| |August 20209WITH THE SYSTEM IN OPERATION, CONTINUOUSLY MONITOR IN REAL-TIME THE ASSETS, SYSTEMS AND OPERATIONS IN TERMS OF THEIR KPIS AND HOW THEY ARE IMPROVINGtime running for months together before allowing any restart, shut-down or break. IT system on the other hand can run with restart and shutdown from time-to-time as required for patch, antivirus update, application migration, and others. From cybersecurity point of view, availability is of top priority in OT system with AIC (Availability of system, Integrity of data and confidentially of infor-mation in the order of priority). In IT system, confidentiality has top priority with CIA (confidentiality, integrity and availability in order of priority). This often has been a bone of contention between IT and OT. Rapid development and pen-etration of IoT and digital tech-nologies with added benefits has necessitated integration among IT, OT and IoT as a key enabler for higher level of benefits. The integrated system provides huge amount of data which can be an-alyzed to discover inefficiencies and improvements in the under-lying processes in real-time, be it production, enterprise functions or market transactions. This can be achieved by machine learning (ML) algorithms used by human experts and machines to learn from the data on certain tasks to maximize the performance. For example, it allows system to learn new things about health of an as-set, predict its malfunction or fail-ure. Artificial Intelligence (AI) al-gorithm can use this information to prescribe preventive and correc-tive actions for the asset based on its process model, design and op-erating conditions.With diverse set of technolo-gies such as IT, OT Automation, IoT, AI-ML and complexities of integration, the challenge for a CXO is what to target and where to start from. Especially when economy and business have be-come dynamic with uncertainty and volatility, any investment of resources and money needs to be justified with short-term gains. This can be addressed with an ag-ile and iterative approach based on key performance indicators (KPIs). CXOs need to create a collaborative team consisting of technology and functional experts from OT, auto-mation, IT, IoT and digitalization. The first step is to identify key performance parameters (and KPIs) of assets, system and pro-cesses to improve based on busi-ness strategy. For example, KPIs can be productivity, quality, ener-gy, asset health, reliability, health, safety, environment and security (physical and cyber). Next import-ant step is to carry-out as-is assess-ment of the KPIs in the plant and processes. There are tools and tem-plates available which can be used for the same. Having done that and knowing the as-is level of the KPIs, set target improvement level for each of the KPIs which would give objective and financially measur-able improvements. Then with the help of technology and application subject matter experts, identify platform and solutions from OT, automation, IT, IoT and digitali-zation. Implement those solutions which not only improve the per-formance, but also measure the corresponding KPIs in real-time. With the system in operation, continuously monitor in real-time the assets, systems and operations in terms of their KPIs and how they are improving. As required, carry-out course correction in the system and solution to prove the value of the planned improve-ments. ML applications can be de-ployed here to discover problems, improvement potentials and pre-dict issues. Some actions can be automated using AI applications for real-time correction and im-provement. Allowing time for first iteration to stabilize in terms of the whole system operating providing PoV (proof-of-value), it is time to start the next iteration with defin-ing the next level of KPIs and re-peat the above steps of Define-As-sess-Solve-Monitor-Prove. In the situations when bigger investments with longer-term benefits will be difficult to justify, each value iteration can be of few weeks or months duration to get the monetized value of the KPIs and justification for investments. This makes the digitalization a journey not a one-time destination. An agile framework and integra-tion of OT, Automation, IoT and AI-ML would help CXOs to accelerate enterprise digital transformation in a collaborative way, achieving performance and financial tar-gets, milestone after milestone.
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