The role of Operational Technology (OT) is evolving quickly in the modern manufacturing plant. Much like its Information Technology (IT) cousin, OT is responsible for secure data management and movement. While the IT team is tasked with leveraging data to solve an infinite number of business problems, the OT team is tasked with leveraging data to solve an endless number of operational, quality, reliability, safety, environmental, and other challenges on the plant floor.
Most companies also have an Information Systems (IS) team that complements their IT team. IS teams focus primarily on data handling, management, and transformation applications, while IT teams focus primarily on managing and maintaining the infrastructure that enables these applications.
The equivalent role to IS on the OT side is the OT Application Engineer. OT Application Engineers have traditionally been focused on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Building Automation Systems (BAS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Fire & Gas systems (FGS), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Advanced Process Control (APC), and Plant Information Management Systems (PIMS). The need to deploy, administer, and maintain these systems is necessary and almost always mission critical, meaning these systems must be running for the plant to operate.
The OT evolution is well under way on several fronts. The first is there is an active push to add Asset Performance Management (APM), Environmental, Health, Safety, and Quality (EHSQ), and Plant Process Management (PPM) systems into manufacturing plants to enhance reliability, safety, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), and related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Secondly, there is an emerging need to not only interface the aforementioned systems in a modular fashion, but to also provide bidirectional connectivity with Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, and to egress all kinds of data to and from Analytics applications that are running in both Edge and Cloud environments. And let’s not forget about the complexity of cybersecurity, working with SaaS solutions, enterprise architecture, managing data of all types (not just time series data), data integrity, and all the other concerns of the modern OT Application Engineer.
So, what else does the OT Application Engineer role require moving forward? More than ever before, the OT Application Engineer requires a technology skillset while also being process oriented. These professionals play a central role in the industrial Digital Transformation process as they deploy low-code Data Hub and Manufacturing Operations Management systems and software solutions that work together and share data and enable continuous improvement. This requires back-end and front-end programming skills to customize workflow, visualization, and reporting solutions to meet the needs of the individual plant and the enterprise. This likely means that you’re going to need to hire Computer Science graduates to complement your engineering disciplines. The IT space has certainly done the same over time, by adding to their IS teams to customize workflow, visualization, and reporting solutions to meet the needs of the business. The time is now for the OT world to mimic their IS cousin and fully embrace digitalization to further optimize the manufacturing plant which will help you become more competitive, sustainable, and profitable.
Jon Hall
Vice President, Digital Transformation
Adatafy™
