Preparing AT for MES governance
AT’s strengths lie in its ability to provide a critical production-oriented perspective to MES. The problem, however, is that the processes used by AT to manage MES technology are usually not as formal as those used by IT. To a great extent, preparing AT for MES means adopting some of those more-rigorous IT processes.
In general, IT departments have a higher governance maturity level than AT groups do, due largely to their focus on infrastructure and application standardization to reduce complexity and cost. With an emphasis on “running IT as a business,” IT typically measures, evaluates and continuously enhances the services it provides to the company. As a result, internal IT processes tend to be well defined.
AT groups, on the other hand, usually spend little time describing their processes and procedures. In some cases, AT is not organized as a formal department or division; instead, there is an automation committee made up of personnel from across the plant. When an AT department does exist, it is typically placed under local operations or local maintenance in each plant, without any centralized management at the company level. This plant-oriented structure can limit AT’s performance and its capacity to think strategically. It is a large part of what makes it so difficult to standardize automation assets, applications and procedures, and why it is so difficult to connect IT with shop floor applications.
The good news is that the path to improved AT governance is clear. Companies can draw on the IT department’s proven methods for managing IT, and apply well-understood governance practices and support standards such COBIT and ITIL.
Companies can follow a clear, multi-step approach to automation governance. This approach begins with an assessment of existing processes, which provides a foundation for the definition of an operational model for governance. This model can be a fully centralized, decentralized or federated one. Some centralization is always necessary to cover processes such as standardizing assets and applications, defining automation procedures and technical architectures, and developing global master plans and automation templates. All roles and responsibilities should be defined up front. Ultimately, this work should lead to plans for change management and taking action.
A key decision in this process is whether the centralized organization or the local plant will be responsible for suggesting new projects, supplying and controlling the automation budget, and managing the project portfolio. If the central group controls too much, the structure tends to be rigid and lose leanness and escalation capacity. This tendency can be alleviated by letting each factory have its own automation budget, depending on its size, growth capacity and profitability. At the same time, it is typically a good idea to centralize the training budget to help ensure that everyone in the organization receives consistent, adequate training. In general, the determination of norms and standards should be under central control, while operational activities should be managed at the plant or regional levels.
Preparing IT for MES governance
To make IT ready for MES governance, companies need to define a new group within IT that is dedicated to industrial IT activities—an “Industrial IT” group. (This approach assumes that IT is already well organized and able to manage IT as a business. If this is not the case, the overall IT organization needs to be brought up to speed before the Industrial IT group is created.)
The Industrial IT structure should be based on a formal governance blueprint, with processes, roles and responsibilities and contact points with other organizational levels all being well defined. The group should be guided by rigorous, manufacturing-oriented service-level agreements with the business. It should “talk the factory language,” and understand production processes, priorities and limitations. Much of the required IT work can be done remotely, of course, but experience has shown that operations personnel will not truly trust IT people who do not have a presence on the shop floor. In addition, when plants have an operational issue, they cannot afford to have the issue entered into an IT work queue or wait for the next global MES template to be released. Production problems are often urgent; operational personnel are not likely to wait for IT if there is a delay, but rather come up with their own pragmatic solutions on site. Overall, then, a local IT structure and presence are a necessity.
In creating the Industrial IT group, companies should draw on technology professionals and automation specialists working the traditional IT and AT areas. A hybrid mix of the two specialties can be created through training and experience over time. In some countries, universities have created a formal degree that focuses developing professionals who specialize in managing MES and level 3 technologies.
Companies also need to decide where to place Industrial IT on the organizational chart. It is usually placed under the CIO, in parallel with corporate IT, but it can also be placed under the COO in parallel with AT. Another option is to have Industrial IT, Corporate IT and AT located at the same level under the CIO. This can be difficult, however, because CIOs are generally not comfortable with automation-related responsibilities. Often, they feel that they do not have the right factory experience and are concerned about becoming responsible for production maintenance. This is not an entirely valid issue, however. While the CIO might have responsibility for central AT governance, there are typically non-centralized groups with deep manufacturing knowledge in place that can be responsible for on-site activities.