Industries such as food and beverage manufacturing and consumer packaged goods (CPG) production are fast-moving environments, with high traceability and proof-of-quality requirements alongside  throughput demands. As such, automation offers a lot of benefits to operations — so changes to existing systems, or implementing new ones can be seen as a source of risk, rather than opportunity. Here, Sam Kirby, a Solutions Engineer for Novotek UK & Ireland, looks at how manufacturers in the food, beverage and CPG sectors can reliably and rapidly extend automation deployments. 

The food and beverage industry has a long history with automated systems. In fact, one of the first fully automated production processes was that of an automatic flour mill, in 1785. The industry has generally kept abreast of automation developments since then, allowing it to keep ahead of ever-growing demand. Similar is true of CPG production, particularly in recent years, as product innovation has become a key business strategy.

CPG and food and beverage production tend towards automation because, in both sectors, much of the workforce is at the field level. As such, connecting systems to gain greater visibility into equipment health, output performance and product quality is invaluable. This is nothing new; engineers have been undertaking such projects for years, In particular, firms in these sectors have firmly established the benefits of connectivity and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. 

“Efficient HMI” Concept – being delivered by GE Digital.

Experience serving the industrial sector has shown that in the most productive environments, SCADA systems present screen to operators that are easy to interpret. By having the operator’s work foremost in screen design, they can be up to 40%  more effective in spotting issue that require technical teams to resolve. Engineers can then respond faster to events on the production line. GE Digital has been delivering templates intended to support this “Efficient HMI” concept as part of their IFIX HMI/SCADA system. 

The templates, refine HMI displays to focus on the most critical information related to executing the work. This decluttered interface improves operator effectiveness in regular operation, and makes it easier to spot issues exceptions, with means improved situational awareness, and more focused reactions to such issues. The overall effect is a higher level of productivity, on measures such as machine utilisation, throughput and quality.

Following this approach, IFIX also features preconfigured sample systems that are aimed at elements of the food, beverage and CPG industries. For example, Novotek can supply the IFIX software with a preset tailored for juice plants, with a display that provides an overview of processes from raw material intake to filling and packaging. Beverage production engineers can run this system immediately following installation to gain an immediate assessment of how production is performing. Even where adaptation is needed, the templates provide working examples of both the efficient look-and-feel, and of the most modern approaches to the technical configuration underneath it all. So engineers and IT teams get a practical hand in furthering their technical knowledge, smoothing the adoption of new versions and related modern development tools. 

It’s not unusual for engineers to believe that preset templates might not adequately fit their unique operations, yet we’ve found that the preconfigured settings often provide a substantial benefit. Of course there is no substitute for testing this directly, which is why Novotek and GE Digital offer CPG companies and food and beverage manufacturers a free demo of IFIX to see how effectively the templates suit them. 

Automation may not necessarily be something new for the food, beverage and CPG sectors, but its continued evolution brings with it new implementation challenges and operational complexities. Novotek values the work by GE Digital on the Efficient HMI concept and application templates as they offer useful tools to customers to help them modernise quickly and safely. And by sharing the methods and example applications, the customer’s IT and engineering groups are given a helping hand in building a bridge from the technical realities of long-established SCADA systems to a more modern solution. 

As the UK’s industrial base continues to adapt to changes in business models, supply networks and trade environments, there’s an opportunity to tap into a massive hidden resource – the install base of HMI/SCADA systems deployed everywhere from power plants to food processors. Many of these systems were implemented in the 90s and 00s as part of the first wave of productivity investments – by supplying a way to visualise the critical elements of complex machines and processes, industrial firms improved the effectiveness of their front-line workers and supervisors, as well as the reliability of their operations. However, rather than a desire to gain a more operational and competitive advantage, the pattern of investment during the previous 20 years has been driven by the feeling of “forced need.” As we’ve aided several clients with improvements to their SCADA systems, we’ve seen two things that influence their choice to upgrade:  

And an unfortunate sub-theme is common – we’re often told that any upgrade “must keep the system the same as the operators are used to”. No changes. No adoption of new functions. No assessment of whether current engineering practices could lead to a better, more maintainable footprint. “Convert the application and get it running again” is the instruction of the day. Even in cases where a firm has run an assessment of different providers and switched to a new SCADA vendor, they’ve then asked to have their old application replicated, rather than taking the upgrade work as a chance to consider what new capabilities might be delivered by the more modern SCADA platform that’s replacing the one from 20 or 30 years(!) ago.  

