Starkly stated sustainability targets such as ‘Net-Zero by 2030’ imply an inherent struggle, and while this may be true in certain arenas, there is a genuine opportunity to achieve environmental goals, automate accountability and improve profitability within manufacturing – all at once.

In this article, we’ll outline exactly how the right capabilities, infused with expertise, can offer a profitable and intelligent pathway to a brighter business and environmental future. Carbon is cash, and reducing your output means retaining capital and growing profitability for the future.

So how is this achieved? Firstly, by fostering a different mindset when conceptualising sustainability measures. Data on utility usage can tell you when you’ve used more or less, but this aggregated data doesn’t have the granularity to explain why. While this is fine for quantifying and reporting on consumption to participate in a carbon exchange, this approach offers no mechanisms to improve these figures. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Success and Sustainability

Novotek Solutions delivers operational technology with a methodology shaped by a deep knowledge gained in over three decades of experience in IT domains.

We’ve led the way in delivering all our projects to a high, IT-compliant standard. Our solutions are supportable, maintainable, and extensible to keep your operation fit for the future.

In decades past, manufacturers in various sectors have embraced initiatives focused on continuous improvement, aiming to enhance production yields, improve equipment reliability, and minimise waste in materials, labour, and capital. Advanced measurement systems that track metrics like machine downtime and material usage, leading to the establishment of comprehensive factory data infrastructures, all support manufacturers’ end goals.

These systems contextualise raw data by associating it with specific details such as order numbers and product codes. Advanced platforms like Proficy Plant Applications from GE Vernova can integrate data from primary sources like water flow meters into this contextual framework. This practice of collecting detailed data related to core equipment and products results in a robust dataset, which serves multiple purposes:

1. Automating Environmental and Compliance Reporting: Using directly measured consumption data to create regulatory reports and calculate incentives.
2. Enhancing Carbon Accounting: With varying standards for translating energy consumption into emissions, having granular data allows for flexibility in reporting and adapting to evolving auditing requirements.
3. Incorporating Footprint Analysis in Continuous Improvement: Analysing measured environmental factors alongside traditional performance metrics reveals the interplay between operational changes and environmental impact. Comparing a product’s footprint data across different times or locations helps identify significant variations.

This approach allowed a major North American brewer to spot cases where energy consumption varied when all other factors were equal. Measuring energy consumption next to production orders meant it could hunt for root causes through its efficiency management system.

Root causes for relative spikes in usage ranged from inefficient process control algorithms for heating or chilling equipment, inconsistent adherence to recipe setpoints, and poor power management relative to down or idle times. The brewer utilised this insight to make recipes and procedures consistent across all sites.

The result? The brewer met a 5-year energy-savings target in just three years!

Operator Behaviour, Transparency and Compliance

As more firms conclude that a functional information strategy is a critical first step in their sustainability journey, gaining the correct capabilities to gather and process data is essential. In times gone by, multiple data collection regimens assembled reports for different purposes, such as customers or regulators, which led to inconsistencies and undue workload on operators and analysts.

The alternative is a single data platform that serves multiple stakeholders, such as GE Vernova’s Plant Applications. Through a single platform, data is gathered once at an appropriate resolution, and the same data can then be repacked for multiple purposes.

Through this method, operations can automate the management and delivery of regulatory data. Adherence to future carbon passport schemes also becomes a process through which you already have the tools to deal with.

Turning to transparency, increasingly, customers are willing to pay a premium for ‘green’ products, where you can demonstrate a complete genealogy and the positive credentials of your products in total confidence. With a comprehensive data platform in place, you have the power to track and demonstrate the exact journey a product has gone through, from raw materials to finished goods. And that is not to overlook the power of transparent data on your operation.

With greater process visibility, automated with real-time data collection, operations gain the insight required for intelligence decision-making from the shop floor to the top floor. Ingesting and utilising this data with a powerful analytics platform drives an understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between asset performance and input consumption. This granular data is then fed into corporate EHS and carbon accounting systems, allowing true utility cost profiles to be a part of production costing and planning exercises. Manufacturers then use cross-plant metrics to accelerate best-practice identification and dissemination.

But that’s not where it ends; by embedding analytics into control and visualisation programs, operators can be presented with rich information to drive decision-making at the shopfloor level. By using intelligent systems in this way, operations can also ensure they are not held hostage to the availability of specialists.

Innovative Strategies in Sustainability

To demonstrate how adopting a manufacturing execution system can offer a ‘many birds for one stone’ solution, we can look at the capabilities and conditions of an operation both before and after implementation.

