As the World Turns- Quality is alway eventually recognized
No, the title of this Blog isn't intended to invoke a daily soap opera, though some of the actions that led up to its writing may play out that way.
Lately, TiPS has been receiving a lot of inquiries from clients who purchased another competitor's alarm management solution. Of course, in some cases it is blamed on a predecessor. When they purchased the solution, they were given the demo that showed all of the things they could do with it, and they were "wowed". Of course, they bought enough services with the product to ensure they'd get it to work anyway, so they weren't concerned. What is now happening is that as the products age, they're starting to sense the true Total Cost of Ownership. Note that I wrote a warning blog about these issues previously. http://tipstalk.tipsweb.com/2007/05/14/total-cost-of-ownership-tco.aspx That is why they are coming back to TiPS, who did not try to "wow" them, but told them simple truths and designed easy to use products that worked year after year, and upgraded easily.
They're finding several interesting things,:
Case 1, Vendor 1
- One vendor simply sold them modified Excel spreadsheets. The attraction was that spreadsheets are known by everybody, and are easy to modify for your own purposes. At least, that was the promise. Now, they're realizing that somebody else's spreadsheet is hard to modify, and spreadsheets are not commercially supportable, especially if you actually do try to modify them. Now every upgrade of new revisions becomes a nightmare. The interesting part about this vendor is that they will claim the product can do ANYTHING any competitors can do. OF COURSE IT CAN! IT"S A SPREADSHEET, for gosh sake. Heck, I can even write multivariable controllers in spreadsheets. But you wouldn't want me deploying them in your plant. I hear they get away with that stuff up in Canada. Perhaps that explains it.
- Next, you try to do more advanced things with your application. They sell you add-ins. You find that the modifications you've done to the spreadsheet don't work with their add-ins. They use something called pivot tables. For the weak of heart, I will avoid explaining what those are. You pay them to come out and try to fix it. What the heck, its a spreadsheet- it can do anything. At the same time, you also order their web browser window, and discover its an add-on that has to be loaded to each machine (not exactly thin client?). And it only allows access to specific things, and a subset of preset analysis options. And it certainly doesn't access the things you'e added yourself. Bummer. However, they've offered to come on site and do some custom programming... but they do offer 24 hour support lines out of India.
- You then decide to go full boat with their management of change, and find that the cost of it was more than expected. But you have to have it to do anything more with the product and get back on track. So, you sink the bucks and find --- you guessed it --- another Excel add-on. Why didn't you just save a lot of money and write your own Excel application to do this? Or hire somebody to do it on contract. You'd have been money ahead, and you'd have owned the design so you could modify it. Man, do you feel taken.
Case 2, Vendor 2
- Another vendor sold them on their approach to alarm management, and sold them the book, the software and the services- hook line and sinker as dad says. So, they sold the software, and came to their site to use it to make it solve their alarm management problems. After a lengthy install, it seemed to be working. Because they were using it for you, they used it to do only the things it was capable of, and they were able to hide any faults. If something screwed up while they were there, they shipped out a quick-fix revision. That impressed the customer actually. Little did he know that he now had a one-off untested version of a software release soon to cause an upgrade nightmare. They did their job- rationalized the alarms, and left the site. After departure, things didn't seem right. The rationalization was all wrong. They'd only rationalized a small percentage of the I/O. The software didn't do a lot of things expected. You didn't know what you received for the massive investment. But they were willing to charge you more to fix it. And it kept crashing- losing data. All of this was hidden while they were on site babysitting the stuff. Now you owned it. But your management felt good about it, so you didn't make noise about the problems, hoping that a new problem would arise, and this one would be ignored. Who wants to be accused of making the wrong decision?
- You decided to try to use their "still beta" application to do dynamic alarming. And you buy it as an add-on. You find that its actually a whole separate product, as their base application cannot deal with real-time alarm data, since it only batches alarm data on a scheduled basis. As you investigate further, you find that the application is just a dumb state analysis tool that changes configurations on the fly. You start realizing that you could have done that inside the DCS and saved a lot of trouble. And Money. The first time you use it, it corrupts your DCS configuration database. You pay them some more money, and they come out and fix it so that won't happen again. It then gets hung up in the middle of a state change, and alters some settings while leaving others untouched. Realizing the danger of that should you be in a critical condition, you side-line the product, and institute some simple state diagnostics in side the DCS- where they can be more easily tracked.
