Streamlining Modernization Projects–Reduce Risk, Cost & Complexity Podcast

Due to the rapid advancement of technology, we face the issue of technology obsolescence in our daily lives. Control systems that have been operating for decades face this challenge. While incremental improvements can be made over time, sometimes a more comprehensive modernization project must be initiated to meet the control challenges and improvement opportunities of the production operations.

Transcript

Scott: Thanks, Jim. Nice to be talking with you.

Jim: Well, it’s great having you sharing your expertise with our listeners today. Well, let’s jump right into things. What pains are our customers facing when we start interacting with them?

Scott: Well, like you mentioned, usually it starts with obsolescence. So, there are existing technologies at end of life, and a lot of times at that point they are buying parts off of eBay, trying to source them from other plants in their area, and generally just struggling to keep parts on hand. But in our conversations, we’ve learned that a lot of times, that’s not really enough to justify a project at that point. You know, these plants have lots of projects going on, lots of things they’re trying to fund, and lots of people fighting over capital. So, we’ve learned that obsolescence and fixing obsolescence for its own sake a lot of times isn’t enough to justify modernization projects anymore. So, we kind of have to look at the downstream effects. And we can see a lot of effects that having an aging control system has on a plant besides just that obsolescence. So that failing hardware can cause process shutdowns, can cause process disruptions, you know, loss of product when that happens, and obviously loss of the money-making part of their facility.

So that’s one of the justifications we see with the older technologies within these plants, that production quality limitations to throughput, just not getting everything they could out of their system and equipment, are all drivers to move these projects forward. And, you know, we’re seeing a lot more of a resource crunch in a lot of these facilities, where their staffing has been dwindling over the years and their engineering resources are cut. And to be honest, when they have a control system in the plant that’s 30, 40 years old or more, they struggle to get and retain resources. If you’re a 22-year-old controls engineer coming out of college, you don’t really wanna go work on something that’s already obsolete. So, all of those are drivers to get customers having these conversations.

Jim: Yeah, that sounds like a number of things from, you know, production and the financial impact of that, and just getting people to be able to work on it can all be part of the justification process. So, with all customers are facing, what’s their best path forward?

Scott: So, their path forward really at that point is to take on some kind of obsolescence project. We used to talk about migrations and call these projects migrations, but really, when we use the word “migration,” we’re talking about kind of a replace in kind. So, the customers getting that obsolescence issue fixed, maybe getting some weight off their shoulders that’s not looming over them, but it doesn’t necessarily move them forward technology-wise and they don’t get a lot of value o...