Episode 05: What Advantages Does Universal Automation Offer Beyond Total Cost of Ownership? | UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Description

In this episode of UAO Goes Live, join a panel of experts from Shell, GR3N, R. Stahl, and Schneider Electric as they explore the transformative benefits of UniversalAutomation.org and IEC 61499 beyond reducing total cost of ownership. Discover how open automation enables hardware independence, portability, and interoperability, while driving innovation, resilience, and sustainability. Learn why decoupling hardware and software is key to future-proofing industrial automation and how it impacts commissioning, migration strategies, and new business models.

About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

UniversalAutomation.org (UAO) is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to transforming industrial automation through open standards and shared source technology. The association manages the reference implementation of a shared runtime execution engine based on the IEC 61499 standard, enabling true interoperability between hardware from multiple vendors and portability of automation software applications.

By providing a ready-to-use, vendor-neutral runtime environment, UniversalAutomation.org empowers companies to build flexible Industry 4.0 architectures, accelerate digital transformation, and maximize return on investment (ROI) through software reusability and hardware independence.

The development of this runtime is governed by shared source principles, ensuring long-term compatibility and collaborative innovation. Members—including end users, OEMs, system integrators, and technology vendors—work collectively to create a global ecosystem for plug-and-produce automation solutions.

UniversalAutomation.org is growing rapidly as more organizations adopt open automation to overcome vendor lock-in, enable IT/OT convergence, and support greenfield and brownfield projects. Academic institutions are also leveraging this technology to train the next generation of automation engineers.

