Q&A: Trends in Process Automation Smart Technology

By Theresa Houck, Executive Editor

In this interview, I chat with Jason Pennington, Director of Digital Solutions at Rockwell Automation Strategic Alliance Partner Endress+Hauser, about trends affecting the increasing demand for digital transformation in process automation.

Also, learn about advancements in smart process instrumentation technologies and how Coriolis technology is improving operations. Enjoy this Q&A and listen to the “Automation Chat" podcast for the full interview (see sidebar).

Theresa: What trends are influencing the increasing demand for digital transformation?

Jason: We see digital transformation applications for process automation being data and analytics, but we also see different forms of digital transformation, such as business models or production models. Think services and integration of service-to-service, cloud-to-cloud and business-to-business. Digital transformation is part of the culture too, such as how a business is optimized.

The key is this: The more you might be willing to share strategically and securely, do you have an opportunity to create a competitive advantage for yourself and your partners?

Theresa: What are some downsides when a manufacturing leader doesn't take smart connected technology into consideration?

Jason: I think about that when an existing or future customer says, "We’re not going to do cloud. My IT group won't allow it."

My response is, "Have we just not really listened to that customer well enough? Have we not presented the right value? Are we capable of digging out their possible business or operational problems? And are we able to address them beyond the idea of just another company talking about cloud and throwing out buzzwords?"

In some cases, you have to do your homework. Put yourself in the customer's position and understand a little bit about its culture. Every company is different in terms of the boundaries and rules they follow. As a business, we have to consider integrating their business processes with our data and how our data might influence some of the decisions they make about their own operation. And that leads a lot to trust.

Theresa: Is there such a thing as being behind in digital transformation, and should plant managers compare themselves to competitors? How should plant managers measure where they stand with digital transformation?

Jason: This is a subjective reflection. What does it mean to be behind? I think that's a different answer for everyone.

By running unsupervised machine learning models on plant-floor machines on the plant floor in real time, does that mean you’re digitally transformed? Or, in some cases, I've seen a lot of companies that are just stuck in pilot purgatory, trying to find this nirvana of connected technology.

Then I've seen some companies a little slow to move, but very strategic in how they move, very methodical. Are those companies left behind just because they've been slower to adopt?

Or perhaps they're not left behind at all — they’re just taking more of a classical approach, writing charters for projects and putting subject matter expert (SME) teams together to think about what problem they’re trying to solve, and finding how investing in this technology can integrate into their larger enterprise?

What are some of the milestones they’re measuring before they really start to adopt this technology? We’ve seen the dynamic, almost kind of a psyche within the industry, of just an acceptance for cloud-first with a variety of containerized platforms able to deliver software that really is innovative and incremental to what enterprises are doing.

[Software] has been created with the ability to deliver some value independent of the hardware platforms they’re running, or not necessarily being reliant upon hardware they can't get. These have been some of the unique industry trends over the last couple years.

Theresa: And how do you see Coriolis and digital transformation working together to improve process automation?

Jason: Coriolis, it's only one technology, but it’s an important one. I'd position Coriolis as one of those unique technologies with multivariable aspects and a lot of evolution in the market. It's able to provide some outcome-based solutions.

There are other very much fit-for-purpose devices. When thinking about a temperature sensor or pressure sensor, there's some interesting diagnostics, little incremental features, but if I want to measure pressure in a steam line, that's about the extent of my specification.

With Coriolis, we have viscosity, density, mass flow, volume flow and a variety of diagnostics. So, we've started to call it “a window to the process.” It's an analyzer that also happens to measure flow accurately.

And thinking about UX (user experience) and UI (user interface), it’s interesting to see how system integrators bring the purity, the blending, the quality, or whatever outcome is needed.

Two engineers are now able to sit in a room in Midwest USA, operating quality systems, delivering coatings, or whatever that they're doing, in 30 to 40 countries. Not only can they benchmark all those sites in the cloud, but they can have a device that's documenting itself and telling the user the pipe’s building up, for example.