Open Process Automation - A Discussion with Bob Hagenau & Don Bartusiak at the ARC Americas Forum 2022

Bob Hagenau & Don Bartusiak discuss Open Process Automation -  a standards-based, open, secure, interoperable process control architecture

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Transcript

Jim Frazer  

Welcome to another edition of the Smart City podcast. Today, we're broadcasting live from the Arc forum here in Orlando, Florida. Today, I'm very happy to welcome as guests Bob Hagenau of C plane.ai and Dunbar Chuseok, from collaborative systems integration. Welcome, gentlemen. How are you today? Fine, thank you. Great. There's so much going on here today at the aarC forum. Let's talk about your focus, which I understand is Open Process Automation is crushed. How do you get to this market space? There was a little bit about yourselves perhaps and about the ecosystem?

Don Bartusiak  

Well, I would say that the motivation was to solve a big problem for the end users with respect to the current display the current state of the art of industrial control systems. And actually aarC was a big part of the story because we first announced its, I was working for Exxon Mobil at the time as the chief engineer for process control, tasked with finding a new solution to a problem of replacing and upgrading control systems. So the idea that was birthed was to transform the industry away from closed proprietary systems to a standards based, open, secure and interoperable architecture. So I'm pleased to say now some six or seven years after that first announcement of the idea at aarC forum, what Bob and I are going to talk about is the steps the progress that's been made over this time, and how close to realization and changing the what's happened with the customers can use. So that's what we'll get into in this chance.

Jim Frazer  

That's great and fascinating. Before some of our less enlightened listeners, can you talk about the benefits of open protocols and standardized protocols and contrast them against each other?

Don Bartusiak  

I would call it Bob addressed that because he's well steeped into what the value proposition is.

Bob Hagenau  

Yeah. So first of all, let me introduce myself, I kind of bring on the it this ot relationship here. So Don brings deep industrial background, I come out of the IT space, this is my, I'm a serial entrepreneur, this is my fifth startup, for others have been successful, luckily, but I've also been an executive at several large companies, I was an SVP at SAP. So I bring a lot of background. But you know what, what we're doing here is really bringing Software Defined infrastructure and a lot of modern IT architecture into realization in process control system. And that brings a tremendous number of benefits. So we'll walk through some of those in a little bit. But those are some of the big things. But the Open Process Automation is provides a standard by which companies can start to create interoperable components in the system that are interchangeable and provide kind of break the harness of vendor lock in that that is on them today, as well as the rip and replace model that they currently have in place, right, you can evolve these systems, as you see fit on an ongoing basis to be able to take advantage of new technologies that are coming out to be able to replace aging equipment with more modern equipment, new CPUs, all of that in a easy to transition state, right, it's no longer difficult to do that, which is today, it's painful to do that. Now it's going to be much easier to do that. And you can select from an entire set of ecosystem vendors that are participating, right today. If I buy DCS from a proprietary vendor, I'm then harness to whatever that vendor can do to push the technology forward. Right. They're a single company. They're good companies, a lot of good engineers in these DCS companies, but they're only single companies. When you open that up, you have an entire ecosystem of companies that are all pushing forward. Think of it as you know when we went from the proprietary PCs, where you had Atari and Commodore to where you went to the open IBM PC, suddenly IBM came out with an open platform for PCs. And the amount of innovation that happened with spreadsheets and word processors and desktop publishing exploded, right. It's a similar thing here, I think you're going to see a lot of innovation, the innovation curve is going to accelerate significantly as we move into the open control era. And there's going to be a lot of innovation that we can't even imagine that's going to happen here.

Jim Frazer  

That's fascinating. As you imagine this is a standard  and standards are on a continuum. Is this on one end of the continuum, suggested framework? Or on the other end? Is it a strict application of say, the seven-layer OSI interoperability model? Or does it sit somewhere in between?

