, which the company can reverse engineer a solution from. Whether looking to deliver on a continuous improvement object that has been identified as part of a formal process, or just illustrating the value of an engineering team unleashed with time to think, it’s key to let the desired improvement dictate what kind of digitalisation will be needed.

For example, if material costs are too high and the agreed goal is to reduce them, a digitalisation project should establish systems that identify the factors influencing this. Understanding the root causes for yield problems could require a combination of machine data, ambient condition data, quality or lab data and information about material quality provided by suppliers. Thinking through where data is readily available, versus where it’s trapped in paper, spreadsheets or isolated automation, will ensure the plan can deliver on the purpose.

Planning at the outset of investing in digitalisation, but some food manufacturers may will have undoubtedly already rushed into digitalisation in years past. For businesses with some digital or automation technologies in place, one of the most valuable things to do is review the lay of the existing digital landscape. The easiest approach to doing this is to apply the ‘three Rs’ to your existing data: reduce systems overlap, reuse data and recycle data.

Reducing data collection system overlap not only makes it easier for managers to identify the source of a specific data set, it also streamlines costs. Why have a downtime system collecting machine event data, a yield analysis system collecting overlapping data and a work in progress tracking system that is separate to both of those? Having three systems collecting fundamentally the same data means duplicated configuration and deployment costs, as well as possible conflict over which one holds the ‘truth’.

An effective data and digitalisation strategy should also aim to use collected data in various calculations to produce several insights. For example, the downtime event data collected for OEE calculations may be part of what’s needed to solve a quality problem. The energy and water data collected for sustainability reporting may hold the key to real savings opportunities. Wherever there is a connection to a data source, managers should think of ways to make sure that a data point only needs to be collected once in order to be used many times.

Finally, offline analysis tools and some of the new analytics packages on the market could mean that old data offers recurring value as a firm chases finer and finer points of improvement. So, it’s important to set up a data management approach and data management platforms that can give you the option of making repeated use of data.

Digitalisation projects can lead to more innovative and effective ways of working for food manufacturers, but they rely on careful planning and strategic implementation. By giving full consideration to the goals to be reached or how data is used within a site, food businesses can ensure their systems are always effectively aligned with their goals.

An annual report by Kaspersky Lab, The State of Industrial Cybersecurity 2018, revealed several interesting facts about how industrial cybersecurity is perceived by businesses and applied to Industrial Control Systems (ICS). The survey of 230 worldwide professionals reveals disconnections between what is feared by businesses, and what’s happening in reality.

For instance, 66 per cent of the surveyed businesses were most concerned about advanced persistent threats (APT), like data leaks and spying (59 per cent), because of their perceived potential impact. In reality, APT’s make up 16 per cent of cybersecurity incidents. Actually, conventional malware and virus outbreaks are becoming the greater problem. These attacks are not overly sophisticated and made up 64 per cent of cybersecurity incidents, last year.

Aside from misconceptions about the external threat landscape, disparities also exist within organisations. In relation to Kaspersky Lab’s survey, technology website tripwire.com cited a report by the SANS Institute. SANS found that, among nearly three-quarters of firms that were confident in their ability to secure their industrial internet of things (IIoT), there were more likely to be different internal perceptions about the effectiveness of their security measures. While leaders and department managers were more likely to have a “rosy outlook” of their security, operational technology departments had a more pessimistic view.

Such misconceptions would be even more of a concern within critical national infrastructures. Cyberattacks against water, energy or chemical supplies can have very real consequences for countries and their populations.

Upgrading control systems

From a hardware and systems perspective, more than half — 54 per cent — of the surveyed businesses identified integrating ICS with IT systems and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems as among the most pronounced challenges. This last statistic places a wider challenge faced by plant managers into a whole new context: specifically, how best to achieve space and cost savings by reducing the size and complexity of plant equipment.

Plant managers are turning to new systems to achieve greater levels of flexibility and profitability in their production. This coincides with older programmable automation controller (PAC) systems, like trusted Series 90-30 controllers, reaching the end of their operational lifespans. In many cases, these 90-30 systems have been relied upon as integral to plant operations for upwards of 25 years.

How can plant managers effectively upgrade their systems, while ensuring that cybersecurity measures keep up with the rate of technology adoption — and the external threat landscape? Fortunately, answers lie in smart hardware and its role in helping manufacturers enhance process flexibility and performance.

Centralised security

One solution lies in better control. The RSTi-EP CPE100 is a compact controller for PAC systems — specifically, to control the RX3i CPU from Emerson which has emerged as a popular and effective upgrade for 90-30 systems. In a nutshell, the RSTi-EP CPE100 leverages the power and flexibility of PAC systems in smaller applications.

The RSTi-EP CPE100, entire PAC systems can be programmed in stand-alone applications, or the system can be used as an auxiliary controller in larger process applications that use the RX3i. Not only does the system leverage the power and flexibility of PAC systems in smaller applications, there are also benefits in terms or cybersecurity — indeed, the RSTi CPE100 is secure by design.

