In an exclusive interview with TimesTech, Rahul Khare, Regional GM of Honeywell Connected Enterprise India, discusses how Honeywell Forge Asset Performance Management (APM) leverages predictive analytics and digital twin technology to optimize asset performance. Khare highlights the solution’s proactive approach, advanced data integration, and machine learning capabilities, which reduce unplanned downtime and enhance operational efficiency across industries.
Read the full interview:
TimesTech: How does Honeywell’s Forge Asset Performance Management differentiate itself from traditional approaches to asset monitoring and maintenance?
Rahul: Honeywell Forge Asset Performance Management (APM) takes a more comprehensive and proactive outlook towards asset monitoring and maintenance than standard condition monitoring systems focusing exclusively on machine protection or reactive maintenance.
Honeywell’s Forge APM differs from traditional approaches to asset monitoring and maintenance in several ways, some of them are:
- Comprehensive Approach: While traditional condition monitoring solutions focus solely on an equipment’s physical condition, Honeywell Forge APM takes a more comprehensive approach by considering both equipment health and performance (energy efficiency).
- Early Detection and Diagnostics: Honeywell Forge APM uses performance decline as a leading indicator of probable equipment problems, allowing for early detection of difficulties. It also uses machine learning algorithms to detect early signs of physical health deterioration, enabling diagnostics.
- Data Integration: Honeywell Forge APM can integrate data from a variety of systems, including existing condition monitoring systems, historians, laboratory information management systems (LIMS), loop monitoring systems, and other plant data sources, to provide a comprehensive perspective of asset performance.
- Advanced Analytics: Honeywell Forge APM enhances traditional performance analysis with descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. It uses data-driven algorithms to examine previous parameter behavior and estimate time to failure, allowing for predictive maintenance capabilities.
- Data Cleansing: Honeywell Forge APM automatically cleanses data before applying analytical models, removing corrupt or erroneous information to ensure that the results are reliable and accurate.
Honeywell Forge APM stands apart from traditional approaches by leveraging a powerful combination of features such as early detection capabilities, comprehensive data integration, advanced analytics, and data cleansing.
TimesTech: Could you elaborate on how predictive analytics and digital twin technology are integrated into Honeywell’s APM solutions to enhance asset performance and reliability?
Rahul: Honeywell’s Forge Asset Performance Management (APM) solution integrates predictive analytics and digital twin technology to enhance asset performance and reliability in several ways:
- Predictive Analytics:
- Honeywell Forge APM uses advanced data-driven algorithms to assess past parameter behavior and estimate asset and component failure times.
- The technology uses machine learning and predictive analytics to forecast probable equipment failures and enable proactive maintenance procedures, decreasing unplanned downtime and enhancing asset reliability.
2. Digital Twin Technology:
- Honeywell Forge APM generates digital twins of assets and processes by combining data from multiple sources, such as process data, asset data, and operational data, into a single dataset.
- These digital twins serve as virtual representations of physical assets and processes, enabling simulations, scenario analysis, and operational optimization.
- Honeywell’s broad expertise in asset models and templates, built and improved over decades of process and machine modeling knowledge, improves the accuracy of the digital twins.
3. Continuous Monitoring and Health Assessment:
- Honeywell Forge APM uses predictive analytics and digital twin technology to continuously monitor equipment and process health.
- The technology may detect early signs of performance degradation or future breakdowns, providing valuable information for preventive maintenance and improvement.
4. Improved Operational Performance:
- Honeywell Forge APM uses accurate digital twins and advanced analytics to find opportunities for improved operational performance, such as energy efficiency, process optimization, and asset utilization.
- The solution can provide recommendations and insights for optimizing processes and assets, resulting in enhanced productivity and cost savings.
5. Efficient Reliability and Maintenance Management:
- Honeywell Forge APM uses predictive analytics and digital twin technologies to improve maintenance schedules, prioritize maintenance activities, and better manage spare parts inventory.
- This proactive approach to maintenance management can lower total maintenance costs while reducing unplanned downtime, ultimately enhancing asset reliability and operating efficiency.
By integrating predictive analytics and digital twin technology, Honeywell Forge APM provides a comprehensive and proactive approach to asset performance management, enabling industrial facilities to maximize asset performance, reduce downtime, and optimize operational efficiency.
TimesTech: With the increasing adoption of cloud technology, how does Honeywell ensure the security and reliability of its APM solutions, especially considering the sensitive nature of industrial data?
Rahul: Honeywell ensures the security and reliability of its Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions by leveraging its expertise in industrial automation and process control. Forge APM connects diverse data systems in a cyber-secure cloud environment, allowing for unified asset and process data analytics. Sensitive industrial data is protected by strict security methods such as data encryption, access controls, and industry-standard compliance. Honeywell’s cloud architecture includes comprehensive security mechanisms, data segregation, and continuous threat monitoring. Advanced analytics and machine learning models provide early detection of possible issues, allowing for proactive maintenance and maximizing asset performance while maintaining data confidentiality and integrity.
TimesTech: What are some real-world examples or case studies where Honeywell Forge APM has significantly improved operational efficiency and reduced unplanned downtime for industrial clients?