- After all you have spent with this company, you still wonder what you have got. You did everything they recommended. You still have a big problem. And your management is starting to ask things like "What did we get for all that money?"All you can any is that you got a book, and a method that now looks questionable, because it didn't deal with a full lifecycle approach to alarm management. In fact, now that you've blown your budget in that area, you may not have enough left to fix the true problems that all of their busy work was masking. You hear they're opening up a new office in the Middle East with your money, so they can find unknowing victims.
Vendor 3 (TiPS)
- Some bought a TiPS product. The installation was done in about one day, and it was gathering data on everything from the newest DCS to the older legacy systems. They even delivered updated filters, and extraction routines to match specific alterations you had made in your control system. Yes, there may have been little glitches here and there. But you found that rather than ship a quick fix, TiPS worked diligently on the problem and sent you a fixed solution in a new release once it was totally resolved, and integrated into the complete release. Meanwhile, the product was busily gathering data to be certain no information was lost, and still yielding valuable results. They didn't try for a one-off fix. And now, when you upgrade, it's just like any other customer. Your release works the same as everybody else's. You downloaded it from their FTP site, and it installed quickly and worked immediately. You're happy that you only have to upgrade one version at the server. The true thin-client saves you from having to upgrade all clients as well.
- You start to realize that everything you need to do for alarm management is integrated into the product. And its all available via a web browser- even remotely if you have proper securities in place. It can't calculate your monthly payments on your new motorcycle, because it doesn't have a spreadsheet built in, but it is purpose-designed with a work flow to resolve alarm management lifecycle issues as you face them.
- You invoke the Management of Change (TiPS Calls it their ALarm KB- for Knowledge Base, and it's built into their analysis tool- ACE). You realize that it downloads your configuration from your DCS with a few clicks, and a rather long wait. But its all there. It is linked to the dynamic database, so that configuration and KB information is available to operators in real-time, and it has a KB template that allows you to enter other knowledge about the tags and alarms. You can even allow useful documents to be linked to it, for operator viewing. You can allow the operators to add notes. Wow- its not a spreadsheet- but it does everything you need to do in alarm management and meet EEMUA guidelines and other specifications. And when you want, it exports anything wanted to a spreadsheet, or a specific web page report built to meet your needs. It can kick out HTML, Excel, Web pages, whatever you want. And it all works out of the box because it was all rigorously tested before you ever saw it.
- You decide to do more. They introduce you to UReason (www.ureason.com) for dynamic alarming. You realize their offering is truly unique, as it deals with alarms that are coming to the operators in real time. You begin a path of successfully handling dynamic alarming, and providing better advisory information to the operator. They introduce you to UCDS (www.mycontrolroom.com). UCDS helps you to get into a plan to resolve deeper seeded control room issues. WIth UCDS, you lay out a plan forward to resolve the issues that lead to poor alarms, and start you down the path of true operator Situation Awareness. You are beginning to realize that alarms are only part of the problem- its really an operations effectiveness issue, and alarms are just an indicator. Together with Mustang Engineering (www.mustangeng.com) you start to resolve control room issues. On issues where you have available manpower, you take care of it. When it causes a bump in resource availability, you call Mustang in to assist, because you know you can trust them to follow up to see the job is done correctly. Because now, you are educated by the best in the world, and you know what needs to be done.
- One year later you are promoted. You managers realize that you know how to find the right solution to their problems, and they want you to replicate this success all over the company. They realize you do not frivolously spend money on things that seem to have questionable value after the fact. You realize it all started with LogMate, and those guys at Tips who were willing to introduce you to people who were the leaders in the industry, rather than trying to send a so-called expert of their own making. You send Steve Maddox a thank you e-mail.
Note: As I wrote this, I noted that one of these companies is advertising to hire a person they hope to send to you as their self-made expert on these issues. Trust TiPS that we will stick to software, and bring the true experts to you when you need them.
---------------------------
Yes, there's no software that's perfect, but clients are finding out that true commercial software is easy to use, and purpose-built for the problem which it is to resolve. It is tested rigorously to internal specifications that meet quality standards even of pharmaceutical companies which perform regular quality audits.
GOOD COMMERCIAL QUALITY SOFTWARE differs greatly from modified Excel spreadsheets. It differs greatly from software built to support a service offering. It is something you should expect to be able to install, use, and maintain yourself, and it should cause very little downstream conflict after installing. If there are problems, the revisions should be tested and included in a regular release cycle, rather than just shipped to you willy nilly. And once the vendor has left site, you should be able to do everything you expected without having to pay extra for each fix.
That's the way its done at TiPS, and we are happy to welcome clients who are coming to us after having tried the "wow" stuff they were promised, but never delivered.
