Industrial Automation Magazine India

Personal data is the fuel that drives much commercial activity online

Published on : Friday 01-07-2022

Hemal Desai, VP Quality & Marketing Communication, Endress+Hauser India.
The pandemic is nearly behind us, but the effects on industry will last longer. What are three digitalisation strategies that companies are working on based on lessons of the last two years?

One point is the future of sales, the interface to the market and customers. In this case we have to utilise every available opportunity in the interaction between the analog and digital worlds. Digitalisation and online platforms create additional access to the market and customers. The further we branch out, the better it is for us.
 
The way in which we work together will nevertheless change – and that's another element. When people are all physically present in a room, collaboration is different than if they are collaborating in a mixed or fully digital environment.
 
Third point will be the robustness of supply chains. With countries closing their borders, supply chains have been interrupted. Endress+Hauser were able to ensure the availability of materials, but many of our customers experienced difficulties. That will lead to new thoughts about how supply chains will be organised.
 
For so many Indian companies who are not fully into Industrial Revolution 3.0, is there any urgency to move towards digitalisation?
The fourth industrial revolution will continue to transform the company's value proposition.
 
“Change is something we have to anticipate and include in our own development,” said Dr Rolf Birkhofer, managing director, Endress+Hauser Digital Solutions. Despite the company's roots in hardware devices, software and services resident in the cloud will increasingly be the means by which E+H delivers value in the future. “What we have today on the cloud will only be a small part of what we'll have in the future,” he said, explaining that the cloud will grow in influence because it facilitates always-on, always up-to-date platforms that require less installation effort and investment cost. “Plus, many software applications will only be available on the cloud going forward,” he added.
 
E+H's five-year journey has already resulted in some 200 patents in the Industrial IoT realm; this led to the 2018 launch of the company's Netilion digital services platform. Looking at the potential for continued growth by delivering more value in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) realm, it was noted that 52% of identified IIoT needs are within the Endress+Hauser area of specialisation.
 
That focus has broadened the company's product offering to include a range of connectivity solutions for bringing non-process data up into the cloud, including FieldPort, FieldGate and FieldEdge devices, plus Netilion-ready sensors that connect directly to the cloud via cellular networks and NB-IoT.
 
By leveraging digital solutions, the company believes it can substantially increase its value proposition to users in three dimensions: overall system availability, instrument reliability and workforce efficiency. Better leveraging of instrumentation diagnostics holds the potential to increase production uptime by 0.5-2%. More reliable instrumentation, in turn, promises a 2-15% reduction in instrument replacement costs. And digital tools and services that improve the workflow efficiency of field engineers can yield productivity improvements on the order of 10-20%.
 
Technology only creates value if there is a use case. Our focus is to create a consumer-like experience. An example is the company's Micropilot FWR30 radar gauge that leverages cellular wireless networks to communicate fluid levels in barrels and intermediate bulk containers (IBCs). It's an application that in the past was simply too complex and costly. The battery-powered gauges are designed to begin delivering value within 10 minutes of being unpacked. ‘We assume users – like consumers – won't read the directions’. 
 
For many companies, the challenge is in moving from pilots to deployment at scale. What is the way forward?
Industry 4.0 has resulted in a number of innovations in both manufacturing and supply chain industry. Some of the big corporations have implemented pilots to deployment programs to overcome future problems related to manufacturing and supply chains. The global race for innovation leadership in Digital Manufacturing is picking up pace: two thirds of industrial companies worldwide say that digitising the production value chain is one of their highest priorities. Despite this focus and enthusiasm, the ‘future of production’ has shown that many companies are experiencing ‘pilot purgatory’ in which they have significant activity underway, but are not yet seeing meaningful bottom-line benefits from this. To more fully understand how manufacturers across the globe are approaching their Digital Manufacturing transformation and the challenges they are facing, the move from the ‘current version’ of factory production to Digital Manufacturing holds the promise of significant value, and shift is a top strategic priority for manufacturers across the globe. Despite the importance placed on it, most manufacturers are struggling to take the Digital Manufacturing successes they have experienced in limited pilots to a scale that would bring the full benefit of the technology. A holistic approach to Digital Manufacturing – one that considers the fundamentals of the organisation and the business as much as it focuses on the technology-related factors – can help manufacturers get over the hurdles that stand between pilot success and companywide rollout. The good news is that, as demonstrated by several real-world cases, a rollout is not a mystery, and successes exist. These ‘lighthouses’ have the power to help unify a manufacturer's vision of Digital Manufacturing. The knowledge from these case examples can also help build a solid business case and chart the course for company-wide implementation.
 
