IEN: What are the major concerns facing providers of computer technology, networks, and related products and services? How can they be addressed?
Frazier: Due to continued constrained budgets, IT/IS providers are forced to show a clear, demonstrable path to ROI for their solutions. Increasing consolidation in the enterprise application vendor market combined with the aforementioned budgetary constraints places even more emphasis on a software vendor''s ability to effect transformational business change -- rather than just step improvements in productivity or cost savings. Manufacturers demand both improved performance AND cost savings from their technology solutions. Technology providers have taken a couple of different approaches to meeting this requirement.
One the one hand, some vendors have focused development toward providing vertically oriented solutions that incorporate specialized features and capabilities targeted at specific industries, such as pharmaceutical or consumer packaged goods. Too often, however, these vertical industry solutions merely provide more marketing than actual additional functionality of any real import. As a result, they provide an initial "warm fuzzy" for customers but rarely any truly transformational ROI.
Some vendors have taken a broader approach. By integrating key functional solutions -- such as supply chain management or field service optimization -- into a comprehensive solution suite, these vendors can offer a true enterprisewide optimization, increasing the productivity of physical as well as human assets while maintaining appropriate cost levels related to inventory, warranties, and the like. As always, there is a catch, however. Some vendors, such as the "big guns" in the ERP market, take too broad an approach and do not deliver world-class functionality in their solutions. Consequently, though the promise of their solutions is huge, so is the cost and the implementation time, and the ROI numbers rarely match up to the promise.
To truly address these concerns, IT/IS providers must provide both comprehensive, fully integrated solutions and best-of-breed functionality. Only then can they deliver the truly transformational business change that manufacturers require.
IEN: What innovations are in store for users in computers and computer accessories, I/O, communication standards, and/or systems? In software? What advances do you see in open standards and data sharing?
Frazier: The stars are aligning in terms of automation, control solutions, and condition-based maintenance systems coming together to offer previously unavailable predictive maintenance capabilities. The following trends are contributing to this:
- Thanks to the traditional path of technology and the integration of wireless capabilities into control systems, the cost-per-point-measured for condition-monitoring tools is decreasing. As a result, manufacturers are bringing more assets online and delivering a wealth of measurement and analysis data to maintenance systems to improve maintenance operations and reduce costs.
- The almost ubiquitous availability of the Internet and increasingly available wireless technologies, as well as new technologies such as service-oriented architectures, further increases the ability of operations and maintenance systems to share information with other enterprise applications. As a result, users throughout the organization can make appropriate decisions based on real-time information.
- Communication is useless if you are speaking different languages, so previously divergent standards organizations are collaborating to deliver standards around computer languages enabling solutions from diverse vendors to communicate. The recent agreement between MIMOSA, the OPC Foundation, and the Instrumentation Systems and Automation (ISA) Society to develop the Open Operations and Maintenance (OpenO & M) standard is a perfect example.
- These innovations are being combined to deliver "Push Maintenance" capabilities. Push Maintenance solutions take information from multiple sources -- such as control systems and inventory, customer, and field service management solutions -- and "push" the appropriate information to maintenance personnel at the precise moment in the maintenance workflow that they need the information to perform specific tasks. This specialization and configurability in information sharing improves productivity and reduces costs required for training.
IEN: What are the R & D hotspots, and which R & D areas are closest to commercialization?
Frazier: RFID is a real hot spot. The ability to automate the tracking of mobile as well as stationary assets in the plant, distribution center, etc., will be a major time- and labor-saver in inventory management, maintenance, customer service, and numerous other areas.
IEN: Can the limitations of wireless technology be overcome?
Frazier: Absolutely. Over the last several years, innovation in wireless technology in terms of security, bandwidth, and infrastructure have caused the hurdles for broad dissemination of wireless to fall in an increasingly rapid pace. Just like RFID, the inherent advantages provided by wireless technology are too great for its limitations to stifle innovation.
IEN: How about production management, collaborative manufacturing, plant intelligence and visibility?
Frazier: As mentioned above, communication among various systems has become straightforward. No longer are expensive, hard-coded point-to-point interfaces required. With tools such as XML messaging, communication of required data between systems such as ERP and EAM is inexpensive and possible without programming expertise. Now, for example, enterprise business decisions can be made based on the impact of maintenance downtime on production and costs. This visibility into all aspects of the business is allowing for quicker and wiser decisions to be made.