Don Bartusiak  

It's not a suggestion. So it's a standard that comes with a conformance certification process, right that we're bringing, we're bringing in phase with the development of the standard. So let me comment. So the, the work of the Open Process Automation forum of the open group started in earnest in 2017. So now at bat present, three, three releases of that standard have been published. Okay, the business ecosystem that enables the transformation that Bob has described, is being assembled now. And what, at this time now, in 2022, you're starting to see products being brought forth by suppliers, and by our two companies that embody the Open Process Automation revision and, and the standard as much as it can be, can be brought forward now by the companies that are working on the standard and have the insights on where it's headed. So it's a very actionable standard, it's not just a set of suggestions. There are conformance certification processes, that the components suppliers are going to have to conform to, to get certified against the standard.

Jim Frazer  

So it's not only a documented interoperability standard, but it also has along with it a parallel certification process, absolutely.

Bob Hagenau  

That which is going to ensure that you can do interchangeability of components, right. That's a lot of what brings the ability to do that. You know, last year was a very exciting year for Open Process automation, because with the third version of the standard being released last year, it was actually the first version where you can build an operational system. And what we realized was no single company can bring a system to market because we started hearing end users saying, hey, our executives are bought into this, this is sounding exciting. We love what Open Process Automation is going to bring to our business. Where do I buy one? How do we get started? How do we get started, right? And the reality is, because no single company can bring this to market by themselves, because it is a multi-vendor system. It required a coalition of companies. And so that's what we did last year was we formed COPPA, which is a Coalition for Open Process Automation. Think of it as a mirrored group to Oh path. And opath, is defining the standard, right. But they by charter cannot encourage commercialization of that standard. So we needed a separate organization that has many of the same members, as Don said, that are dedicated and committed to working on the commercialization of these products, right? And working together. So COPPA is we now have 14 member companies, everyone from you know, we have Phoenix Contact Codesys Smart stole a lot of it industrial or a lot of industrial companies, but also it leaders as well like Intel, and some of their OEMs that are creating low cost industrial PCs that are going to be a part of this. So you've got companies like super micro and ASRock, industrial and others. So,

Jim Frazer  

okay, so you have I like the purity here. And just to restate, simplify for myself, is that on one hand, you have a pure standards group, and on the other, and then you have a parallel trade association that’s commercial,

Don Bartusiak  

I wouldn't call it a trade association I it's more of a coalition of the willing, we, CSI and C playing together kind of instigated this, but we really built we've built this coalition of the willing, particularly these are smaller suppliers, who are incented to enter this business ecosystem. And that's what's happening in practice

Bob Hagenau  

smaller. Well, we do have Intel, Intel contacted some big

Don Bartusiak  

companies, but the point is, it was the nontraditional suppliers they have we put the whole system together that's what CSI and see

Bob Hagenau  

please vendors are ones that bring components they're not trying to bring an entire DCS system. They're not one of the big seven, right?

Don Bartusiak  

So is that these switches don't it's not a trade association. It's a coalition of the willing. And it's

Bob Hagenau  

not a marketing coalition. It's not a sales coalition. This is a technical coalition where last year, I can name one period where we had for four months, we had companies that were included Phoenix Contact install and Kota system seaplane, all on a call on a weekly basis for two hours to kind of say, how do we take this standard that's on a piece of paper and breathe life into it, right? Because as you do that, you find some gaps, you must figure out how to make this work. And so those are some of the things that we were doing. And these are companies that like Stoll and Phoenix contacted are competitors. Right? Yeah, that this is kind of unprecedented in this industry, that they're working collaboratively together to bring these systems to life and to actually make them work to make them interchangeable, too. So it's a, it's exciting. Yeah. Well,

Jim Frazer  

it certainly sounds it in this coalition of the willing, is that where the certifications occur? Or is it occurring? The standards

Don Bartusiak  

standards group is the Center for certification? Not, not, there's COPPA collects no fees. It's development equity. What the companies contribute is the talent of their engineers, and their bosses given them the time to work with us to make working instances of systems. Yeah. So that's, that's what it is.