From the operations leaders’ perspectives, the core mission – make the product; keep the assets running – is the same, and it can be hard to step back, and consider whether the automation and systems around the operation should work the way they always have. And when vendors supply a laundry list of new features or technical updates, it doesn’t necessarily give an operational, maintenance or other non-technical leader compelling information in the right terms for them to see the value in taking that pause to step back and consider a broader approach to what first looked like a “forced necessity”. 

If we had the opportunity to be face to face with every as they took that step back, here’s what we recommend they consider: 

Where vendors spend their SCADA product development dollars IS driven by YOUR needs (yes, some technical, but many more are user/functional focused). Just a few examples would include: 

Using the more modern SCADA could save you time, effort and budget that would otherwise be spent on competing/overlapping new systems.  

OK – this one goes a little deeper into some technological details but stay with us! 

As firms pursue the value that may come from adoption of big data platforms and machine learning or analytics, they often launch data acquisition projects that without understand how existing plant systems part of the landscape can be, rather than driving additional tech into a plant where it may not be needed. 

Often, the IT and HQ operations teams don’t realise that their existing SCADA could accelerate these initiatives.  

Security – the elephant in the room 

It’s true that this is a topic that can cause people’s heads to throb before a discussion even gets started. But we’re going to skip all of the technical details and simply accept that improving cyber security postures is a priority for practical reasons, including: 

• Yup – there are bad actors. Anyone remember the last round of Wannacry incidents? 

• There are increasingly heavy regulatory burdens around certain industries or sectors 
• To the above point, I hear many of you exclaiming “But my firm isn’t part of Critical National Infrastructure!”. That may be true, but we’re even seeing scenarios where brand owners or retailers are insisting that their suppliers be able to prove that they have a solid cyber security position – as that’s seen as an indicator that they’ll be less subject to disruption, one way or another… 

Again, vendors haven’t been idle. It may take some basic work on the applications you have, but if you’ve at least invested in a current version of your SCADA, you’ll be able to take advantage of what’s noted below. 

Another area where IT teams struggle is understanding what can be done at the SCADA layer to meet security goals. As a result, they may consider some unique (and often extreme!) techniques and approaches that may be more difficult and expensive than needed. 

Click here to see what our vendors now have available! iFIX Secure Deployment Guide.

Don’t just “keep it current” – Upgrade!

Given the breadth of functions, capabilities, and technological upgrading that SCADA providers have implemented, it’s probably safe to argue that there’s more “in the box” that might be employed in areas that matter. And we’ve even reserved the details of the important technical things, such as development speed, part and code reusability, and so on, for another time! And we believe that looking at their SCADA with fresh eyes and thinking about what the current platform CAN do – rather than what the 20-year-old application created on the legacy platform from 1992 IS doing – is the key to gaining some new operational gains. And the route to those benefits can be faster to follow, making other digital projects speedier as well. 

The UK Met Office announces a new A–Z of storm names every September, officially beginning the new storm season for the UK. In winter 2021, the Met Office named the first two storms in as many weeks, with projections from mid-December expecting that a further six storms would hit the country leading into the new year.

Despite the predictability of storm season, the impact on utilities companies routinely causes significant problems. In the wake of Storm Arwen on November 26 2021, approximately 3000 homes in northern England remained without power for more than a week. This reflects the challenge of harsh seasonal weather on utilities companies — a challenge that is only set to escalate as global climate change makes erroneous weather events a more common occurrence.

Unsurprisingly, an excessive surplus of water can cause problems in the water network. If assets such as pumping stations become flooded due to a high volume of rainfall or overflowing surface water sources, it can cause further flooding in domiciles and office spaces. It’s for this reason that water and sewage companies are obligated under the Water Industry Act 1991 to ensure their systems are resilient and that the area they serve has effective drainage.