Companies and institutions that want to lead the future of industrial automation, develop next-generation control systems, and participate in a global open automation community are invited to join UniversalAutomation.org.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everybody, good morning, good day to you, wherever you're based over the earth. My name is Greg Bucco, I'm the Chief Marketing Officer for Universal Automation.org and I'm happy to be here with you today for this new release of the UAO Goes Live sessions. Since the beginning, we've been explaining what is Universal Automation.org and we have been welcoming some of our members. with us doing projects and actually showing how the technology is being used. Today will be a bit different because today we'll go for a panel discussion with technical experts in the fields. But why that? And why Universal Automation? Why all of these technologies going now together? So let's see it from perspective, from the end users. We see that... For decades, companies have been kind of restrained by vendor-specific hardware. So not that easy to change the hardware. The software which is implemented onto it is tightly locked and tightly linked with that hardware. So not very easy for innovation, sometimes not very appealing for new generation. And we see that today companies are more and more looking for and looking at that potential. And that is happening in various forms. We see on the market more and more companies going for open. We see organizations are being set up about open automation. For example, the open automation, the open process automation from the OPAF, or even our organization, Universal Automation, which are coming first from, let's say, users and first from companies willing to have. and more and more open automation system. But what does it mean? What does it enable? Open, and especially in that case, software-defined and universal automation means breaking innovation barriers. So making it easier for companies to integrate newer technology in their already existing system by lowering the costs. of accessing the data, the underlying data, which are always available in all systems. But this means as well the ability to reuse software, reuse software across hardware platform, but as well reusing software, meaning that the life cycles from both the hardware and the software are decoupled, meaning that when the hardware comes to an end of life, you don't necessarily have to change or to upgrade your software to it. And that's a major stage. That's a major change, that's a step change. Another point is how to manage multiple suppliers. I have multiple suppliers, all are running with their own system, so it means that I have to train my people, I have to train my staff in maintaining, in developing, in all those different systems. And this training is for sure cost, and this is as well people management. We have to manage the knowledge between the different person in the team and this is not always easy to do. And last but not least, let's think about future generations, future generations, new talents, freshly coming from school, very looking forward having the newest technologies and implementing that in the field. And coming to the field or field of automation, we can see that things and the way to program has not really much evolved in the last 30-40 years. and how to do that, how to bring that to the field. And this is what we, with Open Automation and Universal Automation, are intending to bring to the field. But how to, let's say, taking that question larger and taking other, let's say, actors on the field, today we'll go with you through the question, okay, what can Open enable? And for that, we welcome some leaders from companies like Stahl, Schneider Electric, Shell, and GR3M, as we discuss through the benefits of what Opens brings to industrial automation. And as we are transitioning, I'm happy to welcome on stage. So we have different people from different companies. So we have Trevor, who is a senior OT. security engineer at Shell. Hi Trevor.
Speaker #1
Hello.
Speaker #0
Chief technical officer from the company GR3N. in sweden javi uh jacasia from uh stahl director of global business development and victor santos who is our process automation offer manager at schneider electric so hi to you all and welcome on stage i'm happy to to have you all for this uh for this panel discussion and uh let's start maybe with the question about uh the purpose of of ownership which is one of the part and one of the value which is brought with with software-defined and open automation and this question goes to you Trevor. I've understood you have used software-defined automation, you have used universal automation already in one of your testbeds. Can you tell us a bit more about it? What are the values which you see and what are the gains which you could have already using the technology?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so we had an opportunity to put this in and actually part of our operating facility at a chemical plant in an area that we had the, it's able to easily come down from agents and upgrades. So, again, it's an opportunity to test the product in an operating environment without the risk of impacting production and gives the ability to become familiar with this technology with any significant risk. From an initial perspective, I mean, it's learning the technology and seeing the benefits, but. For some of the comments you made, there's some key benefits for Shell and in the oil and gas facility, particularly we're in an environment that is running all the time. We have very limited downtimes, turnarounds, maintenance turnarounds every four years, very staggered outages, which makes it challenging to keep systems current and up to date. with what we see with the decoupling of software and hardware with open automation. And once you see the ability as this open architecture goes to more of a fully orchestrated HA environment, we now can see the potential for being able to move your control logic to other controllers seamlessly while you're still running and gain the capability to upgrade hardware without a turnaround or production outage, which is Big cost savings for plants like Shell. And then as well, one of the challenges we find is because of those strict shutdowns is oftentimes you're stuck at the behest of the vendor's lifecycle. So then if your upgrade has to happen on this year, sometimes you're ending up putting up IO, for example, that is already halfway through its lifecycle because that's the only thing that's available. when we start thinking of the possibilities of open architecture you now can choose the hardware that has the latest um life cycle the latest hardware available and you can lower your cost of ownership as you hardware now has their whole lifespan ahead of it i think other savings we see is when you're talking about the common interfaces common software platforms is is with your skid packet vendors, all your vendors in these large facilities, you end up having so many different automation companies in place, which also means your staff has to be competent and skilled in a whole variety of software interfaces, configuration interfaces, and the expertise needing to interface all those systems together and get everything to communicate. So if For example, your PSA vendor now is supporting open automation. You can just embed their logic into your existing open automation system, and you can streamline what knowledge is needed at your plant to maintain all your automation systems and have an easy way to interface your systems together.
Speaker #0
Yes, I see. And actually, that's very interesting what you say, because it's kind of backed up with one of the latest articles we've seen from the ARC forum in Orlando in Total Cost of Ownership and there were various people there coming from different companies and exactly backing up as well what you are saying about the different parts on Total Cost of Ownership. So, yeah, thank you for your testimonial. I will now turn to Franco. Franco, you're working for the company called GR3M. And for sure, we have just spoken about total cost ownership, but there are other values and big values and trends which are very important nowadays, which is more about resilience and about availability and so on. And I understood you are one of the earliest adopters of the technology. So can you tell us a bit more about why choosing to go more towards open automation and universal automation? Can you tell us more about it?
Speaker #2
Yeah, first of all, thank you for the opportunity of being here and good morning, good afternoon to everybody. Look, Greg, you're right. I've been using the technology behind universal automation since very early. stage and this was possible because as a company we are still in a phase of industrialization which gives us a bit more flexibility and freedom in our demonstration plans to actually test different solutions. Answering your question I can provide I think two hopefully interesting perspectives. One is related to what we are doing right now, so our current job of industrializing our proprietary process. and the other one is more strategic, more related to the future of our business. Now, for the first point, along our path of industrialization we are in the chemical process industry, so inevitably we needed to build the demonstration plant of our process. And the dynamics of a plant for the startup, which must reach milestones. and must adapt very quickly to the changes of specifications, was actually becoming one of the requirements for our automation architecture. Just to give you an idea, our recently commissioned plant is composed of six sections, which followed six parallel paths of design, election and startup. So how do you design independently or somehow parallelly to the underlying hardware development, the corresponding software architecture. Well, you need open solution, you need the decoupling between the hardware and the software, and you need a way of designing control software so that it can be easily updated along quick life cycles of the plant itself, if you want to call it a local reconfiguration. So just to give you an idea, along the past few months during commissioning, it happened that we had to change quite deeply some of the specifications of the control because we discovered something new. So this kind of flexibility, this kind of reconfigurability of the software is, I think, a strategic and quite important aspect that Universal Automation and all the other technologies of open process automation are bringing. The second point, which is shorter but I think equally interesting, it regards our business model. As a company, we invented a process, our model is partially based on licensing this process to future end users that will build industrial scale plants, like the one that we are planning to have in Spain in a few years. Now, normally, the business considers us giving with our license a set of engineering documentation specifications which another company an epc contractor normally adopt to actually then design it in practice a plant and build it normally control is a minor amount of these documents and control software is completely out of the scope of this model why is that well because historically the control software arrived very late in this stage of engineering of the plant. So it doesn't belong to a licensor like we are. Now thanks to a decoupling between hardware and software, thanks to an anticipation of the value chain of control software development, we are actually evaluating the possibility of extending our license to include also software related aspects. And this to us is incredibly important because as you might imagine the software is an important part as they are titans in us being competitive on a new market like the chemical recycling one. So this is I think it's an interesting aspect that maybe is peculiar to companies like us which works a bit on the verge of innovation. But I think can make the whole industry reason about the ramificated impact that open technologies can have on our market.
Speaker #0
Yes, especially you need to build something, you need to build basically a process which could be reused by others. And this not knowing what they will set as a system below, gaining the full flexibility. This is a good underlying reason for going for more open automation. A question now to maybe Ravi. Ravi, you represent the company STAL. And well, you've been already very early in the way to open automation and so on. I think you've got already some offers. which are available with, for example, the universal information runtime. But one question for me is that how do you see for the customer, which advantages you see for the customer having these, let's say, multi-vendor systems? What does it give? What are the benefits? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #3
Sure, Greg. To start off, thank you for this invitation to be on this esteemed panel. panel and greetings to the audience. in whichever part of the world you are. The major part for STAHL has been the hardware that we promote along with the UA offering which is the IS-1 Plus. It was or is the remote I.O. for the hazardous areas and typically we always try to keep it open and the perspective that you can keep it open to communicate to any of the control system vendors. And we use these standards-based open field-based protocols, open as they can be. Most of the time the control system vendors customize it, or for a more diplomatic word, fine-tune it. And that ended up that beyond testing our hardware with that protocol, with the certification body like PI or ODBA, we would also have to test it with the individual. control system vendor. So that definitely is a challenge from a vendor perspective, but also a challenge from the end user perspective. So for example, if he has a control system vendor and he has multiple sub vendors working with different protocols, so for for one particular protocol A, he would have three or four variants in the plant. which you would have to keep a library and do version management. So that's an unrequired situation for the end user. This definitely challenges the concept of interoperability which you expected with this field-based protocols. And this is what I believe and we believe that UAO is addressing as a major aspect of the new technology. Additionally, I would also add that interoperability was one of the major attributes for Open Process Automation Forum to be formed, led by ExxonMobil and several end users who also saw these challenges in the plants. In their plans, they decided that they needed a standard of standards, build up common information models. and ensure that you would have a real open system and a real interoperability system. And 1499 or rather IC 616499 Universal Automation became one of the foundational technologies for ensuring interoperability. So that is STAAL's take on it and we believe UAO has a bright future going forward. I think I hope that this will be the major part of the business value that will come to end users adopting Universal. Greg?
Speaker #0
Good, yeah, I'm back. Thank you for your valuable input, Ravi. I would like to to call as well uh victor to the stage um victor you are from the company schneider electric and uh I mean, Schneider is already known for being a great advocate for open systems. And yes, could you tell us more what this open ecosystem means for the end users and means for industries in general?
Speaker #4
Yes, of course. Thank you, Greg. Hello, everyone. Well, first of all, I believe this is bringing an unprecedented flexibility. when building automation architectures. I spent many years of my professional career in automation project execution and designing architecture system and designing the systems and a lot of the times when using monolithic and proprietary solutions the challenge was over killing the purpose with a way too expensive solution that sometimes is making it difficult to implement in the solution and that was. basically providing more than what the customer or the user was expecting or requesting to us. And sometimes it could happen the other way around, right? That maybe we are selecting a cost-effective solution, but at the end of the day, it's not addressing really the key user needs in terms of robustness, availability, or data access. So with universal automation, which we do believe is a really transformational thing happening to the industry, Now users can select the hardware, meaning the controllers, the IOSub systems that can fit the purpose of what they need. So that's bringing, I would say, a new world and also giving us and also the users the capability to design fit-for-purpose solutions. That means, for instance, that, well, you know, we are handling sometimes really big facilities, chemical complex or refineries, and then, well, in those facilities there are typically units that are critical for the process that that may require robots a high available hardware solutions while sometimes there are a lot of auxiliary and non-critical units that are just supporting the major process that you may do the automation with a more cost-effective solution that it's just a good enough for that type of processes and and that gives you the flexibility to design really something that is customized to the user needs. So it is really bringing huge value to the users from that perspective. In second place, that also, you know, we all remember this crisis we suffered recently with the global delivery crisis where it was really difficult to get some of the components and there were some products just where delivery time was moved from two weeks maybe up to one year or more. And now with universal automation it's also helping customers to or users to have a more resilient solution, right? Because having the options to grab different components from different vendors that eventually you make some of them really close to your facility or even in the same country to have a more resilient solution for the future just in order to get. get what you need faster and also with the certainty that you can put together all those components and I believe this is the really transformational thing is that a user can put together all those components in a seamless manner. Same configuration tools, same system management tools, all of them ruled by the same software, only one place to build the application so you you can make sure that any universal automation component you are putting in your system, it's a citizen of the same solution. So regardless of the vendor, the user can benefit of a fully compliant solution that is really fitting the purpose and is enabling easier operations and maintenance of the system. On the other side, I would like to highlight also the concept of the software-defined automation, right? How this decoupling the hardware from the software, it's also transforming and also enabling new type of technologies that can make the operation and the maintenance of the plants more sustainable and efficient. For instance, with the software-defined automation, we now can provide new approaches to the automation solutions with putting together the control and compute. capabilities in the same physical platform. And that will basically is enabling a new way of building automation applications where you can, the user can run the a control engine together with other artificial intelligence machine learning data analytics in the same box in the same physical platform and that's it's really making data immediately available to the to the application that are using and it's it's really opening a new door for this type of resilient and sustainable operations and and last last point from my side will be that this also software defining automation will enable new ways of of achieving the ability of the systems and will enable concept as a disruption avoidance which means basically that you can a user whenever the hardware is becoming obsolete they now have the capability to just move the software application to a different control platform so they can keep the system up and running without the need to stop the production And you know, this is very, very frequent use case in the process automation industries where customers typically maybe just stop the plan, they make a general shutdown, a plan shutdown every three, five, seven years in some cases, right? So this software, this decoupling of the hardware and the software and the application, it's really supporting those customers to keep their operation up and running without this disruption. I believe those are the major benefits for the users.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Victor, for your feedback on the technology itself and on the ecosystem. I think we have reached at least the end of the questions coming from me. And I will now take the question coming from the community. I see already some questions came. I will take one and I think this one is for you Franco, coming from Conanda. From your point of view, does this technology help you for the ease of commissioning in some way? Can you say some words about that?