Just as a side note- we don't even recommend their books. We view them as just large, costly marketing brochures advocating a questionable approach to alarm management.
Lately, TiPS has been receiving a lot of inquiries from clients who purchased another competitor's alarm management solution. Of course, in some cases it is blamed on a predecessor. When they purchased the solution, they were given the demo that showed all of the things they could do with it, and they were "wowed". Of course, they bought enough services with the product to ensure they'd get it to work anyway, so they weren't concerned. What is now happening is that as the products age, they're starting to sense the true Total Cost of Ownership. Note that I wrote a warning blog about these issues previously. http://tipstalk.tipsweb.com/2007/05/14/total-cost-of-ownership-tco.aspx That is why they are coming back to TiPS, who did not try to "wow" them, but told them simple truths and designed easy to use products that worked year after year, and upgraded easily.
They're finding several interesting things,:
Case 1, Vendor 1
- One vendor simply sold them modified Excel spreadsheets. The attraction was that spreadsheets are known by everybody, and are easy to modify for your own purposes. At least, that was the promise. Now, they're realizing that somebody else's spreadsheet is hard to modify, and spreadsheets are not commercially supportable, especially if you actually do try to modify them. Now every upgrade of new revisions becomes a nightmare. The interesting part about this vendor is that they will claim the product can do ANYTHING any competitors can do. OF COURSE IT CAN! IT"S A SPREADSHEET, for gosh sake. Heck, I can even write multivariable controllers in spreadsheets. But you wouldn't want me deploying them in your plant. I hear they get away with that stuff up in Canada. Perhaps that explains it.
- Next, you try to do more advanced things with your application. They sell you add-ins. You find that the modifications you've done to the spreadsheet don't work with their add-ins. They use something called pivot tables. For the weak of heart, I will avoid explaining what those are. You pay them to come out and try to fix it. What the heck, its a spreadsheet- it can do anything. At the same time, you also order their web browser window, and discover its an add-on that has to be loaded to each machine (not exactly thin client?). And it only allows access to specific things, and a subset of preset analysis options. And it certainly doesn't access the things you'e added yourself. Bummer. However, they've offered to come on site and do some custom programming... but they do offer 24 hour support lines out of India.
- You then decide to go full boat with their management of change, and find that the cost of it was more than expected. But you have to have it to do anything more with the product and get back on track. So, you sink the bucks and find --- you guessed it --- another Excel add-on. Why didn't you just save a lot of money and write your own Excel application to do this? Or hire somebody to do it on contract. You'd have been money ahead, and you'd have owned the design so you could modify it. Man, do you feel taken.
Case 2, Vendor 2
- Another vendor sold them on their approach to alarm management, and sold them the book, the software and the services- hook line and sinker as dad says. So, they sold the software, and came to their site to use it to make it solve their alarm management problems. After a lengthy install, it seemed to be working. Because they were using it for you, they used it to do only the things it was capable of, and they were able to hide any faults. If something screwed up while they were there, they shipped out a quick-fix revision. That impressed the customer actually. Little did he know that he now had a one-off untested version of a software release soon to cause an upgrade nightmare. They did their job- rationalized the alarms, and left the site. After departure, things didn't seem right. The rationalization was all wrong. They'd only rationalized a small percentage of the I/O. The software didn't do a lot of things expected. You didn't know what you received for the massive investment. But they were willing to charge you more to fix it. And it kept crashing- losing data. All of this was hidden while they were on site babysitting the stuff. Now you owned it. But your management felt good about it, so you didn't make noise about the problems, hoping that a new problem would arise, and this one would be ignored. Who wants to be accused of making the wrong decision?
- You decided to try to use their "still beta" application to do dynamic alarming. And you buy it as an add-on. You find that its actually a whole separate product, as their base application cannot deal with real-time alarm data, since it only batches alarm data on a scheduled basis. As you investigate further, you find that the application is just a dumb state analysis tool that changes configurations on the fly. You start realizing that you could have done that inside the DCS and saved a lot of trouble. And Money. The first time you use it, it corrupts your DCS configuration database. You pay them some more money, and they come out and fix it so that won't happen again. It then gets hung up in the middle of a state change, and alters some settings while leaving others untouched. Realizing the danger of that should you be in a critical condition, you side-line the product, and institute some simple state diagnostics in side the DCS- where they can be more easily tracked.
- After all you have spent with this company, you still wonder what you have got. You did everything they recommended. You still have a big problem. And your management is starting to ask things like "What did we get for all that money?"All you can any is that you got a book, and a method that now looks questionable, because it didn't deal with a full lifecycle approach to alarm management. In fact, now that you've blown your budget in that area, you may not have enough left to fix the true problems that all of their busy work was masking. You hear they're opening up a new office in the Middle East with your money, so they can find unknowing victims.