Jim Frazer  

Okay, we I think we covered a bit of some of the benefits of, of open, interoperable systems, we may have left off something the one comes to mind is commoditization of the products prices come down? Does he become commodities, and then you would get suppliers attempting to differentiate by adding newer features? So a second benefit is that guess what, you get newer features quicker? There's a lot of benefits in, in open standardized protocols. It's not all rosy. However, there's, I'm sure there are some obstacles in this scenario, what are the obstacles in this ecosystem?

Bob Hagenau  

Well there's a lot of standards that have come and gone, I would say, in the industrial marketplace in the past, and as one, the CTO of one major DCS vendor recently pointed out to me, I've been around for 40 years, I've seen a lot come and go, bow paths is different. And it's different for two reasons. One is that it's led by the end users, right? Exxon Mobil started this, but they had 25 different majors fortune 1000, companies that are manufacturers that were in the same pickle, that wanted to get free of vendor lock in and start to recognize a lot of these benefits. So they've been leading it's for the last six years, they're the ones that have published this standard in its third version, and continue to work on this and commit time, significant time to this, right. So the fact that it's an end user led standard is a big difference, right? It's not a vendor trying to accomplish something for their business. This is the end user saying, we need to open this up for our own. And not just for manufacturing, right. I know the smart cities and critical infrastructure a part of what you follow, Jim, it applies to those segments as well. So it's, there's a, it's a very interesting thing.  it's not the standards that we've seen in the past. And we see it, it's a critical kind of rallying cry, or rallying point, I should say, for all of these companies that want to contribute their best of breed components to be able to create this next generation of open distributed control systems.

Don Bartusiak  

Yeah. So I would say, a couple of barriers are big. Alternatively stated as risks, I'll pick a site too. So one of the big questions is, in contrast to the current marketplace, where the US supplier sends and sells a whole stack, the customers are concerned about who's going to be responsible and accountable for performance of a system that's built of heterogeneous components. Well, we're really pleased that one of the most significant roles in the ecosystem is that of the control systems integrator. And one of the Copa members is one of the largest control systems integrators in the world would group and who have made a number of commitments at this year's conference, about how serious they are at being that systems integrator that is going to be accountable for performance of the instances of systems, or paths based systems that they provide to the operating company. The second barrier I would cite, and I'll introduce this one by analogy, so a lot of change is required. But the change is required both on the buy side of the house and the sell side of the house. And the analogy I've used that seems to be resonating with people is just think about the transition from the horse drawn carriage Back to the automobile. The customers had to learn how to drive the cars, in addition to the manufacturers, I mean, to learn how to make cars, right, not buggies. So that that that commitment to learn to embrace the change is another barrier. And we will bring it to the market. And we'll elaborate on this second. Second, separately, is a quickstart. It's a product and a training program. We'll elaborate that in a second. I'll stop there.

Jim Frazer  

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. Digital transformation does have the three pillars of technology, which for many of us, we think is easy. That technology then involves your business processes, which takes often more thinking than just selecting or deploying, or even creating the technical technology, and that the thorniest the most difficult challenge of all is to get your actual people to embrace those processes and that technology. So that's, that's a very valid point.

Bob Hagenau  

Yeah, and change management within these businesses is a is something that needs to be proactively addressed, right? Especially when you've got engineers that have committed 30 years and kind of bet their career on a proprietary system, right. And that's what they know, right? So they're going to be resistant to change. But the reality is change has to happen, because the new engineers coming out of school, are unwilling to commit their entire career to learning a proprietary system that they're going to bet is going to be around for their entire career, right, they want to be able to have the mobility to move around, they want to have the ability to have kind of a skill set that's widely applicable. And that's and they're used to open technology, not and they're not, they're dead. So one wanting to commit to proprietary technology. And as we know personnel and staffing is an increasingly difficult issue for people. A lot of the process controls engineers that know the proprietary systems are starting to retire at a rapid rate right now. And so it's a challenge that the industry has to confront. And so Open Process Automation is an opportunity to break that mold. And as Don said, as you start to, they need to learn the new technology. So we've created something called the Coppa Quickstart, which is an operational control system that is runs a fire heater control, multivariate

Don Bartusiak  

dynamic simulation of a process including emulated instruments.

