The product life cycle principle declares that all products are born, go through a maturity cycle and then eventually retire. Graphically represented, the product life cycle graph is a line illustrated in fig 1.
Fig. 1 Product Life Cycle
Time factor in this graph is determined by a number of variables. When it comes to automation software products specifically, these variables could be, in no particular order of importance:
- Software development technology evolution – SOA, XML, SOAP, SQL,
- Communication industry progress – bandwidth and networking technology
- Computer hardware industry progress – processor speeds, RAMs etc.
- Industry consolidation – mergers acquisitions, technology partnerships etc.
- Industry standards – OPC, TCP/IP, ISA 95 etc.
These are to name some of the variables that affect the time factor. The combined turbulence of these variables tends to decrease the number of years that a product takes to get from point of first commercial release to maturity.
As products move from first introduction to maturity, the noticeable changes are
- No more new features being introduced at functionally stable,
- Limited tech support at the maturity level,
- No spares support or tech support at the retirement level.
Decreases in product life cycles leave businesses with decreased returns on their investments as they find themselves increasingly pushed to move to new technology. Typical reasons that compel for migration to new technology are:
1. System Technical Support – Vendors pull back technical support for systems that have been declared obsolete
2. System Spares Support – vendors pull back spares support for systems that have been declared obsolete
3. Data portability – Legacy systems keep information in isolation, whereas the need increasingly is to have data interchange services on an on-demand basis.
4. Most importantly, cutting edge technology is built around the concept of increasing operational efficiencies and decreasing costs. Investing in technology more often than not does yield in higher returns in investment.
With the process of continual evolution to new technology, and as new technology of today becomes the legacy system of tomorrow, managing the migration process is a perpetual process that organizations find themselves involved in.
The key to planning the technology migration process is driven by:
1. Automation technology products that are based on open standards – give yourself the flexibility to work with the range of vendors of your choice, fetch data from every one, and analyze it through out your migration process.
2. Standards Based connectivity products – leads to the ability to integrate with legacy systems easily – this allows for a planned and phased out evolution plan.
3. Products that are built on technology architectures that provide for a 18-20 year product evolution life cycle – migration is inevitable, at least now you will only be upgrading product versions every three years, as opposed to a complete system over haul and then handling change management issues within the organization.
4. Products that are scalable – migration is complex enough with technology evolution, it should not be complicated with having to migrate due to expansions as well.
Technology Migration Plan at Japan Power Generation Limited
Japan Power Generation Limited, a 135 MW with 24 medium speed diesel engines power plant was installed with the OEM provided Diasys system.
Japan Power was faced with similar technology migration issues as are faced with every organization today. The technology migration strategy at Japan Power was:
1. Select a product that is based on open standards
2. Phase out the migration process
3. Provide a thorough industry standard OPC interface to their entire automation system.
4. Use the standards now deployed to live out the entire life cycles of the products being used.
The powers of Standards Based Connectivity
When Japan Power initially started out in their venture to develop a migration system they were faced with a number of issues, the first and foremost issue was to collect data from a proprietary system into a system that worked on open standards. OPC (www.opcfoundation.org) was the logical choice here for the following reasons:
1. Managing the continual migration process would only be possible if they were using an open standards product.
2. Fetching data from a proprietary system would have only been possible by using OPC.
3. Using industry standards they now could phase out their migration plans.
IntelliMAX, with it’s through and through standards based connectivity interfaces was chosen by Japan Power. Not only did IntelliMAX provide them with all six interfaces of OPC, it also provided them with ODBC, SOAP and XML data connectors for eventual enterprise wide integration.
The SENSYS Solutions (www.sensys.com) team joined hands with the Japan Power engineering team to help them develop the most amicable solution. IO Server was chosen as the OPC server to fetch data from the Diasys DCS via Thicknet interface and to feed it into IntelliMAX server through IntelliMAX DA client.
The Power of DataMAX – Advanced Historian
Japan Power’s management was previously not able to archive data. With the integrated historian DataMAX, they were now able to archive history data, analyze for plant metrics and evaluate production performance in an objective manner. To top it off, ReportMAX fulfilled the need of a dynamic reporting tool offering both preconfigured and custom Web or Excel based historian reports; both periodic and on-demand.
Way Forward
The SENSYS Solutions team has been following up the migration process closely with Japan Power management. The vision is to migrate the Diasys hardware to an open connectivity hardware as well. Again the same principles that were adopted in the first phase of the migration process will be followed.
Japan Power now has a fully functional migration system in place; no more does it need to worry about support being pulled back by the vendors, or spares not being available.
As they look for expansions on their plant, they know that their existing systems are built for scalability and will expand with their business.
The Real Time SOA architecture used by IntelliMAX is cognizant to the product having a 20 year plus life cycle.
Japan Power is now planning to link real time plant floor data with their enterprise applications to in-fact practice process and manufacturing efficiencies. Having invested in an open architecture-based versatile solution, IntelliMAX, JPGL is now geared to fulfill its automation software needs of today and tomorrow.
