I announced a while back that we would be tearing up the editorial calendar and making the November issue a special issue with a single theme: critical infrastructure protection.

I thought I'd share with you the cover, and some of the table of contents...just to whet your appetites, see?

The issue goes to the printer tomorrow, and will be online in a couple of weeks.

Here's a look at some of the stories inside:

My editiorial, "What Is to be Done?" asks who is going to step up and create a Global Critical Infrastructure Emergency Response Team.

Ranjan Acharya, a system integrator from New Zealand confesses to questions about ASCI and ISA99.

Bela Liptak's Lessons Learned column is about Nuclear Plant Security and Cyberterrorism.

John Rezabek's On the Bus column is an end-user's look at cyber.

In Control Report, Executive Editor Jim Montague talks about the stewpot of standards, and how to get in early before all the meat is gone.

In the "feature well," Managing Editor Nancy Bartels steps off with an introduction to "The Security Lifestyle." Then Joe Weiss and I talk reality about cybersecurity-- and how to fix the problem. Next, Jim Montague talks about how security works, in "Carving Up Security." Rich Merritt follows with two articles about physical security, one for outside the plant and one for inside. We nicknamed them "inside" and "outside" when we were working...but we didn't get inside out. Dan Hebert takes on the security of integrated safety systems in his Technically Speaking column, McMillan and Wiener interview DeltaV creator Mark Nixon on safety and security, and Keith Larson talks about the nitty gritty-- tools to make your networks secure.

I'm very pleased with the issue, and I hope you all will be, too.

The Control magazine digital edition is posted. You can read it in Flash format online, and you can also download a DRM-free PDF version and read it at your leisure, or print stories out and pass them around. We welcome you to do that.

http://control.dgtlpub.com/2008/2008-10-31/home.php

I want to apologise for the fact that the blogs have been down for nearly three days. We had some serious problems with the hosted servers on which they run, and it took a very long time, in cyber terms, to get them fixed.

In the process, several of the most recent blog posts were lost. I apologise for that, as well.

Hopefully, we won't have this sort of thing happen, either this badly, or this often, anymore.

Walt

ISA Announces Hurricane Relief Fundraiser to Help Gulf Coast Recover from Storm

Research Triangle Park, NC (22 September 2008) – In response to the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which hit the Gulf Coast states as a Category 2 storm on 13 September, ISA has announced a hurricane relief fundraising program to be held in conjunction with ISA EXPO, 14-16 October in Houston, Texas, at the Reliant Center. ISA also announced a pledge to match funds collected, up to $10,000, approved on Friday by its executive board.

ISA will collect financial donations throughout ISA EXPO 2008, and will dedicate Tuesday evening’s industry reception to the relief effort with a silent auction to raise money for the American Red Cross’ Hurricane Ike disaster relief fund. The Red Cross is providing shelter, food and emotional support to tens of thousands of residents, and with more than 200 shelters opened across several states, the Red Cross and its partners have provided more than 100,000 overnight stays to people affected by Hurricane Ike. The organization is also working to feed and provide mental health counseling to help both victims and emergency personnel.

"The Red Cross can’t do their important work without the support of the community -- our community. After all, these are our colleagues, our friends, our customers, and our suppliers, and we’ll support them and help them rebuild," said ISA Executive Director and CEO Patrick Gouhin.

Individuals can donate by bringing cash or checks made out to the American Red Cross to ISA EXPO, 14-16 October, at the Reliant Center in Houston, Texas. Individuals can also bid on dozens of items at our silent auction, held during the industry reception at the Reliant Center on Tuesday, 14 October, 5:30 – 7 p.m.

Companies can donate in three key ways:

1. Pledge to match the funds raised by ISA EXPO 2008 attendees. This is the most significant gift a company can give – to match a percentage of the generosity of the individuals attending ISA EXPO.

2. Send a one-time donation to ISA, in the form of a check made out to the American Red Cross, to support the effort.

3. Donate a $250+ valued gift to the silent auction. ISA is asking for consumer items, and logos are welcome to be on the donations.

Because of the critical time sensitivity of the disaster relief effort, ISA is asking companies to respond with their pledges of matching funds and silent auction gifts by the end of the week. ISA will accept one-time donations through the conclusion of ISA EXPO on October 16.

Hello All. Sorry for long gap. Today I want to discuss ISO 10303, the standard for the exchange of product (STEP) model data, and how ISO and the OPEN Operations and Maintenance (Open O&M) are not working together, but must do so.

