Background: 

In 1964 IBM released the System/360 which was the first “large” family of computers to use interchangeable software and peripheral equipment. I believe this was the birth of the modern day I.T. department.

In 1969 Modicon introduced the “084″ PLC, this was the birth of modern programming based operations engineering.

Ever since then there has been a war between I.T. and operations engineering. If a company is to survive the in the 21st century, that war has to end!

Personal History: 

In the late 80’s, I was a Co-op student and a young engineer working at General Motors Truck and Bus in Baltimore, MD. At that time, I fell in love with plant floor control systems. Being assigned to the Body Shop was lots of fun as the place was full of Cincinnati Milacron Hydraulic Robots, Allen-Bradley PLC-2’s, and other automation. I learned tons about floor level control systems.

About the same time I started, Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems (EDS) was purchased by GM. EDS supported the front office business systems at the Plant. They would occasionally make the 1/2 mile walk from the front office to the Body Shop. The EDS people would look like fish out of water with their 3-peice suits and total lack of understanding of automation and production systems. We did not relate with the front office I.T. people and they did not relate to us plant rats.

None of the production systems in the Body Shop had any ties to the front office business systems.  Paper manifests were used for scheduling and quality control was done with a clipboard. Somehow we were able to crank out 250,000 M-Vans a year and make the General some money in those days.

Today:

Today, the smart manufacturers and distributors realize that I.T. and Operations must work seamlessly.  The I.T. people must be cognizant of the challenges the operations people face (multi-shift operations, little downtime, high turnover and uneducated workforce). The operations people must also be cognizant of the I.T. challenges (need for change control, thorough testing, task prioritization, many systems interacting together).

If an operational process is running efficiently, it will be a paperless process, and production information and results will be available instantaneously. This creates the real time information that allows management, quality, scheduling, and shipping to improve.

My business, Patti Engineering, has defined itself as a company that can work with both I.T. as well as operations. We can program the most complicated real-time control applications on the floor, but we can also do database design for enterprise wide data tracking systems. The concept of I.T. and operations engineering working together synchronously is a brave new concept for many companies. But if those companies want to survive into the 21st century, they need to get on board and end the war.