Rahul: Lundin Energy Norway has achieved impressive gains in operational efficiency and reduced unplanned downtime by leveraging Honeywell’s Forge Asset Performance Management (APM) solution. As a long-time user of Honeywell software on their Edvard Grieg offshore platform, Lundin has come to rely heavily on Forge APM’s advanced asset management and machinery modeling capabilities.
By connecting over 100 major assets and 3,500 secondary assets to Honeywell Forge, Lundin’s remote engineers in Oslo could continuously monitor asset efficiency and health across the platform’s critical equipment like compressors, pumps, and turbines. Forge APM’s unified data environment integrated inputs from discrete condition monitoring systems. This centralized visibility into equipment performance indicators through Forge APM has made it unnecessary for Lundin to frequently access individual expert monitoring systems. Moreover, Honeywell Forge facilitated the development of digital twins to precisely quantify energy usage and equivalent CO2 emissions across generating and consuming assets. This enabled Lundin to implement real-time energy loss reporting without additional investment.
The operational insights from Forge APM inform Lundin’s energy management strategies and future platform design decisions to minimize environmental impact. By reducing unplanned downtime through predictive maintenance and maximizing energy efficiency, Honeywell Forge APM has delivered transformative operational gains.
In 2022, Independent research firm Verdantix named Honeywell as an ‘innovator’ in APM solutions. Verdantix measured vendors across a wide range of capabilities including Data Capture, Integration, Cyber Security, Maintenance Optimization, and Environmental Performance. Honeywell emerged as an “innovator” based on the breadth and depth of its software functionality across these core areas.
TimesTech: Given the rapidly evolving technological landscape, how does Honeywell ensure that its APM solutions remain adaptable and future-proof to meet the changing needs of industries?
Rahul: Honeywell ensures that its Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions remain adaptable and future-proof to meet the evolving needs of industries through a combination of innovative technologies, continuous improvement, and a commitment to open architecture and scalability.
- Open and Scalable Architecture: Honeywell Forge APM is based on an open and scalable design that enables easy integration with new technologies, data sources, and systems as they emerge. This adaptability allows clients to future-proof their investments by readily embracing developments in areas such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), edge computing, and emerging analytics techniques.
- Continuous Innovation and Improvement: Honeywell actively invests in R&D to further improve and expand the capabilities of its APM solutions. Honeywell keeps its solutions at the forefront of technological innovation by harnessing the most recent breakthroughs in fields such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science, delivering cutting-edge features and functionalities.
- Embedding Domain Expertise: Honeywell Forge APM embeds the knowledge and expertise of Honeywell’s subject matter experts (SMEs) and plant personnel. This domain-specific knowledge is continuously updated, enabling the solutions to adapt to changing industry practices, regulations, and best practices, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness over time.
- Modular and Extensible Design: The modular and extensible design of Honeywell Forge APM enables the smooth integration of additional modules, components, and functionality as they become available. This strategy allows customers to readily expand and customize solutions to meet their individual needs, while also adapting to changing business requirements and technological improvements.
- Collaborative Ecosystem: Honeywell promotes a collaborative environment among customers, partners, and industry stakeholders. By actively participating in this ecosystem, Honeywell obtains vital insights into new trends, challenges, and opportunities that inspire the ongoing development and enhancement of its APM solution.
TimesTech: Could you share insights into the challenges faced and lessons learned during implementing APM solutions in various industrial settings, and how Honeywell addresses these challenges to ensure successful deployment and integration?
Rahul: Honeywell has gained valuable insights and lessons during the implementation of APM solutions across various industrial settings, addressing challenges to ensure successful deployment and integration:
- Combating Knowledge Loss: Honeywell incorporates domain expertise and knowledge into its APM solutions to reduce the risk of experience loss while also ensuring the continuity of asset and process dependability initiatives.
- Comprehensive Asset Monitoring: Honeywell Forge APM enables businesses to monitor all assets and processes, reducing the need to prioritize only important units or “bad actors,” resulting in complete visibility and pre-emptive maintenance.
- Automated Performance Analysis: Honeywell Forge APM automates performance analysis using integrated process and asset models, replacing human calculations and time-consuming processes while offering real-time insights and eliminating undocumented analytical operations.
- Predictive Maintenance: By leveraging machine learning and predictive analytics, Honeywell Forge APM enables predictive maintenance strategies, reducing the reliance on reactive “run-to-fail” practices and minimizing unplanned downtime.
- Productivity and Efficiency Gains: Honeywell Forge APM identifies opportunities for productivity improvement and bottleneck elimination, unlocking new avenues for cost savings and operational efficiency beyond traditional lean practices.
- Capacity Optimization: By providing real-time visibility into asset performance and process health, Honeywell Forge APM enables capacity optimization, reducing unplanned downtime and maximizing profitability during high-demand periods.
- Unified Data Environment: Honeywell Forge APM integrates data silos into a unified environment, fostering collaboration and consensus among engineering, maintenance, and operations teams, facilitating root cause analysis and informed decision-making.
Through these targeted solutions and its expertise in digital intelligence, Honeywell addresses common challenges faced during APM implementation, ensuring seamless integration and maximizing the benefits of these solutions across diverse industrial settings.