Bob Hagenau  

And it has components 14 different vendors have contributed different components to this system. It's working, it's demonstrable in our booth. It's something that companies can actually buy and have internally. And it comes with a set of training. And we do kind of three types of training, we do kind of a two-hour training for the management team and the executives so they can understand how is this going to change their business? What are the opportunities and discuss with them what their perceived risks are right, some of the things that Don was talking about, so we can address that with them. The second component is a two-day training course where we go more in depth, we'll do live demonstrations on the Coppa Quickstart Training Unit, and they will be able to actually see how it works and understand more broadly, what Open Process Automation is going to mean for the parcels control staff. But the third piece is a limited set of engineers that are going to go deep, and we have hands on workshops and training, where they'll actually get very involved, they're going to get their hands dirty. And that's a limited set six to 10 engineers. But those are the engineers that then will work with us to help define the first prediction instances, the field trials and things like that, that they're going to start to implement. So that's how we've modeled the product packaging along the lines of how these large end users want to adopt new technologies. And then that same architecture then moves into their production systems

Jim Frazer  

and how early stage engineers that are coming online are thinking and embracing you quite definitely turned an obstacle into benefit in a way that I hadn't thought of before and that was that early stage engineers may or may not be interested in learning legacy for sure knowledge and that not only are they not available, they are we are we all challenged in finding those early stage employees and in the state of the world. But once we have them, they're not going to be very motivated if they're looking at something that they know may be reaching its end of life very, very similar and not supported by a very engaged and dynamic training scenario.

Bob Hagenau  

You know, we've mentioned staffing A while ago one of the other aspects of an open process automation system is, is there's high degrees of automation of the system component, right? So we think of automating the control process. But a lot today, a lot of the management of the actual system underlying that process control is all manual by need to apply a patch, software patch or other things, right. It's a lot of give me the 30-page instructions, I'll walk out and take a USB key, and we'll fix this right. Or we're going to pay our DCS vendor $300 an hour to go do it for us, right. And so because we're adopting modern it architectures, we're able to actually automate a great deal of this right, we can do updates on process without bringing the process down in any way or affecting it or updates. The ability to if there's a failure, have high availability, but not high availability, with what is done today, with hardware redundancy, we do this with software redundancy, which means this can be much more prevalent, it can be a standard option with very little cost to have software redundancy. And it works as effectively and actually many ways more effectively. Because as you failover to the secondary, the system can self-heal and spin up another secondary in its replacement. Right? Those are the kinds of things that can be done when you have a modern IT architecture underneath it. So there's cost savings from you know, the cost of the devices is going to drop significantly, right. But it's also the life total lifetime costs of removing a lot of the manual efforts that are available today. And having things like software redundancy, instead of hardware it and see all that lowers the total cost of ownership significantly for these systems.

Jim Frazer  

How about in the mobile phone example, it's an Open device. And we've been benefiting as humans with a variety of applications that interoperate with each other, you might have a humidity sensor that tells you it's going to rain or whatever else in your phone. And well, that's a simple example. As Bob and Dawn, as you know, I come from a background that included intelligent transportation systems. And while that's structured in a different way, there are 20 interoperable standards for the major pieces of hardware that reside on a road  - traffic signals and call boxes and toll booths and data coming from vehicles. And what one of the unintended consequences – a very positive one that was not envisioned when this was started being deployed 1015 20 years ago, was mixing and matching that data,  what happens when I know a pedestrians in a crosswalk, and the traffic signal is green? I could now do something about it. I'm guessing that there's a similar scenario of an applications that will develop that we cannot even envision today.

