Data Driven Services : Is this the future of Engineering ?

“Data Driven Services” are the latest buzz-words in our industry…and Data Analytics is being touted as the “next big thing” in the world of Engineering.

When I graduated and joined an Engineering company, I did so because I wanted to solve the technical problems of the day…a power station had a requirement to import fifteen cubic meters of water per second, uphill from a tidal source, in order to be able to operate at its capacity…a steel plant needed to draw 30,000 cubic meters per minute of air at 160°C across a sinter-bed as part of the steel manufacturing process…a crane was required to lift a container weighing up to 40 tonnes at between 50m/min and 125m/min depending upon its actual weight, which was unknown…you get the picture, real Engineering problems with many possible solutions.

Now, I can readily understand the need for data, and the myriad of ways in which it will be able to help us out in the future :

• On-line Condition Monitoring data will enable “just-in-time” servicing and predictive repairs to a plant that is on the point of failure. We all know that when equipment fails, it usually fails at the most inconvenient time…in the middle of the night, or just before the end of a production run. With good Condition Monitoring, we can ensure that spares and man-power are ordered, organised and on-site in good time and that the plant can be stopped in a controlled manner to make a fast pre-emptive repair, rather than the failure itself dictating when and how we deal with the problem, usually with a much more protracted timescale, leading to much higher disruption and cost to the operator.

• I also believe that new business models based upon measured plant data and analytical algorithms are going to emerge whereby an end-user will contract with a supplier based upon a desired outcome rather than purchasing discrete pieces of equipment as is more usual nowadays. In the future, we expect that a customer may purchase “the outcome” which could be defined as the “movement of fifteen cubic meters of seawater per second from the inlet to the steam turbine condenser, with an availability of 99.8% for five years” and then leave the solution…and the penalties for non-compliance…to the supplier, which may or may not be the manufacturer of the pump or its prime-mover…there are some very interesting times ahead, especially for the lawyers who will be writing, negotiating and enforcing these new supply contracts !

Data is going to have to be a big driver to enable these new business models and maintenance regimes, and I have no doubt that they will happen, however the whole industry is in its infancy and much more work will be done in the coming years to find the best and most advantageous ways of doing things.

Now here’s the rub, in my opinion…none of the Engineering problems of my youth have gone away…liquids still needs to be pumped, gases still needs to be fanned, loads still need to be hoisted, and they always will…your household waste and sewage will never be disposed-of via your WiFi.

Some of the traditional suppliers into these industries appear to be moving their focus away from the heavy Engineering and concentrating on producing, transporting, storing and analysing the process data in an attempt to become the leaders in this new field, just as Amazon and Uber have “disrupted” their way into leading their own industry niches in our consumer world.

All the data in the world, however, applied to one end of a crowbar will never provide the mechanical grunt to perform any real job of work so we need to make sure that, in the rush to enter and survive in the brave new data world, we don’t take our eyes off the actual job in hand and make sure we retain the knowledge and the ability to understand how to ACTUALLY move those fifteen cubic meters of water every second. We therefore need to encourage our younger Engineers, the Graduates and the Apprentices, to continue to be the problem-solvers that the traditional Engineers were, whatever field of Engineering they may happen to be in.

Data is a tool that we will undoubtedly have available to us, and the analysis of that data can assist us in providing a solution which can be tailored to give us EXACTLY what we want, but we must not take our eye off the fact that the Engineering of the total solution, whatever that happens to be, remains the fundamental Engineering goal and should continue to be treated as such.

It's comforting (for me, anyway...) to know that Ohm’s Law, Faraday, Newton and the likes are not going away anytime soon…