Production Process Automation: is standardization the magic word?

FHI will organize the next edition of the 25 January 2024 Production Process Automation (PPA) event. I speak with Johan Ike, consultant for WIB, about the relationship between suppliers, system integrators and end users.

By: Hans Risseeuw

WIB is the end-user association - to which approximately 40 companies are affiliated - for instrumentation and process control. The association was founded in the 1960s by five large Dutch companies in the process industry. Originally WIB stood for 'Working Group for Instrument Assessment.' Now this has been translated into English as 'Working-party on Instrument Behavior.' WIB's leitmotif is independent collaboration. The reason for the 'big five' to sit together was to independently share test results in the field of process instrumentation. At the time, companies still did this individually at high costs. Collaboration was and still is the foundation of WIB.

“PPA is the event where we meet each other; we have to do it together.”

Johan tells with some nostalgia how in the years he worked for AkzoNobel, all the knowledge and skills were available internally at the large companies. “In Oss, for example, there was a large pharmaceutical research center where, among other things, the pill – the well-known contraceptive – was developed and in Arnhem there was a large research center where hundreds of scientists worked on innovation and development.”

Due to various factors, the major end users have focused on their core business and the technicians and research departments have been divested and/or sold. The trend at the moment is for technicians to be hired externally.

Production Process Automation is now roughly divided into three areas that, like a marriage where the swing has come to an end for the children, still stays together. Suppliers, system integrators and end users have been driven apart and condemned to each other by the trend of recent decades through specialization and efficiency. Collaboration is not a luxury, but a necessity.

After a long international career, Johan sees the role of WIB and FHI here. He calls WIB and FHI the “glue” that brings the three separate areas – the suppliers, system integrators and end users – together. The PPA event is exactly one of the moments where the three very different companies come together and can look behind the scenes together. He calls system integrators the link that connects suppliers and end users.

“Everything has fallen apart so much,” says Johan, “that you come together again at a fair like PPA.”

The magic word he repeats is standardization. This can of course cause resistance from system integrators and suppliers. But Johan is convinced that – and here he emphasizes that we have to do it together – we have no other choice.

“The process industry wants a control system to which you add functionalities. Modular construction. An element that you click in and that then works 'normally'. In other words: Open Process Automation.”

“Suppliers are a bit afraid of standardization,” Johan adds, “because they want to retain their customers. One system communicates little or nothing with a competitor's system – although this is getting better these days.”

We conclude that it is a shame that the engineers are no longer part of the core business. “But, this also has an innovative advantage. It forces us to work together. You no longer work for one company, you work with and for each other.”