Adopting an Edge to Enterprise strategy for confidence in your operations

Poster: May 25, 2020

A high degree of uncertainty presents challenges in operations and infrastructure. Manufacturing facilities, plants, cities, workers are all adapting to trends that mean taking the workforce remote, implementing new communication and collaboration technologies, and bringing data and decision making where it’s needed. Fluctuation in supply chains and demand mean a need for increased flexibility in managing costs and reacting quickly to market needs. We are all impacted, whether on the plant floor, in the control room or at the enterprise level of the business.

New Challenges for Infrastructure, Process, and Manufacturing

The challenges of bringing workers data remotely to allow for safer operations has also presented infrastructure operations like Carson City Public Works with an opportunity to leverage industrial automation technology to bring remote data to their workforce, and leverage tools that allow them to interact with their system from anywhere. Capabilities like these offer businesses a huge advantage over competitors who cannot safely access facilities or equipment on premise.

This opportunity to meet new requirements by increasing the agility and flexibility of the system and workforce is highlighted as companies revisit how they look at their plant, manufacturing facility, pipeline or water treatment facility regardless of industry. Workforce enablement, operations agility, flexibility and sustainability are all key drivers of the steps businesses are taking to shock-proof their systems.

Operating with Confidence for the future

Operating with confidence means adequately addressing the challenges of 2020. It means ensuring that employees have access to the data they need where and when they need it, on multiple devices and platforms. It means having the insight to make rapid decisions that offer the business the agility to move with the market. Confidence also means having the flexibility to use the right software tools and licensing modules that allow businesses to implement changes quickly and cost effectively.

AVEVA recognizes this and has put significant thought and investment into our Edge to Enterprise automation philosophy.  This goes beyond purely HMI & SCADA and extends into operations management to offer a full stack of interoperable software solutions that can be customized into the right solution for rapidly changing business needs without locking you into massive software purchases intended to run to failure.

Taking an Edge to Enterprise approach helps you focus on the systems and processes you need now, and as you plan for your future

• Workforce Enablement – In today’s market it is important more than ever to be able to connect your teams to the right information, at the right time, in the right context. While security and stability needs may require a nuanced approach to remote capabilities, leveraging native communication protocols and web-based clients that push data to the web or cloud is readily available and simple to configure and implement.
• Operational Agility – To move as quickly as the market, it is important to ensure your team has the right level of visibility to stay informed and take action. In 2020, this extends to leveraging tools including cloud-based portals to analyze data and artificial intelligence and machine learning that drive real-time decision making.
• Flexibility – As the pace of change accelerates, so does the need to rapidly adapt your process to market demands. Operators are looking at ways to be able to best manage their systems. Having the flexibility to adjust architecture and technology as needs change can present a significant advantage. Software subscription also allows for the opportunity to get up and running while managing OPEX.
• Standardization – Standardization can drive predictability and operational efficiency. Where operations are looking at the entire edge to enterprise stack or just a piece, having a standardization focus ensures that you’ll be able to make the most use of your software investments. By standardizing assets like Industrial Graphics and taking a Build Once, Deploy Anywhere approach operators can take advantage of reusability, increased situational awareness and reduced training just to name a few benefits.

Interested in learning more?

Join me for my upcoming chat on June 4th with Rashesh Mody, Head of AVEVA’s Monitor and Control business, where I will be talking with him more about why adopting an Edge to Enterprise strategy is crucial in today’s industrial and infrastructure market.

This is the first in our new series, Operate in 15 with Rashesh Mody, where each month we will be digging deeper on these key drivers, Edge to Enterprise strategy and more. Have a question you would like Rashesh to answer in a future chat sent me a quick email with your question.