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by David R. Brousell, MA Editorial Staff   | Abstract: | The ISA95 interoperability standard for process manufacturers is gaining momentum, but it could be undercut by divisive implementation differences. |
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. [Click to continue] |