Vendor 3 (TiPS)
- Some bought a TiPS product. The installation was done in about one day, and it was gathering data on everything from the newest DCS to the older legacy systems. They even delivered updated filters, and extraction routines to match specific alterations you had made in your control system. Yes, there may have been little glitches here and there. But you found that rather than ship a quick fix, TiPS worked diligently on the problem and sent you a fixed solution in a new release once it was totally resolved, and integrated into the complete release. Meanwhile, the product was busily gathering data to be certain no information was lost, and still yielding valuable results. They didn't try for a one-off fix. And now, when you upgrade, it's just like any other customer. Your release works the same as everybody else's. You downloaded it from their FTP site, and it installed quickly and worked immediately. You're happy that you only have to upgrade one version at the server. The true thin-client saves you from having to upgrade all clients as well.
- You start to realize that everything you need to do for alarm management is integrated into the product. And its all available via a web browser- even remotely if you have proper securities in place. It can't calculate your monthly payments on your new motorcycle, because it doesn't have a spreadsheet built in, but it is purpose-designed with a work flow to resolve alarm management lifecycle issues as you face them.
- You invoke the Management of Change (TiPS Calls it their ALarm KB- for Knowledge Base, and it's built into their analysis tool- ACE). You realize that it downloads your configuration from your DCS with a few clicks, and a rather long wait. But its all there. It is linked to the dynamic database, so that configuration and KB information is available to operators in real-time, and it has a KB template that allows you to enter other knowledge about the tags and alarms. You can even allow useful documents to be linked to it, for operator viewing. You can allow the operators to add notes. Wow- its not a spreadsheet- but it does everything you need to do in alarm management and meet EEMUA guidelines and other specifications. And when you want, it exports anything wanted to a spreadsheet, or a specific web page report built to meet your needs. It can kick out HTML, Excel, Web pages, whatever you want. And it all works out of the box because it was all rigorously tested before you ever saw it.
- You decide to do more. They introduce you to UReason (www.ureason.com) for dynamic alarming. You realize their offering is truly unique, as it deals with alarms that are coming to the operators in real time. You begin a path of successfully handling dynamic alarming, and providing better advisory information to the operator. They introduce you to UCDS (www.mycontrolroom.com). UCDS helps you to get into a plan to resolve deeper seeded control room issues. WIth UCDS, you lay out a plan forward to resolve the issues that lead to poor alarms, and start you down the path of true operator Situation Awareness. You are beginning to realize that alarms are only part of the problem- its really an operations effectiveness issue, and alarms are just an indicator. Together with Mustang Engineering (www.mustangeng.com) you start to resolve control room issues. On issues where you have available manpower, you take care of it. When it causes a bump in resource availability, you call Mustang in to assist, because you know you can trust them to follow up to see the job is done correctly. Because now, you are educated by the best in the world, and you know what needs to be done.
- One year later you are promoted. You managers realize that you know how to find the right solution to their problems, and they want you to replicate this success all over the company. They realize you do not frivolously spend money on things that seem to have questionable value after the fact. You realize it all started with LogMate, and those guys at Tips who were willing to introduce you to people who were the leaders in the industry, rather than trying to send a so-called expert of their own making. You send Steve Maddox a thank you e-mail.
Note: As I wrote this, I noted that one of these companies is advertising to hire a person they hope to send to you as their self-made expert on these issues. Trust TiPS that we will stick to software, and bring the true experts to you when you need them.
---------------------------
Yes, there's no software that's perfect, but clients are finding out that true commercial software is easy to use, and purpose-built for the problem which it is to resolve. It is tested rigorously to internal specifications that meet quality standards even of pharmaceutical companies which perform regular quality audits.
GOOD COMMERCIAL QUALITY SOFTWARE differs greatly from modified Excel spreadsheets. It differs greatly from software built to support a service offering. It is something you should expect to be able to install, use, and maintain yourself, and it should cause very little downstream conflict after installing. If there are problems, the revisions should be tested and included in a regular release cycle, rather than just shipped to you willy nilly. And once the vendor has left site, you should be able to do everything you expected without having to pay extra for each fix.
That's the way its done at TiPS, and we are happy to welcome clients who are coming to us after having tried the "wow" stuff they were promised, but never delivered.
Just as a side note- we don't even recommend their books. We view them as just large, costly marketing brochures advocating a questionable approach to alarm management.
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