Data capture is critical when you’re looking to drive continuous improvements in manufacturing, and it is equally crucial for regulatory compliance. In this article, we’ll look at how intelligent systems can not only streamline the capture of data required for quality management and regulatory compliance in regulated industries, but ensure faster, easier use (and re-use!) of data once captured.

Does your business track critical control points? If so, are you able to retrieve that information quickly and easily? With the right sensors, platforms and software solutions the necessary quality parameters can be continuously captured, with alerts generated in a timely manner for any deviation from specification. This can mean the difference between a batch of good quality, or finished goods that require time and energy to rework to the appropriate standard.

Furthermore, automatically performing regular in-process checks can improve the efficiency of operators and reduce the chances of incorrect data being captured or recorded which could lead to unnecessary work. With solutions from Novotek, we can help you start the journey to a fully automated quality management system.

As all production processes consume raw materials, the exact nature and variability of these materials and the quantities used can have a significant impact on the quality of the finished product. Automatically adjusting the production setpoints to cater for the individual characteristics of raw materials can lead to a more consistent output.

By continuously capturing quality data through intelligent systems, you have the tools to perform a historical review of production performance based on different batches of raw materials. You may have implemented a historian, a lab system, even a performance metrics system already but what if the information in isolated silos that are not easily accessed? In these kinds of situations, we can take advantage of innovations in technology that may have been born outside the factory, but can offer value within the production world.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is often understood to mean the devices and sensors that are interconnected via computers with industrial applications. In fact, it also includes the kind of data management platforms, “data ops” tools and methodologies that make managing and using industrial data easier.Although IIoT may sometimes appear vast and daunting, through an iterative and scalable process, you will rapidly see tangible results in reducing workloads, with an innovative platform for better quality and improved compliance with your industry’s regulations and standards. Linking together the disparate assets and data stores in your operation provides vital visibility, both in real-time and over the history of your production process.

Your data collection and collation processes are streamlined and automated through this connectivity, facilitating the generation of electronic batch records (EBR) that can be used to satisfy regulatory compliance. Modern, data ops tools, combined with low-code app development tools, make it straightforward to combine data from siloed systems into intuitive user interfaces make reviewing data against specific dates, batch codes, raw material lot numbers, or other production parameters more accessible and understandable.

And this approach suits additional needs: Compliance with standards and regulations is vital for the image of your operation. A tailored solution meets your requirements, from recording hitting required temperatures, or exact measurements when combining the right amount of ingredients at the right time. With our solutions, you can rest assured that you have access in perpetuity to every detail of what you’ve produced. And that in turn means being able to support investigations and deliver reporting to to fulfil obligations, and for both internal and external stakeholders.

Many manufacturers are both blessed and cursed with an ever-growing flow of potentially useful data. We see our role as being to provide guidance on the best way to tap that flow so that many different stakeholders can be served for the least incremental cost, and the least disruption to existing OT and IT. Thanks to the modernisation of plant systems, and increasing adoption of IIoT-style tools and platforms, our customers can  put their data into the right hands at the right time more easily than ever!

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.