There is so much work going on in the area of Data Analytics. What about the effort to get real-time data directly from machines?
Netilion is a multi-brand and cloud-based Industrial IoT ecosystem by Endress+Hauser, designed for processes in industrial process engineering. It connects the physical and the digital world. With Netilion we use digitalisation to make knowledge available to our customers to support and optimise their processes and make fact-based decisions fast – anywhere at any time. With its scalable approach and the different digital offerings, Netilion provides options that are precisely tailored to the customer needs.

IIoT focuses on technologies for industrial applications and is a subgroup of the IoT technology. Smart devices and machines connect to each other as well as to the Internet. By this way, data can be collected and stored centrally in a cloud. Digital services enable the user to obtain relevant information on the basis of this data and use it to optimise processes.
 
Netilion Analytics digital service improves data transparency and eliminates obsolescence by optimising and standardising your field devices.
 
Data transparency increases efficiency, saves money, and improves plant availability. A control base upgraded with Netilion Analytics can streamline maintenance and lower costs with efficient parts management. Digitise your plant and gain an overview with Netilion Analytics. The transparency empowers you to make data-driven decisions.
 
To optimise your processes, you need a clear view of your assets. By registering and organising your devices using Netilion Analytics, you can make everything visible and easy to understand.
 
Many companies own field instruments from different generations and manufacturers, for which detailed information is sometimes missing. This can cause problems down the road if spare parts for obsolete instruments are unavailable, which then triggers a hectic procurement mission.
 
Netilion Analytics is a simple way to bring order to your installed base. Just scan your device's nameplate with the Endress+Hauser Scanner app and the device is automatically added to a list of all your assets in Netilion Analytics. Or you can use an edge device to create a list of your assets automatically. Either way, you have a clear picture of all the devices in your plant. For Endress+Hauser devices, Analytics displays additional information such as the availability of the product and – if the product is no longer available – a recommendation for a substitute.
 
Your first step into digitalisation
Now you've scanned, organised and connected your assets, you can start to unlock the useful data they hold. By improving your knowledge on your installed base, you can evaluate obsolescence and standardisation possibilities of your equipment and reduce complexity in the field. This minimises the risk of unplanned downtime. Creating 'digital twins' of your assets, as this process is known, is also the first step to benefiting from many future improvements that IIoT will bring.
 
Many niche and custom solutions are being attempted for connecting legacy machines, what about long term serviceability?
Endress+Hauser IIoT ecosystem are also set to be ready for the market soon. An application for asset health monitoring will monitor the status of the installed base, and is set to eventually enable predictive maintenance. Endress+Hauser Smart Metrology is going in the same direction: This application, which is still in its conceptual phase, will enable the optimisation of the calibration intervals of pH sensors. Another application for water quality will allow for the simple and cost-effective remote monitoring of water levels.
 
Is it too early to talk about standards and regulatory guidelines for collection, storage and access to data?
Increasingly, an ever-wider range of economic, political and social activities are moving online, encompassing various information and communication technologies that are having a transformational impact on the way business is conducted, and the way people interact among themselves, as well as with government, enterprises and other stakeholders. This new landscape gives rise to new business models and a wider scope for innovation. At the same time, it facilitates undesirable activities online, including cybercrime. Creating trust online is a fundamental challenge to ensuring that the opportunities emerging in the information economy can be fully leveraged. The handling of data is a central component in this context. In today's digital world, personal data is the fuel that drives much commercial activity online. However, how this data is used has raised concerns regarding privacy and the security of information. In fact, some countries do not have rules at all. In other cases, the various pieces of legislation introduced are incompatible with each other. Increased reliance on cloud-computing solutions also raise questions about what jurisdictions apply in specific cases. Such lack of clarity creates uncertainty for consumers and businesses, limits the scope for cross-border exchange and stifles growth. As the global economy shifts further into a connected information space, the relevance of data protection and the need for controlling privacy will further increase. Understanding different approaches to and potential avenues for establishing more compatible legal frameworks at national, regional and multilateral levels is important for facilitating international trade and online commerce.
 