Before

Without a detailed understanding of how changing utility inputs will affect processes, efforts to be ‘green’ can cause efficiency and material losses while also potentially introducing quality or product safety risks.

The differences between equipment and processes also present difficulties in formulating an effective strategy. With better data collection, all elements of variability can be profiled – including materials used in processes.

After

Data-driven decision-making brings cost, quality and carbon footprint into balance. With the confidence to act backed by information, tuning processes and utility infrastructure ensures sustainability efforts do not compromise operational performance.

The root causes of overconsumption are more easily understood, and strategies to mitigate them can be formulated and actioned at pace.

The ‘Many Birds’ at a Glance

If we’ve demonstrated anything in this article, we hope it’s the broad scope of what’s possible when looking to drive sustainability – and reap the real rewards on offer for manufacturing! Here are the key takeaways of what’s on the table as we progress towards environmental goals:

1. Expose hidden relationships between production and sustainability factors.
   • A single MES solution provides insight into materials, recipes, assets and processes to find the root causes of the overconsumption of utilities.
2. Gain a single source of truth and improve the visibility of your consumption.
   • Granular data gathered by the single platform can be packaged, analysed and presented to serve many needs.
3. Integrate metrics and analysis to provide additional insight.
   • Automating analytics within a single, scalable platform provides value from the shop floor to the top floor and drives fast, accurate decision-making powered by information.
4. Automate regulatory compliance and power transparency and traceability.
   • Gain competitive capabilities to demonstrate green credentials to customers and other stakeholders.

Last but not least, and in a nutshell, why select Plant Applications from GE Vernova?

• Flexibility in Data Management: The platform can easily link basic time-series data from meters to a wider range of elements like materials, products, and events, all through straightforward configuration.
• Support for Multiple Stakeholders: Plant Applications offers a variety of reporting and analytics capabilities, catering to both internal stakeholders focused on improvement and external stakeholders, ensuring their diverse needs are met.
• Open and Layered Approach: Unlike many sustainability metrics systems that are manual or limited to specific sensors, Plant Applications enhances existing sensor, automation, and software investments, offering a more integrated solution.

Continue the conversation

Do you have any questions about sustainability and manufacturing? Chat to one of our friendly experts to find out more.

A vital convergence

Cybersecurity is a crucial concern. OT equipment has become more IT aligned by necessity through standard protocols and ethernet/IP connectivity. Like a bucket of cold water, this fact woke the IT world to the significant vulnerabilities presented by connected operational systems. Furthermore, the press has continued to fill with stories of backdoors exploited by nefarious actors and the dire consequences of which to reputations, service, and profitability.

It was time for OT to be taken seriously and become part of the IT estate with the same high standards and best practice approaches to security.

So, what does this mean for you as a manufacturer?

Firstly, you must ensure that your control systems, such as PLC, SCADA etc., are secure from threats by keeping systems up to date and only providing connectivity between systems that require it. Leaving your entire operation wide open, with everything connected to everything else, is particularly hazardous. The optimal solution is to establish communication channels secured via switches and routers, allowing protocols to be enabled and disabled as required. Through this method, you can install firewalls between departments to further mitigate the threat of a cybersecurity breach.

The second point to consider is access control. Users should only be granted permissions to systems they require within an IT-supported domain. Paired with appropriate password complexity, a policy of regularly changing those passwords can minimise a potential vector of attack.

Next is virtualisation. By abstracting OT systems from the IT hardware, you can install physical hosts in an environmentally controlled data centre; rather than the old method of putting server racks under desks in control rooms, where they were subject to dust, heat, and the occasional accidental kicking from a steel-toe-capped boot.

Rounding out this brief overview is patching and backups. Patching regularly, at the same frequency as IT systems, ensures systems are constantly kept up to date and reduces the impact of ‘timely’ vulnerabilities such as Log4j. We still visit sites where Windows XP, NT and Server 2000 are still in use. These operating systems are running long after official support has ended, meaning security patches are no longer available and the vulnerabilities are well known and widely published.

Because OT should now be firmly on your IT department’s radar, creating a thorough backup regime will mean your systems are recoverable in the event of data loss due to a ransomware attack, operator error or any other disruption.

Experience and Expertise

Novotek Solutions delivers operational technology with a methodology shaped by a deep knowledge gained in over three decades of experience in IT domains.

