Business software sector targets process market
2 Jun 2008
These days it seems that every announcement of a new technology or business partnership in the automation arena - from the likes of ABB, Emerson, Honeywell, Mitsubishi, Rockwell, Siemens and, increasingly, Cisco - is accompanied by the promise of integration of real-time events on the shop-floor and factory site up into business planning environments.
Among those watching this trend is application software giant SAP, which is increasing its market presence throughout the process industries. And while it has traditionally focused on the ERP/enterprise business planning and execution functions, over the last two to three years the company has started to work with major customers to integrate "plant-to-enterprise" business scenarios.
Customers in the process sector are targeting a natural evolution of the enterprise model rather than the plant model, according to Simon Pollard, vice president, Manufacturing Operations and Execution, SAP EMEA. This, he said, reflects how individual plant-level processes are inherently less important than the overall business performance
"Shop floor processes can be locally efficient, but only become effective - do the right things at the right time - when put in context of higher order business goals and constraints," said Pollard. "We see ourselves playing a major role in these developments and have a number of products and platform technologies specifically designed and available to do exactly this."
However, the SAP executive cautions that there are "zero reasons" for process industry operators to implement any form of real-time integration without first establishing clear definitions and stakeholder alignment on how the integration increases business and process performance.
"All efforts should be focused initially on understanding potential benefits, often in the context of a guiding principle or manufacturing philosophies such as lean, JIT and Six Sigma. Smart industry-specific, real-time integration scenarios are simply a tactic towards benefits such as reduced cost, latency, waste or improved return on assets," Pollard stated.
Surveying the current drive towards such integration in the UK process industries, Pollard sees good progress, though only within the context of the early stages of a fundamental market shift. For many manufacturers, he said, the big constraint on adoption remains the degree of de-centralised, plant-specific policy making and a lack of a unified architectural approach.
"Many companies have built up a large portfolio of heterogeneous plant systems with no common architecture, no common purchasing strategy, no justified application or technology portfolio," Pollard explained. "The clear contrast to modern ERP policies is quite stark. However, we do now see clear recognition of the 'definition of the problem' and the 'targeted end goal'. It's the how, when, who and how much that people's minds are focusing on."
According to Pollard, ERP systems such as SAP require a standards-based integration and intelligence layer that can essentially protect the purity of the ERP from the very complex automation and control technologies. In SAP's case this includes its MII (Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence) product and the standards would typically be driven by ISA95, B2MML (Business to Manufacturing Markup Language) type approaches.
Secondly, he said, there is a need for clarity in the architectural setup in terms of the system of record for primary data - such as formulae, recipes and quality - and how business data models reside across the very different worlds of the enterprise versus the high-volume, real-time execution systems. Likewise, there should be a top-down rationalisation and standards-based approach to the ISA Level 3 and 2 systems rather than the de-centralisation of the past.
"Finally," said Pollard, "there needs to be direct and tangible linkages defined and prioritised that show how the real-time integration supports the corporate manufacturing strategy, be it lean, six sigma, time-to-market reduction, asset optimisation, compliance, agile cross supply chain collaboration and optimisation mechanisms. Then the technical platform and foundation is given the business value to give the very top executives the confidence to manage the tricky change management and investment issues." According to a spokesman for the group, most Akzo Novel operations have implemented process control systems, varying from light systems for not so complicated production processes to heavy systems such as Honeywell's for complex and high-throughput production systems.
"In the latter case we do have several MES systems on top of the PLC-oriented automation, which is an integral part of the production process. Our standard for ERP is SAP and again in the more bulk-oriented processes we do have integration implemented between MES and SAP," the company explained.
For Akzo Nobel, the main driver for further integration is to have "a more holistic view on the total chain from production towards supply," with the emphasis very much on the speciality chemicals part of the portfolio. This, said the spokesman, will also allow for further optimisation of the production processes and therefore improve the cost base and delivery time.
The level of integration of the process facilities at BASF differs depending on the requirements of business and operative processes, existing automation technology and the expected benefits of a process integration, according to Christian Siemens, a BASF spokesman who lists the key drivers for further integration as "market pull and technical push."
