Efficient Plant October 2022 - 12

feature | digital transformation
customizable, off -the-shelf, failure-analysis
templates. In addition, some analytical
off erings include embedded failure
analyses.
SENSORS AND
NETWORKS
Building out sensors consists
of several possible activities.
Th e simplest is to gather
existing operational data
that is already stored in a
data historian. Since this
type of data was created
to operate a manufacturing
process, it's unlikely to provide
a complete picture of asset health.
Condition-monitoring data will
need to be added, including sensors
that measure parameters, such as pressure,
temperature, and fl ow, that are not needed
for operating purposes. In addition, PLCs
and OEM systems are likely to contain useful
data not shared outside these systems.
Knowing the importance of your failures
will help build out your sensors logically
and effi ciently.
Companies should also focus on designing
a network architecture that preserves
process security while making process
and non-process data available for cloud
access, where maximum computing power
is available. Th e Namur Open Architecture
(NOA) provides a blueprint for maintaining
security while accessing process data and
augmenting it with sensor data required
by the digital-twin data model. A detailed
description of the concept can be found in
the NAMUR Recommendation NE 175.
Developing a robust, scalable wireless
strategy is a critical part of effi ciently building
out sensors. Wireless-sensor networks
can also be perfectly aligned with NOA.
Wireless is already the lowest-cost approach
to deploying sensors and is likely to become
even cheaper. It's reasonable to expect that
12 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
ures but they garnered no value because
they could not move the required actions
through their work processes before the
assets actually failed. If your work
processes are broken and/or your
people do not follow your processes,
you will not realize value
from better early-warning
systems such as digital twins.
Peter Drucker famously
quipped that, " Culture eats
strategy for breakfast. " Digital
twins may be an important
technological innovation and
even part of a larger reliability
and workforce-transformation
strategy but success depends on
cultural adoption. A workforce that
views digital twins as the " fl avor of the
day " will easily scuttle programs by stickAn
eff ective digital-twin program can play a significant
role in keeping people at all levels informed
about manufacturing operations.
sensor manufacturers will begin to market
lower cost wireless sensors that do not
have the reliability or durability required in
process control. Th ose higher-end sensors
are not necessary for the purposes we're
talking about, thus the cost of deployment
shouldn't be compared to hardware used in
mission-critical process control.
REALIZING THE BENEFITS
What an organization does with a digital
twin matters most. No one should be
rewarded for fi nding a potential failure.
Rewards should only be handed out for
fi nding and repairing a problem without
a functional failure. I once heard a client
tell how they had abandoned their predictive-maintenance
program because it failed
to deliver value. Th eir rationale was not
what you might think. Th ey were actually
very successful at fi nding potential failing
to the status quo. To ensure successful
adoption, all ranks of company leadership
should be educated on the importance of
digital twins and provided with details of
the multi-year project and frequent progress
reports.
Take stock of your capabilities to compete
today and fi ve years from now and think
about how the power of digital twins,
in their end state, may transform your
operations. While detailed, continuous
measurement of asset health may seem like
a loſt y, distant goal, keep in mind that all of
the activities required to establish a digital
twin will bring benefi ts in their own right.
Overall reliability improvement will not be
the least of those benefi ts. EP
Will Goetz is Vice President of Corporate
Development at Performance Consulting
Associates, Duluth, GA (pcaconsulting.com).
He brings to the role deep operational expertise,
extensive market knowledge, and strong
quantitative analytical skills. Prior to joining
PCA he played a number of thought-leadership
roles at Emerson.
OCTOBER 2022
http://www.pcaconsulting.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Efficient Plant October 2022

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