We’ve led the way in delivering all our projects to a high, IT-compliant standard. Our solutions are supportable, maintainable, and extensible to keep your operation fit for the future.

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If you’ve walked through factories and seen operator or supervisor screens like the one below, you’re actually seeing both the best and worst aspects of technology evolution! Clearly, no data is left hidden within the machine or process, but screen design looks to have been driven by the abililty to visualiase what’s available from the underlying controls, rather than a more nuanced view of how to support different people in their work. you could say that the adoption of modern design approaches to building a “good” HMI or SCADA application has lagged what the underlying tools can support.

In Proficy iFIX, GE Digital has incorporated a mix of development acceleration and design philosophies that can both lead to more effective user experiences with a deployed system, while also making the overall cost of building, maintaining, and adapting a SCADA lower.

Three critical elemetns stand out:

1. Model-centric design

This brings object-oriented developement principles to SCADA and related applications. With a “home” for standrad definitions of common assets, and their related descriptibe and attribute data, OT teams can create reusable application components that are quick to deploy for each physical instance of a type. The model also provides useful application foundations, so things like animations, alarm filters and so on can be defined as appropriate for a class or type – and thereofore easily rolled out into the screens where instances of each type are present. And with developments in the GE site making the model infrastructure available to Historain, analytics and MED solutions, work done once can defray the cost and effort needed in related programs.

Taking advantage of what current-generation iFIX offers will mean a different development approach – considering useful asset and object model structure, then templating the way objects should be deployed is a new starting point for many. But with that groundwork laid, the speed to a final solution is in many (most!) cases, faster than older methodologies – and that’s beofer considering the advantage of resuability across asset types, or across multiple servers for different lines or sites.

Recovered time buys room for other changes

With rich automation data mapped to the model, and faster methods to build and roll out screen, different users can have their views tailored to suit their regualr work. Our earlier screen example reflected a common belief that screen design is time-consuming, so best to put as much data as possible in one place so that operators, technicicans, maintenance and even improvement teams can all get what they need without excessive development effort. But that can mean a confused mashup of items that get in the way of managing the core process, and in turn actually hamper investigations when things are going wrong.

But where development time is less of a constraint, more streamlined views can be deployed to support core work processes, with increasing levels of detail exposed on other screen for more technical investigation or troubleshooting. Even without fully adopting GE Digital’s Efficient HMI design guidelines, firms can expect faster and more effective responses form operators and supervisors who don’t have to sift through complex, overloaded views simplu to maintain steady-state operators.

With significant gains to be had in terms of operator responsiveness, and effective management of expectations, the user experience itself can merit as much consideration as the under-the-bonent changes that benefit developers.

Greenfield vs. Brownfield

It may seem like adopting a model-based approach, and taking first steps with the new development environments would be easier on fresh new project, whereas an upgrade scenario should be addressed by “simply” porting forward old screens, the database, etc. But when you consider all that can be involved in that forward migration, the mix of things that need “just a few tweaks” can mean as much – or more – work than a fresh build of the system, where the old serves as a point of reference for design and user requirements.

The proess database is usually the easiest part of the configuration to migrate forward. Even if changing from legacy drivers to IGS or Kepware, these tend to be pretty quick. Most of the tradeoffs of time/budget for an overall better solution are related to screen (and related scripting) upgrades. From many (many!) upgrades we’ve observed our customers make, we see common areas where a “modernisation” rather than a migration can actully be more cost effective, as well as leaving users with a more satisfying solution.

Questions to consider include:

While there is often concen about whether modernisation can be “too much” change, it’s equally true that operators genuinely want to support their compaines in getting better. So if what they see at the end of an investment looks and feels the same way it always has, the chance to enable improvements may have been lost – and with it a chance to engage and energise employees who want to be a part of making things better.

Old vs. New

iFIX 2023 and the broader Proficy suite incorporating more modern tools, which in turn offer choices about methods and approahces. Beyond the technical enablement, enginerring and IT teams may find that exploring these ideas may offer benefit in areas as straightforward as modernising system to avoid obsolescene risk to making tangile progress on IoT and borader digital initiatives.

In 2013, the UK Government Office for Science produced a report, entitled the Future role for energy in manufacturing. In this report, they identified two threats to UK-based manufacturers. The first was that the price of energy in the UK will rise, compared to the cost faced by competitor firms abroad, placing UK manufacturers at a significant disadvantage. Well, the price has risen but globally because of the Russia Ukraine war. Nevertheless, the threat to UK manufacturing is still valid. The second threat is that a low-carbon electricity supply will be unreliable, and that the cost of power cuts will rise. Well, that is certainly true if you rely solely on low-carbon electricity. But using multiple sources of power can be greatly beneficial.