Speaker #2
The answer is absolutely yes. Actually, the elaboration of the answer is that you need to anticipate a commissioning With a different approach with respect to what you did or you would do with the traditional technologies. If you follow a design pattern, especially for ICC 1499 software, you are able to actually anticipate some of the commissioning phase, especially for what regards loop checks and the commissioning of low-level typical elements like valves, pumps, vessels and so on. so you can actually anticipate part of the commissioning while you are still finalizing the development of some of the higher level control software so in this way you can certainly anticipate problems relating mostly to the electrical part of the plant so solving the loops and checking that every all the instrumentation works but you can also go ahead and start let's say fine-tuning the lower level loops of some pid so it's seems like commissioning in this way, in the sense that it shortens it, but it also allows for a more structured commissioning and a reduced effort because of the reusability of code. If you stress the usage of an object-oriented approach in designing your control software, then obviously these initial bigger efforts, because you need to develop libraries, then it comes back to you as a reduced amount of error corrections while you are in cognition. So yes, cognition is certainly one of the strongest points for adopting this technology.
Speaker #0
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Franco, for answering that. I see some other questions came already. I will show you the next one from Stephen. A general question to the panel. What is the biggest challenge in updating legacy equipment to utilize.
Speaker #1
ic61499 i don't know who wants to start on this uh on this question i could start i think i i feel that challenge too um if you have legacy equipment it's hard to justify a full rewrite of your your code your ip to a new standard and in the example that we used at shell it was a poc that was um the code was so obsolete that had to be rewritten anyway so then it made sense to move towards IEC 61499 but from a customer perspective I think when you think of the existing legacy systems that are out there there will be a need to have some kind of migration strategies and some of those things as we go forward into this open space because that is our intellectual property there and and it's very hard to justify rewriting that all to a new standard versus just having a migration path out good any other addition
Speaker #0
to that comment Also, maybe from my side, what I would add is not just migration, the migration application sometimes is not a one-to-one migration. Because the 1499 is really bringing a new way of building applications from a new perspective, more asset-oriented and more really self-contained type of automation. I would say one of the challenges would be just thinking in a different manner when adopting 1499 to make the most of the use of for the 1499 right that's something really you need maybe some expertise just to guide you in this process to make them make the most of this migration to enjoy and for sure a benefit from the from the open automation and universal automation principles for the rest of the plan
Speaker #1
the life cycle franco you wanted to to say something.
Speaker #2
Well, just a quick addition to what my colleagues already said, is that sometimes you don't need to update the equipment, the legacy equipment themselves. So what you need to do is to integrate them into a newer and larger architecture, where you put on top of the legacy systems, new layers of automation and control, which might be an orchestration of legacy system, a supervision. connection between them. So in this case the question is not just substituting the legacy ones, but how you interface and you correctly embed legacy systems into a new formalism based on 61499. And for this the answer is, unfortunately, simpler because you don't need to rewrite code, you don't need to substitute old hardware, what you need to do is to employ some techniques so that you can interface and mask under a 61499 appearance, your legacy system. So this is a point to be considered, I think.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So orchestrate the application basically and add a new layer on top of the existing to encapsulate it and orchestrate it.
Speaker #2
If you need, because if you don't, you don't touch.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Good. Thank you all. One other question which came from Konanda, addressed to Victor, but it's open to you all. For end-user, major advantage would come from ease of engineering or from reusability of application in the future. What do you believe? Maybe let's start with you, Victor.
Speaker #0
It's hard to say. Why do you have to choose? It's both things, right? You can benefit from both. what what would be major impact? Well, time, we will see with the time, right? But of course, usability of application is a big thing, right? Whenever you are moving from different hardware platforms and decoupling this software, today, it's you look into other spaces of the technology, right? From video or music or some other type of industries, right? Keeping that in the literal property with the capability to run in any potentially hardware platform. It's a really desirable thing, a really powerful thing, right? So you don't depend any longer to have your intellectual property, your application attached to a physical device. Nowadays, if you ask the young kids, that seems like a thing from the past, right? So without a doubt, that reusability is a huge impact. But the ease of engineering, I would say it's more for... maybe for us as automation vendors and for the system integrators sometimes, because not all the end users, at least in the process automation industries, not all the users just go into the system and start modifying the application. So it maybe will be more advantage I would say for automation vendors and system integrators rather than for end users. But again, just be careful, right? Because it will depend on the customer, it will depend on the industry, so it also can and bring a lot of value for for end users as well.
Speaker #1
Good. Any other comments?
Speaker #3
Yeah, I would just add there Greg. I think the UAO throws up the ecosystem of a marketplace of applications. So that creates a complete new spectrum of software developers who can provide applications in the marketplace which can be adopted. to their various hardwares and various applications. It also ensures that a company like Shell building some kind of an optimization application. and then being able to deploy it across the world at their different plants. So definitely, my opinion, perspective, the usability of applications is going to be a major driver for the end users basically. That's all.
Speaker #1
Good, thank you. Trevor, Franco, maybe any...
Speaker #4
I would say I guess the reusable of applications kind of like both Victor and Ravi said is first decoupling from your hardware so you can use your applications you control and move to any hardware as you move along you don't have to lose that work you've done to it as well when you start thinking large scale of the ability to take something you develop for one place and be able to just take that container and move it over and utilize it in much of your other facilities would definitely
Speaker #1
create a good advantage good good um i see one last question uh i don't see what it is but um i think the question is migration strategy from 6 11 41 to 6 49 what are the top ones in your experience so i think victor you started already to answer that in the previous previous question
Speaker #0
Yeah, to me, the biggest one is just typically whenever you build an application in the past with 1131, you were more focused on the bits and bytes, right? And they're just connecting the signals. And then eventually, depending on your platform, you may have the option of start creating templates that are attached to specific devices, right? But not all the systems. support that. So you just basically start writing code or creating a function blocks without a given structure. One of the biggest major potential over the adoption of 1499 is really this asset centric approach to the application. So you really build the kind of detailed training inside your application where you can easily see the different assets, the devices, the pumps, the valves, the tanks, the reactors, the everything, right? So later, if you design or you migrate your application based on those principles, rather than, again, trying to do a one-to-one migration, which is, I would say, it's not the preferred way, whenever you are using this asset-oriented, you later, whenever you are running your plan, you will benefit from that approach, right? It is just being a big jump whenever you are handling the application, because later, whoever accessing the application will understand it. Because it will be just different units, you will have a type of plan hierarchy and you will have your process units and then you can release seeing the control configurator how the valves are connected to the different devices, and the pumps, and what are the dependencies, rather than entering the application and start seeing hundreds of thousands of connections going nowhere and difficult really to handle. To me, that's one of the more principles that makes sense whenever to a migration strategy. But there are many others. This is a nice topic, a complex topic. Maybe others in the table can share their experiences.
Speaker #2
Yeah, actually I would like to add something because if by migration strategy you mean how can I reuse my 6.11.31 code migrated to 6.14.99, let me be harsh, start from scratch. It's not like you cannot. it's like you don't want. The design principles of an object-oriented language like 61499 are really exploited only the moment you adopt in full its new semantics. You cannot do that if you come from the procedural and cycle time-based approach of 61131. What you risk is maybe you save some thousand lines of code. but you will get an application in 649 which is not really exploiting 649 so in the end the amount of time you would have spent in the end in any case is to be uh is to be redone so my suggestion is to actually go and start from scratch and learn from scratch and to redo things which for companies and system integrators which might have uh years of accumulated software from previous project obviously it appears as a big obstacle as a mountain to be to be climbed But you need to look beyond that mountain, beyond what accepting a new paradigm of software development unleashes in the future, which is integration with higher layers of the automation pyramid, integration of advanced data analytics and supervisory control loops outside of the controller. Everybody's talking about AI, but if you don't change the way you design control software, AI is useless. for automation. So all of these, if you do it with legacy technologies, with an old language like 60131 languages, you will spend thousands of hours to achieve minor results. This is the investment that you are doing in migrating to a new language.
Speaker #1
Great addition. So I think we... Slowly come to the end of this panel discussion. So basically we have been and we have seen what open means and what open can enable. And we have seen through the different example as well how universal automation is supporting next generation of software-defined automation. Maybe just a last word to you all, maybe a call to action that you want to send. to the community? I start with you Trevor.
Speaker #4
Yeah thanks, I guess what I'd say is that I do believe that open automation, this new way of doing our automation for our facilities is going to be the way of the future and for that to happen we just need the vendors, we need the customers to jump board to to join your organizations like ua uao and opath and and try to drive that open architecture into the future.
Speaker #1
Thank you. What about you, Victor?
Speaker #0
Well, from my perspective, my call to action is to the users because similar way we have been, we have seen big transformation and changes in the society during the last two years, right? With the smartphones and all the revolution on the streaming and all the different technologies, how IT technologies has change the world we are living in. This change is also coming to the automation world. And the focus is more than ever on the services and the capability of the platform to protect the IP and enable data to make the most use of it in the platform without any dependencies. So Universal Automation is about the users and it's basically telling us, the automation vendors, to reinvent ourselves to better save.
Speaker #2
our our customers so it's that that would be my my my message thank you victor franco any call to action yeah a quick one actually and it's related to the fact that i'm actually connecting to what victor said the world of automation is changing and and it doesn't it's not going to stop and it takes time to actually accept, learn and exploit this new technology. So either you start now and you have the time to be ready when you will be asked for, or you decide to wait and you will be late. And when you will be late, there will be someone else stealing your job. So it's a quite harsh environment, a quite radical change is happening. The revolution that we have been talking about for the industry, from my point of view, is happening now, is starting to happen now. And you need to embrace a new approach and not stay attached to the old one. Very simple.
Speaker #1
Thank you, Franco. Ravi, call to action from your side.
Speaker #3
Yeah, I think we have already set the action. We have the offer on the table to answer Franco. We are ready with the hardware, so we have taken the leap. and I hope other vendors also join in and broaden the ecosystem. The hardware of STAAL is very strong for the hazardous areas globally, which can be put into a zone 1, zone 2, div 1, div 2, and particularly safe applications. And in addition to that, I also would say the decoupling of hardware, software, reusability of application opens up a new ecosystem, a new marketplace for software. I believe we had a presentation sometime back from Amiibi of Brazil who talked about some software development they did. And I believe that is the way to go to bring in a big ecosystem of hardware and software vendors. So all the best to all the vendors to start somewhere today.
Speaker #1
Thank you. Thank you all. Maybe last last comment from my side. So on behalf of Universal Automation Network, first, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to be present for this. What is panel discussion? It was really great to have your your feedback, your experience as a user or as a vendor of of automation. And I think this gives a. a very valuable view to our viewers on the next step next generation of automation system because in fact next generation is already today you are already using those technologies which are there to make automation advance and a call to action to our users join us join universal automation.org if you are users if you are a vendor join us make make the the road with us draw the next generation of automation system. If you are a user, it's very easy to be with us. You can influence the technology. If you are a user, that's very easy as well to make an offer and have it on the market since the technology is already there, and it can be already shared with you. As you see here as an example, we have and we have the company , but many others are already decided. to become members of Universal Automation Network and they are slowly commercializing offers to the market which is good and which is helping the users such as Trevor and Franco having an easier job at the end by having a let's say a full basket of products which are available. So thank you all, I wish you a nice end of the day and I will talk to you next time see you bye bye
Speaker #0
Thank you.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

UAO Goes Live brings the conversations from our popular LinkedIn Live series directly to your favorite podcast platform. Each episode explores the world of open, interoperable automation powered by IEC 61499. Join industry leaders, innovators, and experts as they share real-world applications, success stories, and insights that are shaping the future of industrial automation.

