The devil, they say, is in the details. In the process industry, efforts to standardize interoperability between ERP and manufacturing execution systems (MES) could be undermined unless the market rallies around common implementation methods and a more effective standards-making process.
The problem, which has reared its ugly head in other sectors of the technology industry in the past, is that high-level standards only go so far in establishing commonality. The way a standard is implemented will often determine whether its goals are ultimately achieved or not. Today, the process industry is struggling with this very issue with regard to the ISA95 standard, which is designed to enable ERP and MES systems to communicate, an important objective for many process manufacturers.
ISA95, defined by the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA), sets the basic terminology and information models between an ERP system and MES software. But a complimentary specification, called the business-to-manufacturing markup language (B2MML) from the World Batch Forum organization, establishes the grammar, or sentence structure, of how these systems actually communicate.
Now, before you begin to yawn from all the standards talk, understand the bottom line: What's at stake is whether your company's systems, from the shop floor to the top floor, will be able to communicate and provide you with the information necessary to compete in an increasingly global and competitive industry. Sound important enough?
The devil that's popping up for ISA95 is how it will be implemented using B2MML schemas. Already, there is concern in the industry that a lack of consensus around B2MML and how schemas are established could result in a Balkanization of ISA95.
We've seen this movie before. Two decades ago, AT&T attempted to standardize the UNIX computer operating system around what was called System V. Despite its best efforts, AT&T couldn't prevent different companies from implementing the Bell Labs-developed UNIX kernel differently, which ultimately resulted in a highly-fragmented market. In the early '90s, efforts by an organization known as the Open Software Foundation to standardize other types of computer software also never succeeded.
In order to prevent a replay in the ISA95 arena, what's needed is a more organized overall standards effort in the process industry. Andy Chatha, president of ARC Advisory Group, which has been in the forefront of trying to better organize standards efforts in the process industry, sounded the alarm at a recent ARC conference in Boston.
"There are at least a half dozen bodies in the process industry working on standards, but they are not working together," he said. "With ISA95, each industry needs B2MML schemas, and a standards organization needs to be founded for B2MML." Chatha points to the Open Application Group in the discrete industry as a possible model.
Whatever your feelings are about standards, there can be no debate about the importance of accomplishing system interoperability. The failure so far to do so has held back manufacturers from fully flexing their organizational muscles on the global playing field. Information is power, and manufacturers need the information from all parts of their businesses to compete. If ISA95 gets stalled, we all will end up taking a step backwards.
What's your view on ISA95 and B2MML? Write to me at dbrousell@thomaspublishing.com.