Podcast: OT and IT convergence success stories
Key Highlights
- OT/IT convergence succeeds when IT and OT teams align on security, reliability, and operational requirements.
- Plant-wide assessments of hardware, software, and documentation are critical before modernization projects begin.
- Digital twins and AI-powered vision systems are helping manufacturers optimize performance and quality.
- Predictive maintenance tools use AI to forecast failures, improve uptime, and refine maintenance strategies.
In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Scott Achelpohl speaks with Scott Woodward and Trentyn Beekman of Huffman Engineering about the challenges and opportunities of OT/IT convergence in industrial environments. They discuss how manufacturers can modernize legacy systems, improve cybersecurity, and strengthen collaboration between IT and OT teams. The conversation also explores the role of executive engagement, system standardization, and plant assessments in successful digital transformation initiatives. Finally, they examine emerging AI applications, including digital twins, vision inspection, and predictive maintenance.
Below is an excerpt from the podcast:
Scott Achelpohl: I'm just going to jump gentlemen straight into questions, OK, and we'll have a hopefully a lively and spirited conversation. There are usually two components as National Grid found and we mentioned in our intro to converging OT and IT successfully, or at least merging some, if not most of their functions: human factors, but also technological ones. I'll focus my first question on technology and not to be too technical, but as a background OT at National Grid, for example, focused on copper and TDM based transport technologies and infrastructure, while IT focused on IP based transport and digital communications. Gentlemen, and I'll aim this question at Scott, what similar technological hurdles has Huffman faced when trying to bridge OT and IT?
Scott Woodward: Yeah thanks um so you said I've been doing this for over 25 years and 25 years ago it was more getting everything on the network um back then it was token ring and Ethernet for the HMIs and then most of the automation wiring was physical type of serial communications, Modbus, Profibus. Now we're kind of moving away from those standalone integrations and moving into pretty much everything's Ethernet based. But the OT network is still different than IT. There's some unique features of it with the real-time requirements for connecting to the physical world, but we still need to connect to the IT environment too so we can share data and provide the information that's required to run the business.
On the HMI side, some of the things that we've seen is before, everything was a thick client. You'd have a Windows computer and you would install whatever HMI software was on it. About 10 years ago, we moved to thin clients where you would have a very amenable PC, not really running Windows, but running something really basic and you're just bringing up that application. And now the future is pretty much websites. It's like what's going to run the website that your SCADA is going to run on. So some of those changes between the going to Ethernet and going to the new ways to work with the web pages, those have been some recent changes that Huffman's been tackling on some of the OT convergent projects that customers know they need and they just kind of need to know how to do it right and keep the reliability requirements up on their manufacturing floor. Trentyn, what about you?
Trentyn Beekman: I'll just jump in and say some other challenges we faced, kind of Scott mentioned, have just been like the mismatch between communication technologies and design priorities that IT and OT use. So in OT environments, especially legacy systems, you're often dealing with older serial communication protocols that were more built for reliability and longevity. And then you also typically have a flat, isolated network design to minimize latency and maximize uptime. But on the IT side of things, everything is more IP-based networking. more scalable infrastructure with security at the top of mind. So that kind of creates a challenge.
SA: I'm going to work on question #2, and I'm going to aim this one at Scott first, and then Trentyn, you can chime in. Gentlemen, do you have anecdotes about how the company has bridged technological hurdles? or modernized gear to service both for greater efficiency, both IT and OT?
SW: Yeah, I think like part of it is the technology has changed and it has from 20 years ago before your automation groups could kind of control the whole thing. They could control the network, they control the servers, they control the databases. Right now those are pretty specialized requirements, especially with cybersecurity coming into play. Moving forward. We're going to let IT do what's best for them, but let them know what the requirements are for OT that they need out of those systems. It's really a cooperation and getting to have a good understanding of who's responsible for what and where the tie-ins are, who's responsible up to what part. I think when there's conflicts, they can bring in an engineering company like ours and we can kind of, we've seen it from other companies and we can kind of. We know what the best practices are from the industries and what really works in the field.
