Nearly every industry is full of acronyms. LEED, USGBC, IMP, SIP, ICF, AIA, BIM, CAD, P.E. and ASHRAE are the construction-related acronyms I was able to prattle off without really thinking about it. But keeping straight what they stood for when I first started out took a little bit more time, let alone understanding which was which. So when I saw integrating OT with BMS as one of the topics this month, I was a little confused as to what integrating overtime with Bristol-Meyers Squib had to do with Food Engineering. After a second of wondering, I did remember that BMS stood for building management system, but I still had to look up OT to put it into context. To give myself and others a bit more understanding of the systems at play here, I talked to Edwin Alsina, senior application consultant with Rockwell Automation’s lifecycle services team.
Edwin Alsina: OT is the operating technology that would be in your plant network where all your control systems are connected and communicating. BMS in this case your building management system controls systems like your facility’s air conditioning or environmental control. (In our work we do have a couple of acronyms that are the same, for example we have another team that does burner management systems.) Our [Rockwell’s] role is that we make all the systems work together to maintain the desired environmental conditions in production areas, these being your temperature, your relative humidity or your differential pressure. Our intelligence systems are pretty much the brains of your mechanical system operations.