The PSM system can be used for applications such as:

• Electrical power consumption monitoring and reporting
• Fault monitoring
• Generator control features for generator to power grid synchronization
• Demand penalty cost reduction/load shedding

The PSM system consists of:

• PSM module – A standard IC694 module that mounts in an RX3i main rack. The PSM module provides the DSP capability.
• Terminal Assembly – A panel-mounted unit that provides the interface between the PSM module and the input transformers.
• Interface cables – Provide the GRID 1 and GRID 2 connections between the PSM module and the Terminal Assembly

The image below shows how a basic PSM system can be connected.

PSM System Features

• Uses standard, user-supplied current transformers (CTs) and potential transformers (PTs) as its input devices.
• Accurately measures RMS voltage and current, power, power factor, frequency, energy, and total three-phase 15-minute power demand.
• Provides two isolated relays that close when the voltage phase relationships between the two monitored grids are within the specified ANSI 25 limits provided by the RX3i host controller. These contacts can be used for general-purpose, lamp duty or pilot duty loads. Voltage and current ratings for these load types are provided in GFK-2749, PACSystems RX3i Power Sync and Measurement System User’s Manual.
• Provides a cable monitoring function that indicates when the cables linking the PSM module and Terminal Assembly are correctly installed.
• PSM module and Terminal Assembly are easily calibrated by hardware configuration using the PAC Machine Edition (PME) software.

To find out how Novotek can help you reduce your energy consumption and manage multiple energy sources email us at info_uk@novotek.com

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses across the UK have faced a surge in cybercrime. In fact, research indicates that UK businesses experienced one attempted cyberattack every 46 seconds on average in 2020. Industrial businesses are a prime target for hackers and the ramifications of a data breach or denial-of-service attack are far-reaching, making system security imperative. Here, David Evanson, corporate vendor relationship manager at Novotek UK and Ireland, explains how industrial businesses can keep their vital systems secure.

For many business leaders and engineers, it is still tempting to consider large multinational companies or data-rich digital service providers to be the prime target for hackers. However, the growing volume of cyberattacks on businesses globally show that any company can be a target of malicious attacks on systems and services.

According to research by internet service provider Beaming, there were 686,961 attempted system breaches among UK businesses in 2020, marking a 20 per cent increase on 2019. Of these attacks, Beaming noted that one in ten intended to gain control of an Internet of Things (IoT) device — something that indicates a tendency to target system continuity rather than conventional data.

Both factors together are cause for alarm among industrial businesses of all sizes. Hackers are targeting all manner of companies, from start-ups to global organisations, and focussing more on the growing number of internet-connected devices and systems that were previously isolated.

The consequences of a device being compromised range from data extraction to service shutdown, and in any case the financial and production impacts to an industrial business are significant. There is no single quick fix to bolster cybersecurity due to the varying types of hacks that can take place. Some cyberattacks are complex and sophisticated; others less so. Many attacks on devices tend to fall into the latter category, which means there are some steps industrial businesses can take to minimise risk.

Novotek has been working closely with industrial businesses in the UK and Ireland for decades. One common thing that we have observed with automation hardware and software is that many engineers do not regularly upgrade software or firmware. Instead, there is a tendency to view automation as a one-off, fit-and-forget purchase. The hardware may be physically maintained on a regular schedule, but the invisible software aspect is often neglected.

Older firmware is more susceptible to hacks because it often contains unpatched known security vulnerabilities, such as weak authentication algorithms, obsolete encryption technologies or backdoors for unauthorised access. For a programmable logic controller (PLC), older firmware versions make it possible for cyber attackers to change the module state to halt-mode, resulting in a denial-of-service that stops production or prevents critical processes from running.

PLC manufacturers routinely update firmware to ensure it is robust and secure in the face of the changing cyber landscape, but there is not always a set interval between these updates.

In some cases, updates are released in the days or weeks following the discovery of a vulnerability — either by the manufacturer, Whitehat hackers or genuine attackers — to minimise end-user risk. The firmware version’s upgrade information should outline any exploits that have been fixed.

