Companies continue to wrestle with how best to manage technology and productivity, the Internet of Things and related bring-your-own-device (BYOD) issues. Although productivity is critical to today’s lean engineering, the costs to the company can range from hard costs — purchasing dozens or even hundreds of portable devices and having enough IT resources to support different versions of smart phones and tablets — to soft costs, including the security of intellectual property.

In a new survey conducted by IHS Technology, nearly 30% of responding engineers and end users report using mobile devices in industrial automation. About half of those respondents say they are using their own tablets and smartphones.

While the proliferation of smart phones and tablets is making it easier for engineers to access and monitor equipment productivity, one automation thought leader says the first step for any company is to define what BYOD means to a specific company.

“Mobile and BYOD, although they seem to go hand in hand, are really two separate things,” says Kyle Reissner, integrated architecture mobility platform leader for Rockwell Automation. “When we think of mobile, we’re talking about content that is portable across devices, creating personalized experiences for the user and enabling the users differently — no matter the device they are using, including the desktop."

Reissner says that "mobile is really a design philosophy. BYOD is about the facilitation of hardware and the protection of intellectual property.”

Surge in Mobile Apps

Fully 90% of the IHS survey respondents say they use their mobile devices to read and respond to emails, with around 85% saying they use a device to collect information and data from machines. Mark Watson, associate director of Discrete Automation at IHS, says that the last 12 months have seen a surge in automation vendors and end-user companies develop and introduce mobile apps so engineers can monitor equipment from anywhere.

This mobile functionality allows users to quickly identify if something is wrong with a machine and advise an engineer on-site to look at the problem, Watson says. “It potentially prevents a shutdown because you are made aware that a particular component is getting close to failure.”

Mobile devices also have the potential to guide facility-wide performance improvements.

For example, Rockwell Automation expects mobile applications to increase its own internal productivity by 10%. With the release of its VantagePoint Mobile product, Rockwell Automation offers end-users a way to access real-time and historic manufacturing data via a new mobile component, including building user-specific or shared displays on the fly with key performance indicators (KPIs) and tagging data and/or a variety of graphical elements. This is designed to help enable better and easier decision-making throughout a facility. It also provides the "mobile and user first content customers are starving for,” Reissner says.

Who Owns the Data?

Despite benefits such as less equipment downtime and improved decision making afforded by personal mobile devices in industrial automation, problems exist for employers and engineers alike.

“There is definitely an issue with who owns the data,” says Tom Moore, an industrial automation analyst with IHS. Questions seldom arise if an end user analyzes data in house. However, if the data is shared externally with a third party or an industrial automation vendor, "then there are questions over who owns the data, as well as the security of transmitting it,” he says.

One possible solution involves enabling access to information without actually storing it on the device.

“When we’re looking at architecting data nowadays, we typically will not download the data but will download a representation of the data so the users can see the information but can’t take it with them,” says Doug Bellin, global senior manager of manufacturing and energy at Cisco. “When they close up the application, the data gets wiped off and they have to refresh the device.”

Web-based systems not only offer an option to keep data permanently off a personal device, but they also allow the use of multiple types of devices running on different operating systems. California-based Opto 22has developed groov, which engineers can use to securely monitor and control automation systems and equipment from any mobile device. Because groov operates from a web browser, no information is stored on the user’s smart phone or tablet.

Using the tool, engineers can build an operator interface that supplements existing human-machine interfaces. Users are able to control not only what appears in the app they create but who is authorized to view it.

"Groov is empowering the IoT [Internet of Things], BYOD and the personalization of information systems and processes” says Ben Orchard, applications engineer for Opto 22.

Addressing Security

In tandem with data ownership, security of both the devices and the accessed information remains a top concern. “We’ve had customers create hybrid approaches where they have some data that is available through the cloud and some data they keep strictly on premise,” says Alec Pinkham, an applications engineer for Iconics. “That helps to protect critical data and real-time operations.”

MobileHMI stores data on the server, not on the device. Source: IconicsAs a companion to GENESIS64, its PC-based HMI/SCADA automation visualization software, Massachusetts-based Iconics created an app called MobileHMI. MobileHMI uses Windows and HTML 5 web-based technology to enable engineers to create dashboards and monitor critical information remotely on any platform.

“MobileHMI offers full control, so you can essentially do anything GENESIS64 can do on the desktop,” says Pinkham. “All of the data is stored on the server side, not on the phone or tablet.”

With MobileHMI , Iconics also seeks to address security concerns by restricting certain users to read-only access. so that only authorized users can make real-time changes to the system.

Some technology approaches put the security onus on the customer, but the solution still demands additional IT resources to make them work. Cisco takes another approach. With an eye toward visibility and control of mobile devices accessing the network, the Identity Services Engine (ISE) builds a profile of the device user and his or her location.

“If I know that person is in front of the machine, I will give them full control capabilities, if they have that right,” says Bellin. “But if that person is at a remote location, they only can view the machinery." The approach is intended to enhance data security.

Engineers also need to know how their own devices and information will be protected, leading to device accountability questions. What happens, for instance, when an employee has sensitive corporate information on his or her phone and then loses it?

“The IT department needs to be able to remotely wipe the phone,” Orchard says. "If the owner of the device doesn’t like that idea, employers need to have some solid rules and procedures to manage personal devices used in the workplace.”

But even then a remote data wipe of data may be insufficient because some information still can be recoverable, and not all devices support the function. This is a main reason for keeping industrial information from being stored on personal devices. Some employers have circumvented the problem by supplying engineers with work-only mobile devices that need to be checked in and out at the turn of each shift.

Another question arises when a personal device is damaged in the workplace. As Moore puts it, “Does the company have to pay for it because the employee was using it at the company’s request, or is it the employee’s fault?”

The Next Jump Forward

As BYOD becomes the norm rather the exception in industrial automation, IHS’s Watson says he believes that companies will explore more ways to achieve better efficiency in production. “Control function for mobile wireless devices will be the biggest jump forward, enabling flexible control of machinery, maybe even critical applications, in the future,” he says. “This will have a much larger impact on productivity beyond just simple visualization but there are obvious security and reliability implications.”

The use of personal mobile devices for industrial automation tasks is on the rise, but not without concerns about security, data ownership and device accountability. In response, industrial automation vendors are developing software and mobile apps that give engineers greater flexibility to do their jobs while also working to ensure that a company’s information is safe. Until employers have the confidence and validation about the security of their data, however, the BYOD movement will continue to be the subject of considerable scrutiny.

Editor's Note: Join Tom Moore from IHS and Kyle Reissner from Rockwell Automation as they take part in an upcoming Engineering360 webinar, "Trends in Industrial Mobility and Communication," on October 22. Register for this free webinar.

Additional Resources:

Rockwell Automation

Cisco

Iconics

Opto 22