Whether you are an engineer, a technology leader, or simply passionate about the next wave of automation, this podcast is your go-to source for cutting-edge discussions, practical knowledge, and thought leadership.

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everybody, good morning, good day to you, wherever you're based over the earth. My name is Greg Bucco, I'm the Chief Marketing Officer for Universal Automation.org and I'm happy to be here with you today for this new release of the UAO Goes Live sessions. Since the beginning, we've been explaining what is Universal Automation.org and we have been welcoming some of our members. with us doing projects and actually showing how the technology is being used. Today will be a bit different because today we'll go for a panel discussion with technical experts in the fields. But why that? And why Universal Automation? Why all of these technologies going now together? So let's see it from perspective, from the end users. We see that... For decades, companies have been kind of restrained by vendor-specific hardware. So not that easy to change the hardware. The software which is implemented onto it is tightly locked and tightly linked with that hardware. So not very easy for innovation, sometimes not very appealing for new generation. And we see that today companies are more and more looking for and looking at that potential. And that is happening in various forms. We see on the market more and more companies going for open. We see organizations are being set up about open automation. For example, the open automation, the open process automation from the OPAF, or even our organization, Universal Automation, which are coming first from, let's say, users and first from companies willing to have. and more and more open automation system. But what does it mean? What does it enable? Open, and especially in that case, software-defined and universal automation means breaking innovation barriers. So making it easier for companies to integrate newer technology in their already existing system by lowering the costs. of accessing the data, the underlying data, which are always available in all systems. But this means as well the ability to reuse software, reuse software across hardware platform, but as well reusing software, meaning that the life cycles from both the hardware and the software are decoupled, meaning that when the hardware comes to an end of life, you don't necessarily have to change or to upgrade your software to it. And that's a major stage. That's a major change, that's a step change. Another point is how to manage multiple suppliers. I have multiple suppliers, all are running with their own system, so it means that I have to train my people, I have to train my staff in maintaining, in developing, in all those different systems. And this training is for sure cost, and this is as well people management. We have to manage the knowledge between the different person in the team and this is not always easy to do. And last but not least, let's think about future generations, future generations, new talents, freshly coming from school, very looking forward having the newest technologies and implementing that in the field. And coming to the field or field of automation, we can see that things and the way to program has not really much evolved in the last 30-40 years. and how to do that, how to bring that to the field. And this is what we, with Open Automation and Universal Automation, are intending to bring to the field. But how to, let's say, taking that question larger and taking other, let's say, actors on the field, today we'll go with you through the question, okay, what can Open enable? And for that, we welcome some leaders from companies like Stahl, Schneider Electric, Shell, and GR3M, as we discuss through the benefits of what Opens brings to industrial automation. And as we are transitioning, I'm happy to welcome on stage. So we have different people from different companies. So we have Trevor, who is a senior OT. security engineer at Shell. Hi Trevor.
Speaker #1
Hello.
Speaker #0
Chief technical officer from the company GR3N. in sweden javi uh jacasia from uh stahl director of global business development and victor santos who is our process automation offer manager at schneider electric so hi to you all and welcome on stage i'm happy to to have you all for this uh for this panel discussion and uh let's start maybe with the question about uh the purpose of of ownership which is one of the part and one of the value which is brought with with software-defined and open automation and this question goes to you Trevor. I've understood you have used software-defined automation, you have used universal automation already in one of your testbeds. Can you tell us a bit more about it? What are the values which you see and what are the gains which you could have already using the technology?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so we had an opportunity to put this in and actually part of our operating facility at a chemical plant in an area that we had the, it's able to easily come down from agents and upgrades. So, again, it's an opportunity to test the product in an operating environment without the risk of impacting production and gives the ability to become familiar with this technology with any significant risk. From an initial perspective, I mean, it's learning the technology and seeing the benefits, but. For some of the comments you made, there's some key benefits for Shell and in the oil and gas facility, particularly we're in an environment that is running all the time. We have very limited downtimes, turnarounds, maintenance turnarounds every four years, very staggered outages, which makes it challenging to keep systems current and up to date. with what we see with the decoupling of software and hardware with open automation. And once you see the ability as this open architecture goes to more of a fully orchestrated HA environment, we now can see the potential for being able to move your control logic to other controllers seamlessly while you're still running and gain the capability to upgrade hardware without a turnaround or production outage, which is Big cost savings for plants like Shell. And then as well, one of the challenges we find is because of those strict shutdowns is oftentimes you're stuck at the behest of the vendor's lifecycle. So then if your upgrade has to happen on this year, sometimes you're ending up putting up IO, for example, that is already halfway through its lifecycle because that's the only thing that's available. when we start thinking of the possibilities of open architecture you now can choose the hardware that has the latest um life cycle the latest hardware available and you can lower your cost of ownership as you hardware now has their whole lifespan ahead of it i think other savings we see is when you're talking about the common interfaces common software platforms is is with your skid packet vendors, all your vendors in these large facilities, you end up having so many different automation companies in place, which also means your staff has to be competent and skilled in a whole variety of software interfaces, configuration interfaces, and the expertise needing to interface all those systems together and get everything to communicate. So if For example, your PSA vendor now is supporting open automation. You can just embed their logic into your existing open automation system, and you can streamline what knowledge is needed at your plant to maintain all your automation systems and have an easy way to interface your systems together.
Speaker #0
Yes, I see. And actually, that's very interesting what you say, because it's kind of backed up with one of the latest articles we've seen from the ARC forum in Orlando in Total Cost of Ownership and there were various people there coming from different companies and exactly backing up as well what you are saying about the different parts on Total Cost of Ownership. So, yeah, thank you for your testimonial. I will now turn to Franco. Franco, you're working for the company called GR3M. And for sure, we have just spoken about total cost ownership, but there are other values and big values and trends which are very important nowadays, which is more about resilience and about availability and so on. And I understood you are one of the earliest adopters of the technology. So can you tell us a bit more about why choosing to go more towards open automation and universal automation? Can you tell us more about it?
Speaker #2
Yeah, first of all, thank you for the opportunity of being here and good morning, good afternoon to everybody. Look, Greg, you're right. I've been using the technology behind universal automation since very early. stage and this was possible because as a company we are still in a phase of industrialization which gives us a bit more flexibility and freedom in our demonstration plans to actually test different solutions. Answering your question I can provide I think two hopefully interesting perspectives. One is related to what we are doing right now, so our current job of industrializing our proprietary process. and the other one is more strategic, more related to the future of our business. Now, for the first point, along our path of industrialization we are in the chemical process industry, so inevitably we needed to build the demonstration plant of our process. And the dynamics of a plant for the startup, which must reach milestones. and must adapt very quickly to the changes of specifications, was actually becoming one of the requirements for our automation architecture. Just to give you an idea, our recently commissioned plant is composed of six sections, which followed six parallel paths of design, election and startup. So how do you design independently or somehow parallelly to the underlying hardware development, the corresponding software architecture. Well, you need open solution, you need the decoupling between the hardware and the software, and you need a way of designing control software so that it can be easily updated along quick life cycles of the plant itself, if you want to call it a local reconfiguration. So just to give you an idea, along the past few months during commissioning, it happened that we had to change quite deeply some of the specifications of the control because we discovered something new. So this kind of flexibility, this kind of reconfigurability of the software is, I think, a strategic and quite important aspect that Universal Automation and all the other technologies of open process automation are bringing. The second point, which is shorter but I think equally interesting, it regards our business model. As a company, we invented a process, our model is partially based on licensing this process to future end users that will build industrial scale plants, like the one that we are planning to have in Spain in a few years. Now, normally, the business considers us giving with our license a set of engineering documentation specifications which another company an epc contractor normally adopt to actually then design it in practice a plant and build it normally control is a minor amount of these documents and control software is completely out of the scope of this model why is that well because historically the control software arrived very late in this stage of engineering of the plant. So it doesn't belong to a licensor like we are. Now thanks to a decoupling between hardware and software, thanks to an anticipation of the value chain of control software development, we are actually evaluating the possibility of extending our license to include also software related aspects. And this to us is incredibly important because as you might imagine the software is an important part as they are titans in us being competitive on a new market like the chemical recycling one. So this is I think it's an interesting aspect that maybe is peculiar to companies like us which works a bit on the verge of innovation. But I think can make the whole industry reason about the ramificated impact that open technologies can have on our market.
Speaker #0
Yes, especially you need to build something, you need to build basically a process which could be reused by others. And this not knowing what they will set as a system below, gaining the full flexibility. This is a good underlying reason for going for more open automation. A question now to maybe Ravi. Ravi, you represent the company STAL. And well, you've been already very early in the way to open automation and so on. I think you've got already some offers. which are available with, for example, the universal information runtime. But one question for me is that how do you see for the customer, which advantages you see for the customer having these, let's say, multi-vendor systems? What does it give? What are the benefits? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #3
Sure, Greg. To start off, thank you for this invitation to be on this esteemed panel. panel and greetings to the audience. in whichever part of the world you are. The major part for STAHL has been the hardware that we promote along with the UA offering which is the IS-1 Plus. It was or is the remote I.O. for the hazardous areas and typically we always try to keep it open and the perspective that you can keep it open to communicate to any of the control system vendors. And we use these standards-based open field-based protocols, open as they can be. Most of the time the control system vendors customize it, or for a more diplomatic word, fine-tune it. And that ended up that beyond testing our hardware with that protocol, with the certification body like PI or ODBA, we would also have to test it with the individual. control system vendor. So that definitely is a challenge from a vendor perspective, but also a challenge from the end user perspective. So for example, if he has a control system vendor and he has multiple sub vendors working with different protocols, so for for one particular protocol A, he would have three or four variants in the plant. which you would have to keep a library and do version management. So that's an unrequired situation for the end user. This definitely challenges the concept of interoperability which you expected with this field-based protocols. And this is what I believe and we believe that UAO is addressing as a major aspect of the new technology. Additionally, I would also add that interoperability was one of the major attributes for Open Process Automation Forum to be formed, led by ExxonMobil and several end users who also saw these challenges in the plants. In their plans, they decided that they needed a standard of standards, build up common information models. and ensure that you would have a real open system and a real interoperability system. And 1499 or rather IC 616499 Universal Automation became one of the foundational technologies for ensuring interoperability. So that is STAAL's take on it and we believe UAO has a bright future going forward. I think I hope that this will be the major part of the business value that will come to end users adopting Universal. Greg?
Speaker #0
Good, yeah, I'm back. Thank you for your valuable input, Ravi. I would like to to call as well uh victor to the stage um victor you are from the company schneider electric and uh I mean, Schneider is already known for being a great advocate for open systems. And yes, could you tell us more what this open ecosystem means for the end users and means for industries in general?
Speaker #4
Yes, of course. Thank you, Greg. Hello, everyone. Well, first of all, I believe this is bringing an unprecedented flexibility. when building automation architectures. I spent many years of my professional career in automation project execution and designing architecture system and designing the systems and a lot of the times when using monolithic and proprietary solutions the challenge was over killing the purpose with a way too expensive solution that sometimes is making it difficult to implement in the solution and that was. basically providing more than what the customer or the user was expecting or requesting to us. And sometimes it could happen the other way around, right? That maybe we are selecting a cost-effective solution, but at the end of the day, it's not addressing really the key user needs in terms of robustness, availability, or data access. So with universal automation, which we do believe is a really transformational thing happening to the industry, Now users can select the hardware, meaning the controllers, the IOSub systems that can fit the purpose of what they need. So that's bringing, I would say, a new world and also giving us and also the users the capability to design fit-for-purpose solutions. That means, for instance, that, well, you know, we are handling sometimes really big facilities, chemical complex or refineries, and then, well, in those facilities there are typically units that are critical for the process that that may require robots a high available hardware solutions while sometimes there are a lot of auxiliary and non-critical units that are just supporting the major process that you may do the automation with a more cost-effective solution that it's just a good enough for that type of processes and and that gives you the flexibility to design really something that is customized to the user needs. So it is really bringing huge value to the users from that perspective. In second place, that also, you know, we all remember this crisis we suffered recently with the global delivery crisis where it was really difficult to get some of the components and there were some products just where delivery time was moved from two weeks maybe up to one year or more. And now with universal automation it's also helping customers to or users to have a more resilient solution, right? Because having the options to grab different components from different vendors that eventually you make some of them really close to your facility or even in the same country to have a more resilient solution for the future just in order to get. get what you need faster and also with the certainty that you can put together all those components and I believe this is the really transformational thing is that a user can put together all those components in a seamless manner. Same configuration tools, same system management tools, all of them ruled by the same software, only one place to build the application so you you can make sure that any universal automation component you are putting in your system, it's a citizen of the same solution. So regardless of the vendor, the user can benefit of a fully compliant solution that is really fitting the purpose and is enabling easier operations and maintenance of the system. On the other side, I would like to highlight also the concept of the software-defined automation, right? How this decoupling the hardware from the software, it's also transforming and also enabling new type of technologies that can make the operation and the maintenance of the plants more sustainable and efficient. For instance, with the software-defined automation, we now can provide new approaches to the automation solutions with putting together the control and compute. capabilities in the same physical platform. And that will basically is enabling a new way of building automation applications where you can, the user can run the a control engine together with other artificial intelligence machine learning data analytics in the same box in the same physical platform and that's it's really making data immediately available to the to the application that are using and it's it's really opening a new door for this type of resilient and sustainable operations and and last last point from my side will be that this also software defining automation will enable new ways of of achieving the ability of the systems and will enable concept as a disruption avoidance which means basically that you can a user whenever the hardware is becoming obsolete they now have the capability to just move the software application to a different control platform so they can keep the system up and running without the need to stop the production And you know, this is very, very frequent use case in the process automation industries where customers typically maybe just stop the plan, they make a general shutdown, a plan shutdown every three, five, seven years in some cases, right? So this software, this decoupling of the hardware and the software and the application, it's really supporting those customers to keep their operation up and running without this disruption. I believe those are the major benefits for the users.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Victor, for your feedback on the technology itself and on the ecosystem. I think we have reached at least the end of the questions coming from me. And I will now take the question coming from the community. I see already some questions came. I will take one and I think this one is for you Franco, coming from Conanda. From your point of view, does this technology help you for the ease of commissioning in some way? Can you say some words about that?