With the system, companies can apply optimised security right from the very start. RSTi CPE100 incorporates technologies like Trusted Platform Modules and secure, trusted, and measured boot. It allows centralised configurations, so that encrypted firmware updates can be executed from a secure central location. Specifically, a suite of cybersecurity technologies can help prevent unauthorized updates. Meanwhile, built-in security protocols can protect against man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) — where the attacker secretly inters with communications between two parties — and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Speaking of the “man-in-the-middle”, another key takeaway from Kaspersky Lab’s report is that, going forward, industrial companies must also pay more attention to employees’ understanding and awareness of cyber threats. Because the RSTi-EP CPE100 can streamline application development and integration, a further benefit of the system is that it simplifies training for operators and maintenance workers.

While cyberattacks on ICS computers are misunderstood by many within industry, it’s necessary to overcome these misconceptions while keeping up with the best cybersecurity measures. Novotek recommends that managers should pay attention to system security from the very beginning of their integration. The more critical the application, the more important it is that ideas surrounding cyberattacks accurately pre-empt the realities.

Digital transformation has become a goal for many businesses in the industrial sector, as automation technologies develop and the fields of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) converge. However, digital transformation is also an ambiguous concept to strive towards without a clear strategy. Here, we speak with Richard Kenedi, senior vice president of manufacturing at industrial software provider GE Digital, and George Walker, managing director of industrial automation expert Novotek UK, about the ideal path to industrial digital transformation.

GE was one of the first to make serious investments in digital technology and was arguably the first digital industrial provider. What are the key lessons learned from the GE that you would share with other industrial companies?

Richard Kenedi (RK): “The first is focus. You have to know your customers and how you can best help them. It’s not about the technology, it’s about solving the problem. I think secondly, it’s about attitude. We’ve learned that customers aren’t looking for a hero to save them, they want a guide to help them solve a problem today and see around the corners for tomorrow.

“Thirdly, it’s critical to have deep domain expertise when it comes to the people, processes and technologies of each industry we serve.

“In every industry, there are organisations that are implementing at the edge of technology and others that are slower in adoption. Each organisation is at its own individual point of digital transformation maturity. Issues range from culture to investment to workforce. Digital transformation is critical but planning and implementation can’t slow ongoing production. Each company needs guidance to approach digital transformation in a way that meets their holistic situation and requirements.”

For Novotek, as a GE partner in the UK and Northern Europe, you’ve been helping businesses digitalise and increase automation in their operations for some time. What are some of the common challenges when starting that process?

George Walker (GW): “As with any early stage technology, a lot of people initially struggle to separate the hype from the practical reality. Digital transformation, Industry 4.0 and digitalisation have becoming industry buzzwords in the past few years, with a lot of companies promising the Earth if a company installs its latest widget. Often we find companies want to digitally transform, but don’t have a clear picture of why or what they’re looking to achieve.

“The reality is all these concepts are a means to an end — they shouldn’t be the goal in themselves. The end goal might be improved productivity, higher throughput, reduced downtime or lower operating expenditure. Digital transformation is the vehicle that gets industrial businesses to that destination, and the systems that are required as part of that depend on the company’s specific outcomes, focusses and current operations.”

Often, IT providers claim their offerings can digitalise the manufacturing space. What is the difference between an IT and OT setting and why do you see a need for purpose-made software in the manufacturing space?

RK: “IT and OT have come a long way in convergence. In many cases, we’ve evolved from the boundaries and barriers of the past to greater collaboration. IT has gained respect for the real-time needs and process domain expertise of OT. OT has gained an appreciation for IT’s capabilities such as security and mobility. The people and the systems have to work together.

“Purpose-made software has been important for decades. Build-your-own solution is costly, and now more than ever, with our aging workforce retiring, the knowledgebase that continued to drive and support do-it-yourself solutions is becoming unavailable. Most organisations understand the risk that they’re taking on by considering do-it-yourself today. 

“In contrast, purpose-made, out-of-the-box software provides a long-term solution with on-going innovation, maintenance, and support. Companies benefit from focussed development and best practices. For example, these out-of-the-box solutions help industrial companies support the reality of an operator’s job on the ground all the way to the plant manager, and even for global operations directors. You need to understand the failure modes and the success modes for their processes, and you need to understand how that translates into different KPIs across the organisation – for example, how OEE impacts revenue, or even new technologies.”

GW: “From our side, the biggest disadvantage of IT providers trying to fit corporate software into industrial settings is that although IT and OT are closely interlinked and complementary, they are still fundamentally different. These clear distinctions, between the environments in which they are used, mean that companies with comprehensive experience of serving industrial markets will always be better equipped to meet the needs of manufacturing software.

