Standards help to smooth the integration of manufacturing data
Increased competitive pressures and tighter margins are forcing manufacturers in all industries to adopt new methods and strategies to ensure their plants are operating at maximum efficiency.
In the process industry, manufacturers are achieving significant efficiency improvements by integrating manufacturing systems with business applications, such as product processing, order entry, scheduling and packaging. As companies find more reasons to integrate data from process manufacturing with the rest of the enterprise, engineers are turning to industry standards to help. The two standards that are providing critical guidance in helping improve understanding of communications are ANSI/ISA S88 and S95.
First introduced in 1995, S88 was created to provide common language and models for the design and specification of control systems for batch processing. It defines states (or conditions) and terminology for the physical plant, procedures and recipes of a batch process. Batch manufacturing systems that follow S88.01 are flexible and enable reuse of equipment and software. As interest has risen towards integrating traditional ERP, MES and control domains, systems that are utilising the S88.01 standard provide a great foundation for smooth information and coordination between the domains.
Among the key benefits of S88 is the ability to deploy a common automation strategy across systems – allowing companies to develop efficiencies related to validation and regulatory issues. This common automation platform also enables the building of information handling efficiencies at the ERP and MES planning levels.
As a companion for integrating data vertically in an enterprise, S95 standards establish common terminology for the description and understanding of manufacturing information. It also defines the information exchange between the manufacturing control functions and other enterprise functions, including data models and exchange definitions. S95 is intended to connect the automation definitions in S88 to business systems. As a result, manufacturers who purchase systems that follow these standards, can have more confidence that they will understand how to communicate for increased effectiveness. In addition, users will find greater ease with the integration process.
Even as the use of these standards continues to spread and organisations reap the benefits of improved communication accuracy and efficiency, there are still companies that don’t recognise the need standards for enhanced operations and for more effective communications. Still, as plant floor processes and data continue to permeate the enterprise, companies not relying on some form of standardisation put themselves at greater risk for potential errors and will miss opportunities to streamline production processes.
By applying standards, companies can remove the barriers that exist between process manufacturing and other business applications. Processes that are built around standards provide a powerful step toward simplifying development and provide a solid framework for improving long-term performance. Additionally, using standards helps customers with a consistent operational protocol for easy integration across the plant. Bottom line: better control of any process will contribute to improved operations.
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