Operational Technology Viewpoints

Creating a Strategic IT-OT investment plan is essential for all manufacturing organizations. With all the opportunities to fund projects, which ones are the most important can only be understood, if considered as part of an overall corporate investment strategy. Too often, IT and OT investments are considered separately. While IT investments may have higher visibility across the enterprise, OT investments can also have a significant impact on the business.

TECHgium is an educational initiative for young engineers that results in proof of concepts in machine learning, video analytics, smart tools, augmented reality, IoT platforms, and other exciting areas. This is a unique initiative to share end user challenges and pain points with students and ask them to come up with innovative solutions. The aim is to provide engineering students with relevant exposure to the challenges and practical insights for Industrie 4.0. TECHgium will create an ecosystem that bridges the industry-academia divide by providing the participants with an opportunity to work on technologies of tomorrow, enhance their career prospects, and simultaneously augment LTTS’ solution development team.

On April 16, my old office at the Department of Energy announced the release of its latest Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems (CEDS) R&D Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA).

Global companies set their sights on Bengaluru in the 1980s but the pace began accelerating only after 2000. Initially, outsourcing to India was considered a cost-effective option for routine jobs; but that is no longer true.

The theme of this blog is grid-scale batteries reduce generation, transmission, and distribution costs while improving grid reliability and resilience. One thing that has not changed is the demand for reliable power, since our lifestyle and economy depend on reliable electric power.

ARC Advisory Group recently collaborated with John Fryer from Stratus Technologies on an article published in Pumps and Systems Magazine to determine if real-time data could be applied as a disruptive technology to more effectively manage water and wastewater infrastructure. Due to tight budgets and a lack of broad public recognition of the problems, needed improvements have been deferred for years or, in some cases, even decades

The number one reason to implement operational historians and time-series databases is to be able to make data-driven process decisions.   The operational historian collects real-time process data from process control systems, sensors, equipment, and other data sources.

The ISA99 committee and IEC TC65 WG10 have developed and approved a robust series of international standards that provide normative requirements for securing industrial automation and control systems (IACS).

New automation trends are revolutionizing the manufacturing landscape. This trend includes increased collaboration and integration between technologies, processes, and people. ARC explores this dynamic further in a recently published report titled Collaborative Robots Global Market 2017-2022. According to Rajkumar Paira, the report’s author, cobots are key smart factory technologies making manufacturing more efficient and competitive in the global marketplace.

ARC has been noticing a growing trend among IOCs and even some NOCs that are increasingly taking steps to position themselves as energy companies and no longer just operating as oil & gas companies. Statoil’s board of directors recently proposed to change the name of the company to