Don Bartusiak  

So included in the scope of the standard, Jim is provisions for software products, which is about defining the information models and the exchange mechanisms among software components in us in a system. And so in the work process, part of the certification activity that we talked about earlier, there's going to be a registry of conformant products, including software packages. So you know, this, this concept of the App Store in automation has been talked about for a long time. But it's never actually been realized. In some vendors have affected many app stores for their product. But we're now talking about an industry standard that allows the ecosystem to contribute best in class solutions to customer business problems. Because of the certification process, customers can buy with confidence that it will work in the platform architecture. So that's part of what's in the scope of this act. Let

Bob Hagenau  

me give some examples of the types of advanced capabilities that are going to be available on this. And this is just incremental from where we are today. I think there's going to be a lot of things that we can't like you said imagine. But today, if you look at model, predictive control, right, that's a significant step up from the traditional PID architectures as far as how you can get higher yields out of your systems. But today, those Model Predictive Control applications run at a supervisory level, which means they're above the whole system. And they run it one minute cycle times now I come out of the IT world and one minute cycle times. Is that even a cycle time? I'm not sure but yeah, but what you can do, what we're able to do now is take those, those algorithms, those Model Predictive Control algorithms, and set them right next to the control loops. And they can interoperate with the control loop at one second cycle times, right, much faster cycle times, which means you can control those processes at a much more granular level, which yields higher yields, right, because you can run closer to the line. And so CSI is one of the leading experts in in Model Predictive Control, we've got some of the experts in the industry. And so those are some of the things that we're already demonstrating. We demonstrated that already, in the last six months,

Jim Frazer  

I wouldn't have thought that low latency was all that important in in process control, I think about in terms of transportation and the vehicle converging on a pedestrian. But right. But I could see where you're, you can eke out a little bit of advantage there,

Bob Hagenau  

you can reduce those safety buffers, right?

Don Bartusiak  

That's right, although you have to think about some of the processes where the dynamics are very fast. And the consequences of not being able to regulate them can have enormous financial consequences. Pieces of turbo machinery, for example, have to be controlled on very, very small sampling rates, because the dynamics are so fast, okay, so that there's a lot of exam, there's a lot, there's a lot of there's a lot of samples, it's not just about heating up some big tank,

Bob Hagenau  

and check the temperature check. It's in those multivariant control systems that it plays off the most

Jim Frazer  

Thanks for the authenticity. I see you're getting traction, and I see your member count and the enthusiasm is building over since we've heard about this a few years ago, but your initiative does reside in in a larger world where some of these systems are not going to go away. So what support is there for other media platforms, protocols some of those legacy things that you need to connect with? How do you do that?

Don Bartusiak  

No, we acknowledge that the installed base is going to be there for a long time. So part and parcel of what all of us are working on it are the interfaces to like existing equipment we don't like Yeah, so like, typically, we use the phrase gateway, which is a translation device between an existing system on one side of that interface, and the overpass conformance system on the other side of that interface. So this is it, this is not a new problem for the industry. So, all the operating companies that have gone through control systems, upgrades and migrations have found solutions to the problem, Jim, that you just asked us that you have in in a brownfield situation, you're not going to cut these? Well, some plants that shut down regularly, you can replace an entire system in you know, in a small plant a week, in a large plant a couple of months, that's relatively atypical. Most of the more typical scenario is you operate the old system, in parallel with the new system, sometimes over a period of multiple years. So the industry is comfortable, it knows how to do that. And it's all contingent on building those gateway devices between the old and the new. And that's part of

Bob Hagenau  

what we're doing even within a single DCS vendors ecosystem, right? They will have to for their old legacy systems, they must build gateways, even to their new systems, right, because it's new technology. So it's not a problem that it has not been overcome. And it's overcome double, but it will, it'll be a transition. But a lot of there's a lot of new Greenfield types of applications that are coming online as well certainly,

Jim Frazer  

do you see the standard off? Moving from the gateway and a supervisory level down into the sensor or let's say edge device before we say Yes, sir.

Don Bartusiak  

Well, okay, so we've defined the scope boundary to be the interface from the IO module out to the field device. So the sensors and the field protocols are outside the scope of the standard. But we work we're working very diligently to stay aligned with the evolution of technology at the sensor actuator and field device communications level. So I'm going to go into some specifics here. So like four to 20 milliamp is the is the analog way, or zero to 10 volt is the analog way of communicating with sensors. There are digital technologies like prophy, bus prophy, net, ether cat, Ethernet IP, okay, and so we're building a connect connectivity to that category of field devices and networks. But we're also looking ahead at emerging technologies like advanced physical layer, which is to wire Ethernet, including Power over Ethernet out to what will be genuinely IoT devices. So we comprehend and embrace all of that. But the O pass standard basically goes from the I O device up through all of the on-premise compute equipment that will be used for process control. But just like we've talked about that interface to the field device, the interface to the enterprise business systems or cloud resources is in the scope of what we're paying attention to. And we're pleased, we're one of the newest joiners into the Cobo Coalition of the Willing is really good at that control system to cloud conductivity. So we're going to bring that into the scope of the Coppa collaboration.

