IT/OT Convergence Drives Digital Transformation

Overview

At the 2021 ARC Industry Forum, the two sessions on IT/OT convergence driving digital transformation across industries brought forth interesting perspectives and gripped audience interest. ARC’s Craig Resnick, Vice President, gave a broad overview and moderated both sessions. This Insight focuses on the second session that explored how companies have used IT/OT convergence to drive digital transformation, how it is evolving in a pandemic affected world, and the benefits for all stakeholders.

Setting the tenor for the session, Craig said that the new normal created by the pandemic is impacting companies and propelling them to respond faster and become more agile and operationally resilient. There is a lot more common ground shared by IT and OT and the boundaries are dissolving as the remote workforce and teams need to connect and collaborate seamlessly. “From IT/OT convergence we are now moving to IT/OT fusion,” he said.

Speakers: Mary DeAlba, Global Industrial Network Solutions Design Manager, SKF Group; Firdaus Hasani, Head, System and Work Process Digital Tools, Petronas; Tyler Fedun, Manager IT Operations Applications, Butane Blending, and Operational Data Analytics, Energy Transfer; and Julimar Bonicenha, Senior Engineer, Klabin

Panelists: Dan Schaffer, Senior Product Manager, Networking and Security, Phoenix Contact; Alex Tate, Area Manager and Applications Specialist, Capstone Technology; Justin Conroy, Technical Manager, and Athos Garcia, Full Stack Developer, Radix Engineering and Software; and Jared Hartness, Director of Industry Solutions, GE Digital

IT/OT Fusion and the Digital Transformation Journey

SKF Group

Giving a brief overview of the SKF Group, Mary DeAlba said that the company, which was founded in 1907, manufactures and supplies bearings (of which it is the world’s largest manufacturer), seals, lubrication and lubrication systems, maintenance/mechatronics/power transmission products, condition monitoring systems and related services globally. 

SKF’s digital transformation journey began in 2017. About 50 people from across the organization were involved in an exercise to identify OT and IT requirements to achieve a digitalized SKF smart factory standard. The approvers of this new standard were the company’s Manufacturing Capability Council and IT Architecture Council. A series of building blocks, including network zoning/hardware, infrastructure resilience, secure remote access, and evaluation of multi-vendor network components, were each assigned to a team to achieve these objectives. Mary also listed the specific requirements of OT and IT that had to be addressed. Based on these objectives and requirements, SKF selected Phoenix Contact as the supplier for the standard industrial network hardware used for its smart factory connectivity and other services. This digital transformation journey taught SKF many lessons, a few include:

• Protecting the process (OT) is more important than protecting the data (IT).
• IT must be flexible to OT requirements.

• A manufacturing IT organization may be necessary to build a bridge between OT and IT and to accommodate immediate demands to digitalize.

Petronas Downstream

Striving for world-class operational excellence through asset performance management (APM) at Petronas Downstream was the topic of Firdaus Hasani’s presentation. As part of Petronas’ integrated business, Petronas Downstream plays a key strategic role in enhancing the value of petroleum resources and transforming it into high-quality and value-added products for the global market. Petronas has embarked on an organizational transformation called OE R2 transformation (operational excellence and results expected).  This covers the work process, management system, and empowerment (speed of decision making). The objective of the OE R2 digital strategy is to achieve seamless integration between work processes and digitalization. Next, Firdaus spoke about the connected workforce to enhance efficiency and productivity, providing an example of overlaying the work process with digital tools.

Firdaus explained that implementation of APM for operational excellence requires an end to end holistic approach, which includes (design, operation, third party integration, and change management. The core objectives of APM are reliable data flow and an optimum reliability strategy. Plant assets at Petronas Downstream can now be managed in a single platform that is standardized and integrated.

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Keywords: IT/OT Convergence, Fusion, Digital Transformation, ARC Industry Forum, Operational Excellence, COVID -19, Pandemic, ARC Advisory Group.