Sometimes employees and contractors need to see information wherever they are with whatever device they have at hand. Sometimes that old “making the rounds to collect information while carrying a clipboard” just doesn’t cut it any longer. Then again, technology suppliers have found that the ability to monitor their products while they are in use at customers’ plants is the surest way to provide prompt service—and improve their products, too.

“People all over our company need production information on demand,” says John Ragone, plant process optimization manager at National Grid/Keyspan, in Long Island, N.Y. With the recent acquisition of Keyspan, London-based National Grid operates the second largest utility in the United States and the largest in the United Kingdom. The plant process optimization department acquires and manages the infrastructure and applications to get information to the control rooms and to others who need the information.

The search for new solutions took Ragone to Monterey, Calif., in August 2006 and the OSIsoft users conference. There he met Michael Saucier, chief executive officer of Transpara, a start-up company in Pleasanton, Calif. Transpara had developed the technology to port information from OSIsoft’s PI historian to mobile devices such as smart mobile phones.

“Our primary infrastructure for collecting data from our distributed control systems, burner management systems and recorders is OSIsoft PI and iFix from GE Fanuc Automation,” says Ragone. “Michael showed me how I could get all this information on a cell phone, and I thought that this would be great. Like everyone, we have to do more with less. With this technology, we could get information out to people who can’t always pop open a laptop or even open a browser. But we can all have cell phones, and most everyone knows how to use Google. So I bought the system, and we had it up and running in a week—without needing an integrator.”

Transpara had originally targeted the process industries, and Keyspan is a utility. “They worked with us to provide the specific needs for the utility industry,” reports Ragone. The system includes an in-house Web server with restricted access to the Internet. Screens are developed for the various roles of users—from vice president to technician. “The screens are actually URLs [universal resource locators] on the server. Each screen captures only the information necessary for that particular role. So everyone who is authorized can call the URL with their cell phone and get specific information,” says Ragone.

Ideas from conferences

He is also bullish on the value of attending user conferences. “Every year, I leave that conference with some new thing we can use.” The biggest issue Ragone had selling the idea in the company was the stigma that associated cell phones as luxury items. The system has proved its worth, though. “All of our other systems are either event-driven, as in alarms, or scheduled. With this system, information is on demand, available whenever needed, and updated by the minute.”

The Transpara system is developed for smart phones running the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system. Ragone saw a demo of the system running on the much-hyped Apple iPhone, however. His reaction—“It’s sweet.”

This application is not surprising to Tom Fiske, senior analyst for automation and supply chain at ARC Advisory Group Inc., in Dedham, Mass. “Companies are searching for best practices in knowledge management,” says Fiske. “No matter what sort of industry, managers and operators need on-demand knowledge in order to do their jobs in the face of global competition in manufacturing.”

Few applications in industry are more remote than oil fields and gas wells. According to Amit Mehta, principal at enterprise connectivity integrator Moblize, in Houston, “A major issue for operators and investors alike has been transparency. By this, I am referring to the inability until fairly recently to access current, real-time production data from oil fields and gas wells that are generally located great distances from the typical operations center.”

Mehta says that new technologies for transmitting production data has relieved the operator of the somewhat cumbersome and time-consuming responsibility of monitoring remote production primarily through site visits and daily gauge reports prepared in the field and mailed or faxed to the operator daily or weekly. Since many of the people at the pumper/gauger locations are contractor employees, they usually have many other issues to contend with each day. Recruiting qualified people for these remote locations is another issue. Until the advent of mobile phones, many of these contractors could not even be contacted directly on an as-needed basis. ...