Yet ensuring resilience in the water network is no simple task due to the size of the network and the number of distributed assets. It’s for this reason that water operators depend upon supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems at remote sites and, increasingly, an effective data management and control platform. The local control systems are necessary to accurately monitor and control equipment, but an effective overarching system makes it possible to remotely address issues as they arrive.

For example, Novotek routinely works with water companies across the country to help them establish more effective automation setups to facilitate remote decision-making in a streamlined, efficient manner. One of the challenges that arises frequently is that of data silos, where field engineers may have access to pertinent equipment health or performance data that is valuable but inaccessible to other teams. Fortunately, this is best — and easily — addressed with an overarching system that collects data once and presents different views to different stakeholders.

Not every system will be well positioned to provide flexible data views to users and be capable of ensuring effective response to floods. Ideally, an industrial automation platform should also feature effective data visualisation, as well as predictive analytics that can use locally collected data to anticipate the likelihood of asset damage or outage. These attributes allow operators to easily coordinate an effective and rapid response to seasonal flooding as it occurs, at the most vulnerable or at-risk parts of a network before further problems ensue.

As winter storms continue to become more frequent and impactful, water operators must be increasingly prepared to combat the effects and maintain uptime of network assets. Automation has long been a necessity due to the scale of operations, but the effectiveness of automation deployments has never been so important.

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”.

The best approach may be to let the data dictate where to focus your innovation efforts. Or, if there’s a lack of useful data, then that itself may be the answer.

In this whitepaper, Novotek UK and Ireland explains how utilities operators can get to grips with data management to create an effective data-driven approach to innovation. Covering how to consolidate and modernise assets for data collection, how to make sense of utilities data and which method to use to get the most long-term value from data, the whitepaper is an invaluable resource for utilities operations managers and engineers.

Complete the form below to receive a copy of the whitepaper.

Every industrial business focuses on uptime as a priority. For manufacturers, this directly relates to productivity and profitability, with any disruption to operations — for example, due to a power failure — being a costly risk. Yet for power utilities companies, uptime is all about securing a continuous supply of power to said manufacturer by ensuring assets are reliably operational. Here, David Evanson, Corporate Vendor Relationship Manager Novotek UK and Ireland, highlights some of the most overlooked factors in automation uptime in power network assets.

The typical power generation and distribution network consists of hundreds of distributed assets, ranging from the generators and motors supporting power generation, to the power poles and infrastructure that distribute that power across long distances. This has been the case for decades, but the number of assets continues to climb as more areas experience greater levels of electrification, adding complexity to the process of managing power networks.

In the years ahead, power networks are only set to become more complex. In 2018, Prithpal Khajuria, business lead and domain expert for power industry at Intel, commented that “there are several new elements coming to the grid, solar panels, added storage, electric vehicles, so the management of the distribution grid is going to become more complex as we go forward.”

The automation layer of a power network is vital in managing this challenge, allowing utilities managers and technicians to remotely monitor assets and easily adjust processes. Integral to this functionality are programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in the field, which already have a complex set of technical requirements that operators must consider when specifying them.

An often overlooked consideration when specifying hardware is futureproofing. For power networks, PLCs might be in operation for over a decade. As such, two other factors become important in selection: environmental conditions and modularity. Some parts of a network are exposed to extended temperature conditions and the PLC must be able to function effectively in this range. Similarly, upgrading PLCs in the future shouldn’t require a complete overhaul of connected automation systems.

From Novotek’s experience providing automation hardware and software to the power industry, part of the reason that operators overlook these considerations is due to the scale of the network. If one in 50 PLCs is failing due to environmental issues, this can at first seem like a nuisance more than a pressing problem. But for larger power generators where networks of 2000 controllers are quite common, this amounts to 40 PLC failures and can severely impede efficient power generation.

Furthermore, when the time comes to modernise and upgrade the PLC or replace it due to a failure, it means ensuring compatibility with the other systems and devices in the automation layer. With some PLCs, operators can find themselves in a situation where only certain models of hardware will communicate effectively, leading to a time-consuming and expensive replacement process.

At Novotek, we recommend choosing open PLCs and automation, which are compatible with the broadest possible range of systems and applications. For example, Emerson’s PACSystems RX3i range of controllers fits this requirement because it is an open controller that can communicate with most modern automation systems. In addition, it also boasts an extended operating temperature that makes it durable in demanding environments and it supports easy migration from outdated controllers, with backwards compatibility for modular kits and built-in programming translation. These factors together make it an ideal option for power network automation.

