IT/OT/ET convergence enables enterprise visualization

Posted: July 02, 2024

Many have written about converging information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT) from both technology and cybersecurity perspectives. The production implementations of this convergence within industrial facilities have progressed steadily for decades. However, the original approaches lacked a more complete method of deployment, and management has been too simplistic for many industrial enterprises to realize consistent value. Newer technologies and an increased ability to incorporate engineering technology (ET) set the stage for a new approach to industrial information convergence.

Why converge, and what is this convergence?

IT/OT convergence joins divergent sets of technologies, priorities and organizations so that industrial facilities and the specialists that support them can operate better. In theory this means improving efficiency, yield, quality, agility, profitability, safety, health and sustainability—especially so that a smaller pool of specialists can support a larger fleet of facilities. But almost 30 years of convergence continues to increase risks in cybersecurity, data privacy and resiliency. Resiliency has become a major challenge when the specialists are remote and cannot reliably interact with the facilities; this physical distance has created a tension of priorities between protecting the facilities and protecting the business.

Legacy IT/OT has been valuable, but not sufficient. Adding ET allows coordinators of maintenance employees and contractors to understand questions like “where?” and “what equipment do we have right now?” as they manage teams in high-risk/high-cost activities with the minimum schedule and cost and maximum health, safety and environmental performance. Leading enterprises in mining, oil and gas, petrochemicals and energy have developed strategic differentiation using ET in combination with IT/OT.

What does IT/OT/ET convergence look like?

Consider the following example: A leading petrochemicals enterprise significantly transformed one of its many plants to achieve almost perfect reliability with minimum waiting time for field workers and maximum work completion. It provided the coordinators with tools to review some of each day’s field activity very quickly to assess access work preparation and safety (IT doesn’t provide this information) and then combine the IT/OT/ET tools to operate at lower cost than its competitors. Then, it took advantage of scale, achieving similar results quickly across the enterprise. Each plant has different technology and equipment, but creating a unified coordination center made scaling that convergence highly effective.

Implementations of IT/OT/ET convergence become command centers, and these are very different from monitoring centers or control towers:

Diverse visualization—to address what one executive described to me as “we don’t know what we don’t know”—can look like this:

What are the benefits of convergence?

Business improvement through work transformation that can translate into many positive outcomes, depending on the use cases applied.

• Optimize plans, schedules and operations using more accurate, frequent and earlier information
• Change when, where, which and how people address challenges and make improvements
• Minimize “waste work” to find, validate and create information
• Respond to events or incidents more quickly, improving productivity

Ready to learn more about how a convergence strategy could work for your organization?