Fig. 1 Product Life Cycle
Time factor in this graph is determined by a number of variables. When it comes to automation software products specifically, these variables could be, in no particular order of importance:
- Software development technology evolution – SOA, XML, SOAP, SQL,
- Communication industry progress – bandwidth and networking technology
- Computer hardware industry progress – processor speeds, RAMs etc.
- Industry consolidation – mergers acquisitions, technology partnerships etc.
- Industry standards – OPC, TCP/IP, ISA 95 etc.
These are to name some of the variables that affect the time factor. The combined turbulence of these variables tends to decrease the number of years that a product takes to get from point of first commercial release to maturity.
As products move from first introduction to maturity, the noticeable changes are
- No more new features being introduced at functionally stable,
- Limited tech support at the maturity level,
- No spares support or tech support at the retirement level.
Decreases in product life cycles leave businesses with decreased returns on their investments as they find themselves increasingly pushed to move to new technology. Typical reasons that compel for migration to new technology are:
1. System Technical Support – Vendors pull back technical support for systems that have been declared obsolete
2. System Spares Support – vendors pull back spares support for systems that have been declared obsolete
3. Data portability – Legacy systems keep information in isolation, whereas the need increasingly is to have data interchange services on an on-demand basis.
4. Most importantly, cutting edge technology is built around the concept of increasing operational efficiencies and decreasing costs. Investing in technology more often than not does yield in higher returns in investment.
With the process of continual evolution to new technology, and as new technology of today becomes the legacy system of tomorrow, managing the migration process is a perpetual process that organizations find themselves involved in.
The key to planning the technology migration process is driven by:
1. Automation technology products that are based on open standards – give yourself the flexibility to work with the range of vendors of your choice, fetch data from every one, and analyze it through out your migration process.
2. Standards Based connectivity products – leads to the ability to integrate with legacy systems easily – this allows for a planned and phased out evolution plan.
3. Products that are built on technology architectures that provide for a 18-20 year product evolution life cycle – migration is inevitable, at least now you will only be upgrading product versions every three years, as opposed to a complete system over haul and then handling change management issues within the organization.
4. Products that are scalable – migration is complex enough with technology evolution, it should not be complicated with having to migrate due to expansions as well.
Technology Migration Plan at Japan Power Generation Limited
Japan Power Generation Limited, a 135 MW with 24 medium speed diesel engines power plant was installed with the OEM provided Diasys system.
Japan Power was faced with similar technology migration issues as are faced with every organization today. The technology migration strategy at Japan Power was:
1. Select a product that is based on open standards
2. Phase out the migration process
3. Provide a thorough industry standard OPC interface to their entire automation system.
4. Use the standards now deployed to live out the entire life cycles of the products being used.
The powers of Standards Based Connectivity
When Japan Power initially started out in their venture to develop a migration system they were faced with a number of issues, the first and foremost issue was to collect data from a proprietary system into a system that worked on open standards. OPC (www.opcfoundation.org) was the logical choice here for the following reasons:
1. Managing the continual migration process would only be possible if they were using an open standards product.
2. Fetching data from a proprietary system would have only been possible by using OPC.
3. Using industry standards they now could phase out their migration plans.
IntelliMAX, with it’s through and through standards based connectivity interfaces was chosen by Japan Power. Not only did IntelliMAX provide them with all six interfaces of OPC, it also provided them with ODBC, SOAP and XML data connectors for eventual enterprise wide integration.
The SENSYS Solutions (www.sensys.com) team joined hands with the Japan Power engineering team to help them develop the most amicable solution. IO Server was chosen as the OPC server to fetch data from the Diasys DCS via Thicknet interface and to feed it into IntelliMAX server through IntelliMAX DA client.
The Power of DataMAX – Advanced Historian
Japan Power’s management was previously not able to archive data. With the integrated historian DataMAX, they were now able to archive history data, analyze for plant metrics and evaluate production performance in an objective manner. To top it off, ReportMAX fulfilled the need of a dynamic reporting tool offering both preconfigured and custom Web or Excel based historian reports; both periodic and on-demand.
Way Forward
The SENSYS Solutions team has been following up the migration process closely with Japan Power management. The vision is to migrate the Diasys hardware to an open connectivity hardware as well. Again the same principles that were adopted in the first phase of the migration process will be followed.
Japan Power now has a fully functional migration system in place; no more does it need to worry about support being pulled back by the vendors, or spares not being available.
As they look for expansions on their plant, they know that their existing systems are built for scalability and will expand with their business.
The Real Time SOA architecture used by IntelliMAX is cognizant to the product having a 20 year plus life cycle.
Japan Power is now planning to link real time plant floor data with their enterprise applications to in-fact practice process and manufacturing efficiencies. Having invested in an open architecture-based versatile solution, IntelliMAX, JPGL is now geared to fulfill its automation software needs of today and tomorrow.
1 comment:
I think that the product life cycle theory that you have mentioned is losing its appeal given the modern theoretical models. The concept has much more depth as presented here or taught in an MBA class.
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