Endress+Hauser has become the first industrial company to obtain the StarAudit certification. The IIoT offering of the measurement instrumentation specialist was given four-star certification by EuroCloud. Within the framework of the certification, all areas that are relevant for the collection of data in cloud-based applications were reviewed.
 
Endress+Hauser has given top priority to data security during the development of cloud-based applications. “In conversations with customers, the second question which is nearly always asked concerns our security standards and measures to ensure them,” says Thomas Schmidt, StarAudit Project Leader at Endress+Hauser, “which is why we decided to carry out a comprehensive audit through an independent body.”
 
The StarAudit certificate confirms that web-based services are based on specific security standards and have been correspondingly validated. This offers a traceable quality assessment of cloud services through a transparent and reliable certification process. The aim is to strengthen the trust of customers and users in cloud services. The certificate was officially handed over in Zurich in April.
 
Digital transformation is deemed to be necessary for companies to become part of the big global supply chains. Are there already such requirements by big buyers as a condition to become their suppliers?
In the next three to five years, we will see an increase in the adoption of digital supply chain technologies, as well as technologies that improve human decision making. In addition to labour availability constraints, rapidly rising labour rates and the residual impacts of Covid-19 will compel most companies to invest more in cyber-physical systems
 
E-commerce, the second trend, is remaking the entire logistics industry. The inexorable rise of online sales is well documented. But even as logistics companies have benefited from burgeoning volume, the business is not without its challenges. Many B2B networks are struggling to adapt to B2B2C. Many large logistics companies fulfil e-commerce orders by carving out a corner of warehouses designed for B2B operations. And some logistics companies have at times been willing to use e-commerce as a loss leader to add business to their transport divisions. But as volume expands, all such arrangements are coming under immense strain. Here, too, automation seems to be an answer.
 
So more and more companies are entering the D2C business through different platforms, which indirectly creates a bigger stress on the supply chains model. It will then be for the industry to reduce time of delivery through online platform sales and deliveries will be done faster. This will result in the requirement of the supply chain industry to rely heavily on digital platforms to meet the rapid demand from the industry.
 
How could Digital Transformation help companies to cope with the supply constraints of recent origin – for example electronic chips, for example other shortages arising out of political events in Europe?
Many organisations have experienced a resulting loss of focus on their existing transformation mandates. Driver shortages, logistics provider capacity issues, inflation, shipping delays, increased freight costs, depleted inventory levels, labour shortages and dealing with demand peaks have all dominated discussions and required attention. Operational leads have been required to shift their focus from large change projects to keeping the business running day-to-day and ensuring both staff and customers immediate needs are satisfied. Boards are now learning how to balance the oversight of crisis response with the strategic thinking that is required beyond these immediate challenges. 
 
Whilst they have been taking a back seat over the last 12-18 months, it is however these transformation mandates and their successful implementation that is likely to determine an organisation's success. It is now more important than ever to ensure operations are as flexible and resilient as possible, so it is vital that these projects are carried out, keeping operations up to date and avoiding unnecessary added cost and resource requirements that can be experienced if existing operations are not modernised. 
 
Management should ensure that they adopt a scalable, crisis management process, ensure they have sufficient leadership capability in place, and document their experiences and learnings throughout the pandemic to ensure they are able to balance the short and long term priorities so focus on essential change projects is not lost.
 
There are several considerations to assist companies as they face these challenges:
a. Operations should be flexible and resilient enough to adapt and adjust in real-time to changes in trade flows, new regulations, and the impact of Covid-19, climate change, trade tensions and other geopolitical movements.
 
b. Technology should be effectively utilised to help reduce operating costs, provide visibility, and diversify the way customer needs are met.
 
c. Capability to adapt to digital operations and drive actionable improvements from data is important.
 
d. Supply chain networks should be responsive to increasing customer requirements.
 
Hemal Desai is a graduate in Instrumentation Engineering and has over 30 years of experience in process control & automation business. Currently he works for Endress+Hauser India Pvt Ltd.
 
(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)