What is an Industrial Unified Control Center?

Within industrial and manufacturing environments that are trying to advance towards a digital transformation process, it is very common to encounter certain barriers or challenges that try to slow down the acceleration of this change. Many times it happens due to a technological change, a change in work philosophy, or even a change in mentality in the group of workers. Paradigms have changed in a very short time, and we can no longer justify ourselves by saying that we live in a VUCA environment.

A study by LNS Research, a British industrial consulting and analysis company, focused on best practices for digital and operational transformation, as well as technological leadership prospecting, says the following:

“The main concern of customers is no longer the ROI, and the main challenges to achieve production objectives involve greater interdepartmental collaboration, eliminating functional silos, and the simplification of the management of automation and control systems.”

I why an Industrial Unified Control Center is Necessary

With forty years of experience in the market, Wonderware offers value in virtually any industrial sector, and as a result of the experience and continuous improvement over these years, the concept of the UOC, Unified Operations Center, is born.

The UOC comes to answer:

A Scarce Automation of Procedures, with the Objective of:

• Make better tactical decisions.
• Eliminate disparate systems and processes.
• Break down organizational silos.

Information Silos, with the Objective of:

• Unify them, to have a more strategic vision.
• Technologically unify systems and processes.
• And offer a more business-oriented and business vision.

Unified Operations

• Thanks to the contextualization of data and converting it into information with BI and dashboarding tools to drive better decision-making.
• Be able to control costs.
• Link process facilities, IT, warehouses… and optimize interaction operations between them, in this way the facilities offer a better TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

In short, an integration of operations from different disparate systems and information silos with the aim of also integrating people and different types of users (maintenance, operations, engineering, quality, IT…) into a single platform that converges and acts as a true SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS.

I Objectives of the Industrial Unified Control Center

For that reason, the objective of a UOC could be summarized as:

• Improve Real-Time Decision Making: Thanks to complete business visibility, for a safe and optimal analysis and execution of operations.
• Increase in operational performance: Thanks to the Real-Time contextualization of all the verticals that make up the organization, managing each operational level according to its needs and functionalities.
• Increase in Efficiency and Improvement of Profitability: Thanks to the digitization of processes, collaboration between departments through automated SOPs and improvement of the quality of operations.

I Solution Map for a UOC:

These objectives can be addressed thanks to a solution map that tries to unify sites, assets, systems and people from the different engineering, operations and performance teams, and that allow to respond to the following operational and information challenges:

• How can I better monitor and control operations?
• How to provide security and comply with rules and regulations?
• How can I improve operational efficiency?
• How do I guarantee the availability and reliability of assets?
• How can I allow better decision making?
• How can I offer a better user experience?

It is also very important to work with a solution map that ensures the 8 characteristics of success for a UOC: visibility, contextualization, universal, agnostic, effective, flexible, compatible and above all collaborative.

And as one of the most important parts of the UOC is people, and not all of us are the same, each position must get a different benefit from the UOC:

Greater Profitability

For COOs (Chief Operating Officers), SVP of Operations, Digital Transformation Officers… for a better decision making:

• Real-time cost and profitability analysis.
• Key performance indicators on the overall production and performance objectives of the entire plant.
• Intuitive dashboards.

Operational Efficiency

For plant managers, maintenance managers, production… emphasizing response times and problem solving:

• Greater situational awareness.
• Context-based application capabilities for control and optimization.
• Evolution towards improved operational excellence.

Efficiency for IT

For CIOs, IT managers…improving the maintenance of system lifecycles:

• Implement and manage changes to live production systems, enabling continuous improvements.
• Eliminate downtime associated with application maintenance.
• Built-in security at all levels.

In short, end users will be able to get more out of the information and data from all systems, anticipate problems and, therefore, minimize downtime.

In the following POSTS we will delve deeper into the practical implementation of UOCs in food and beverage environments, pharmaceutical environments and chemical environments. Don’t miss them!

We are ready and want to travel with all of you. Who’s in?

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