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In the age of the data-driven business, every industry struggles with invisible walls that exist between different departments and units, reducing overall effectiveness. These walls exist because each business unit has its own data and systems, often not shared with one another, creating silos of disconnected information. 

This creates two major problems. First, stakeholders are often unaware they exist. Second, decision-making processes and strategy are underinformed because they do not (or cannot) access all available data. 

The Harvard Business Review once claimed data silos drive up costs by as much as 80%, threatening the viability of many digital transformation projects. Anything that potentially hinders strategic operational improvements must be addressed or your business will be unable to challenge more agile, better informed competitors. Lack of access to, or trust in, available information could put your organization at risk when important decisions need to be made, placing it at a disadvantage to competitors that are able to better leverage their available data to continuously improve their business. 

Breaking silos allows your business to maximize value from its data and assets. Information can be linked to provide additional context that allows a better understanding of what's happening in the business and where improvements and efficiencies can be made. This contextual insight is invaluable when formulating future plans, as it assists in shaping an evidence-based strategy that aligns with customer and shareholder requirements. Consequently, it enables the development of an insightful operational strategy that facilitates continuous improvement.

Where are the silos?

Any corporate data set that cannot share insights with other applications is a silo and missed opportunity. Every standalone application and database represents a silo. If the CMMS and data historian cannot share data easily, they're siloed. If your shift log records exist as paper-based forms, they're another silo. Moreover, if engineering information is standalone, then there's no authoritative, contextualized source for maintenance and operations. By joining these together in a digital twin, we create a connected ecosystem where all involved have easy access to trustworthy information that can be leveraged for improved decision-making. 

Data silos prevents business success

Breaking free from these silos is critical to achieving greater productivity and safety, as it enables comprehensive oversight of operations. Yet many businesses find themselves at a plateau, where operations are well-established, but identifying new efficiencies is a challenge. Managers also recognize that data-driven decision-making is the future, but their current IT systems are committed to specific business units, trapping operational data within silos that are inaccessible to the broader organization.

Why silo smashing efforts fail

When it comes to storing asset, plant master data and engineering information, some organizations attempt to use their maintenance management systems as their system of record. These systems were never intended for this use, leading to suboptimal outcomes. 

In many cases, this approach only contributes to the proliferation of data silos. The maintenance management system maintains its separate master data set, alongside those generated by other management applications, which require manual updates. As a result, inconsistencies arise rapidly among these data sets, manifesting at various levels, including hierarchy, nomenclature and plant configuration detail.

This lack of consistency hinders effective interoperability not only between systems but, more critically, between individuals. For example, a maintenance professional may struggle to communicate with an analytics expert when discussing different hierarchies and naming conventions.

Digital twins smash silos the right way

Actually smashing silos requires a system capable of uniting operations, maintenance, safety, engineering and real-time data, which is where the digital twin comes into play. A digital twin feeds all of these systems with consolidated, evergreen and consistent data, filtered and maintained for the specific needs of each individual application. 

A digital twin maintains consistency and increases data visibility. 

Why break silos?

Making all of your corporate data available by breaking information silos delivers four key benefits: 

1. Risk Reduction and Enhanced Safety: Access to reliable data from all operations facilitates the identification and mitigation of safety risks, ensuring the well-being of employees.

2. Enhanced Efficiency: Easy access to information and its validation accelerates decision-making, improving accuracy. Access to accurate, unified data enhances operations throughout the organization.

3. Increased Transparency: Promotes transparency across the organization, enabling stakeholders to make fully informed operational and strategic decisions.

4. Enhanced Analytics: Integrating plant asset data into analytics systems to deliver valuable context to generate deeper, more relevant insights. This understanding improves performance assessment and identifies opportunities for enhancement.

View from the edge

On its own, IoT sensor data is of limited use beyond alerts to immediate production process problems. A data historian provides a way to centralize, collate and filter alerts, allowing for the review of the complete history of each asset. Moving beyond immediacy of alerts, the data historian facilitates the identification and tracking of long-term trends affecting operations, such as misconfigurations or early warnings of imminent asset failure. 

The OSIsoft™ PI System™, since acquired by AVEVA and renamed the AVEVA™ PI System™, is an example of a data historian that works alongside the digital twin model. Working together, sensor data can be combined with data from control systems and other sources to create a complete history of operations.  

The AVEVA PI System stores data at the edge, on-premise or in the cloud. However, its greatest value lies in its ability to provide context to the data, allowing it to represent and define assets and the relationships between the data. All of this information is rolled up to the plant or enterprise level as needed to support planning and comparison. 

Data collated by the AVEVA PI System can be used by more than operators of assets; it can also be securely shared with business partners, such as equipment vendors, managed maintenance vendors and suppliers of process additives, so they can leverage the same data to extract additional value.

More context required

AVEVA offers operational information, but customers also require connectivity to other components of the digital twin. As they manage assets, they seek to comprehend their design and the optimal methods for operation and maintenance.

Additionally, there are other digital twin users who need real-time representations that align with design and engineering updates. They require access to current and historical operational data so they can plan design modifications, modernize efforts, maintain activities and -- eventually -- decommission. 

By combining AVEVA's and Hexagon's software capabilities, the digital twin can serve both types of users. For example, a production analyst can work as normal with AVEVA PI Vision™, but with the added benefit of direct access to the information in HxGN SDx®. They can see things like current design documents, 3D models, P&IDs and other engineering data. This allows operations workers to quickly understand how an asset was designed, what its operational parameters should be and how to maintain or troubleshoot it. 

The same is true for HxGN SDx users who are able to access historical and live data from the PI System. This gives engineering and design workers easy access to current sensor data and operational history, which is really handy when planning a change. HxGN SDx can also provide engineering data to the AVEVA PI Asset Framework to ensure that it's up-to-date and complete. 

Interoperability is the future

The interoperability between the AVEVA PI System and HxGN SDx is an important step toward smashing silos. Increased visibility of data enables new digital transformation options and better collaboration across the lifecycle of assets, which gives operators greater control over the present and future of their production facilities.

To learn more about how HxGN SDx and the AVEVA PI System complement each other and how this dynamic duo can benefit your organization, please watch the “Essential Elements of an Operations Digital Twin” webinar series.