However, it’s important to note that legacy PLCs may no longer receive firmware updates from the manufacturer if the system has reached obsolescence. Many engineers opt to air-gap older PLCs to minimise the cybersecurity risk, but the lack of firmware support can also create interoperability issues with connected devices. Another part of the network, such as a switch, receiving an update can cause communications and compatibility issues with PLCs running on older versions — yet another reason why systems should run on the most recent software patches.

At this stage, engineers should invest in a more modern PLC to minimise risk — and, due to the rate of advancement of PLCs in recent years, likely benefit from greater functionality at the same time.

Firmware vulnerabilities are unavoidable, regardless of the quality of the PLC. At Novotek, we give extensive support for the Emerson PACSystems products that we provide to businesses in the UK and Ireland. This involves not only support with firmware updates as they become available, but also guidance on wider system resilience to ensure that businesses are as safe as possible from hardware vulnerabilities. The growth in cyberattacks will continue long beyond the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and infrastructure and automation are increasingly becoming targets. It may seem a simple step, but taking the same upgrade approach to firmware that we do with conventional computers can help engineers to secure their operations and keep running systems safely.

In the age of connectivity, there is no shortage of useful information that engineers can leverage to optimise and improve operations. Everything from the speed of motors to the weather forecast can influence production. However, bringing these data sources together in a secure way is a challenge faced by many engineers. Here, George Walker, managing director of Novotek UK and Ireland, explains how engineers can bridge the gap between local process data and external data sources.

The Internet of Things (IoT) may still be a relatively new concept for many consumers and professional service businesses, but the idea of machine-to-machine communication and connectivity is nothing new for industry. In fact, it’s been more than 50 years since the programmable logic controller (PLC) first became popular among industrial businesses as a means of controlling connected systems.

The principle behind the PLC is quite simple: see, think and do. The controller will ‘see’ what is happening in a process based on the input data from the connected devices and machines. The PLC then processes this input and computes if any adjustments are required and if so, it signals these commands to the field devices. Traditionally, the field devices that could be controlled was limited, but recent developments in sensor technology have made specific components and resources much more measurable.

For example, if a water tank is almost at full capacity in a food processing plant, data from connected sensors can feed that information to a PLC. The PLC then sends the signal for the valve to close once the water volume exceeds a certain threshold, which prevents overflow. This is a simple control loop that sufficiently meets the need of the process.

Unfortunately, even as edge computing and PLC technology has advanced and offered more sophisticated data processing and control at the field-level, many plant engineers continue to setup their devices in this way. In reality, modern edge devices and industrial PCs (IPCs) are capable of providing much greater control, as well as responding to external commands or variables that were previously beyond the scope of control systems.

The outer loop

While the idea of the Industrial IoT (IIoT) is predominately a means of branding modern connectivity, the wider Industry 4.0 movement has brought with it some valuable advancements in edge and PLC technology. Among these advancements is the potential for on-premises automation and control systems to not only connect with local devices in an inner loop, but to draw from external sources: an outer loop.

The outer loop can take several forms, depending on what is most applicable or relevant to a process or operation.

For example, some more digitally mature businesses might have outer loops that feature an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, supply chain management software or a wider manufacturing execution system (MES). These systems will share and receive relevant information or send required adjustments — such as due to raw material intake or low stock — to an edge device, which feeds into the inner loop. This allows industrial businesses to make use of more comprehensive data analysis than can be achieved in local data systems.

Alternatively, an outer loop could draw from data sources that are completely external to a plant’s operations. For example, a wind farm operator could use an outer loop that drew from sources of meteorological data for wind forecasts. This could inform the optimum pitch and yaw of a turbine, controlled by a field device.

Another example, and one that will resonate with many industrial businesses, is energy price. The cost of power from the electrical grid fluctuates throughout the day, which might mean that on-site generation — such as solar panels or heat recovery processes — become more economical during times of peak grid demand. An outer loop can communicate this data efficiently to the relevant systems in a business, and changes can then be enacted that allow the business to reduce energy costs.

Establishing secure connection

Clearly, there is a benefit for industrial businesses to establish both inner and outer loops. However, there is one barrier to deployment that most engineers encounter: hardware limitations.

Traditional PLCs were designed in a rather utilitarian manner to complete control functions effectively and in a straightforward manner. This no-frills approach persists even with modern PLCs — even with today’s technical specifications, most PLCs are not designed in a way that struggles to handle much more than a real-time operating system and some control applications.

Attempting to set up such a PLC to interact with an outer loop would either not work at all or severely hinder performance and risk failure.