Speaker #2
The answer is absolutely yes. Actually, the elaboration of the answer is that you need to anticipate a commissioning With a different approach with respect to what you did or you would do with the traditional technologies. If you follow a design pattern, especially for ICC 1499 software, you are able to actually anticipate some of the commissioning phase, especially for what regards loop checks and the commissioning of low-level typical elements like valves, pumps, vessels and so on. so you can actually anticipate part of the commissioning while you are still finalizing the development of some of the higher level control software so in this way you can certainly anticipate problems relating mostly to the electrical part of the plant so solving the loops and checking that every all the instrumentation works but you can also go ahead and start let's say fine-tuning the lower level loops of some pid so it's seems like commissioning in this way, in the sense that it shortens it, but it also allows for a more structured commissioning and a reduced effort because of the reusability of code. If you stress the usage of an object-oriented approach in designing your control software, then obviously these initial bigger efforts, because you need to develop libraries, then it comes back to you as a reduced amount of error corrections while you are in cognition. So yes, cognition is certainly one of the strongest points for adopting this technology.
Speaker #0
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Franco, for answering that. I see some other questions came already. I will show you the next one from Stephen. A general question to the panel. What is the biggest challenge in updating legacy equipment to utilize.
Speaker #1
ic61499 i don't know who wants to start on this uh on this question i could start i think i i feel that challenge too um if you have legacy equipment it's hard to justify a full rewrite of your your code your ip to a new standard and in the example that we used at shell it was a poc that was um the code was so obsolete that had to be rewritten anyway so then it made sense to move towards IEC 61499 but from a customer perspective I think when you think of the existing legacy systems that are out there there will be a need to have some kind of migration strategies and some of those things as we go forward into this open space because that is our intellectual property there and and it's very hard to justify rewriting that all to a new standard versus just having a migration path out good any other addition
Speaker #0
to that comment Also, maybe from my side, what I would add is not just migration, the migration application sometimes is not a one-to-one migration. Because the 1499 is really bringing a new way of building applications from a new perspective, more asset-oriented and more really self-contained type of automation. I would say one of the challenges would be just thinking in a different manner when adopting 1499 to make the most of the use of for the 1499 right that's something really you need maybe some expertise just to guide you in this process to make them make the most of this migration to enjoy and for sure a benefit from the from the open automation and universal automation principles for the rest of the plan
Speaker #1
the life cycle franco you wanted to to say something.
Speaker #2
Well, just a quick addition to what my colleagues already said, is that sometimes you don't need to update the equipment, the legacy equipment themselves. So what you need to do is to integrate them into a newer and larger architecture, where you put on top of the legacy systems, new layers of automation and control, which might be an orchestration of legacy system, a supervision. connection between them. So in this case the question is not just substituting the legacy ones, but how you interface and you correctly embed legacy systems into a new formalism based on 61499. And for this the answer is, unfortunately, simpler because you don't need to rewrite code, you don't need to substitute old hardware, what you need to do is to employ some techniques so that you can interface and mask under a 61499 appearance, your legacy system. So this is a point to be considered, I think.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So orchestrate the application basically and add a new layer on top of the existing to encapsulate it and orchestrate it.
Speaker #2
If you need, because if you don't, you don't touch.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Good. Thank you all. One other question which came from Konanda, addressed to Victor, but it's open to you all. For end-user, major advantage would come from ease of engineering or from reusability of application in the future. What do you believe? Maybe let's start with you, Victor.
Speaker #0
It's hard to say. Why do you have to choose? It's both things, right? You can benefit from both. what what would be major impact? Well, time, we will see with the time, right? But of course, usability of application is a big thing, right? Whenever you are moving from different hardware platforms and decoupling this software, today, it's you look into other spaces of the technology, right? From video or music or some other type of industries, right? Keeping that in the literal property with the capability to run in any potentially hardware platform. It's a really desirable thing, a really powerful thing, right? So you don't depend any longer to have your intellectual property, your application attached to a physical device. Nowadays, if you ask the young kids, that seems like a thing from the past, right? So without a doubt, that reusability is a huge impact. But the ease of engineering, I would say it's more for... maybe for us as automation vendors and for the system integrators sometimes, because not all the end users, at least in the process automation industries, not all the users just go into the system and start modifying the application. So it maybe will be more advantage I would say for automation vendors and system integrators rather than for end users. But again, just be careful, right? Because it will depend on the customer, it will depend on the industry, so it also can and bring a lot of value for for end users as well.
Speaker #1
Good. Any other comments?
Speaker #3
Yeah, I would just add there Greg. I think the UAO throws up the ecosystem of a marketplace of applications. So that creates a complete new spectrum of software developers who can provide applications in the marketplace which can be adopted. to their various hardwares and various applications. It also ensures that a company like Shell building some kind of an optimization application. and then being able to deploy it across the world at their different plants. So definitely, my opinion, perspective, the usability of applications is going to be a major driver for the end users basically. That's all.
Speaker #1
Good, thank you. Trevor, Franco, maybe any...
Speaker #4
I would say I guess the reusable of applications kind of like both Victor and Ravi said is first decoupling from your hardware so you can use your applications you control and move to any hardware as you move along you don't have to lose that work you've done to it as well when you start thinking large scale of the ability to take something you develop for one place and be able to just take that container and move it over and utilize it in much of your other facilities would definitely
Speaker #1
create a good advantage good good um i see one last question uh i don't see what it is but um i think the question is migration strategy from 6 11 41 to 6 49 what are the top ones in your experience so i think victor you started already to answer that in the previous previous question
Speaker #0
Yeah, to me, the biggest one is just typically whenever you build an application in the past with 1131, you were more focused on the bits and bytes, right? And they're just connecting the signals. And then eventually, depending on your platform, you may have the option of start creating templates that are attached to specific devices, right? But not all the systems. support that. So you just basically start writing code or creating a function blocks without a given structure. One of the biggest major potential over the adoption of 1499 is really this asset centric approach to the application. So you really build the kind of detailed training inside your application where you can easily see the different assets, the devices, the pumps, the valves, the tanks, the reactors, the everything, right? So later, if you design or you migrate your application based on those principles, rather than, again, trying to do a one-to-one migration, which is, I would say, it's not the preferred way, whenever you are using this asset-oriented, you later, whenever you are running your plan, you will benefit from that approach, right? It is just being a big jump whenever you are handling the application, because later, whoever accessing the application will understand it. Because it will be just different units, you will have a type of plan hierarchy and you will have your process units and then you can release seeing the control configurator how the valves are connected to the different devices, and the pumps, and what are the dependencies, rather than entering the application and start seeing hundreds of thousands of connections going nowhere and difficult really to handle. To me, that's one of the more principles that makes sense whenever to a migration strategy. But there are many others. This is a nice topic, a complex topic. Maybe others in the table can share their experiences.
Speaker #2
Yeah, actually I would like to add something because if by migration strategy you mean how can I reuse my 6.11.31 code migrated to 6.14.99, let me be harsh, start from scratch. It's not like you cannot. it's like you don't want. The design principles of an object-oriented language like 61499 are really exploited only the moment you adopt in full its new semantics. You cannot do that if you come from the procedural and cycle time-based approach of 61131. What you risk is maybe you save some thousand lines of code. but you will get an application in 649 which is not really exploiting 649 so in the end the amount of time you would have spent in the end in any case is to be uh is to be redone so my suggestion is to actually go and start from scratch and learn from scratch and to redo things which for companies and system integrators which might have uh years of accumulated software from previous project obviously it appears as a big obstacle as a mountain to be to be climbed But you need to look beyond that mountain, beyond what accepting a new paradigm of software development unleashes in the future, which is integration with higher layers of the automation pyramid, integration of advanced data analytics and supervisory control loops outside of the controller. Everybody's talking about AI, but if you don't change the way you design control software, AI is useless. for automation. So all of these, if you do it with legacy technologies, with an old language like 60131 languages, you will spend thousands of hours to achieve minor results. This is the investment that you are doing in migrating to a new language.
Speaker #1
Great addition. So I think we... Slowly come to the end of this panel discussion. So basically we have been and we have seen what open means and what open can enable. And we have seen through the different example as well how universal automation is supporting next generation of software-defined automation. Maybe just a last word to you all, maybe a call to action that you want to send. to the community? I start with you Trevor.
Speaker #4
Yeah thanks, I guess what I'd say is that I do believe that open automation, this new way of doing our automation for our facilities is going to be the way of the future and for that to happen we just need the vendors, we need the customers to jump board to to join your organizations like ua uao and opath and and try to drive that open architecture into the future.
Speaker #1
Thank you. What about you, Victor?
Speaker #0
Well, from my perspective, my call to action is to the users because similar way we have been, we have seen big transformation and changes in the society during the last two years, right? With the smartphones and all the revolution on the streaming and all the different technologies, how IT technologies has change the world we are living in. This change is also coming to the automation world. And the focus is more than ever on the services and the capability of the platform to protect the IP and enable data to make the most use of it in the platform without any dependencies. So Universal Automation is about the users and it's basically telling us, the automation vendors, to reinvent ourselves to better save.
Speaker #2
our our customers so it's that that would be my my my message thank you victor franco any call to action yeah a quick one actually and it's related to the fact that i'm actually connecting to what victor said the world of automation is changing and and it doesn't it's not going to stop and it takes time to actually accept, learn and exploit this new technology. So either you start now and you have the time to be ready when you will be asked for, or you decide to wait and you will be late. And when you will be late, there will be someone else stealing your job. So it's a quite harsh environment, a quite radical change is happening. The revolution that we have been talking about for the industry, from my point of view, is happening now, is starting to happen now. And you need to embrace a new approach and not stay attached to the old one. Very simple.
Speaker #1
Thank you, Franco. Ravi, call to action from your side.
Speaker #3
Yeah, I think we have already set the action. We have the offer on the table to answer Franco. We are ready with the hardware, so we have taken the leap. and I hope other vendors also join in and broaden the ecosystem. The hardware of STAAL is very strong for the hazardous areas globally, which can be put into a zone 1, zone 2, div 1, div 2, and particularly safe applications. And in addition to that, I also would say the decoupling of hardware, software, reusability of application opens up a new ecosystem, a new marketplace for software. I believe we had a presentation sometime back from Amiibi of Brazil who talked about some software development they did. And I believe that is the way to go to bring in a big ecosystem of hardware and software vendors. So all the best to all the vendors to start somewhere today.
Speaker #1
Thank you. Thank you all. Maybe last last comment from my side. So on behalf of Universal Automation Network, first, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to be present for this. What is panel discussion? It was really great to have your your feedback, your experience as a user or as a vendor of of automation. And I think this gives a. a very valuable view to our viewers on the next step next generation of automation system because in fact next generation is already today you are already using those technologies which are there to make automation advance and a call to action to our users join us join universal automation.org if you are users if you are a vendor join us make make the the road with us draw the next generation of automation system. If you are a user, it's very easy to be with us. You can influence the technology. If you are a user, that's very easy as well to make an offer and have it on the market since the technology is already there, and it can be already shared with you. As you see here as an example, we have and we have the company , but many others are already decided. to become members of Universal Automation Network and they are slowly commercializing offers to the market which is good and which is helping the users such as Trevor and Franco having an easier job at the end by having a let's say a full basket of products which are available. So thank you all, I wish you a nice end of the day and I will talk to you next time see you bye bye
Speaker #0
Thank you.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

