Industrial Automation Magazine India

Standardisation should help accelerate the adoption of automation

Published on : Saturday 20-08-2022

Nimish Danani, Director Consulting Services, Hitachi Vantara.

Seamless connectivity seems to be a topic arousing much interest. Why would production entities need to have autonomous communication?
As the Industry 4.0 progresses in the journey and adoption increases, the industry realises the importance of data and the need to have data available real-time. This has further propelled industries to improve the connectivity with their plant location, warehouses and vendor/suppliers as well. Autonomous communication is enabling them to get more real-time insights and make decisions in real-time about changes in production, suppliers, or dispatch.
 
Is the need for real time communication also experienced over the enterprise boundaries? For example, with the vendor subsystems, with delivery subsystems? How about across multiple plants?
Yes. In the past communication within enterprise boundaries was always given priority. As Industry 4.0 adoption increases the benefits of going Digital are beyond just connecting single plants and corporate offices. As the visibility improves across plant locations and with vendors and delivery organisations are in a better position to take real time decisions based on market needs. They could re-plan supplier deliveries based on factory status and where required, increase production of certain goods due to a demand spike.
 
Historically major vendors have developed their own communication interfaces and protocols. Each such protocol was embraced by their partners. Equally, since ages there has been a call out for open protocols from the side of major buyers. What actually defines an open protocol? When can a system be said to support an open protocol?
This has been an ongoing struggle in the days of IT adoption and similar is the case with industrial data. Every industry partner or OEM who builds a system and a platform for ingesting data and helping decision making always starts with a ‘propriety protocol’. During early days the customers are also keen to try and experience the new found technology features of the industry partner. As new technologies mature like ‘Asset Monitoring Platform’, there comes a need where multiple assets from different partners need to send data to a central location to enable better decision making and help leadership with right real-time data for improving decision making capabilities.  
 
In the automation industry, which is a competent body to provide accreditation and registration for protocols? Which is the entity who would define an open protocol? What commercial incentive would such an entity hope for? How would upgrades and revisions be handled?
The International Society of Automation (ISA) and International Electromagnetic Commission have a set of recommended standards for control systems and many companies do work towards complying with them. In the current world, something like ‘Interoperable AI’ seems to be picking up. The Government of India has taken up this initiative, which is encouraging interoperable AI standards (Interoperability – indiaai.gov.in).
 
Standardisation should help accelerate the adoption of automation and help the industry. Ideally this should be a ‘not for profit’ kind of an organisation so that it remains neutral across product vendors and works for the larger benefit. As the industry evolves this agency can keep updating the standards and allow a fair market place.
 
How do upcoming technologies propose to deal with this topic? Such technologies include Cloud systems, Big Data Systems and more?
If we look at technologies like Cloud or Big Data, whenever an enterprise is choosing a vendor and the system integrator they are definitely checking interoperability. Many niche companies have their own protocols to create data lakes or build AI offer data management solutions which could be industry specific or function specific. Enterprises will need to ensure that they are able to get data from these systems in a format that can be integrated with other systems and brought on a single platform to make sense of the data. While there may be similarities in the features being offered by various brands but each brings its own value proposition on the table. This makes it necessary for the user enterprise to build necessary skills and also ensure compatibility.

Does use of Open communication compromise on cybersecurity aspects?
Open communication can be more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats if not implemented well. It’s like any technology tool which can bring in tremendous value to an enterprise but if not secured can be a big hazard. While communication protocols were fixed, the threat of hacking if we take an example was low as most of the devices were hardened with the single unique proprietary protocol. As we allow interoperable devices and with open communication becoming the norm, there will be a need to secure the enterprises from possible cyber threats.
 
(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)
 
Nimish Danani, Director Consulting Services, Hitachi Vantara, is an industry expert with Consulting and Technology experience across companies and a keen interest in how Digital impacts the Business.