Orlando -- In one of the first tangible moves to bridge the gap between the enterprise and the plant, SAP and Invensys jointly announced the availability of two composite applications that link production-based systems from Invensys with ERP-based accounting systems from SAP. The partners' packaged composite applications (PCAs), are the first in a family of pre-integrated applications for the consumer packaged goods and process industries that SAP and Invensys will jointly develop and sell.
The first two offerings, dubbed Real-Time Finance and Real-Time Production Execution, were unveiled this week at the annual ARC Advisory Group conference in Orlando. The applications — built on SAP's NetWeaver and Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (xMII) xApps technology and the ArchestrA framework of Invensys's Wonderware unit — provide a feedback loop between production processes and ERP accounting systems.
The Real-Time Finance composite application aligns business objectives with manufacturing by providing a view into production-related financial performance on a minute-by-minute basis, the companies said, instead of the traditional daily, weekly, or monthly feedback. Visibility is delivered through an executive dashboard.
The Real-Time Production Execution application is a pre-integrated solution for dispatching, executing, monitoring, and evaluating manufacturing production and performance runs in plant operations ranging from discrete to process to hybrid.
These are the first xApps developed by Invensys, but, more significantly, they are the first composite applications that allow customers to easily tie together production with the enterprise, according to Invensys officials. While connectivity between the two domains does exist, it has mostly been the product of customized integration work. Pilot projects of the two new products have been under way at three major joint customers of Invensys and SAP, the names of which were not disclosed.
"Our customers are telling us that by having a composite application that can manage across separate domains, they are aligning business processes with manufacturing operations, they are improving customer responsiveness, optimizing scheduling, and, ultimately, they have better service models," said Peter Martin, Invensys Process Systems' vice president of performance measurement and management, during a press conference.
The idea of integration is not new, but customers are looking for a cut-and-dried way to do it, industry observers say. Composite applications are the key.
"You can present a customer with an EAI [enterprise application integration] solution and tell them all of the things they possibly can do," but it's a tough sell, said Mike Bradley, president of Wonderware, in an interview with Managing Automation. "The customer will come back and say, 'If it's a pre-built application, we'll take that.'"
The joint efforts of SAP and Invensys may give some legs to Invensys's InFusion Enterprise Control System (ECS) vision, outlined last April, and lend credibility to the idea of composite applications that SAP has championed.
According to a research note released this week by AMR Research, "The partnership elevates the ArchestrA framework to the status of a platform for delivering highly flexible yet packaged composite applications. It gives manufacturers a configurable means to weave legacy investments into their new overarching manufacturing architectures. Of course, it also gives SAP and Invensys a way to tap into manufacturing scenarios that had previously been inaccessible to them both."
The two composite applications are the first of many more to come, officials said. The next likely offering will address the issue of quality, according to Wonderware.
"There is a lot more work for us to do," said Sudipta Bhattacharya, SAP's senior vice president of SCM, PLM, and manufacturing, during a press conference. "But this sets the wheels in the mind turning. This is the direction we had to go. SAP and Invensys had to come together to form this ecosystem."
In other news at the ARC Advisory Group conference:
- Wonderware announced two new applications. Wonderware Information Server 3.0, formerly known as SuiteVoyager, is a Web-content server for all Wonderware graphics, reporting, and analysis applications that offers integration with Microsoft Office 2007. ActiveFactory 9.2 software provides trending and analysis of Microsoft Office information, adding advanced X-Y regions and plots to uncover cause-and-effect relationships across manufacturing processes and performance metrics.
- Sensicast Systems launched SensiNet Services, an application services offering for industrial and commercial enterprises that lets plant and facility managers use temperature, energy, and moisture monitoring applications over the Internet without having to locate the applications within their own network infrastructure.
- ILS Technology, LLC announced the deviceWISE 2.0 connectivity platform, which enables direct communication between intelligent devices and the enterprise, providing a detailed view of the production environment and the ability to monitor and respond to operational issues in real time. The company also announced a joint development agreement with Mitsubishi Electric Corp. to embed deviceWISE 2.0 in Mitsubishi's Q Series programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
- IT outsourcing services company HCL Technologies announced a new service offering called SynAps, a holistic framework and methodology that addresses multiple elements of the manufacturing value chain. HCL developed this approach to help manufacturers synchronize business processes and manufacturing activities that may be globally dispersed.