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31 www.drivesncontrols.com October 2021 TALKING INDUSTRY n Professor Sam Turner Chief Technology Officer High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult Samworks across the HVMCatapult Centres and with stakeholders, including the government, to develop amanufacturing strategy for the UK. He is part of theMade Smarter strategy implementation group andwas part of the review team. Bill Killick Technical Key Account Manager HMS industrial Networks An IIoT specialist with more than 30 years industry experience of connecting people, data and machines together in industrial IoT applications, Bill has worked for organisations including Finder Relays, Norgren Pneumatics and the Royal Navy. Sam Thiara UK Sales Director MCS Control Systems Samhas been active in the industrial and process automation, andmanufacturing IT technology sectors for more than 30 years. He has worked as an applications engineer, solutions architect, channel manager and business development manager in Schneider Electric’s automation business and subsequently as the European business development lead at Emerson Process Automation. Keith Atkinson Automation Sales Engineer Weidmuller UK For more than 25 years, Keith has worked in various roles in the industrial automation sector. His experience straddles factory and process automation, where he has been involved in the design, specification, supply and support of complex control systems frommost major PLC, Scada and DCS vendors. Michael LeFeuvre Regional Product Manager Red Lion Controls Michaël Lefeuvre has spent more than a decade working in various departments in Red Lion Controls. An important part of his job is to position the company’s portfolio in the regional markets and to support its sales andmarketing team. Andy Pye Webinar Chair and Consulting Editor DFA Media Andy has edited many leading UK design and manufacturing titles over the past four decades. He is a graduate material engineer and spent five years in engineering consultancy before entering technical publishing in 1980. manufacturing business the need to improve our digitalisation processes and we now look to support our customers in that journey,” he said. “If followed correctly, a roadmap will provide benefits beyond just fixing things that might solve a small problem, but which do not actually transform the whole business,” Thiara explained. “In a manufacturing business, some digital transformation initiatives don’t always work that well, because business executives do not really know what to do, or which steps to take first. “One of the things we found from looking at the application of factory automation, where you aim to improve the automation of manual processes on a machine-by-machine basis, was that often they build these little islands of isolated data,” he continued. “One piece of advice we give is if you are looking to resolve a particular operational problem, look at the end in mind, because you will then look to connect all these together, as you need to do to allow you to be able to monitor performance over the longer term. This means that there’s a need for a bottom-up approach to actually fix the problem, but also to keep in mind the top-down approach about the whole enterprise.” Keith Atkinson from agreed: “Weidmuller has found that its relationship with customers has evolved from being a supplier of connectors to a consultancy on digitalisation. Within this consultative approach, the journey starts with defining a digital workflow, starting with from digitisation of the initial design process. A key aspect is how to bridge the worlds of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT). “You have to have a strategy for both top-down and bottom-up data flow,” he added. “The UK process industry has historically been very conservative, but to improve their competitiveness, and to increase their diagnostic coverage, a large amount of data is being driven from the top down, much of it focussing around asset management. We are engaging with asset managers, people we have never engaged with before.” A related area is how to incorporate legacy systems into a digitalised factory. While it is uncommon to build a new factory from scratch, many plants incorporate machines that are 40 years old or more. “Mostly, companies are making do with the machines they already have,” reported Red Lion’s Michael Lefeuvre, who specialises in linking legacy machines to digital networks. “When you go into the field, many manufacturers are not at the digital level. It’s a good target, but still a dream! “Creating the first digitalisation stone often involves connecting old machines,” he added. “Such a machine may be central to the whole operation, because it does something unique and cannot be replaced. The primary objective is how to collect very basic data, when such a machine does not have any communication technology on board, not even a PLC. It is also important to consider cybersecurity, because legacy machines, even though they may be connected into the network, are not capable of handling their own security. “The biggest challenge of connecting such machines into a digital network is not the technology, because collecting and processing basic input and output signals is relatively straightforward. It is more the strategic issue of data sharing. Often, senior executives don't think about the data needs of the shopfloor, to assist with how well or badly production is going and how that might be used. Again, a well-designed roadmap will help with planning. “IT systems are often designed for the management or top-level levels in the company, with nothing for the shopfloor,” Lefeuvre continued.“But while senior management needs to have a vision of where they want to go, operators also need to be able to use data on the shop floor to optimise production. But for that you need to make a connection between the shop floor and the data, and there is often no such connection. It's always bottom-up.” n Talking Industry The Panel The full Talking Industry discussion can be viewed on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adBc8DBh8b4. A longer version of this article will be posted on the Talking IndustryWeb site (https://talkingindustry.org )