Here is the situation that I see, knowing that I only have a spectator's view. ISO 10303 has been used in the product design organizations for discrete manufacturing for 15 years (A&D, automotive, industrial equipement, plant building design, some electronics). The standard set and the assoicated software products has evolved right up to the manufacturing operations walls, but stopped there because the majority of the discrete manufacturing operations is done manually or through robotics or assembly lines. The actual production operations systems are primiarly paper-based routing and quality data collections. Most routes and work descriptions for the plant are product-centric. Meanwhile, the Open O&M standards (ISA-88, ISA-95, OMAC, OPC, OAGIS, MIMOSA) are primiarly operations-based where they design and characterize the product-non-specific definition of operations work and resources. The Open O&M standards view operations in recipes and routings as product-independant. They view that as the best way to address adaptive manufacturing. The Open O&M standards have matured to a point of application across all the batch and process industries (CPG, F&B, P&P, Pharm, Chemical, 3Ms, O&G). The software and hardware vendors for these industries are all moving their product towards the Open O&M baseline.

Why? The manufacturers view this standardization as the best way to apply Lean as these industries move for a make-to-stock to a make-to-order manufacturing form. Meanwhile, the discrete industries and the ISO group are developing their own operations set of models to extend the design schema into operations. I believe that they are viewing that Lean single piece flow requires operations to be product-specific.

I believe this is a very bad assumption. Production capability has to be charactized and optimized independently, and product production has to apply the limited resources based on availability. Currently, two large automotive manufacturers, GM and Tata Motors, have noticed this and determined that the best way to define the Lean standard work in the plant and baseline capabilities is to apply the OPEN O&M standards at their plants. This requires a transformation of the STEP-based designs and the PLM system into the manufacturing operations systems' data and process models. I believe that discrete and batch/process manufacturers and the vendors need to directly address NIST at a government level and ISO, ISA and OAG at an association level to get these standards groups to finally work together.

The largest issue in the OPEN O&M is that the devekioers are volunteer and not supported at the committee level with money and resources by the manufacturers ,where the ISO 10303 group are heavily financed by discrete manufacturers and vendors. Siemens is in a position of direct leadership and needs to take this on, since they acquired UGS, which supports 10303 and owns/sells a large suite of OPEN O&M operations management products.

I am personally working on a project where this situation creates mass confusion for manufacturers. One of my clients has 4 product lines funneling into one plant where, for the exact same production routing, the definitions for BOMs (engineering and manufacturing), routes, operations, work instructions, equipment settings are all different and product-specific. This means that the production controller, supervisor and operators have to deal with four different definitions for the same operations. This is a large barrier to Lean, standard work and single-piece flow. You simply cannot scale or flex the workforce or the production areas.

This is Walt Boyes, hijacking the good ship "Hitchhiking..." for a moment to pass on an important announcement from WBF and OMAC:

The WBF Working Group Committee would like your help to advance automation across industries, yourcareer, and your company!

The Committee sponsors work groups that will develop a deliverable to further the advancement of the automation profession and the industries it serves. A key component for creating a successful work group is leadership and commitment. GE Fanuc has stepped forward to offer its leadership and personal effort in determining high-interest topics relating to the automation community that could be developed into working groups. The first step is to identify an area of interest and then develop the deliverable and charter.

Current areas of consideration are:

- Make2Pack Standards - Security, Safety, and Quality

- Materials Tracking - Wireless and RFID

- Campaign Management - Record Tracking, Tab Recipe Editor

- Common Industrial Interface Model for Application to Application Data Exchange using ISA95

If you are interested in one of these areas, or would like to suggest other areas, please contact Dave Chappell, WBF Working Group Committee Chairman at davec@wbf.org and he will pass your information on to GE Fanuc. The WBF Working Group Committee would like to thank you for your participation in this important work for automation.

Hello All,

From Lean Blog from November, I found this great posting how short term ROI is killing America. The example provide great perspective.

At 6:59 AM, November 15, 2007, Norman Bodek said...

Inventory to Mr. Ohno was the biggest waste and he started a lot of his
initial efforts to reduce inventory. Prior to his thinking most managers
considered inventory a valuable asset for Wall Street loved it. The more
inventory you produced the higher your profits. You did not have to sell
your products. For example, GM made over 5 billion around three years ago
and lost close to 14 billion the next - they couldn't sell what they made.

To me ROI is the same. What is a reasonable expectation for your return on
investments? When I went to NYU Graduate School of Business we were taught
to factor in the interest cost to borrow and the expected rate of return of
your capital invested. The Japanese continually look at the long term and
their ROI reflects that. Too often in America we want very fast ROI¹s,
which keeps us looking at this quarter. An example is Dana Corporation
where every manager knew they were measured on ROI. Dana went bankrupt.