Bob Hagenau  

So again, Open Process automation, is a platform upon which you can do a bunch of innovative things, right. It's an open platform, you can insert new technologies, you can evolve these systems, and you can bring in best of breed technologies, whether that's from the industrial space or the IT space and integrate these on top of the platform. Let me give you an example of cybersecurity, which is obviously very important in the smart city world and critical infrastructure, right. So we have first, we have o pass has, which is the standard has built in OPC. UA is the technology or the standard that's used to communicate up and down the system that is encrypted, it's authenticated, it's authorized. So it's got built in, in cybersecurity from day one, right, as opposed to most of the legacy systems from which they're mostly just building walls around them to make sure that there's no safety of us. But if somebody punctures that exterior wall, right, it's it's open game, right. But we can do now. So that's built into the standard. But we can also then take kind of the best of breed the cutting-edge cybersecurity that's coming out of industry, and insert that into the system as well. So we just did a demonstration about a month and a half ago with Intel, and Intel now has a new tech technology that allows for them to verify that a device is trustworthy. And they use this using cryptographic signatures. So it's got a chip called a TPM chip, which is specifically created for this. And they will look at what's installed on us on a on a device and create what they call a hash key. It's a think of it as a cryptographic signature. So once you've got that cryptographic signature, you just monitor that device, if that cryptographic signature changes, and you haven't updated it, and you know, you haven't changed it, then you know that there's some sort of somebody's messed with it right. And therefore, there could be a risk of a cybersecurity breakup. So, so we demonstrated that matter of fact, we're at RSA this week, which is the bike biggest cybersecurity conference in the world. And we're demonstrating that with Intel at that show. So there's the ability to take cutting edge capabilities, this is the technology came out of Google. And Intel now is making it more broadly available. And we're the first ones demonstrating that inside of an industrial control system, that can actually change the game a lot for cybersecurity. But those are just you know, you can build in threat detection, there's all kinds of cybersecurity is a chess game. So you're always trying to match whatever is going on with the latest cybersecurity threats because they're coming out with new ways to do it all the time. But your current systems can't they're kind of cast and see met, you can't really evolve them or move at to meet the latest cybersecurity threats. When you have an open system, you can do that you can take these best of breed cybersecurity components and integrate them easily. So that's just a

Jim Frazer  

fascinating example. you've outlined initiative tremendously well today. What do you see for the future? Where is your initiative going to evolve over the next days, weeks, months and years?

Don Bartusiak  

Well, that the ecosystem that that is envisioned must be reduced to practice, right. So the components suppliers must bring conformant products forward and get them registered. The systems integrators must learn how to go and deliver, or pass based systems gain the confidence of the customers of the buyers establish a track record of commercial installations of open space systems. So there's going to be a scaling prep activity here, think of the technical readiness levels of the NASA model. So we're going to still have to climb up that ladder of technical readiness. But once that happens, then then we believe that that innovative ecosystem that Bob sketched out earlier in this interview is going to start to happen. And the amount of economic value creation in the OTC space is just going to blossom. It's going to be like a renaissance, as we have seen in adjacent industries. So we I just probably sketched out, it may be a decade

Bob Hagenau  

or two, that if you look at the transition, where the DCS systems that we have today, and how they originally came to be right, they were replacing some microcomputers, that anyway, I won't go into the details, but that transition, once it was proven the technology, and the in this, it's really a new business model as well, once that was proven out, new systems that were bought in that transition happened within a four to five year period. Now, that doesn't mean all the legacy systems are going to be replaced, but new,