“GE, for example, is uniquely positioned due to its extensive history in the industrial space, as well as in digital technologies and software. Similarly, Novotek has worked closely with industry for many years and have developed modules and systems in response to industry issues and opportunities. This means we can both ensure that our software is built around the needs, wants and requirements of industrial environments, rather than being retroactively reshaped to meet a market brief.”

How does GE see itself differentiating itself from its competitors?

RK: “We are more focused on our target markets and industries, because these are the places where we believe we can best help our customers win. In those areas, it’s really about simplicity, speed and scale. Simplicity – because we’re investing across all our product lines to make it easier than ever for customers to adopt and adapt our technologies for their needs. That goes for user experience in the field, through to no-code rapid application development visualisation tools like Proficy Operations Hub.

“Speed – because really customers want return on investment as quickly as possible, and they want responsiveness if they have a problem, and scale – because with our technologies, teams and our partners we are able to bring solutions to customers not only for one line or factory but for an entire enterprise globally. When we bring simplicity, speed and scale together for customers, that’s when you see truly transformative results.”

What are the ideal first steps an industrial business can take towards digitally transforming their operations?

GW: “The first step should always be to plan and identify what you want to achieve. For example, if your focus is on innovating to develop better products and find new ways of operating, this might lead you towards systems such as a modern manufacturing execution system (MES). The MES, alongside SCADA systems on the plant floor, allows for automated feeds of data through each level of an industrial business and insight into all processes.

“Likewise, a business who wants to reduce the frequency of maintenance or downtime might opt for  a Historian software that simplifies the collection, aggregation and analysis of data from equipment and operations. A specialist can advise the best systems to ensure the right results, if the business knows what its objectives are.

“This isn’t a decision to be made by one group within a company either. It’s important everyone, from the maintenance engineers to C-suite personnel, are involved in determining what the focus is to ensure buy in at every level. That way, you increase the likelihood that systems are introduced and set up to provide the insight each level of user needs, in the most effective way.”

Recently, I came across the concept of hyper-automation. While it initially sounds like a buzzword akin to the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and smart manufacturing, it actually means quite the opposite. It’s a term for operating environments that are bloated with automated, ‘smart’ systems making production excessively complicated.

This is particularly poignant because it speaks to a situation we have seen time and time again while serving businesses as Novotek UK and Ireland. Plants are increasingly becoming over-automated, with numerous systems installed to perform individual parts of a single process when a single system would accomplish the same thing. This doesn’t often happen with physical automated systems, but it’s a growing problem with industrial automation software and platforms.

Unfortunately, this problem doesn’t seem like it will be going away any time soon. It’s often not due to a lack of communication in an industrial business – although this is unquestionably a factor in some cases – as much as it is the result of the wrong approach to the latest industrial revolution.

For many businesses that Novotek UK and Ireland works with, the focus seems to be on obtaining IIoT-enabled widgets to achieve greater results, whether that be increased throughput, higher production rates or better energy efficiency. But because these systems are evaluated individually for payback and for technology choices, they form a patchwork network of equipment and systems that is expensive in its excessive complexity. Customers lose the chance to understand how they could use a common approach to defining key data requirements and to defining uses for data that cross functional boundaries – and this missed chance leads to overlap of systems and duplication of IT and OT spend.

Many successful adopters of digital technology typically work to become digitally-ready first. The process of becoming ready for digitalisation is generally about setting business objectives and working backwards to the tech that will enable them, while fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration so many stakeholders see how each other’s needs are really related. But in industrial environments, it’s often expressed as if digital readiness correlates to the amount of sensors, control systems and IIoT-enabled devices are installed.

For a leading industrial business to become digitally ready, the first step is identifying what you want to achieve. What is the end goal for the operational transformation? This could be a specified reduction in energy usage across a factory, or it could be an increased rate of production. With these goals in mind, leadership must consider what is currently stopping them from achieving this, whether it’s a lack of insight into key industrial processes or a skills shortfall.

Only once this is established can a business truly look at what systems can help. Fortunately, establishing these areas of limitation involves extensive communication with different aspects of the business, which means leadership can identify overlap between departments. This makes it easier to avoid investing in multiple systems that achieve the same thing.

Illustrating the challenge: Because Novotek UK and Ireland is an industrial automation specialist, we’re often called into businesses where we find there is overlap between the field service monitoring software and plant SCADA systems. These systems provide fundamentally similar performance insights from equipment, but neither the field technicians nor plant managers were aware of the other’s system.

The result of this is bloated networks and expensive, complex automation systems. This can be avoided simply by defining business goals first and working backwards from there, making technology an enabler rather than an emphasis. Working with specialist automation consultants, such as Novotek UK and Ireland, helps ensure that an industrial company’s vision is first achievable and then, ultimately, achieved.

The fourth industrial revolution and the IIoT are industry-changing concepts, but they shouldn’t change a company’s focus. If you treat them as new opportunities to achieve core business objectives, then you’ll find that they’re more tech-enabled than tech-driven.