The Great Digital Shift Change

In #MyIndustry, which is the process industry, operators in most refineries, petrochemical plants, chemical plants, and other process plants still have to rely on a small set of data which transmitted using analog signals, and personnel still have to walk around the plant manually collecting data on a clipboard. And more such plants are still being built today. This is hard to believe in an age where almost everything around us is completely digital. Fortunately, it finally looks like this is about to change. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the underlying digital technologies are about to change how plants are automated, and therefore how these plants are run & maintained. Fully digital automation systems are now faster to deploy, at lower cost, and with greater flexibility. Fully digital plants are built producing greater quality with higher throughput and less down time, with lower operation and maintenance cost, greater energy efficiency, and fewer emissions. Even business models are changing in this digital transformation. This means jobs and skills will also transform. This is coinciding with aging baby boomers retiring in what’s become known as “The great shift change”. Perhaps it should be called the great digital shift change. Here are my personal thoughts:

The Future Is Digital

Around the world, young engineers are taking their digital habits from home and from campus with them to work. They expect to have information at their fingertips, not to go into a dull, dirty, dangerous, and distant (4D) plant to get it. They expect connections to be digital and rich with data, not analog with all its limitations. This digital automation evolution has been a long time coming because it is disruptive, it transforms how plants are run and maintained. The changing of guards now taking place makes this the natural transition point to fully digital automation. The most interesting fact is that many plants have already been built with digital Fieldbus instead of 4-20 mA and on-off signals. Several old plants are being modernized with digital WirelessHART communication.

Here are some examples of the digital transformation already taking place:

• Industrial product transformation: “enchanted” fieldbus and wireless products now exist not possible with 4-20 mA and on-off signals
• Operations transformation: pervasive use of sensors eliminates the need for manual data collection changing the standard operating procedures in plants
• Business model transformation: the value chain is changing as vendors provide customer with data as a service instead of products
• Aftermarket service transformation: maintenance contracts for repairs will be linked to the remote monitoring services

Because running the individual pairs of wires required for each 4-20 mA and on-off signal, on average three of them per device, and providing system I/O channels is so expensive, most plants until now have been built with a bare minimum of instrumentation. This means operators get the bare minimum of operational data. The maintenance, reliability department, and others rely heavily on manual data collection for the same reason. However, companies are reengineering their vision of the future of automation.

Fully digital plants can be built to be more environmentally friendly, more reliable, more efficient, and lower cost, and making higher quality product. This is what is so exciting with digitization of plants and IIoT. However, some new disciplines and roles with new competencies might be required. Here are some thoughts in no particular order:

1. Network Nanny (not actual title) – to manage the health of digital field instrument networks in the plant. Corresponding to the IT department now in the office which did not exist before office digitization. This might be the I&C department but might also be a new department perhaps called the OT department. In the past, the digital networks that tie field instruments to the system kind of fell into the cracks between the instrument group and the systems group. Now plants may establish this as a dedicated team.
2. Software Engineer – in the plant, to administer the suite of new analytics software that is making its way into plants, but are not part of the control system, and not part of the ERP either
3. Data analyst – to build and tune data analytics algorithms to meet the needs of various plant departments and disciplines such as process, energy, reliability, maintenance, HS&E, operations, integrity, mechanical, and inspection etc. to stay productive, agile, and meet their other KPIs
4. Cyber security expert – perhaps an IT role, but with an understanding of industrial real-time deterministic protocols, different needs for authentication and authorization, orders of magnitude greater infrastructure reliability requirements, 24/7 support, third-party remote monitoring service access etc. Great interpersonal skills to broker IT/OT integration.
5. Remote monitoring engineer – associated with various disciplines like reliability, electrical switchgear, mechanical, integrity, and energy etc. to support multiple remote sites from a central location. Offshore platforms and vessels will have less people on board, with many of the tasks performed remotely from an onshore office. Acting on alerts, diagnosing problems, and guiding users at site.

Automation vendors will also hire new categories of engineers such as data analysts, user interface designers, and cyber security experts. What job changes are you seeing at your site? Please share your thoughts. Well, that’s my personal opinion. If you are interested in how the digital ecosystem is transforming process automation click “Follow” by my photo. Click “Like” if you found this useful to you and share it with others if you think it would be useful to them.