Although technical capabilities are a core consideration of automation layer devices, futureproofing is equally about environmental and physical factors. They are invaluable to maintain a reliable power generation and distribution network long-term, ensuring uptime for the network and those that rely upon it.

50 years ago, the thought that a plant manager could stay home and be able to have meaningful oversight of operations, while collaborating with other remote colleagues on the details, was unbelievable. If COVID-19 had struck at that time, most factories would have simply closed entirely.

Today, instead, with the right industrial IT solutions, plant management — along with team supervisors, quality leaders, engineers and continuous improvement managers — can work as a team as if they were together, regardless of where they are. A combination of developments in IT and OT have come together to make this possible.

There are now ways to securely deliver existing automation software applications such as SCADA via the web. Likewise, plant data repositories, or Historian software, have had the speed and power of their collection and storage capabilities supplemented with modern, web-based tools for exploring data. This includes ways to quickly add context and description to otherwise technical data points, so there can now be one source of raw truth that is accessible from anywhere, comprehensible by anyone.

Full-fledged production tracking systems or MESs have similarly had rich web-based front ends built, so that the detailed flow of events and activities can be tapped into from anywhere, regardless of how those systems may have had to be tied to on-site automation and sensors

The driving force behind the evolution of plant tech, though, was to enable greater productivity. With information from core operations readily at hand, alongside information from the broader enterprise, leading firms began to accelerate their continuous improvement efforts, undertake deeper collaboration with suppliers and other industrial partners and develop better insights into how to refine products and processes. The fact that their modern systems lent themselves to remote work and collaboration would come to be seen as a bonus aspect to these capabilities.

Despite the ready availability of modern plant IT and automation, and the numerous documented cases of manufacturers realising the benefits of modern systems, many factories remain wedded to paper, spreadsheets and ad-hoc/as-able machine data analysis efforts (often based on manual extraction and collation of data from individual assets).  The implications of this go beyond it being comparatively inconvenient to deal with remote working.

Firms that have incorporated more modern plant solutions already enjoy significant advantages in their cost of production, their operational flexibility and their predictability in relation to meeting demand. The question is whether such current advantages will be further entrenched, or whether we will see a surge of investment from others to take on these capabilities. There is also a question of whether the firms catching up will look to go beyond simply sustaining their operations and towards fine-tuning or even re-shaping them.

Lessons from leading organisations

The next wave of technology adopters can benefit from observing how organisational structures and behaviours have been changed as modernisation has unfolded. New tech has certainly changed the way line-side operators stage, execute and manage production. However, the freer flow of data to different stakeholders has also seen improvement in surrounding business processes such as supply chain coordination and product design.

One of the cultural changes common in leading firms is broad recognition that detailed operational data supports the work of many stakeholders traditionally seen as removed from the production process. This has prompted the formation of cross-functional teams responsible for ongoing learning about the continuing evolution of automation and software.

Tasked with spotting developments that could yield outsize impact, not just sustain incremental gains in capability, cross-functional teams embody the recognition that technology is not only a critical tool to enable existing strategies, but potentially the key to new ones. That behavioural change also means that tech adoption is no longer intimidating or mysterious. With IT, operations, product design, engineering and quality leaders learning together, each group’s perspective and knowledge becomes part of a common understanding of how to understand the next technology wave in the context of the firm’s challenges and opportunities.

If the COVID outbreak showed how rapidly our steady work routines and supply networks can be disrupted, this is the time to see how technology can provide UK plc with increased resilience and a renewed operational vigour. It’s vital that manufacturers adopt the tools that support better insight and collaboration for the impact they can have on productivity, flexibility and even innovation. Modern plant systems should be seen as critical to success all the time, not just as a convenience during a pandemic.

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.

There are several regulations that Dutch water companies must adhere to. Both national and EU regulations strictly control the cleanliness of the water that is put back into the water system. For example, the European Drinking Water Directive specifies a total of 48 microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters that must be monitored and tested regularly to meet the standard.

