Data visibility: the case for not everyone seeing everything

Everyone wants to have access to everything at all times. Everyone. After all, why should the CEO not be able to see the real time product of widgets at their plant over in Saskatchewan from the central office in Shanghai?

Let us think about that for a minute from the CEO's perspective...

• Would the CEO seeing that conveyor 2 is running at 65% capacity actually help the CEO do the CEO's job?

• Could there be a valid reason for conveyor 2 being at 65%?

• Is the CEO going to start calling and asking the plant about conveyor 2's speed?

Again, keep in mind, Shanghai is already paying a plant manager to run things at that office.

Now, let's think from the IT gal's perspective...

• She has to run an extra network between sites OR pass data through an additional DMZ

• She now has a single point (corporate) where all the networks are connected

• They go to an office that is often partially open to the public

• She is getting called in extra to troubleshoot "comm fails" on the plant's end

Now let's think from the OT guy's perspective...

• More points of access to defend, oh joy

• More graphics to update

• How much control would the CEO actually have? (Hopefully none, but you never know)

And from the plant manager's perspective...

• Is the CEO not reading my reports?

• Do I need to second guess everything?

• Is the CEO going to start requesting plant changes that she will not understand the ramifications of?

All these (and more) are legitimate questions before you say yes to extra access. Let us consider a far different situation: feeding runtime data into your firm's maintenance system.

Pros:

• More repairs can be done on run hours, less on days since last repaired

• Operators can verify run hours, rather than having to write down and re-enter for each device on rounds

• Calculable return on investment

Cons:

• Limited additional access to control system

• A few extra (wo)man-days put into setup

Think about the trade-offs of additional access. It might be worth the risks!