only to find that the root cause was a mechanical issue. With AssetCentre (a Rockwell Software product), they were able to go back and restore the line to its original state, saving many hours.”

Huge savings

Sometimes, changing the technology of managing and recording change is a huge benefit just in itself. Take the example of pharmaceutical companies. These companies have massive documentation requirements as set forth by the many regulatory agencies that they work under. Changing to electronic records from paper-based systems can be a huge time and money saver.

Chris Morse is a product marketing manager based in the United Kingdom for Phoenix-based automation supplier Honeywell Process Solutions. He relates the story of one such manufacturer who faced the challenge that a change might have 400 to 500 steps. “It would take an entire binder to hold the documents. But that isn’t the whole story. They couldn’t just print that, but also had to print everything in the large system that was related—8,000 binders full of paper. When they changed to the Honeywell Quality Version Change System, the printing of all but two sheets of paper was eliminated. This amounted to a savings of $300,000 per year. This also eliminated the fear of change, leading to more process improvements.”

Morse notes that people, especially in the quality department, are leery of change until shown that it can be trusted. Gimmi Felice, product manager for Proficy Change Management at GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, a Charlottesville, Va.-based automation supplier, comments, “One of the biggest challenges to adopting change-management software is culture. This is especially true in industries where they are not used to logging and documenting. It is a big shock to people in other industries.”

Grant Le Sueur, InFusion product marketing director at Invensys Process Systems, an automation supplier based in Plano, Texas, says the importance of change management has expanded from pharmaceutical to such other industry verticals as oil and gas, and fossil power. Among users, there are two phases of change management—construction and operational. The construction phase has the heaviest engineering activity, and therefore, the heaviest change. “Some contracts involve multiple contractors. Without change management, it would be impossible. You might get some design requirements from Japan and others from Houston. You start to build, then there are other changes you have to incorporate. Then, at acceptance, you need to document changes on the fly to deliver as-built documentation.”

Technologies and culture are converging to manage change in order to improve safety, quality and efficiency—and to help companies improve profitability.

 

Subscribe to Automation World's RSS Feeds for Feature Articles