Engineers can tackle this problem by introducing a separate gateway device that serves as an intermediary between the outer loop and the inner loop. However, this is a somewhat inelegant solution that requires investment in additional devices, which will require ongoing maintenance and introduce yet another device into already large system networks. Across an entire site, this quickly becomes costly and complicates network topologies.

A better solution is an unconventional one. It is possible to set up a modern automation controller in such a way that it breaks the conventions of PLCs, as long as the device is capable of multi-core processing at pace. From Novotek’s perspective, one of the best modern units that meet this need is Emerson Automation’s CPL410 automation controller.

The CPL410 can split inner and outer loop processing between its multiple processor cores. The inner loop and PLC processes can run from a single core, while another core — or even a group of cores, depending on complexity — can run more sophisticated containerised applications or operating systems. Additional cores can broker between the inner and outer loops, ensuring reliability and security.

A multi-core setup is useful because it allows the PLC processes and gateway to be consolidating into a single unit, without compromising performance capacity or speed. It also means that ageing or obsolete PLCs can be upgraded to a controller such as the CPL410 during any modernisation initiatives, minimising additional capital costs.

Although the idea behind the IoT is not a new one for industrial businesses, the fact that other sectors are embracing the idea means more external data points than ever before are available. With systems in place that can support effective inner and outer loops, industrial businesses can leverage the increased connectivity of external markets and enhance their own operations.

Food production is truly a sector that operates under the mantra of “reinvent the everyday, every day”. The sector is constantly evolving, whether manufacturers are innovating new product ranges that meet changing consumer tastes or switching packaging materials to extend shelf-life or reduce waste. And these are just examples of substantial shifts; food manufacturers are also regularly making smaller challenges by refining recipes, adapting processes or adjusting ingredient and material supply lines.

Despite — or perhaps because of — the environment of constant change, food processors can benefit more than many other manufacturers from carefully targeted use of data collection, visualisation and analysis solutions. After all, yesterday’s optimisation isn’t particularly optimal if today means a new stock-keeping unit (SKU), a new critical ingredient supplier or a new recipe.

The approach that many businesses take to becoming data-driven is to extensively map out their digitalisation journey, with each aspect comprehensively planned. This doesn’t generally support the flexibility needed in food manufacturing.

Rather than taking this approach, modern solutions make it possible to build or buy micro-applications that share common data infrastructure and even app-building or visualisation tools. This means that impactful new capabilities can be adopted through fast initial works that create re-usable building blocks. Later works then become incremental, rather than potentially having different systems creating overlapping capabilities.

Micro-apps in practice

We can see how this micro-app approach can be put into action by considering one of the most common challenges in food processing: managing the effect of variability in key ingredients, so that yields are maximised with minimal re-work or ingredient waste. It’s likely that a manufacturer would already have some of the information needed to address the challenge. The question is, how can you quickly supplement what’s in place?

It’s a safe bet that the factory has automation and maybe supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, so there is an abundance of machine-generated data to tell us about the details of how processes are performing. Focussing more closely on yield performance, we can assume our manufacturer has a lab system where in-process and finished good tests give very clear indicators of how well a product is being made.

From Novotek’s experience, the most common gaps in tackling yield issues come from two areas. The first is supplier quality data, which is often provided either written down or in an electronic format that doesn’t mesh with existing systems. This makes analysis more difficult, because there’s no actual database to work from.

The second area is that the variations in raw materials that affect yields may actually be within the specifications defined for those materials. As such, there may not be an obvious fix. It’s likelier that material data needs to be analysed alongside several process performance and quality performance data points. Understanding the relationships between more than two or three variables will probably mean adding a new kind of analysis tool.

Micro-apps can be highly focussed on the core capabilities required. In this case, the micro-app would provide three core functions. First, it would provide a simple means to capture ingredient quality data as it’s received, into a system that also holds the specific material characteristic specifications and limits – all on a “by-lot” basis. It would also offer a machine learning tool that can help clarify how the range of material quality variation can be managed in relation to what machine settings or recipe adjustments might allow for good final yield and quality results.

Finally, the micro-app would be able to alert production staff to make recommended changes to a recipe or process as different raw material lots are staged for use – an automated monitor of yield/quality risk from material variation. This could be as simple as a new smart alarm sent back to existing SCADA, or a notification on a smartphone.

Industrial software vendors are adapting their offers, in recognition of the trend towards micro-apps aimed at specific business processes. So, the software licensing needed to enable material data collection and quality specification monitoring on a key process would be built around a low user count and narrow set of underlying configuration and integration points, rather than a comprehensive plant-wide project. That can mean starting investments in the low thousands for software and some deployment work.