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About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

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About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

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Speaker #0
Hi everybody, good morning, good day to you, wherever you're based over the earth. My name is Greg Bucco, I'm the Chief Marketing Officer for Universal Automation.org and I'm happy to be here with you today for this new release of the UAO Goes Live sessions. Since the beginning, we've been explaining what is Universal Automation.org and we have been welcoming some of our members. with us doing projects and actually showing how the technology is being used. Today will be a bit different because today we'll go for a panel discussion with technical experts in the fields. But why that? And why Universal Automation? Why all of these technologies going now together? So let's see it from perspective, from the end users. We see that... For decades, companies have been kind of restrained by vendor-specific hardware. So not that easy to change the hardware. The software which is implemented onto it is tightly locked and tightly linked with that hardware. So not very easy for innovation, sometimes not very appealing for new generation. And we see that today companies are more and more looking for and looking at that potential. And that is happening in various forms. We see on the market more and more companies going for open. We see organizations are being set up about open automation. For example, the open automation, the open process automation from the OPAF, or even our organization, Universal Automation, which are coming first from, let's say, users and first from companies willing to have. and more and more open automation system. But what does it mean? What does it enable? Open, and especially in that case, software-defined and universal automation means breaking innovation barriers. So making it easier for companies to integrate newer technology in their already existing system by lowering the costs. of accessing the data, the underlying data, which are always available in all systems. But this means as well the ability to reuse software, reuse software across hardware platform, but as well reusing software, meaning that the life cycles from both the hardware and the software are decoupled, meaning that when the hardware comes to an end of life, you don't necessarily have to change or to upgrade your software to it. And that's a major stage. That's a major change, that's a step change. Another point is how to manage multiple suppliers. I have multiple suppliers, all are running with their own system, so it means that I have to train my people, I have to train my staff in maintaining, in developing, in all those different systems. And this training is for sure cost, and this is as well people management. We have to manage the knowledge between the different person in the team and this is not always easy to do. And last but not least, let's think about future generations, future generations, new talents, freshly coming from school, very looking forward having the newest technologies and implementing that in the field. And coming to the field or field of automation, we can see that things and the way to program has not really much evolved in the last 30-40 years. and how to do that, how to bring that to the field. And this is what we, with Open Automation and Universal Automation, are intending to bring to the field. But how to, let's say, taking that question larger and taking other, let's say, actors on the field, today we'll go with you through the question, okay, what can Open enable? And for that, we welcome some leaders from companies like Stahl, Schneider Electric, Shell, and GR3M, as we discuss through the benefits of what Opens brings to industrial automation. And as we are transitioning, I'm happy to welcome on stage. So we have different people from different companies. So we have Trevor, who is a senior OT. security engineer at Shell. Hi Trevor.
Speaker #1
Hello.
Speaker #0
Chief technical officer from the company GR3N. in sweden javi uh jacasia from uh stahl director of global business development and victor santos who is our process automation offer manager at schneider electric so hi to you all and welcome on stage i'm happy to to have you all for this uh for this panel discussion and uh let's start maybe with the question about uh the purpose of of ownership which is one of the part and one of the value which is brought with with software-defined and open automation and this question goes to you Trevor. I've understood you have used software-defined automation, you have used universal automation already in one of your testbeds. Can you tell us a bit more about it? What are the values which you see and what are the gains which you could have already using the technology?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so we had an opportunity to put this in and actually part of our operating facility at a chemical plant in an area that we had the, it's able to easily come down from agents and upgrades. So, again, it's an opportunity to test the product in an operating environment without the risk of impacting production and gives the ability to become familiar with this technology with any significant risk. From an initial perspective, I mean, it's learning the technology and seeing the benefits, but. For some of the comments you made, there's some key benefits for Shell and in the oil and gas facility, particularly we're in an environment that is running all the time. We have very limited downtimes, turnarounds, maintenance turnarounds every four years, very staggered outages, which makes it challenging to keep systems current and up to date. with what we see with the decoupling of software and hardware with open automation. And once you see the ability as this open architecture goes to more of a fully orchestrated HA environment, we now can see the potential for being able to move your control logic to other controllers seamlessly while you're still running and gain the capability to upgrade hardware without a turnaround or production outage, which is Big cost savings for plants like Shell. And then as well, one of the challenges we find is because of those strict shutdowns is oftentimes you're stuck at the behest of the vendor's lifecycle. So then if your upgrade has to happen on this year, sometimes you're ending up putting up IO, for example, that is already halfway through its lifecycle because that's the only thing that's available. when we start thinking of the possibilities of open architecture you now can choose the hardware that has the latest um life cycle the latest hardware available and you can lower your cost of ownership as you hardware now has their whole lifespan ahead of it i think other savings we see is when you're talking about the common interfaces common software platforms is is with your skid packet vendors, all your vendors in these large facilities, you end up having so many different automation companies in place, which also means your staff has to be competent and skilled in a whole variety of software interfaces, configuration interfaces, and the expertise needing to interface all those systems together and get everything to communicate. So if For example, your PSA vendor now is supporting open automation. You can just embed their logic into your existing open automation system, and you can streamline what knowledge is needed at your plant to maintain all your automation systems and have an easy way to interface your systems together.
Speaker #0
Yes, I see. And actually, that's very interesting what you say, because it's kind of backed up with one of the latest articles we've seen from the ARC forum in Orlando in Total Cost of Ownership and there were various people there coming from different companies and exactly backing up as well what you are saying about the different parts on Total Cost of Ownership. So, yeah, thank you for your testimonial. I will now turn to Franco. Franco, you're working for the company called GR3M. And for sure, we have just spoken about total cost ownership, but there are other values and big values and trends which are very important nowadays, which is more about resilience and about availability and so on. And I understood you are one of the earliest adopters of the technology. So can you tell us a bit more about why choosing to go more towards open automation and universal automation? Can you tell us more about it?
Speaker #2
Yeah, first of all, thank you for the opportunity of being here and good morning, good afternoon to everybody. Look, Greg, you're right. I've been using the technology behind universal automation since very early. stage and this was possible because as a company we are still in a phase of industrialization which gives us a bit more flexibility and freedom in our demonstration plans to actually test different solutions. Answering your question I can provide I think two hopefully interesting perspectives. One is related to what we are doing right now, so our current job of industrializing our proprietary process. and the other one is more strategic, more related to the future of our business. Now, for the first point, along our path of industrialization we are in the chemical process industry, so inevitably we needed to build the demonstration plant of our process. And the dynamics of a plant for the startup, which must reach milestones. and must adapt very quickly to the changes of specifications, was actually becoming one of the requirements for our automation architecture. Just to give you an idea, our recently commissioned plant is composed of six sections, which followed six parallel paths of design, election and startup. So how do you design independently or somehow parallelly to the underlying hardware development, the corresponding software architecture. Well, you need open solution, you need the decoupling between the hardware and the software, and you need a way of designing control software so that it can be easily updated along quick life cycles of the plant itself, if you want to call it a local reconfiguration. So just to give you an idea, along the past few months during commissioning, it happened that we had to change quite deeply some of the specifications of the control because we discovered something new. So this kind of flexibility, this kind of reconfigurability of the software is, I think, a strategic and quite important aspect that Universal Automation and all the other technologies of open process automation are bringing. The second point, which is shorter but I think equally interesting, it regards our business model. As a company, we invented a process, our model is partially based on licensing this process to future end users that will build industrial scale plants, like the one that we are planning to have in Spain in a few years. Now, normally, the business considers us giving with our license a set of engineering documentation specifications which another company an epc contractor normally adopt to actually then design it in practice a plant and build it normally control is a minor amount of these documents and control software is completely out of the scope of this model why is that well because historically the control software arrived very late in this stage of engineering of the plant. So it doesn't belong to a licensor like we are. Now thanks to a decoupling between hardware and software, thanks to an anticipation of the value chain of control software development, we are actually evaluating the possibility of extending our license to include also software related aspects. And this to us is incredibly important because as you might imagine the software is an important part as they are titans in us being competitive on a new market like the chemical recycling one. So this is I think it's an interesting aspect that maybe is peculiar to companies like us which works a bit on the verge of innovation. But I think can make the whole industry reason about the ramificated impact that open technologies can have on our market.
Speaker #0
Yes, especially you need to build something, you need to build basically a process which could be reused by others. And this not knowing what they will set as a system below, gaining the full flexibility. This is a good underlying reason for going for more open automation. A question now to maybe Ravi. Ravi, you represent the company STAL. And well, you've been already very early in the way to open automation and so on. I think you've got already some offers. which are available with, for example, the universal information runtime. But one question for me is that how do you see for the customer, which advantages you see for the customer having these, let's say, multi-vendor systems? What does it give? What are the benefits? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #3
Sure, Greg. To start off, thank you for this invitation to be on this esteemed panel. panel and greetings to the audience. in whichever part of the world you are. The major part for STAHL has been the hardware that we promote along with the UA offering which is the IS-1 Plus. It was or is the remote I.O. for the hazardous areas and typically we always try to keep it open and the perspective that you can keep it open to communicate to any of the control system vendors. And we use these standards-based open field-based protocols, open as they can be. Most of the time the control system vendors customize it, or for a more diplomatic word, fine-tune it. And that ended up that beyond testing our hardware with that protocol, with the certification body like PI or ODBA, we would also have to test it with the individual. control system vendor. So that definitely is a challenge from a vendor perspective, but also a challenge from the end user perspective. So for example, if he has a control system vendor and he has multiple sub vendors working with different protocols, so for for one particular protocol A, he would have three or four variants in the plant. which you would have to keep a library and do version management. So that's an unrequired situation for the end user. This definitely challenges the concept of interoperability which you expected with this field-based protocols. And this is what I believe and we believe that UAO is addressing as a major aspect of the new technology. Additionally, I would also add that interoperability was one of the major attributes for Open Process Automation Forum to be formed, led by ExxonMobil and several end users who also saw these challenges in the plants. In their plans, they decided that they needed a standard of standards, build up common information models. and ensure that you would have a real open system and a real interoperability system. And 1499 or rather IC 616499 Universal Automation became one of the foundational technologies for ensuring interoperability. So that is STAAL's take on it and we believe UAO has a bright future going forward. I think I hope that this will be the major part of the business value that will come to end users adopting Universal. Greg?
Speaker #0
Good, yeah, I'm back. Thank you for your valuable input, Ravi. I would like to to call as well uh victor to the stage um victor you are from the company schneider electric and uh I mean, Schneider is already known for being a great advocate for open systems. And yes, could you tell us more what this open ecosystem means for the end users and means for industries in general?
Speaker #4
Yes, of course. Thank you, Greg. Hello, everyone. Well, first of all, I believe this is bringing an unprecedented flexibility. when building automation architectures. I spent many years of my professional career in automation project execution and designing architecture system and designing the systems and a lot of the times when using monolithic and proprietary solutions the challenge was over killing the purpose with a way too expensive solution that sometimes is making it difficult to implement in the solution and that was. basically providing more than what the customer or the user was expecting or requesting to us. And sometimes it could happen the other way around, right? That maybe we are selecting a cost-effective solution, but at the end of the day, it's not addressing really the key user needs in terms of robustness, availability, or data access. So with universal automation, which we do believe is a really transformational thing happening to the industry, Now users can select the hardware, meaning the controllers, the IOSub systems that can fit the purpose of what they need. So that's bringing, I would say, a new world and also giving us and also the users the capability to design fit-for-purpose solutions. That means, for instance, that, well, you know, we are handling sometimes really big facilities, chemical complex or refineries, and then, well, in those facilities there are typically units that are critical for the process that that may require robots a high available hardware solutions while sometimes there are a lot of auxiliary and non-critical units that are just supporting the major process that you may do the automation with a more cost-effective solution that it's just a good enough for that type of processes and and that gives you the flexibility to design really something that is customized to the user needs. So it is really bringing huge value to the users from that perspective. In second place, that also, you know, we all remember this crisis we suffered recently with the global delivery crisis where it was really difficult to get some of the components and there were some products just where delivery time was moved from two weeks maybe up to one year or more. And now with universal automation it's also helping customers to or users to have a more resilient solution, right? Because having the options to grab different components from different vendors that eventually you make some of them really close to your facility or even in the same country to have a more resilient solution for the future just in order to get. get what you need faster and also with the certainty that you can put together all those components and I believe this is the really transformational thing is that a user can put together all those components in a seamless manner. Same configuration tools, same system management tools, all of them ruled by the same software, only one place to build the application so you you can make sure that any universal automation component you are putting in your system, it's a citizen of the same solution. So regardless of the vendor, the user can benefit of a fully compliant solution that is really fitting the purpose and is enabling easier operations and maintenance of the system. On the other side, I would like to highlight also the concept of the software-defined automation, right? How this decoupling the hardware from the software, it's also transforming and also enabling new type of technologies that can make the operation and the maintenance of the plants more sustainable and efficient. For instance, with the software-defined automation, we now can provide new approaches to the automation solutions with putting together the control and compute. capabilities in the same physical platform. And that will basically is enabling a new way of building automation applications where you can, the user can run the a control engine together with other artificial intelligence machine learning data analytics in the same box in the same physical platform and that's it's really making data immediately available to the to the application that are using and it's it's really opening a new door for this type of resilient and sustainable operations and and last last point from my side will be that this also software defining automation will enable new ways of of achieving the ability of the systems and will enable concept as a disruption avoidance which means basically that you can a user whenever the hardware is becoming obsolete they now have the capability to just move the software application to a different control platform so they can keep the system up and running without the need to stop the production And you know, this is very, very frequent use case in the process automation industries where customers typically maybe just stop the plan, they make a general shutdown, a plan shutdown every three, five, seven years in some cases, right? So this software, this decoupling of the hardware and the software and the application, it's really supporting those customers to keep their operation up and running without this disruption. I believe those are the major benefits for the users.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Victor, for your feedback on the technology itself and on the ecosystem. I think we have reached at least the end of the questions coming from me. And I will now take the question coming from the community. I see already some questions came. I will take one and I think this one is for you Franco, coming from Conanda. From your point of view, does this technology help you for the ease of commissioning in some way? Can you say some words about that?
Speaker #2
The answer is absolutely yes. Actually, the elaboration of the answer is that you need to anticipate a commissioning With a different approach with respect to what you did or you would do with the traditional technologies. If you follow a design pattern, especially for ICC 1499 software, you are able to actually anticipate some of the commissioning phase, especially for what regards loop checks and the commissioning of low-level typical elements like valves, pumps, vessels and so on. so you can actually anticipate part of the commissioning while you are still finalizing the development of some of the higher level control software so in this way you can certainly anticipate problems relating mostly to the electrical part of the plant so solving the loops and checking that every all the instrumentation works but you can also go ahead and start let's say fine-tuning the lower level loops of some pid so it's seems like commissioning in this way, in the sense that it shortens it, but it also allows for a more structured commissioning and a reduced effort because of the reusability of code. If you stress the usage of an object-oriented approach in designing your control software, then obviously these initial bigger efforts, because you need to develop libraries, then it comes back to you as a reduced amount of error corrections while you are in cognition. So yes, cognition is certainly one of the strongest points for adopting this technology.
Speaker #0
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Franco, for answering that. I see some other questions came already. I will show you the next one from Stephen. A general question to the panel. What is the biggest challenge in updating legacy equipment to utilize.
Speaker #1
ic61499 i don't know who wants to start on this uh on this question i could start i think i i feel that challenge too um if you have legacy equipment it's hard to justify a full rewrite of your your code your ip to a new standard and in the example that we used at shell it was a poc that was um the code was so obsolete that had to be rewritten anyway so then it made sense to move towards IEC 61499 but from a customer perspective I think when you think of the existing legacy systems that are out there there will be a need to have some kind of migration strategies and some of those things as we go forward into this open space because that is our intellectual property there and and it's very hard to justify rewriting that all to a new standard versus just having a migration path out good any other addition
Speaker #0
to that comment Also, maybe from my side, what I would add is not just migration, the migration application sometimes is not a one-to-one migration. Because the 1499 is really bringing a new way of building applications from a new perspective, more asset-oriented and more really self-contained type of automation. I would say one of the challenges would be just thinking in a different manner when adopting 1499 to make the most of the use of for the 1499 right that's something really you need maybe some expertise just to guide you in this process to make them make the most of this migration to enjoy and for sure a benefit from the from the open automation and universal automation principles for the rest of the plan
Speaker #1
the life cycle franco you wanted to to say something.
Speaker #2
Well, just a quick addition to what my colleagues already said, is that sometimes you don't need to update the equipment, the legacy equipment themselves. So what you need to do is to integrate them into a newer and larger architecture, where you put on top of the legacy systems, new layers of automation and control, which might be an orchestration of legacy system, a supervision. connection between them. So in this case the question is not just substituting the legacy ones, but how you interface and you correctly embed legacy systems into a new formalism based on 61499. And for this the answer is, unfortunately, simpler because you don't need to rewrite code, you don't need to substitute old hardware, what you need to do is to employ some techniques so that you can interface and mask under a 61499 appearance, your legacy system. So this is a point to be considered, I think.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So orchestrate the application basically and add a new layer on top of the existing to encapsulate it and orchestrate it.
Speaker #2
If you need, because if you don't, you don't touch.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Good. Thank you all. One other question which came from Konanda, addressed to Victor, but it's open to you all. For end-user, major advantage would come from ease of engineering or from reusability of application in the future. What do you believe? Maybe let's start with you, Victor.
Speaker #0
It's hard to say. Why do you have to choose? It's both things, right? You can benefit from both. what what would be major impact? Well, time, we will see with the time, right? But of course, usability of application is a big thing, right? Whenever you are moving from different hardware platforms and decoupling this software, today, it's you look into other spaces of the technology, right? From video or music or some other type of industries, right? Keeping that in the literal property with the capability to run in any potentially hardware platform. It's a really desirable thing, a really powerful thing, right? So you don't depend any longer to have your intellectual property, your application attached to a physical device. Nowadays, if you ask the young kids, that seems like a thing from the past, right? So without a doubt, that reusability is a huge impact. But the ease of engineering, I would say it's more for... maybe for us as automation vendors and for the system integrators sometimes, because not all the end users, at least in the process automation industries, not all the users just go into the system and start modifying the application. So it maybe will be more advantage I would say for automation vendors and system integrators rather than for end users. But again, just be careful, right? Because it will depend on the customer, it will depend on the industry, so it also can and bring a lot of value for for end users as well.
Speaker #1
Good. Any other comments?
Speaker #3
Yeah, I would just add there Greg. I think the UAO throws up the ecosystem of a marketplace of applications. So that creates a complete new spectrum of software developers who can provide applications in the marketplace which can be adopted. to their various hardwares and various applications. It also ensures that a company like Shell building some kind of an optimization application. and then being able to deploy it across the world at their different plants. So definitely, my opinion, perspective, the usability of applications is going to be a major driver for the end users basically. That's all.
Speaker #1
Good, thank you. Trevor, Franco, maybe any...
Speaker #4
I would say I guess the reusable of applications kind of like both Victor and Ravi said is first decoupling from your hardware so you can use your applications you control and move to any hardware as you move along you don't have to lose that work you've done to it as well when you start thinking large scale of the ability to take something you develop for one place and be able to just take that container and move it over and utilize it in much of your other facilities would definitely
Speaker #1
create a good advantage good good um i see one last question uh i don't see what it is but um i think the question is migration strategy from 6 11 41 to 6 49 what are the top ones in your experience so i think victor you started already to answer that in the previous previous question
Speaker #0
Yeah, to me, the biggest one is just typically whenever you build an application in the past with 1131, you were more focused on the bits and bytes, right? And they're just connecting the signals. And then eventually, depending on your platform, you may have the option of start creating templates that are attached to specific devices, right? But not all the systems. support that. So you just basically start writing code or creating a function blocks without a given structure. One of the biggest major potential over the adoption of 1499 is really this asset centric approach to the application. So you really build the kind of detailed training inside your application where you can easily see the different assets, the devices, the pumps, the valves, the tanks, the reactors, the everything, right? So later, if you design or you migrate your application based on those principles, rather than, again, trying to do a one-to-one migration, which is, I would say, it's not the preferred way, whenever you are using this asset-oriented, you later, whenever you are running your plan, you will benefit from that approach, right? It is just being a big jump whenever you are handling the application, because later, whoever accessing the application will understand it. Because it will be just different units, you will have a type of plan hierarchy and you will have your process units and then you can release seeing the control configurator how the valves are connected to the different devices, and the pumps, and what are the dependencies, rather than entering the application and start seeing hundreds of thousands of connections going nowhere and difficult really to handle. To me, that's one of the more principles that makes sense whenever to a migration strategy. But there are many others. This is a nice topic, a complex topic. Maybe others in the table can share their experiences.
Speaker #2
Yeah, actually I would like to add something because if by migration strategy you mean how can I reuse my 6.11.31 code migrated to 6.14.99, let me be harsh, start from scratch. It's not like you cannot. it's like you don't want. The design principles of an object-oriented language like 61499 are really exploited only the moment you adopt in full its new semantics. You cannot do that if you come from the procedural and cycle time-based approach of 61131. What you risk is maybe you save some thousand lines of code. but you will get an application in 649 which is not really exploiting 649 so in the end the amount of time you would have spent in the end in any case is to be uh is to be redone so my suggestion is to actually go and start from scratch and learn from scratch and to redo things which for companies and system integrators which might have uh years of accumulated software from previous project obviously it appears as a big obstacle as a mountain to be to be climbed But you need to look beyond that mountain, beyond what accepting a new paradigm of software development unleashes in the future, which is integration with higher layers of the automation pyramid, integration of advanced data analytics and supervisory control loops outside of the controller. Everybody's talking about AI, but if you don't change the way you design control software, AI is useless. for automation. So all of these, if you do it with legacy technologies, with an old language like 60131 languages, you will spend thousands of hours to achieve minor results. This is the investment that you are doing in migrating to a new language.
Speaker #1
Great addition. So I think we... Slowly come to the end of this panel discussion. So basically we have been and we have seen what open means and what open can enable. And we have seen through the different example as well how universal automation is supporting next generation of software-defined automation. Maybe just a last word to you all, maybe a call to action that you want to send. to the community? I start with you Trevor.
Speaker #4
Yeah thanks, I guess what I'd say is that I do believe that open automation, this new way of doing our automation for our facilities is going to be the way of the future and for that to happen we just need the vendors, we need the customers to jump board to to join your organizations like ua uao and opath and and try to drive that open architecture into the future.
Speaker #1
Thank you. What about you, Victor?
Speaker #0
Well, from my perspective, my call to action is to the users because similar way we have been, we have seen big transformation and changes in the society during the last two years, right? With the smartphones and all the revolution on the streaming and all the different technologies, how IT technologies has change the world we are living in. This change is also coming to the automation world. And the focus is more than ever on the services and the capability of the platform to protect the IP and enable data to make the most use of it in the platform without any dependencies. So Universal Automation is about the users and it's basically telling us, the automation vendors, to reinvent ourselves to better save.
Speaker #2
our our customers so it's that that would be my my my message thank you victor franco any call to action yeah a quick one actually and it's related to the fact that i'm actually connecting to what victor said the world of automation is changing and and it doesn't it's not going to stop and it takes time to actually accept, learn and exploit this new technology. So either you start now and you have the time to be ready when you will be asked for, or you decide to wait and you will be late. And when you will be late, there will be someone else stealing your job. So it's a quite harsh environment, a quite radical change is happening. The revolution that we have been talking about for the industry, from my point of view, is happening now, is starting to happen now. And you need to embrace a new approach and not stay attached to the old one. Very simple.
Speaker #1
Thank you, Franco. Ravi, call to action from your side.
Speaker #3
Yeah, I think we have already set the action. We have the offer on the table to answer Franco. We are ready with the hardware, so we have taken the leap. and I hope other vendors also join in and broaden the ecosystem. The hardware of STAAL is very strong for the hazardous areas globally, which can be put into a zone 1, zone 2, div 1, div 2, and particularly safe applications. And in addition to that, I also would say the decoupling of hardware, software, reusability of application opens up a new ecosystem, a new marketplace for software. I believe we had a presentation sometime back from Amiibi of Brazil who talked about some software development they did. And I believe that is the way to go to bring in a big ecosystem of hardware and software vendors. So all the best to all the vendors to start somewhere today.
Speaker #1
Thank you. Thank you all. Maybe last last comment from my side. So on behalf of Universal Automation Network, first, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to be present for this. What is panel discussion? It was really great to have your your feedback, your experience as a user or as a vendor of of automation. And I think this gives a. a very valuable view to our viewers on the next step next generation of automation system because in fact next generation is already today you are already using those technologies which are there to make automation advance and a call to action to our users join us join universal automation.org if you are users if you are a vendor join us make make the the road with us draw the next generation of automation system. If you are a user, it's very easy to be with us. You can influence the technology. If you are a user, that's very easy as well to make an offer and have it on the market since the technology is already there, and it can be already shared with you. As you see here as an example, we have and we have the company , but many others are already decided. to become members of Universal Automation Network and they are slowly commercializing offers to the market which is good and which is helping the users such as Trevor and Franco having an easier job at the end by having a let's say a full basket of products which are available. So thank you all, I wish you a nice end of the day and I will talk to you next time see you bye bye
Speaker #0
Thank you.

