Chemical Engineering April 2013 - 5

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Bringing mobility to the plant
In his keynote presentation at this year's ARC Forum (February 11-14,
Orlando, Fla.; www.arcweb.com), Andy Chatha, president and founder of
ARC, stated that there were over ten billion WiFi-connected devices in 2012
and that over 50 billion are expected by 2020. He called this the " era of connected
devices " and introduced the concept of information-driven manufacturing
(IDM), where competitiveness is driven by the ability to effectively
obtain and use information that is available from a wide variety of sources.
Rapidly advancing technologies are driving IDM, and one of the enablers is
the readily accessible, mobile device.
Mobile handheld devices, which were once forbidden on the plant floor, are
moving into the realm of being sought-after solutions for manufacturing personnel.
The high attendance at the ARC Forum track devoted to this topic is
indicative of the growing interest in mobile devices for manufacturing.
There seems to be a convergence of several factors that are driving the
movement toward mobility in the plant. First, the nature of many jobs is
changing, and the need to do more with less opens opportunities where mobility
of information can help. For example, many operators no longer stay
in one control room all day overlooking one process unit. Instead, they need
to cover several units in a plant, and so accessing information remotely is
a plus. Second, the nature of the workforce itself is changing. As mobile devices
have become so prevalent in our daily lives, people want to be able to
get the same instant information in their workplaces that they can get outside
of it. Young " millenials " entering the workforce expect mobility. Third,
the availability of the technology for the mobile devices themselves, and
supporting technologies like wireless instrumentation, and " smart " sensors
and transmitters, is advancing rapidly.
A number of examples of mobile devices in operation in the chemical
process industries (CPI) was given at the ARC Forum. Those examples
included environments where an iPad could be used, as well as environments
where intrinsically safe (IS) devices were required. Areas that
could, or already are benefitting from handheld devices on the plant floor
include: maintenance; inventory management; quality control; and data
management, such as being able to fulfill regulatory " paperwork " requirements
from out in the field rather than having to come back to an office
setting to do so.
There are certainly issues that need to be addressed in this age of mobility
- the most important being safety and data security. A robust approach
to cybersecurity is certainly needed. This is an issue that is becoming
increasingly important for manufacturing (see Chemical Plant
Security: Gating More Than the Perimeter, Chem. Eng., September 2012,
pp. 18-22). I expect some earlier considerations about introducing handheld
devices on the plant floor included concerns about lost productivity
due to workers using these devices for non-work-related activities. Years
ago, this was also a main concern in allowing internet accessibility in the
workplace, but the resulting improvements in productivity outweighed
those fears.
One suggestion that was heard during the ARC Forum
was that companies need to put a set of policies in place
before implementing the use of mobile devices in order
to address some of the concerns, particularly about data
security. With this sound advice, handheld devices are
poised to help increase productivity as manufacturers
embrace the new technologies available to them.
■
Dorothy Lozowski, Managing Editor
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Chemical Engineering April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering April 2013
