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Part 2: Industry 5.0 beckons - Navigating the shift with IT-OT convergence
Part 2: Industry 5.0 beckons - Navigating the shift with IT-OT convergence

September 2, 2024

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Continued from Blog 1.

  • Amidst the current challenges around legacy data, and computing environments, what does it take to realize the vision of Industry 5.0?
  • How can companies take advantage of the industrial big data that’s out there?
  • What’s the missing link between Industry 5.0, industrial connectivity, and industrial big data?

The answer lies in IT-OT convergence.

Manufacturers are under constant pressure to cut manufacturing and operating costs, create higher quality, sustainable, and custom configured products, and enable new models (such as product-as-a-service) to recoup revenues.  This necessitates the adoption of smart manufacturing practices that can bring about new forms of efficiency, and flexibility. This implies the role of advanced technologies including IIoT, AI, robotics, automation, and digital twins. Ultimately, it all boils down to data. Availability of structure and unstructured data, real-time accessibility, connectivity and integration, and analytics paves the way for manufacturers to maximize their gains from smart manufacturing. Harnessing the power of industrial big data is a complicated task considering challenges arising from data silos such as data incompatibility, inconsistent data security strategy, and inaccessible data sets.

A key challenge and necessity in enabling the shift towards Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 is to do with increased connectivity between devices, and systems, and building a robust data foundation to enable better information-sharing and collaborative operations. This in turn calls for convergence of the information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) layers. IT-OT convergence drives significant improvements in industrial processes and operations and helps achieve real-time production visibility, predictive maintenance, enhance machine utilization and availability, reduces energy costs, and carbon footprint, and improves cybersecurity posture.

IT-OT convergence requires interoperability between production and operational processes, people, and systems. But with organizations traditionally keeping IT and OT as distinctive entities, with IT managing information systems and OT handling production equipment, building a unified data model and seamless real-time data flow across systems and applications with the right access controls is not always easy.

 

Benefits and challenges in IT-OT convergence

IT comprises of laptops, computers, networking and storage devices, and other equipment, and resources that are data-centric and used by businesses to store and utilize data and information across the business. OT on the other hand monitors and controls physical devices typically associated with industrial topography. This is used to manage physical assets, including everything from manufacturing equipment and vehicles to boilers, freezers, HVAC systems, and specialized machinery.

Achieving IT-OT convergence has its own array of benefits and challenges.

Benefits

Challenges

Real-time production visibility – Enables gathering of real-time data from factory equipment providing an instant view of production.

Integration complexity – Aligning IT and OT requires overcoming challenges stemming from multiple communication protocols and connectivity mechanisms, technology standards, and security standards.

Enhanced operational efficiency –Facilitates real-time data analytics and monitoring, expediting responses and decisions and streamlining operations.

Data integration – Ensuring data integration and connectivity between devices and sensors on the shop floor, OT systems, and the IT systems remains a challenge owing to siloed processes, older equipment with no sensors, and equipment compatibility issues.

Cost reduction/ optimization – Through predictive maintenance and automation, IT-OT convergence mitigates unexpected operational and maintenance expenses by pre-emptively identifying potential issues.

Security concerns – OT systems when integrated with IT may pose a significant threat emanating from increased risks of data breaches, cyberattacks and industrial espionage given the OT infrastructure gets exposed to all the threats faced by IT traditionally.

Improved decision making – Through preventive maintenance, IT-OT integration can help in things like material/ resource planning, and scheduling production to best utilize available machine capacity.

Skills gap – The absence of proper training and certifications, and lack of cross training in IT and OT skills can lead to inconsistencies in managing the converged IT and OT systems.

Table 1: Key benefits and challenges

 

How can technology service providers help?

There are numerous solutions in the market spanning Industrial IoT (IIoT), data management, and industrial security that paves the way for IT-OT integration. However, there is a need for people, systems, and processes related to IT and OT to work in tandem in order to reap the real benefits of IT-OT convergence. Further, a governance mechanism must be in place to oversee IT and OT projects right from strategy, and planning to execution. Service providers’ role remain crucial considering their deep domain expertise and platform-based solutions/ offerings for IT-OT integration that solves for cost, efficiency and time to market. They help industrial companies solve the unique challenges related to IT-OT integration and provide consulting for prioritizing the right use cases.

 

Spotlight – Hitachi Digital Services

(Excerpts from Hitachi Digital Services Analyst and Advisor Day 2024 held at Hyderabad)

An example of a provider doing some interesting work in this area is Hitachi Digital Services. On 27th and 28th June, at Hitachi Digital Services’ Analyst and Advisor Day Event at Hyderabad, Hitachi Digital Services (HDS) demonstrated how it is spearheading the IT-OT convergence for different industries and organizations by utilizing its capabilities in this domain.

Below is a quick summary:

  • HDS has strong capabilities spanning edge-to-core backed by in-house Lumada product portfolio. Lumada has solutions like Industrial DataOps, Inspection Insights and other pre-built solutions that run on its IIoT platform. Lumada Industrial DataOps services integrates OT data from any industrial system and combine it with IT data from the edge to the cloud providing advanced analytics capabilities for industrial use cases.
  • HDS has its Hitachi Application Reliability Centers (HARC) helps streamline cloud operations for better IT and OT process integration. These centers opened in June 2022 and are a key value add to HDS’ delivery capabilities. They focus on site reliability engineering principles and automation to improve reliability and cost for cloud applications and enables data convergence across IT and OT for edge-to-multi cloud workloads.
  • Hitachi’s Omika Works, the first factory in Japan to be selected as a Lighthouse, an initiative by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for designating the advanced factories around the world, reduces the lead time of core products by 50% without impacting quality. This shows the group’s strong capabilities in combining digital technologies and expertise from IT, OT, and products.

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