TB: Yeah, so the project Scott is kind of alluding to, in this specific example, IT is often focused on access issues and network configuration changes, specifically permissions as to who should be able to access systems and who should not be able to access systems. And our job, the idea was to upgrade all the legacy equipment to modernize the hardware and software. It is often easier to secure because of the new built-in security features with the new hardware and software. But in order to do that, we being on the OT side of things had to request some firewall configuration changes that would allow the OT devices to talk to each other through the now different VLANs, and since the new network was no longer a flat network design. So definitely upgrading the hardware and software so that it's easier for IT to secure and easier for OT to manage and maintain is definitely been an anecdote for us.
SA: You know, guys, of course we want to focus on success stories. One of our recent stories looked at the fact that IT and OT initiatives can fail. They can fail when executive engagement stops at sponsorship and funding. How engaged has been the C-suite that Huffman has at Huffman or through clients stayed after improving and funding some IT and OT modernization? We keep hearing that executive engagement is tremendously important all along the way. Scott, what do you have to say about that?
SW: I think the executive engagement is critical. They're driving it. They know they want They just. not sure how to get there. A few of the things that they're really looking at, some things that are really recent that they're pushing for is one is paperless manufacturing. They want to eliminate the paper batch records. They're hard to manage. People make mistakes when they write stuff down. Occasionally they get lost. And if you lose a batch record, the batch of product you can't use, you can't sell.
The other thing is there's a lot of data that's sitting in the plant floor that the executives can use. Operational uptime, OEE, equipment effectiveness, that is a big driver of what some of the information that they like. Also just the integration with the ERP systems. When they release product orders for planning for the warehouse management for even the recipes and quantity, quality of the materials that are used in manufacturing. If there's an out of spec that's discovered once the materials on the plant floor, they want the systems to be able to identify that. And so it's not used if it's not in the correct quality status. Those are some of the things that I think they're looking at to get out of the OT and IT convergence.
TB: I would say even beyond the C-suite and moving down, it's having good engagement from experts on both the IT and OT side of things throughout the life of the project is a big deal. And in a particular project, we had an outstanding IT resource who was willing to put in the hours needed over the holidays to make sure we had the access and other things we needed. But the automation engineer as well on the OT side of things that we worked closely with was also super engaged and they both did their best to understand each other's side, and were willing to make the necessary sacrifices to make sure their system was secure, reliable and efficient all at the same time.
Smart Industry covers the digital transformation of manufacturing and the IIoT for industrial professionals.
SA: Speaking of corporate mandates, we hear a lot about corporate mandates and that often comes down to companies wanting or needing to standardize. Can you talk about the importance of standardizing systems across site plants or locations? I'll let you go first, Scott.
SW: A lot of the corporate higher level, like multiple sites to have a standard systems in place, you're able to kind of evaluate and judge how projects going forward on how big the scope of that project is going to be. I think there's a lot of standardization with equipment, but a lot of times you get what you get when you order equipment. If you need a specific manufacturing equipment, sometimes they come with non-standard processes and you need to find a way to integrate those. I think the biggest thing is to do assessments to figure out what you have and what you need and how to go forward with that.
SA: Sometimes after decades of different operators leading and different systems being put in, the question becomes, where do you start? So from Huffman's perspective, where do you start with OT and IT convergence? I think this is a convergence question.
TB: In my experience, often our clients are unsure where to start. And even though a specific plant had a corporate mandate to upgrade similar to other sites, each plant has its differences. Each plant has a different system, has different management. So we started where we often do with an assessment of all the hardware, software versions, all the licensing agreements, just everything that we can get our hands on to figure out what's going on in the system and how it's operating, how it works. And after decades of much of the equipment has been supported by different people and documentation can be anywhere from. non-existent to not correct. So yeah, that's what we do. We start with an assessment and then we offer a plan.
SA: I'm going to throw the floor open to Scott first on this question. It's an important one because it's about risk. I mean, really guys, the conversation should start with risk. Scott first and then Trentyn, can you talk about how IT and OT have different goals and how you address the risk factors with each of them?