About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

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About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

About UniversalAutomation.org (UAO)

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi everybody, good morning, good day to you, wherever you're based over the earth. My name is Greg Bucco, I'm the Chief Marketing Officer for Universal Automation.org and I'm happy to be here with you today for this new release of the UAO Goes Live sessions. Since the beginning, we've been explaining what is Universal Automation.org and we have been welcoming some of our members. with us doing projects and actually showing how the technology is being used. Today will be a bit different because today we'll go for a panel discussion with technical experts in the fields. But why that? And why Universal Automation? Why all of these technologies going now together? So let's see it from perspective, from the end users. We see that... For decades, companies have been kind of restrained by vendor-specific hardware. So not that easy to change the hardware. The software which is implemented onto it is tightly locked and tightly linked with that hardware. So not very easy for innovation, sometimes not very appealing for new generation. And we see that today companies are more and more looking for and looking at that potential. And that is happening in various forms. We see on the market more and more companies going for open. We see organizations are being set up about open automation. For example, the open automation, the open process automation from the OPAF, or even our organization, Universal Automation, which are coming first from, let's say, users and first from companies willing to have. and more and more open automation system. But what does it mean? What does it enable? Open, and especially in that case, software-defined and universal automation means breaking innovation barriers. So making it easier for companies to integrate newer technology in their already existing system by lowering the costs. of accessing the data, the underlying data, which are always available in all systems. But this means as well the ability to reuse software, reuse software across hardware platform, but as well reusing software, meaning that the life cycles from both the hardware and the software are decoupled, meaning that when the hardware comes to an end of life, you don't necessarily have to change or to upgrade your software to it. And that's a major stage. That's a major change, that's a step change. Another point is how to manage multiple suppliers. I have multiple suppliers, all are running with their own system, so it means that I have to train my people, I have to train my staff in maintaining, in developing, in all those different systems. And this training is for sure cost, and this is as well people management. We have to manage the knowledge between the different person in the team and this is not always easy to do. And last but not least, let's think about future generations, future generations, new talents, freshly coming from school, very looking forward having the newest technologies and implementing that in the field. And coming to the field or field of automation, we can see that things and the way to program has not really much evolved in the last 30-40 years. and how to do that, how to bring that to the field. And this is what we, with Open Automation and Universal Automation, are intending to bring to the field. But how to, let's say, taking that question larger and taking other, let's say, actors on the field, today we'll go with you through the question, okay, what can Open enable? And for that, we welcome some leaders from companies like Stahl, Schneider Electric, Shell, and GR3M, as we discuss through the benefits of what Opens brings to industrial automation. And as we are transitioning, I'm happy to welcome on stage. So we have different people from different companies. So we have Trevor, who is a senior OT. security engineer at Shell. Hi Trevor.
Speaker #1
Hello.
Speaker #0
Chief technical officer from the company GR3N. in sweden javi uh jacasia from uh stahl director of global business development and victor santos who is our process automation offer manager at schneider electric so hi to you all and welcome on stage i'm happy to to have you all for this uh for this panel discussion and uh let's start maybe with the question about uh the purpose of of ownership which is one of the part and one of the value which is brought with with software-defined and open automation and this question goes to you Trevor. I've understood you have used software-defined automation, you have used universal automation already in one of your testbeds. Can you tell us a bit more about it? What are the values which you see and what are the gains which you could have already using the technology?
Speaker #1
Yeah, so we had an opportunity to put this in and actually part of our operating facility at a chemical plant in an area that we had the, it's able to easily come down from agents and upgrades. So, again, it's an opportunity to test the product in an operating environment without the risk of impacting production and gives the ability to become familiar with this technology with any significant risk. From an initial perspective, I mean, it's learning the technology and seeing the benefits, but. For some of the comments you made, there's some key benefits for Shell and in the oil and gas facility, particularly we're in an environment that is running all the time. We have very limited downtimes, turnarounds, maintenance turnarounds every four years, very staggered outages, which makes it challenging to keep systems current and up to date. with what we see with the decoupling of software and hardware with open automation. And once you see the ability as this open architecture goes to more of a fully orchestrated HA environment, we now can see the potential for being able to move your control logic to other controllers seamlessly while you're still running and gain the capability to upgrade hardware without a turnaround or production outage, which is Big cost savings for plants like Shell. And then as well, one of the challenges we find is because of those strict shutdowns is oftentimes you're stuck at the behest of the vendor's lifecycle. So then if your upgrade has to happen on this year, sometimes you're ending up putting up IO, for example, that is already halfway through its lifecycle because that's the only thing that's available. when we start thinking of the possibilities of open architecture you now can choose the hardware that has the latest um life cycle the latest hardware available and you can lower your cost of ownership as you hardware now has their whole lifespan ahead of it i think other savings we see is when you're talking about the common interfaces common software platforms is is with your skid packet vendors, all your vendors in these large facilities, you end up having so many different automation companies in place, which also means your staff has to be competent and skilled in a whole variety of software interfaces, configuration interfaces, and the expertise needing to interface all those systems together and get everything to communicate. So if For example, your PSA vendor now is supporting open automation. You can just embed their logic into your existing open automation system, and you can streamline what knowledge is needed at your plant to maintain all your automation systems and have an easy way to interface your systems together.
Speaker #0
Yes, I see. And actually, that's very interesting what you say, because it's kind of backed up with one of the latest articles we've seen from the ARC forum in Orlando in Total Cost of Ownership and there were various people there coming from different companies and exactly backing up as well what you are saying about the different parts on Total Cost of Ownership. So, yeah, thank you for your testimonial. I will now turn to Franco. Franco, you're working for the company called GR3M. And for sure, we have just spoken about total cost ownership, but there are other values and big values and trends which are very important nowadays, which is more about resilience and about availability and so on. And I understood you are one of the earliest adopters of the technology. So can you tell us a bit more about why choosing to go more towards open automation and universal automation? Can you tell us more about it?
Speaker #2
Yeah, first of all, thank you for the opportunity of being here and good morning, good afternoon to everybody. Look, Greg, you're right. I've been using the technology behind universal automation since very early. stage and this was possible because as a company we are still in a phase of industrialization which gives us a bit more flexibility and freedom in our demonstration plans to actually test different solutions. Answering your question I can provide I think two hopefully interesting perspectives. One is related to what we are doing right now, so our current job of industrializing our proprietary process. and the other one is more strategic, more related to the future of our business. Now, for the first point, along our path of industrialization we are in the chemical process industry, so inevitably we needed to build the demonstration plant of our process. And the dynamics of a plant for the startup, which must reach milestones. and must adapt very quickly to the changes of specifications, was actually becoming one of the requirements for our automation architecture. Just to give you an idea, our recently commissioned plant is composed of six sections, which followed six parallel paths of design, election and startup. So how do you design independently or somehow parallelly to the underlying hardware development, the corresponding software architecture. Well, you need open solution, you need the decoupling between the hardware and the software, and you need a way of designing control software so that it can be easily updated along quick life cycles of the plant itself, if you want to call it a local reconfiguration. So just to give you an idea, along the past few months during commissioning, it happened that we had to change quite deeply some of the specifications of the control because we discovered something new. So this kind of flexibility, this kind of reconfigurability of the software is, I think, a strategic and quite important aspect that Universal Automation and all the other technologies of open process automation are bringing. The second point, which is shorter but I think equally interesting, it regards our business model. As a company, we invented a process, our model is partially based on licensing this process to future end users that will build industrial scale plants, like the one that we are planning to have in Spain in a few years. Now, normally, the business considers us giving with our license a set of engineering documentation specifications which another company an epc contractor normally adopt to actually then design it in practice a plant and build it normally control is a minor amount of these documents and control software is completely out of the scope of this model why is that well because historically the control software arrived very late in this stage of engineering of the plant. So it doesn't belong to a licensor like we are. Now thanks to a decoupling between hardware and software, thanks to an anticipation of the value chain of control software development, we are actually evaluating the possibility of extending our license to include also software related aspects. And this to us is incredibly important because as you might imagine the software is an important part as they are titans in us being competitive on a new market like the chemical recycling one. So this is I think it's an interesting aspect that maybe is peculiar to companies like us which works a bit on the verge of innovation. But I think can make the whole industry reason about the ramificated impact that open technologies can have on our market.
Speaker #0
Yes, especially you need to build something, you need to build basically a process which could be reused by others. And this not knowing what they will set as a system below, gaining the full flexibility. This is a good underlying reason for going for more open automation. A question now to maybe Ravi. Ravi, you represent the company STAL. And well, you've been already very early in the way to open automation and so on. I think you've got already some offers. which are available with, for example, the universal information runtime. But one question for me is that how do you see for the customer, which advantages you see for the customer having these, let's say, multi-vendor systems? What does it give? What are the benefits? Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker #3
Sure, Greg. To start off, thank you for this invitation to be on this esteemed panel. panel and greetings to the audience. in whichever part of the world you are. The major part for STAHL has been the hardware that we promote along with the UA offering which is the IS-1 Plus. It was or is the remote I.O. for the hazardous areas and typically we always try to keep it open and the perspective that you can keep it open to communicate to any of the control system vendors. And we use these standards-based open field-based protocols, open as they can be. Most of the time the control system vendors customize it, or for a more diplomatic word, fine-tune it. And that ended up that beyond testing our hardware with that protocol, with the certification body like PI or ODBA, we would also have to test it with the individual. control system vendor. So that definitely is a challenge from a vendor perspective, but also a challenge from the end user perspective. So for example, if he has a control system vendor and he has multiple sub vendors working with different protocols, so for for one particular protocol A, he would have three or four variants in the plant. which you would have to keep a library and do version management. So that's an unrequired situation for the end user. This definitely challenges the concept of interoperability which you expected with this field-based protocols. And this is what I believe and we believe that UAO is addressing as a major aspect of the new technology. Additionally, I would also add that interoperability was one of the major attributes for Open Process Automation Forum to be formed, led by ExxonMobil and several end users who also saw these challenges in the plants. In their plans, they decided that they needed a standard of standards, build up common information models. and ensure that you would have a real open system and a real interoperability system. And 1499 or rather IC 616499 Universal Automation became one of the foundational technologies for ensuring interoperability. So that is STAAL's take on it and we believe UAO has a bright future going forward. I think I hope that this will be the major part of the business value that will come to end users adopting Universal. Greg?
Speaker #0
Good, yeah, I'm back. Thank you for your valuable input, Ravi. I would like to to call as well uh victor to the stage um victor you are from the company schneider electric and uh I mean, Schneider is already known for being a great advocate for open systems. And yes, could you tell us more what this open ecosystem means for the end users and means for industries in general?
Speaker #4
Yes, of course. Thank you, Greg. Hello, everyone. Well, first of all, I believe this is bringing an unprecedented flexibility. when building automation architectures. I spent many years of my professional career in automation project execution and designing architecture system and designing the systems and a lot of the times when using monolithic and proprietary solutions the challenge was over killing the purpose with a way too expensive solution that sometimes is making it difficult to implement in the solution and that was. basically providing more than what the customer or the user was expecting or requesting to us. And sometimes it could happen the other way around, right? That maybe we are selecting a cost-effective solution, but at the end of the day, it's not addressing really the key user needs in terms of robustness, availability, or data access. So with universal automation, which we do believe is a really transformational thing happening to the industry, Now users can select the hardware, meaning the controllers, the IOSub systems that can fit the purpose of what they need. So that's bringing, I would say, a new world and also giving us and also the users the capability to design fit-for-purpose solutions. That means, for instance, that, well, you know, we are handling sometimes really big facilities, chemical complex or refineries, and then, well, in those facilities there are typically units that are critical for the process that that may require robots a high available hardware solutions while sometimes there are a lot of auxiliary and non-critical units that are just supporting the major process that you may do the automation with a more cost-effective solution that it's just a good enough for that type of processes and and that gives you the flexibility to design really something that is customized to the user needs. So it is really bringing huge value to the users from that perspective. In second place, that also, you know, we all remember this crisis we suffered recently with the global delivery crisis where it was really difficult to get some of the components and there were some products just where delivery time was moved from two weeks maybe up to one year or more. And now with universal automation it's also helping customers to or users to have a more resilient solution, right? Because having the options to grab different components from different vendors that eventually you make some of them really close to your facility or even in the same country to have a more resilient solution for the future just in order to get. get what you need faster and also with the certainty that you can put together all those components and I believe this is the really transformational thing is that a user can put together all those components in a seamless manner. Same configuration tools, same system management tools, all of them ruled by the same software, only one place to build the application so you you can make sure that any universal automation component you are putting in your system, it's a citizen of the same solution. So regardless of the vendor, the user can benefit of a fully compliant solution that is really fitting the purpose and is enabling easier operations and maintenance of the system. On the other side, I would like to highlight also the concept of the software-defined automation, right? How this decoupling the hardware from the software, it's also transforming and also enabling new type of technologies that can make the operation and the maintenance of the plants more sustainable and efficient. For instance, with the software-defined automation, we now can provide new approaches to the automation solutions with putting together the control and compute. capabilities in the same physical platform. And that will basically is enabling a new way of building automation applications where you can, the user can run the a control engine together with other artificial intelligence machine learning data analytics in the same box in the same physical platform and that's it's really making data immediately available to the to the application that are using and it's it's really opening a new door for this type of resilient and sustainable operations and and last last point from my side will be that this also software defining automation will enable new ways of of achieving the ability of the systems and will enable concept as a disruption avoidance which means basically that you can a user whenever the hardware is becoming obsolete they now have the capability to just move the software application to a different control platform so they can keep the system up and running without the need to stop the production And you know, this is very, very frequent use case in the process automation industries where customers typically maybe just stop the plan, they make a general shutdown, a plan shutdown every three, five, seven years in some cases, right? So this software, this decoupling of the hardware and the software and the application, it's really supporting those customers to keep their operation up and running without this disruption. I believe those are the major benefits for the users.