Some of Novotek’s customers are now progressing through projects defined by such very specific functional needs. Our job at Novotek is to ensure that any new solutions serve the purpose of being able to act as supplements to other such micro-apps in the future.

Next stages

A strategic advantage of micro-apps is that the planning and execution stages are less time-intensive than a far-reaching, plant-wide digitalisation project. Food engineers can do several things to begin reinventing their everyday processes. For example, food manufacturers can deploy predictive downtime applications on key processes. These are apps that can even take into consideration whether the products made have their own impact on failure modes.

Each micro-app reflects an opportunity to make the overall food manufacturing operation more adaptable. This means that innovation in products, processes and business models can be done, all the while knowing that refining and optimising the “new” won’t be held up by tools and practices that are too difficult to adapt from the “old”.

It’s no secret that IPCs play an essential role in modern industrial operations. These vital units undertake a range of tasks, from managing equipment performance data to motion and automated system control. It’s therefore no surprise that the IPC market continues to go from strength to strength. In fact, ResearchAndMarkets forecasts that the global IPC market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.45 per cent, to be valued at $7.756 USD by 2026.

IPCs feature prominently on the factory floor, generally either in control cabinets or mounted onto machinery. Being on the frontline means that engineers and plant managers know that, as a minimum, they need to specify ruggedised IPCs for their operations. What sometimes gets overlooked, however, is the operating temperature range of an IPC unit.

Electronic circuits and computing components are highly susceptible to extreme temperatures, be they high or low. At high temperatures, components can deteriorate faster. In the case of IPCs, modern CPUs are designed to prevent accelerated component deterioration by throttling their processing performance. This succeeds in reducing the heat produced in processing circuits, but it means that processes running on the IPC run slowly or become unresponsive — not ideal for real-time control applications.

In certain markets, considering operating temperature range is second nature for engineers. For example, an IPC tasked with controlling or collecting data from a welding robot will be specified to withstand high temperatures.

However, temperature should be a consideration even in unassuming industrial environments. If an IPC is situated outside, the exposure to sunlight — alongside reduced airflow in an installation — can cause an increase in temperature that can reach up to 70 degrees Celsius. Both Novotek and its partner Emerson Automation have encountered industrial businesses that have experienced this problem.

Of course, the solution to the challenge of overheating in IPCs is to specify a unit that boasts good thermal performance in an extended operating temperature. Unfortunately, not all IPCs that claim to offer this feature are actually effectively tested in conditions that accurately reflect real-world operating conditions, which can lead to some IPCs failing when deployed in the field.

The reason why extended temperature IPCs fail is due to the way that the testing is undertaken. In many cases, the IPC is tested in a thermal chamber that has significant forced air flow conditions, which reduces the efficacy and the accuracy of the test itself. A more effective way of testing is for the IPC manufacturer to block the airflow, which simulates a realistic use condition in a cabinet environment.

Emerson Automation conducts its tests under these restricted airflow conditions, which allows it to accurately demonstrate that its IPCs can perform at high temperatures without throttling processing performance. The company has even shared a video of its IPC thermal testing process, highlighting the capabilities of its RXi2-BP.

It’s for this reason that Emerson’s IPCs are the go-to option from Novotek’s perspective, because they ensure reliable and consistent operation in demanding environmental conditions.

With IPCs playing such a vital role in modern industry, its important that they are up to the task not only in terms of computing capacity, but also environmental performance. When plant managers and engineers can specify an IPC with assurances of the accuracy of thermal testing, it provides peace of mind that the unit can handle the heat.

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.

In the dairy industry as in many others, margins are everything. Business leaders always want their operations to be as efficient and effective as possible, with the highest possible uptime and the lowest possible operational expenses. This means low product wastage, high energy efficiency and lean processes.

However, dairy manufacturers and processing plants face an additional pressure. Raw dairy produce has a very limited lifespan, so it’s vital that it is treated in a timely fashion to prevent potential risks to public health. Unsurprisingly, regulation is very stringent on factors such as hygiene and the correct temperature for milk to be stored at pre-treatment. Each of these are defined in the UK’s Dairy Products (Hygiene) Regulations 1995.

This is one of the key distinctions between dairy processing and many other industrial segments. Improved process speed and operational efficacy isn’t simply sought after to increase throughput and profitability. It becomes an objective because it directly correlates with the safety of products. If raw milk spends too long at a temperature above 6 degrees Celsius without being properly treated, it becomes at risk of harmful bacteria growing.