SW: OT is dealing with the physical world. You're talking about robots, you're talking about scales, you're talking about equipment that exists physically in the environment. IT is more of the higher level business systems. They also probably have more interaction with external systems that are on the internet. OT is really, they have different requirements as far as speed and as far as security. Something Trentyn talked about is different sites. One of the last project we had, one site kind of pushed back on their IT for some of their VLAN networks. IT wants something very secure. But it's kind of hard to work with. Automation systems have unique ports and kind of unique communications that go between the different VLANs. And one of the things we found with one site, we didn't have any problems with it because they kind of already worked out with their IT. But the last site we did didn't have as a robust automation department and OT department. So they took what IT gave them and we found it was very difficult to find all the communication requirements in the ideal IT segmenting of the network. So that's one of the things we're just working with the assessment with the even during each site is critical to make sure you have a successful implementation.
TB: Yeah, so another thing we found on this project, we were able to recommend a few things to the client that would help them continue to bridge the gap. And some of those things they can do on their own without needing us. There are many, many out there. They're playing out emergency scenarios, you know, that could be something that they implement, you talk about risk, what happens if something does go wrong, if something does go down, you want to have a plan of what to do so you could draft a policy or procedure in the case of an emergency. to allow the OT professionals access from IT to make sure they can keep things running. And a lot of times it's about educating IT about OT and also the reverse OT about IT.
SA: I was just at Realize Live and the entire conversation it seemed was about AI. But here's an AI question. We at Smart Industry have so far this year to focus our reporting on the specifics of what adopting organizations are doing with AI and processes and software and technology they are using to facilitate adoption. We had a real good story on semiconductor maker Wolfspeed. They were a really nice recent example. Tell us about Huffman's AI journey. I'll let you go first, Scott.
SW: I think a lot of us are dealing with AI with our customers. One of the things that we're seeing, everyone's asking about it, but what it is is still hard to, it's still not defined yet. I think a lot of where AI is being used is kind of after the fact. There's very few things that are being done in real time with AI. A lot of that is, it took a long time to get them to go to the cloud for anything. Now it's going to take a while to figure out what the risk is, what the responsibility is for AI, for the life sciences, is how do you qualify that? Where we're seeing AI is like vision inspection.
AI is very good. If you tell them what's a good part and what's a bad part, AI can tune their vision inspections very good to identify the good parts, the bad parts very fast. Before it was kind of an art more than a science to get vision inspection correct. Another thing we're seeing AI is digital twins. What that is, is a lot of manufacturers have systems part of AI where you set up a digital twin of your manufacturing process. It's the physical layout, it's the HMIs, it's the servers, it's the PLC programs. And from that, what you can do is you can test how it's going to work. You can find out where your bottlenecks are. You can find out what maybe maintenance problems you might have. I think the digital twins is in the short term. That's kind of the next big thing for the manufacturing that's going to be using AI.
TB: I'll just add, from a programming standpoint, we're pretty cautious because of the NDAs we have with our clients. And we want to make sure that we protect their data. As system integrators, our clients trust us with a lot of information. So we're always very careful about how we use that. And it could be used for programming, but again, you have to be very careful. We are a cybersecurity company. We're looking to speed up the delivery of proposal work, leverage the power of the tool. in very specific ways like that. That's not just for specifically our customers, but also our processes. But just like the IT OT conversation, we want to let the experts do what they're best at. So we want to let IT run security on the business systems, let OT run the platform production, and let AI with a watchful eye for accuracy and accountability. speed up what it can speed up, but always rely on the impressive power of the human engineering brain and experience when it comes to customizing a control system.
SW: I was going to say I add one more thing to the AI discussion is predictive maintenance. If you feed all the information into some of the AI stuff, it's getting very good at predicting when things might fill. It will help you attune your preventative maintenance schedule. It will even help you determine end of life or equipment where it might make sense to replace the whole thing. I think that's another part of AI on the manufacturing floor that is gaining some traction.
About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.
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About the Author
Scott Achelpohl
Scott Achelpohl is the managing editor of Smart Industry. He has spent stints in business-to-business journalism covering U.S. trucking and transportation for FleetOwner, a sister website and magazine of SI’s at Endeavor Business Media, and branches of the U.S. military for Navy League of the United States. He's a graduate of the University of Kansas and the William Allen White School of Journalism with many years of media experience inside and outside B2B journalism.