It may seem odd to dedicate a report on process automation software to a software technology that today has no presence in process automation. However, the FACE software architecture and FACE Consortium that supports it will play an important role in the future of process automation as end users and automation suppliers work to define an “Open Process Automation” architecture.

The most precious asset of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) efforts is the data and analytics that will be unleashed by the “things.” However, current analytics products are only the tip of the iceberg.

The growing interest in Big Data in recent years has led to a host of ques-tions about how this trend influences or is impacted by applications in manufacturing operations. Often, the first area of attention is the role played by data historians as the repositories for the large volume of process related information generated in a typical industrial plant.

In 2009, in the middle of the economic crisis, some economists consulted history books and made two conclusions: 1) recovery after a financial crisis takes significantly longer than after a crisis in manufacturing, and 2) in the past, it took around eight years to recover from an economic crisis.

This report will provide a maturity model for operational analytics. Readers of this report will better understand how analytics can be defined in terms of improved outcomes across the three components that drive operations: people, process, and things.