Speaker #0
Thank you, Victor, for your feedback on the technology itself and on the ecosystem. I think we have reached at least the end of the questions coming from me. And I will now take the question coming from the community. I see already some questions came. I will take one and I think this one is for you Franco, coming from Conanda. From your point of view, does this technology help you for the ease of commissioning in some way? Can you say some words about that?
Speaker #2
The answer is absolutely yes. Actually, the elaboration of the answer is that you need to anticipate a commissioning With a different approach with respect to what you did or you would do with the traditional technologies. If you follow a design pattern, especially for ICC 1499 software, you are able to actually anticipate some of the commissioning phase, especially for what regards loop checks and the commissioning of low-level typical elements like valves, pumps, vessels and so on. so you can actually anticipate part of the commissioning while you are still finalizing the development of some of the higher level control software so in this way you can certainly anticipate problems relating mostly to the electrical part of the plant so solving the loops and checking that every all the instrumentation works but you can also go ahead and start let's say fine-tuning the lower level loops of some pid so it's seems like commissioning in this way, in the sense that it shortens it, but it also allows for a more structured commissioning and a reduced effort because of the reusability of code. If you stress the usage of an object-oriented approach in designing your control software, then obviously these initial bigger efforts, because you need to develop libraries, then it comes back to you as a reduced amount of error corrections while you are in cognition. So yes, cognition is certainly one of the strongest points for adopting this technology.
Speaker #0
Yes, thank you. Thank you, Franco, for answering that. I see some other questions came already. I will show you the next one from Stephen. A general question to the panel. What is the biggest challenge in updating legacy equipment to utilize.
Speaker #1
ic61499 i don't know who wants to start on this uh on this question i could start i think i i feel that challenge too um if you have legacy equipment it's hard to justify a full rewrite of your your code your ip to a new standard and in the example that we used at shell it was a poc that was um the code was so obsolete that had to be rewritten anyway so then it made sense to move towards IEC 61499 but from a customer perspective I think when you think of the existing legacy systems that are out there there will be a need to have some kind of migration strategies and some of those things as we go forward into this open space because that is our intellectual property there and and it's very hard to justify rewriting that all to a new standard versus just having a migration path out good any other addition
Speaker #0
to that comment Also, maybe from my side, what I would add is not just migration, the migration application sometimes is not a one-to-one migration. Because the 1499 is really bringing a new way of building applications from a new perspective, more asset-oriented and more really self-contained type of automation. I would say one of the challenges would be just thinking in a different manner when adopting 1499 to make the most of the use of for the 1499 right that's something really you need maybe some expertise just to guide you in this process to make them make the most of this migration to enjoy and for sure a benefit from the from the open automation and universal automation principles for the rest of the plan
Speaker #1
the life cycle franco you wanted to to say something.
Speaker #2
Well, just a quick addition to what my colleagues already said, is that sometimes you don't need to update the equipment, the legacy equipment themselves. So what you need to do is to integrate them into a newer and larger architecture, where you put on top of the legacy systems, new layers of automation and control, which might be an orchestration of legacy system, a supervision. connection between them. So in this case the question is not just substituting the legacy ones, but how you interface and you correctly embed legacy systems into a new formalism based on 61499. And for this the answer is, unfortunately, simpler because you don't need to rewrite code, you don't need to substitute old hardware, what you need to do is to employ some techniques so that you can interface and mask under a 61499 appearance, your legacy system. So this is a point to be considered, I think.
Speaker #1
Yeah. So orchestrate the application basically and add a new layer on top of the existing to encapsulate it and orchestrate it.
Speaker #2
If you need, because if you don't, you don't touch.
Speaker #1
Yeah. Good. Thank you all. One other question which came from Konanda, addressed to Victor, but it's open to you all. For end-user, major advantage would come from ease of engineering or from reusability of application in the future. What do you believe? Maybe let's start with you, Victor.
Speaker #0
It's hard to say. Why do you have to choose? It's both things, right? You can benefit from both. what what would be major impact? Well, time, we will see with the time, right? But of course, usability of application is a big thing, right? Whenever you are moving from different hardware platforms and decoupling this software, today, it's you look into other spaces of the technology, right? From video or music or some other type of industries, right? Keeping that in the literal property with the capability to run in any potentially hardware platform. It's a really desirable thing, a really powerful thing, right? So you don't depend any longer to have your intellectual property, your application attached to a physical device. Nowadays, if you ask the young kids, that seems like a thing from the past, right? So without a doubt, that reusability is a huge impact. But the ease of engineering, I would say it's more for... maybe for us as automation vendors and for the system integrators sometimes, because not all the end users, at least in the process automation industries, not all the users just go into the system and start modifying the application. So it maybe will be more advantage I would say for automation vendors and system integrators rather than for end users. But again, just be careful, right? Because it will depend on the customer, it will depend on the industry, so it also can and bring a lot of value for for end users as well.
Speaker #1
Good. Any other comments?
Speaker #3
Yeah, I would just add there Greg. I think the UAO throws up the ecosystem of a marketplace of applications. So that creates a complete new spectrum of software developers who can provide applications in the marketplace which can be adopted. to their various hardwares and various applications. It also ensures that a company like Shell building some kind of an optimization application. and then being able to deploy it across the world at their different plants. So definitely, my opinion, perspective, the usability of applications is going to be a major driver for the end users basically. That's all.
Speaker #1
Good, thank you. Trevor, Franco, maybe any...
Speaker #4
I would say I guess the reusable of applications kind of like both Victor and Ravi said is first decoupling from your hardware so you can use your applications you control and move to any hardware as you move along you don't have to lose that work you've done to it as well when you start thinking large scale of the ability to take something you develop for one place and be able to just take that container and move it over and utilize it in much of your other facilities would definitely
Speaker #1
create a good advantage good good um i see one last question uh i don't see what it is but um i think the question is migration strategy from 6 11 41 to 6 49 what are the top ones in your experience so i think victor you started already to answer that in the previous previous question
Speaker #0
Yeah, to me, the biggest one is just typically whenever you build an application in the past with 1131, you were more focused on the bits and bytes, right? And they're just connecting the signals. And then eventually, depending on your platform, you may have the option of start creating templates that are attached to specific devices, right? But not all the systems. support that. So you just basically start writing code or creating a function blocks without a given structure. One of the biggest major potential over the adoption of 1499 is really this asset centric approach to the application. So you really build the kind of detailed training inside your application where you can easily see the different assets, the devices, the pumps, the valves, the tanks, the reactors, the everything, right? So later, if you design or you migrate your application based on those principles, rather than, again, trying to do a one-to-one migration, which is, I would say, it's not the preferred way, whenever you are using this asset-oriented, you later, whenever you are running your plan, you will benefit from that approach, right? It is just being a big jump whenever you are handling the application, because later, whoever accessing the application will understand it. Because it will be just different units, you will have a type of plan hierarchy and you will have your process units and then you can release seeing the control configurator how the valves are connected to the different devices, and the pumps, and what are the dependencies, rather than entering the application and start seeing hundreds of thousands of connections going nowhere and difficult really to handle. To me, that's one of the more principles that makes sense whenever to a migration strategy. But there are many others. This is a nice topic, a complex topic. Maybe others in the table can share their experiences.
Speaker #2
Yeah, actually I would like to add something because if by migration strategy you mean how can I reuse my 6.11.31 code migrated to 6.14.99, let me be harsh, start from scratch. It's not like you cannot. it's like you don't want. The design principles of an object-oriented language like 61499 are really exploited only the moment you adopt in full its new semantics. You cannot do that if you come from the procedural and cycle time-based approach of 61131. What you risk is maybe you save some thousand lines of code. but you will get an application in 649 which is not really exploiting 649 so in the end the amount of time you would have spent in the end in any case is to be uh is to be redone so my suggestion is to actually go and start from scratch and learn from scratch and to redo things which for companies and system integrators which might have uh years of accumulated software from previous project obviously it appears as a big obstacle as a mountain to be to be climbed But you need to look beyond that mountain, beyond what accepting a new paradigm of software development unleashes in the future, which is integration with higher layers of the automation pyramid, integration of advanced data analytics and supervisory control loops outside of the controller. Everybody's talking about AI, but if you don't change the way you design control software, AI is useless. for automation. So all of these, if you do it with legacy technologies, with an old language like 60131 languages, you will spend thousands of hours to achieve minor results. This is the investment that you are doing in migrating to a new language.
Speaker #1
Great addition. So I think we... Slowly come to the end of this panel discussion. So basically we have been and we have seen what open means and what open can enable. And we have seen through the different example as well how universal automation is supporting next generation of software-defined automation. Maybe just a last word to you all, maybe a call to action that you want to send. to the community? I start with you Trevor.
Speaker #4
Yeah thanks, I guess what I'd say is that I do believe that open automation, this new way of doing our automation for our facilities is going to be the way of the future and for that to happen we just need the vendors, we need the customers to jump board to to join your organizations like ua uao and opath and and try to drive that open architecture into the future.
Speaker #1
Thank you. What about you, Victor?
Speaker #0
Well, from my perspective, my call to action is to the users because similar way we have been, we have seen big transformation and changes in the society during the last two years, right? With the smartphones and all the revolution on the streaming and all the different technologies, how IT technologies has change the world we are living in. This change is also coming to the automation world. And the focus is more than ever on the services and the capability of the platform to protect the IP and enable data to make the most use of it in the platform without any dependencies. So Universal Automation is about the users and it's basically telling us, the automation vendors, to reinvent ourselves to better save.
Speaker #2
our our customers so it's that that would be my my my message thank you victor franco any call to action yeah a quick one actually and it's related to the fact that i'm actually connecting to what victor said the world of automation is changing and and it doesn't it's not going to stop and it takes time to actually accept, learn and exploit this new technology. So either you start now and you have the time to be ready when you will be asked for, or you decide to wait and you will be late. And when you will be late, there will be someone else stealing your job. So it's a quite harsh environment, a quite radical change is happening. The revolution that we have been talking about for the industry, from my point of view, is happening now, is starting to happen now. And you need to embrace a new approach and not stay attached to the old one. Very simple.
Speaker #1
Thank you, Franco. Ravi, call to action from your side.
Speaker #3
Yeah, I think we have already set the action. We have the offer on the table to answer Franco. We are ready with the hardware, so we have taken the leap. and I hope other vendors also join in and broaden the ecosystem. The hardware of STAAL is very strong for the hazardous areas globally, which can be put into a zone 1, zone 2, div 1, div 2, and particularly safe applications. And in addition to that, I also would say the decoupling of hardware, software, reusability of application opens up a new ecosystem, a new marketplace for software. I believe we had a presentation sometime back from Amiibi of Brazil who talked about some software development they did. And I believe that is the way to go to bring in a big ecosystem of hardware and software vendors. So all the best to all the vendors to start somewhere today.
Speaker #1
Thank you. Thank you all. Maybe last last comment from my side. So on behalf of Universal Automation Network, first, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to be present for this. What is panel discussion? It was really great to have your your feedback, your experience as a user or as a vendor of of automation. And I think this gives a. a very valuable view to our viewers on the next step next generation of automation system because in fact next generation is already today you are already using those technologies which are there to make automation advance and a call to action to our users join us join universal automation.org if you are users if you are a vendor join us make make the the road with us draw the next generation of automation system. If you are a user, it's very easy to be with us. You can influence the technology. If you are a user, that's very easy as well to make an offer and have it on the market since the technology is already there, and it can be already shared with you. As you see here as an example, we have and we have the company , but many others are already decided. to become members of Universal Automation Network and they are slowly commercializing offers to the market which is good and which is helping the users such as Trevor and Franco having an easier job at the end by having a let's say a full basket of products which are available. So thank you all, I wish you a nice end of the day and I will talk to you next time see you bye bye
Speaker #0
Thank you.

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About UAO Goes Live: The Future of Automation

Tune in and discover how UniversalAutomation.org and its ecosystem are transforming industries, one open standard at a time.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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