Controls Networks and IT Networks Need to Work Together for Effective Supply-Chain Management

By Mike Bacidore, Managing Editor

As supply-chain management casts an eye toward demand visibility and production performance, the inevitable collisions between IT and manufacturing network engineers become more pronounced. But two companies, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble (P&G), are turning those clashes and conflicts into convergence and cooperation.

Jeff Kent, technology section head, controls and information, at P&G (www.pg.com), and David Bynum, principal engineer from Coca-Cola North America (www.coca-cola.com), explained this past November at Rockwell Automation Fair in Anaheim, Calif., how their enormous companies have straddled the chasm and begun to tap valuable manufacturing data.

"Internal to P&G, we have a very strong manufacturing IT presence," said Kent. "As we begin to blur those roles, the architectures they've already defined will change. On the technology side, there's still a huge amount of struggle. In our internal culture, when the IT department wants data, they come and get it. We know how damaging that can be. In these very integrated high-effort systems, we need to reduce the effort. Whether we're in Africa or somewhere else, those systems have to have the same agility."

One key hurdle at P&G is having OPC as a way to connect to the Logix platform. "There were interventions made, and we backed them off the polling rates or number of tags, or we've explored other ways to mirror the data so they can access that chassis, rather than our real running controller," said Kent. "Making Logix a data server actually means creating mirrored data so we don't hit the controller with OPC calls. We need to mirror those tags over."

At Coca-Cola, it's all about being in tune with a demand-driven supply chain and striking the right balance between efficiency, service and cost, said Bynum. "How do we promote information beyond the first consumer out to other organizations within the division so they can also see what's coming?" he asked. "What information do we need so we can be more responsive to those demand signals? The Logix platform has pushed the envelope for us. That platform allows us to take all these pieces, bring it to a central platform and serve it back out to the users. Before Logix, it was still hammer-and-chisel to put those systems in place. Now we have conversations between Rockwell Automation and IT, not just manufacturing controls. Today we have the framework in-house, so both groups collaborate. We have IT and the shop-floor expertise to get the job done, and integration to ERP has given us some momentum. We don't allow IT to just come and take whatever information they want. Creating an information layer reduces latency on the actual controller and HMI at the shop-floor level."

James Ingraham, software development team leader at Sage Automation (www.sagerobot.com), Beaumont, Texas, says most of the system integrator's customers haven't been integrating machinery with the IT network. "The coupling point still seems to be barcodes on products or pallets as they come off the production line," he says. "Even when there are nice windows into the production environment, individual machines usually aren't part of that.  We rarely even get assigned IP addresses for our Ethernet equipment. We have seen a few sophisticated systems, where IT has been involved and specified gateways and segregated networks and handed out IP addresses, even allowing remote VPN access." But Ingraham says it's the exception, rather than the rule.

"Our IT department is highly involved in projects concerning control and control systems," explains Choy-Hsien Lin, development engineer, process control, Stora Enso Publication Paper (www.storaenso.com), Hyltebruk, Sweden. "There is a growing need for Ethernet communication and other high-level protocols. This increases the number of attack vectors to the systems exposing them to significant security risks. Data from our plants are aggregated in several central systems, but the ERP is only connected to specific points where custody transfer occurs."

One typical case of conflict between IT and controls engineers is when a company has an IT department that desires to do remote management of PCs, explains Stuart McFarlane, vice president, Viewpoint Systems (www.viewpointusa.com), Rochester, N.Y. "Typical cases of IT control include when IT specifies which operating system to use," says McFarlane. "Sometimes, IT will specify computer make and model when clearly that make and model are not appropriate for the industrial application or when IT specifies remote management of OS updates, novel client updates and antivirus updates. This aspect is particularly problematic because the computers installed for an application have been verified to operate and the automatic updates disturb the configuration enough that the application no longer functions correctly."

Production data is not typically collected by ERP systems, says McFarlane. "This is still an area that sounds like a good idea but is very difficult to implement and manage," he says. "The exception to this rule is the medical industry that has implemented 21 CFR, Part 11, traceability. Since it has taken it that far, integration into ERP is a smaller step. IT and plant engineers do not typically play nicely together. The most successful companies' IT organizations realize they are there to support the business in the most effective and secure way possible and are part of the solution and not part of the problem."