Don Bartusiak  

but it seems a greenfield green field, we're going to, we're going to see, I think you're going to see

Bob Hagenau  

you're going to see a fast transformation into to this of new systems being bought in four or five years. Yeah,

Don Bartusiak  

once that ecosystem develops, you're just going to see a clip on the Greenfield. Now at

Jim Frazer  

some point, you hit an inflection point, we do an awful lot of work in electric vehicles. And so they're the inflection point everyone wait is waiting for there is simply when all in cost and electric vehicles is below that of internal combustion engine vehicle. When that happens? Well, there won't be any more internal combustion engine vehicles sold, it'll be all over. And that will happen. It's just your guess is it turns out or five years out.

Bob Hagenau  

And we're working right now with a lot of the leading-edge innovative companies around the world, some of the Fortune 1000s that are part of O path are now adopting COPPA Quickstart, to start to start down this journey, right. And we're planning on field trial workshops with them and that sort of thing. So they're, they're moving down this whole road starting now. But we think we're going to have the early majority is going to follow up fairly quickly, as they start to test this out. And you know, we have these training units today, those may or may not be needed in the future, right? You may turn to wood and say, hey, I just learned Cisco, here's

Don Bartusiak  

our, here's our spec for building and deploy,

Bob Hagenau  

right. So I think that's going to happen in the next two to three years, you're going to see that transformation. So it's real. And it's happening now. And I want to encourage your listeners to if you your impression was from four years ago, about what Open Process Automation is, things have happened, and things have changed in the last year. And you need to look at how that's going to work, you're

Don Bartusiak  

hearing what Bob just said, as we go into business development, I mean, customers that were knowledgeable of where passively monitoring are now coming back to us and say, wow, we really see things changing, we're going to pay a lot more attention. Now, we're going to be telling us this.

Jim Frazer  

That's great. We'd all be remiss if we didn't issue a strong call to action. So, so out of all your participants, or stakeholder communities, let's say in your ecosystem, can you perhaps list them and suggest ways for them to participate in this effort?

Don Bartusiak  

Well, I think with standards, we're big, because there is a long time, time constant for standards. If you really want to achieve competitive advantage by being an early adopter, you need to get an anticipatory understanding of where things are headed. So I would recommend to people it's time that the call to action is maybe to, to the operating companies, as well as the suppliers who are not current members of the OPA forum, to join to get that enlightened insight on where this is headed. Secondly, it's the time has come. I mean, our companies are bringing something that they can buy, to get started with the transition to o pass-based systems. So if you're ready to make that commitment, we're ready to help you get started. Yeah,

Bob Hagenau  

absolutely. And they can go to our website COPPA controls.org. And you can read about what we're offering, and you can contact us through there as well. There's an email get started. I'm forgetting the email address, but it's on the website

Don Bartusiak  

Copa control.org. Good.

Jim Frazer  

Let's go back to that. So I think just to restate, if you are, really want to go and drive into, dig deep into the standards, join the Standards Association participate, read it, learn it, live it, right. If you are an end user, that's an operator of facility, there are, there is already a wealth of resources of different types that you could you could shop for either a turnkey system from wood, or some training system, perhaps you just go just for training this point where in you don't play anything for a little while. There are also you could go out and look for actual components that are on the market that are in fact ready to go today. Ask yourself with me with the ecosystem. Did we leave any out? No, no.

Don Bartusiak  

I think that's the three categories.

Jim Frazer  

Great. Well, we've had a great time here covering Open Process Automation. Are there any last comments you have for our audience today?

Don Bartusiak  

It's real. It's not just a slide. We're in a vision and you can purchase it today. Absolutely.

Jim Frazer  

No lie. So before we go, we're going to try one more time for that contact information. How about we just go with the website?

Bob Hagenau  

We'll go with the website, Copa control.org. Okay, cool. control.org.

Jim Frazer  

Well, thanks, Bob. And Don, for joining us today on the smart city podcast and we look forward to having all our listeners join us again on our edition of this podcast.

ARC Advisory Introduction  

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