Whether a dairy manufacturer is setting out to reduce their product wastage or lower energy usage, one thing remains a constant. No matter how many shiny new machines, automated systems or wirelessly connected widgets a business invests in, maintenance will be the key to getting the most out of hardware investments. In spite of this, it’s often the part of the process that many engineers begrudge, due either to it being time-consuming, labour-intensive or highly complex to maintain certain systems.

Digitalising maintenance

Fortunately, advancements in industrial automation systems over the past decade have gone some way to addressing the challenges conventionally associated with maintenance. As more industrial assets — whether that is the pump in a milk pasteuriser or the SCADA system controlling a packaging line — are able to connect with manufacturing execution systems (MESs) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, dairy plant managers are presented with an increasingly reliable and scalable means of determining maintenance schedules.

This eliminates some of the guesswork from maintenance schedule, which means that plant managers can devise maintenance schedules that are more strategic. For example, a SCADA system might pick up a dwindling performance in a motor. If the SCADA system is connected to an MES, the plant manager can easily access this information remotely and make maintenance of that motor a priority. For perfectly healthy systems, they can be maintained only when their performance data indicates they need it.

The only downside to this is that if a plant contains thousands of connected data sources, it can simply be too much data for a plant manager to reasonably analyse to determine the ideal maintenance schedule. More advanced MESs resolve this problem, a good example being GE Digital’s Predix, which incorporates machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) into the system.

This AI can identify correlations and trends in data sets, allowing it to alert managers when maintenance should be conducted on a system. In effect, the AI learns the indicators of poor equipment health and can facilitate a shift to a predictive maintenance model, reducing unnecessary labour and time usage.

Although this makes life easier for plant managers, it does little to simplify the maintenance process itself for engineers. This is where AR comes in, by using the data within the MES and a purpose-built industrial internet of things (IIoT) platform to reimagine maintenance.

Bringing AR to dairy

A contributing factor to the complexity of maintaining some systems is a matter of design. Engineers need to know the most efficient and easiest way of accessing the components that need attending to, and this is not always an easy task — not least because it requires prior knowledge of the specific parts that are under-performing.

Take a milk pasteuriser for example. If the problem is that the flow rate of milk is lower than it should be, it could be a problem with the centrifugal pump, the valve or even the flowmeter measuring flow. With enough performance data from each of these parts, maintenance engineers can easily know which to inspect. And what better way to access this data than a digital overlay showing real-time performance data of each part?

This becomes possible with an industrial AR application like those available through PTC’s ThingWorx 8 IIoT platform, offered by Novotek UK and Ireland. This platform allows dairy engineers to build apps that are specifically designed for their plant and applications, ensuring that the app is suitable for any set up. Of course, the key to achieving this effectively is to work with an industrial AR expert like Novotek to ensure everything goes smoothly.

With that in place, maintenance technicians and engineers can either use AR headsets or their mobile phones to access the application. Simply by holding their phone up to a pasteuriser, engineers could see real-time performance data and could zoom in deeper to see specific parts. With a virtual representation of the pasteuriser’s centrifugal pump on the screen, engineers can inspect and identify if it is the part causing problems. If it is, the AR app can show the easiest way to access and maintain it.

And if a problem is particularly puzzling and the maintenance engineer isn’t sure how to address it, AR applications make it possible for specialist technicians to remotely view and advise on the issue. This encourages the sharing of specialist knowledge and improves the effectiveness of overall plant maintenance.

The value offered by AR is applicable to almost every connected system in a dairy plant. Let’s say that a dairy plant’s manufacturing execution system highlights that a rotary evaporator, used to standardise the dry matter of milk in the early production stages, requires maintenance. As the evaporator consists of several components, a maintenance engineer could use AR to see a virtual representation of the components in the evaporator and identify which needs attending to.

By using a purpose-built AR application, the engineer can view real time system data from the ThingWorx IIoT platform and see which components are performing inefficiently. In this case, it could be that the evaporator’s compressor requires lubrication. The engineer can then resolve this in the least disruptive way possible, minimising the impact that necessary maintenance has on production. Crucially, this technology maximises uptime and improves overall equipment effectiveness in the most efficient, effective and easy way possible. If a dairy manufacturer is looking to make their operations as lean and efficient as possible, AR seems like the ideal tool to help achieve precisely that.