Without data, you are blind and deaf in the middle of a freeway. With OT/IT integration, you can drive safely on the road to higher performance. Converging OT and IT enables companies to achieve the full process visibility needed for informed decision-making. By processing and analyzing data, it is possible to gain insights you couldn’t before. So, why are so many companies struggling with implementing solutions for OT/IT integration?

The rocky road to implementation

Smart factories in the context of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are widely recognized as a necessity for increasing productivity and efficiency. But many companies have not yet managed to implement smart production or even to digitalize large portions of their value chain.

The extent to which organizations are struggling to make progress in their Industry 4.0 initiatives is illustrated by a recent commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Siemens, questioning more than 400 decision makers in IT and operations: 51% of respondents said that they were currently undergoing a digital transformation and 22% stated that they were planning to begin a digital transformation within the next 12 months, compared with only 27% who said that they had completed significant portions of their digital transformation.

The gap between the vision and what’s working

When manufacturing companies talk about the future, they often present visions of smart production units or even entire autonomous factories with self-orchestrating equipment and collaborative robots.

But the truth is, such concepts will remain visions if companies do not manage to ensure a seamless data flow across all steps and levels of the value chain, full data transparency and the ability to analyze data. Without data, any orchestrating system – be it a classical MES or an ERP – is essentially blind and deaf. It’s in the name: Data-based decision-making is simply not possible without data – and this is true for any system that supports human decision-making through data. This data is key for monitoring machines to optimize their efficiency and improve the entire production process.

The challenge of shop floor data integration

In many organizations, operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) are two different worlds that are not connected or are only partially connected with each other – in terms of architecture, technology, and responsibilities. In fact, 79% of more than 400 study participants said that improving IT and OT integration is a high or critical priority for their organization, but only 36% have already implemented this today with no plans to expand or upgrade their current efforts (A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Siemens, February 2022). This is caused by many factors, including security concerns; diverging requirements for aspects such as bandwidth, availability, and response times; complex and/or heterogeneous environments; legacy equipment that lacks interfaces to modern data management standards and systems, and lack of skilled staff.

It is this lack of convergence between the data generated on the shop floor in the OT environment and the abilities to process and analyze data in IT systems – that presents one of the biggest hurdles in Industry 4.0 and IIoT. In the same Forrester study cited above, only a third of respondents rated their OT and IT as “completely integrated.” Until very recently, integration between these two worlds was often only achievable through highly customized and thus costly solutions.

How to close the integration gap

If companies fail to establish data transparency in their operations through OT/IT integration, they will not be able to benefit from data-based decision-making in the context of management and operator decisions or for advanced solutions using AI or machine learning.

This data transparency can be established through OT/IT integration – and this in turn requires three elements:

First, you need to have brownfield connectivity to integrate your production equipment into a coherent data model.

Next, you need to standardize the interfaces between OT and IT.

And finally, you need to establish tools and systems for data analysis and evaluation, both locally and on the enterprise level.

Mastering OT/IT integration with Totally Integrated Automation

The Siemens portfolio provides everything a company needs for OT/IT integration. In addition to offering a portfolio of hardware and software solutions, Siemens can draw on expert knowledge acquired through the implementation of digitalization projects within our own factories to support our customers and partners in their digitalization efforts.

Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) enables companies to begin their digital journey starting from the shop floor – no matter in which stage of digitization a company finds itself because automation data will be transmitted and analyzed quickly and understandably. Through global standards and uniform interfaces, field and machine levels are linked together horizontally, and OT and IT are linked vertically, i.e., from sensor to edge to cloud. Whether you’re a machine builder or plant operator, this saves you precious engineering time and increases productivity of your production. Thus, TIA provides the solid basis for a Digital Enterprise and a successful OT/IT convergence.

A successful OT/IT integration needs solid solutions

The SIMATIC WinCC products are a good choice to make the integration of OT and IT happen. They offer connectivity to the field via a large variety of communication drivers. Data is stored, processed, and visualized using the core components of the system. Integration with further applications in the IT/OT environment is provided via Standard interfaces like OPC UA, REST and others.

The products are designed to be the central data platform and integrate operations modules like KPI engines and shift calendar. Line Coordination enable the fast orchestration and adaptation of production sequences for the design, control and monitoring of recipe-controlled processes.

Integration of WinCC Unified in Industrial Edge allows collaborating with all other apps within the ecosystem and provides data via the Industrial Information Hub (IIH) to the IT layer with the semantics of the shop floor.

Realize data integration with Industrial Information Hub

The Industrial Information Hub (IIH) is an Industrial Edge App for data integration. It gathers data from the automation layer and provides it to the IT layer of a factory – the perfect tool for OT/IT integration. This application allows connecting to any brown field device and gather the data in one central data hub using highly performant connectors. Within the IIH data is pre-processed before it is sent to further systems and into the cloud using OPC UA, the most widely spread communication standard within the OT world. As the complexity in the manufacturing industry increases it is most important to be able to access data flexibly and directly. This demand is met by a digital twin of the factory living inside the Industrial Information Hub that is used to retrieve data in a structured manner. To realize the data integration from OT to IT the IIH has synchronizing capabilities to aggregate data into parent devices – even up to the cloud. This way data can be accessed in the same way on the shop floor as it can be in any cloud environment.

Let’s take a look at one of our customers where OT/IT integration already has a concrete benefit.

Improving quality through OT/IT integration

One company that joined forces with Siemens to achieve OT/IT integration is Creative & Innovative Systems (CIS), a Korean specialist in battery production plants. In battery production, quality is extremely critical. Therefore, CIS aimed to establish traceability of the quality for every single battery produced for their end customers. Gaining this kind of transparency and traceability can only be realized when data is being processed and analyzed seamlessly from OT to IT in the entire electrode manufacturing process. Based on the standard OPC UA, the customer was able to connect the shop floor and the IT environment in the process of the lithium coating winding. With the integrated automation approach, TIA provides a solid foundation with motors, controllers, a SCADA system, and the TIA Portal. Thanks to the high degree of standardization across all components and the consistent digitalization of the engineering processes, the CIS specialists were able to benefit from an unexpectedly high efficiency gain: “We’ve been able to shorten set-up time by up to 20 percent and achieve greater flexibility and productivity,” says Hur Sang-gu, head of design at CIS.

Do you now see more clearly which path you will take with OT/IT integration? Which challenges will you address next? Please let me know in the comments.