integrator engineer. The systems engineer would design the system and the shop guys would build it,” says Beaufaux.  “Now you have three integrator engineers for every shop guy and the hardware is more sophisticated.”

Best practices

As systems integrators move from job to job, they accumulate knowledge from a variety of vendors and a range of different industries. “Best practices is definitely part of what we offer, and end-users appreciate it,” says Ed Diehl, president of Concept Systems. “We work across many industries. We can take things we’ve learned in aerospace or food and it can be applied to consumer products applications.”

Professional certification of integrators also gives integrators credibility as professionals who understand systems across many industries. “The certification credential from the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA) lets the user expect a professional organization to bring structured project methodology,” says Ray Bachelor, president of Bachelor Controls Inc., an integrator in Sabetha, Kan. “Certified integrators will build a more consistent platform, rather than a loose collection of disparate hardware.”

Accumulating best practices is more than simply working at a lot of different plants. The teaching of best practices has become part of CSIA’s certification process. “We have a process in place where we have a best practices committee and we subject submissions to peer review,” says Bachelor. “Through peer review, we evaluate whether this or that is a better best practice. We manage best practices systematically.”

One key attribute of systems integrators is their ability to provide local support and troubleshooting. “One of the value propositions of systems integrators is they have a local presence,” says ARC’s Nowak. “So [end-users] know the integrator will be available to help with training.”

Using a local integrator, though, can produce complications for companies with multiple plants. “The majority of our customers are pretty much in the South, but some of those customers use us globally,” says Stringer, of Solvere. “So we get on planes and go to other plants, and we try to support some plants by phone. The Internet has helped us to support plants remotely.”

Integrators are being called on to take more responsibility than simply designing and implementing control systems. Integrators are now getting asked to assume responsibility for systems’ maintenance. “We’re being asked about maintenance support agreements,” says Stringer. They want a yearly contract because they don’t have the personnel to do it.”

There are two more areas where systems integrators are taking more responsibility—keeping systems from degrading, and managing data. “You spend all this money on these automation systems and they degrade.  After two or three years, the majority of the applications are turned off, including features designed to add value,” says Avanceon’s Zeigenfuse. “We had a plant that was operating at 50 percent efficiency and we moved it to 80 percent by doing a number of little things they didn’t have the time to do.”

Systems integrators are also getting involved in managing the flow of data. “One value we provide is looking at what the plant is doing with data,” says Dean Streck, chief executive officer of VI Engineering, an integrator in Farmington Hills, Mich. In many cases, useful data exists within a plant, but it’s not getting to the right people, says Streck. “We take the data and make it accessible,” he notes. “In one case, we took plant data and delivered it to the business side in five minutes—when it used to take five weeks.”

Given all the changes in plant staffs and the increasing complexity of the hardware and software involved in plant automation, the role of the systems integrator has expanded significantly over the past two decades. In many cases, plants effectively outsource their automation engineering to integrators, even including the maintenance involved in keeping the system in prime working order.

Sidebar Article - Integrators Bridge the Gap
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