industrial//industrial ecosystem

The industrial ecosystem is the set of companies around a plant and the way money and data flow between them. A plant is also a capital flow that keeps it alive, besides a process and an information flow, and studying PLCs without knowing who buys from whom misses half the system (industrial automation). Five kinds of actor meet around an industrial plant.

The industrial ecosystem is the set of companies around a plant and the way money and data flow between them. A plant is also a capital flow that keeps it alive, besides a process and an information flow, and studying PLCs without knowing who buys from whom misses half the system (industrial automation). Five kinds of actor meet around an industrial plant.

EPCDesigns, procures, builds and commissions a large plant, then hands it over.

Automation vendorSells PLCs, DCS, HMI, SCADA, drives, I/O, networking and software (Siemens, Rockwell, Schneider, ABB, Emerson, Honeywell, Yokogawa).

System integratorJoins equipment of different brands, programs, configures communications, builds HMI and SCADA, commissions, and often stays under a maintenance contract.

OEMMakes a specific machine (compressor, packaging line, robot, CNC) and delivers it with its own controller and software.

The plantPurchasing, production and maintenance departments, with high technical knowledge.

There is no single commercial chain. A plant owner may buy through an EPC, directly from an automation vendor, through a system integrator, or receive an OEM machine that someone then has to integrate. Each path ends at the same sophisticated buyer.

The three flows overlap without being the same thing. In a bottling plant the physical flow is pumps, fillers and conveyors; the information flow says how many bottles came off line 2 and which filler stopped; the capital flow says what each bottle cost and what maintenance is worth. Raising a technical indicator, a filler's availability from 92 to 95 %, pays only if the bottleneck was that filler and the extra bottles can be sold, which is why a technical improvement has to be argued in the capital flow before anyone funds it.

After the plant is built, the long business starts: the aftermarket of spares, service, software and upgrades over fifteen to thirty years, and the newest and tensest negotiation, who holds the machine's data (data holders). Seen as a market rather than as flows of material and capacity (Industrial), a plant's bottleneck can be a maintenance contract or a data license rather than a machine.