The majority of the information available around Industry 4.0, Smart production and Smart maintenance is… just marketing. A subtopic that is pushed a lot these days is the need to integrate IT and OT. The story almost sounds like there’s a battle raging between both fields, and that very smart solutions need to come to the rescue to bring peace. In our daily interactions on the shop floor we however hear a different story.
The real problem is not going to be solved by implementing yet an other technical product or software. The real problem is not an OT/IT mismatch, it is that production and maintenance are not aligned. Not only on the level of the teams involved, but from the core of the company structure (management) level. This problem has 2 sides:
- Thanks to accounting and reporting tools both have evolved into different, isolated “cost centers” with fancy dashboards in Tableau or Power BI
- The way Production and Maintenance are defined and bounded internally has drifted in the wrong direction
When looking at a manufacturing site, the goal would be to produce as much products or goods as possible at the required quality, at the lowest cost. This with 2 essential boundary conditions: under safe working conditions (short- and long-term) and with a fair compensation for the employees.
Production and maintenance are intimately linked:
- If an operator abuses an installation, it will get broken. In a narrow view maintenance will have to fix it and get it running again. This will be at the expense of the “maintenance” budget. “Maintenance” is thus penalized for something it cannot do anything about. And moreover: doesn’t have budget left for real improvements. The result: standstill
- If maintenance wants to avoid “abuse”, it can start building in a lot of switches and stops to avoid this abuse or other forms of mis-use. In reality this will hinder the life of the operator, making her or his task less interesting, valuable… The motivation of the operator decreases and efficiency as well. The outcome: less work is done and some people will leave the company, so output decreases.
At management level both responsibilities are isolated, both in search for efficiency gains. Both departments chase their own goals. The end result is however a less performant organization, making it increasingly hard to reach its goals.
On the friction between IT and OT: if goals of production and maintenance are aligned, getting information flowing is only a minor issue. IF all know “why” data is required on certain locations, it can be easily arranged, in multiple ways, regardless the vendor or specific solution.