Fast return on investments is good for the stockholder but can be bad for
the company in the long term. I feel that is a prime reason we have lost so
much business to Japan, China, Korea, etc.

Cheap labor might have some factor but if Toyota can do it here, make cars
in America, then so can we if we are willing to make sacrifices for the long
term.

Chasing cheap labor is very inviting and hard to turn down, but it is part
of this short-term thinking and it is "selling America short."

It is much better to wring out the wastes, get all employees empowered and
trained in problem solving activities to demonstrate that we can compete
internationally. Wring out this waste before you consider closing plants
and going overseas.

The Japanese companies are faced with fierce competition with Korea, China
and other low cost countries but they don't want to sell Japan short. I
believe their approaches are:

1. Automate everything possible for those machines running night and day
can easily compete with cheap labor.
2. Use part time employees in the non-skilled jobs. This protects the
permanent employees. I saw that at the factories where part time workers
were doing the repetitive tasks and the skilled permanent employees were
repairing the machines, doing the complicated assembly work, the inspection,
the design engineering, etc. Part time people can only work for a maximum of
three years in a company in Japan. The part time employee does not receive
the same training and development as the permanent employees. It is not easy
on the part time employees, at all, but it does give the companies an
opportunity to automate those unskilled tasks.

I believe that Toyota is still probably one of the best manufacturing
companies to work for in Japan.

I recommend two books: Rebirth of American Industry, which covers the first
issue and my new book by Dr. Shingo Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking.
Shingo was a great master. His new book shows you how to develop your
employees from their ability to identify and solve problems. It is a jewel.

Best wishes,
Norman Bodek

As some of you may know, I am one of the consultants and standards leaders who is forming the Industrial Interoperability Compliance Institute. I have talked to over 100 companies of all kinds: end users, vendors and system integrators. Many of these companies are among the top 100 global manufacturers. Yet many simply do not understand that they are paying large amount of excess cost for custom interfaces and reports. These management teams tell me that they view the IICI as a vendor-driven organization. Their belief that the IICI is a vendor task is frankly wrong and very dangerous for their own business interests. Without a standards-based information model containing standard transactions to represent their standard business processes, their businesses have to create and maintain custom, monolithic transaction models to interface with their suppliers, customers and plants across their ever-expanding supply chains. The management is simply not allowing their manufacturing and supply chain systems to strategically enable their business to be adaptive and configurable to market change. Consequently, their competiveness and profit are directly effected by utilizing disparate systems with custom interfaces, analytics and reports. This approach to integrated systems seriously constrains business and does not enable Lean practices. This business model will not flex to change rapidly enough to provide the market advantage required or desired. The IICI is not a vendor task, quite the opposite. The vendors actually want manufacturers to continue have their disparate systems so they can limit their customers' decisions and own architecture choices. This is what happened on the PLC/DCS side in the 90s. Vendors are resistant to open standards. In doing over $25 million in MOM systems worldwide and working with over 10 different vendors channels, I have witnessed that the highest life-cycle cost for integrated manufacturing systems is the custom interfaces, reports and analytics. For manufacturers' IT costs to go down and their competitive market response to increase, companies need to be leader in this IICI effort.

Hello All,
Well I have been lost in space again. It has been an interesting month with my clients and vacation. I am now back with my feet on the ground and blogging will be picking up. Walt Boyes, our Editor in Chief, has just posted the Market Intelligence Report for Process Control Software. Control surveyed over 300 end users. The results of this study are worth the 8-minute look. Basically, from my world of manufacturing operation management software or MES, business intelligence, decision support and business-to-manufacturing integration, the survey showed that only 20% to 25% of end users are using these production management tools. The results are very disturbing from the point of view that the current executive core of process and manufacturing companies still believe that they can compete globally and transfer thenknowledge of their aging workforce without these advanced operations management systems. This just goes to show that Lean and Six Sigma concepts are nothing but political rhetoric to the North American executive. A day of reckoning is coming.

Sometimes. Many and most manufacturers require some kind of Capital Expenditure (CapEx) justification where somekind of ROI has to be constructed for any IT project over a given amount, say $100K. Some process are better than others but only 15% actually measure results according to MESA International. However, most company as usaul these day are missing the big fish. A detailed ROI validated the system's requirements, migration path and business expectations if it is based on what level of improvement over what time period is expected on a granualar level from the actual quantified waste streams from a value stream analysis of the product workflow. Otherwise, the requirements have no real connection to business expectations.