While some of the standards are set lower than the European Drinking Water Directive, for substances such as boron, bromate and fluoride, the Dutch national legislation adds a number of other substances to monitor such as Cryptosporidium and Polychlorobiphenyls. This means that overall, the water quality in The Netherlands is internationally recognised as being particularly high.

To meet these standards, water companies must ensure that they have strict procedures in place to meet the regulatory standards. While the water infrastructure in the Netherlands is particularly developed, there are still improvements that can be made to help the water companies effectively feed back this information to the government. 

The need for monitoring

One of the key challenges in the Dutch water industry is outdated equipment that makes it difficult for water companies to collect the information required across the treatment process. A 2017 report by the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu stated that “in order to take preventative actions [against harmful contaminants in the sources of drinking water], it is necessary to monitor possible hazardous contaminants through the water supply chain.”

The same report stated that while most Dutch drinking water companies are improving their operational monitoring and management, stricter controls may be brought in in the future. Rather than monitoring for a concentration of 1 microgram per litre, the report suggests that the value may be lowered to 0,1 microgram per litre in the future.

While this increased control may be some time away, it’s vital that the Dutch water companies, from all aspects of the water supply chain, consider their reporting procedures.

However, they are often stunted by outdated equipment. Across Europe, the water industry is plagued with ageing infrastructure. There are numerous pieces of equipment used in the sanitisation process of water, as well as the pumps and vessels used to get the water around the plant. However, if the equipment is not able to be connected to an overarching control system, the plant loses the opportunity to collect important data.

Updating equipment

Even in a country with a water infrastructure as well funded as The Netherlands’, it is still difficult for water companies to update all their equipment in one go. Instead, water companies must draw up a plan of the processes that they want to be able to monitor better.

Once they have completed this plan, they can upgrade equipment that allows them to do this. For example, infrastructure managers may decide to first invest in connected equipment to help them feedback the level of contaminants at each stage of the purification process.

Once the equipment has been updated and there are plethora of connected devices reporting information, it is necessary to control these using an overarching control system to control and gather this information. This will allow the infrastructure manager to make actionable decisions and share this information with authorities when necessary.

Reporting

While water companies have kept manual records of contaminant levels for decades to comply with reporting legislation, this is not the most efficient way of doing this.

All water companies must follow strict quality control procedures internally and report to the Regional Public Health Inspector (RHI), at least on an annual basis. If concerns are raised at any point about the safety of drinking water, the water company must be able to provide supporting data within a short period, so any outbreak can be traced effectively.

When using manual data collection, it is time consuming to log the data, import it into spreadsheets and print the records. Due to the amount of human involvement in the process, mistakes could easily be made, or the historic data may be lost if not correctly filed.

To meet the regulations of the water industry, it is essential that water companies use a control system that allows them to manage this data effectively.

Managing data

If water companies invest in equipment to help them to collect data throughout the water purification process, it is worthless without a SCADA system that can collect and manage the data.

Not only will the SCADA system give the plant manager more awareness and control over the processes in the water treatment plant, it will allow the regulatory information to be safely collected and stored.

By using a SCADA system such as Novotek’s iFix Automation Software and digitising the collection of important data, this will reduce the time taken collecting the data manually and reduces the likelihood of human error. The information can then be displayed in a clear report, alerting the plant manager to any discrepancies. When required, the report can then be sent to the regulatory authorities.

As historic data is so valuable in the water industry, it is ideal for plant managers in this industry to also use an information system that can gather, archive and compress large amounts of data. If any problem is detected much later in the water treatment process, having this large volume of data available will make it much easier to identify the origin of the contaminant.

Having a large amount of data available through investing in better sensors and automation equipment across a water treatment plant will help plant managers to have a better awareness of their industry. However, without the right SCADA system and historic information system, such as GE Historian, the investment in the connected devices is worthless.

With water management being so important in The Netherlands and the water industry leading the way in Europe, it is likely that regulatory control will increase to ensure the country retains its reputation for some of Europe’s cleanest drinking water.

With this in mind, water treatment plant and infrastructure managers need to make sure that their plant uses an up-to-date control system that is relevant to the digital age to manage their data, to ensure that they can be one step ahead of any future regulatory changes.