Replace, Repair, Upgrade, Other Pathways.

You have had "old reliable" for ten years and you are unsure about whether to replace, repair or upgrade. Usually issue comes down to cost benefit analysis. And are there other options which you have not even considered?

Even if one has decided to do something like Continuous Monitoring or Lifecycle Management of the unit (because one has a programme for all units), the choice is still hard.

One craves data to inform decision, but a study or upgrade may be needed to even get data. That costs too.

A. Get a study. Or hook directly to remote monitoring. Externals are involved and that can cost. For too many reasons to list herein... that often will not work.

B. Replace it with modern gear and start fresh. Hard to argue with that. And if it can be gotten through - golden. But one will never know what was thrown away... and it will be questioned.

C. Repair and Upgrade. This is a trick option. When one is in the process of doing repairs, it always makes sense to do an upgrade. But you are at the mercy of the contractors who do this work. However often it is the best value. 

D. Give it a born again experience - warts and all. This last one was once as expensive as all of the above, and at least as much trouble.

What if you could magically turn dumb old reliable into a smart new system with self diagnosis. Not saying that we fix old reliable yet, or even have it mend its ways. Just make it talk. Just make it self aware.

That was just not an option as little as five years ago. It was expensive. Only the manufacturer or installer of old reliable could do such magic and their incentive was always to replace and repair first and ask questions later. Upgrade to self awareness often gets value engineered out of the process.

But think about what

• - NEST does for your furnace and AC system.
• - RESA Power Systems does for old switchgear.
• - Any OBD-II monitor can do for your car (insurance).
• - Eaton PXG600E does for a Westinghouse metering system.
• - Roku, Chromecast (or similar) does for your home entertainment system.

The age arises where you buy a "rebirth" box for old reliable: Hook the box onto old reliable (with sensors and wires to what little smarts old reliable has). Hook the box onto your existing network (and we all have networks - even if we do not think about them). Analyze old reliable with Internet tools.

Past ages made such a rebirth box expensive because:

• A. The box hardware was expensive. A PLC is thousands.
• B. The setup of the box was expensive. System engineering is just plain expensive... again in the thousands.
• C. Maintaining the box was expensive. The ecosystem of data exchange and support required massive organizations.
• D. The box (because of hardware, setup and ecosystem costs) was made to do everything possible - but not one thing well.

The key is in the economics of chips, simple interfaces, auto-configuration, and supporting ecosystem that have come from  the explosion in mobile devices. And the mantra of doing what it should do well is finally coming.

I like the idea of reuse. It turns the installed base into an opportunity instead of a liability. And it is good for everyone. I like the idea of a smart device. David Rose - Enhchanted Objects. I like the idea of this being magic.

MassTLC IoT at PTC - Smart Connected Products Transforming Competition - HBR.

IoT has had much discussion lately. Went to a great MassTLC sponsored seminar at PTC on November 4. How Smart, Connected Products are Transforming Competition. Went hand in hand with article in Harvard Business Review. Lay of land for Smart Connected Products. Ten questions businesses should ask themselves. Very appropriate.  Looking at steps

1. 1. Monitoring.
2. 2. Control.
3. 3. Optimization.
4. 4. Autonomy.

Could not help but think about the roots of IoT in tracking/viewing things. The order should perhaps still be

1. 1. Monitoring.
2. 2. Optimization (based purely on what is monitored and outside of any actual IoT programme).
3. 3. Autonomy.
4. 4. Control - Control is last because one should understand the situation before taking action.

And in many cases there are limits (safety, regulatory, privacy, moral, etc.) on what can be controlled. Most of the value is in monitoring and optimization. Some situations never get to control.

 

There were questions during discussions about..

When will industries standardize? What are we waiting for?

1. Leadership from Apple, Amazon, Google and so forth were cited for consumer.
2. Leadership by the main players are often cited in commercial industry. But there is a commercial incentive for non-standard approaches (differentiators) in many situations.
3. Cooperation and collaborative openness. There are examples of collaborative standardization. There are ecosystems which makes it easy to exchange, normalize, coordinate, aggregate and analyze data.

Examples of collaborative standardization:

• BACnet in buildings.
• Sunspec in renewables.
• MTConnect in factory systems.
• OPC (XML DA) in automation.

And the following too - if an ONLY if the mapping/schema is well known... the universally accepted schema is the heart of the matter

• Modbus in industrial. The depth and of Modbus (all the way to sensors), and the breadth of its install base, should not be ignored.
• SNMP in IT.
• RESTful exchange in commerce.
• Any XML in any domain.
• MQ (message queuing) in any domain.

SQL is often hauled out as an exchange method. There is no universal public schema for any database system. Such a schema would be orthogonal to the performance needs of a database.
 
And as a final word. Smart connected things without goals and analytics are fruitless. And goals need not be set in stone, as they are generally informed by analytics. Tactical drives the strategic and vice versa. They are two sides of the same coin. Planning is essential but plans are useless.

 

Continuous Monitoring Based Commissioning.

Article regarding Continuous Monitoring Based Commissioning.
http://w3.usa.siemens.com/buildingtechnologies/us/en/Smart_Buildings/Documents/the-12-things-you-need-to-know-about-monitor-based-commissioning-a-siemens-white-paper-final.pdf

Most everyone knows about commissioning. For most systems the concept is straightforward, and the goal is universal - optimization - chiefly for reliability (be it economic or functional.. and this is not really an "or" at transcendence).

It is more nuanced what happens with re-commissioning a system... Is it a snapshot? Does one stop the process? etc.

Then after one gets the before/after understood... one is faced with understanding ongoing versus batch/jump. The real winners (sometimes better termed "non-losers") are the ones who can harness the power of continous improvement.

Here is Contiuous Improvement with a large "C". 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process