"The 'market pull' requires an optimisation of capacity utilisation, whereas process integration enables a higher planning accuracy, can help reduce off-spec production and accelerate the operative workflows, such as automatic transfer of test results from LIMS to batch control," said Siemens. "Thus, process integration helps us meet the customer's requirement of higher product diversity and shorter delivery time, as well as the requirements by customers or legislators concerning process retraceability."
The "technical push" concerns open system architectures providing standard communication technologies adapted for the needs of the process industry. This includes methods for process optimisation, such as scheduling and modelling, which should deliver a reduction in engineering costs for automation and business software.
BASF, meanwhile, expects its software suppliers to better meet the requirements defined by NAMUR and other user organisations. They should also provide more modular and open products with connectivity for online and configuration data, which are easy to configure and reasonably priced, Siemens stated.
Last word, though, to Dermot Coady, marketing director of MTL Instruments, who highlights the barriers to fully integrated process operations, not least at plant device level — an area, he noted, that is well outside the remit of IT companies.
"Many major IT and networking companies have tried to enter the process control market and to date have been largely unsuccessful," he said. "This is due to the lack of understanding of the key requirements associated with the industry, such as the need for real-time mission critical systems and components, environmentally hardened components, hazardous area and safety critical applications.
MTL sees wireless and industrial Ethernet technologies as the main enablers for integration, along with the availability of appropriate defence-in-depth, cyber security systems. Users, Coady noted, are concerned with opening up their system to the corporate systems because of the potential for attack.
And, concluded Coady, although there is progress in the integration with business systems, "process control remains an island and any integration is taking place by the introduction of communication highways within the plant".
How to link disparate systems
Many manufacturers have invested, over many years, in multiple production systems, which were never designed to communicate via open and flexible technologies, such as Ethernet, TCP/IP and web-technologies.
These companies, typically, also own such a wide array of different control systems and automation networks. Their engineers believe it impossible - or at least too costly, complicated and time consuming - to unify these systems.
However, the latest connectivity technologies enable operators to combine the disparate parts of their existing production system so that devices share data and make it readily visible to everyone who needs to see it.
Production managers and engineers continue to use and install closed networks, closed protocols, closed HMI systems and proprietary SCADA databases, according to Dave Hammond, product manager for Ethernet and communications products at MAC Solutions (UK) Ltd, based near Redditch, UK.
"There are many control and automation suppliers who will happily sell companies proprietary 'upgrades' to their existing plant control systems, often with significant time and cost implications," said Hammond.
"Manufacturers who rely heavily on the technology of one key automation vendor will often be unaware that there are alternative, truly-open, connectivity solutions available, since it is often hard to find a truly 'unbiased' supplier of open connectivity solutions," he claims.
Hammond recommends a three-stage approach for customers going down the integration road, starting with 'device connectivity', then 'OPC data connectivity', and onto 'visualisation of information'.
The first step is all about physical conversion and involves migrating existing, closed physical connections to an open physical connection. The second stage involves moving from an existing, closed communications protocol to an open communications protocol. And the final step, the presentation conversion, involves moving from an existing, closed method of information presentation to a truly open method of presenting this information.
This approach, said Hammond, helps manufacturers to achieve seamless, integration of production data with business systems, including SQL databases, ERP and MES systems, and to capture and unify data from both new production machines and legacy production alike.
Among those watching this trend is application software giant SAP, which is increasing its market presence throughout the process industries. And while it has traditionally focused on the ERP/enterprise business planning and execution functions, over the last two to three years the company has started to work with major customers to integrate "plant-to-enterprise" business scenarios.
Customers in the process sector are targeting a natural evolution of the enterprise model rather than the plant model, according to Simon Pollard, vice president, Manufacturing Operations and Execution, SAP EMEA. This, he said, reflects how individual plant-level processes are inherently less important than the overall business performance
"Shop floor processes can be locally efficient, but only become effective - do the right things at the right time - when put in context of higher order business goals and constraints," said Pollard. "We see ourselves playing a major role in these developments and have a number of products and platform technologies specifically designed and available to do exactly this."
However, the SAP executive cautions that there are "zero reasons" for process industry operators to implement any form of real-time integration without first establishing clear definitions and stakeholder alignment on how the integration increases business and process performance.
"All efforts should be focused initially on understanding potential benefits, often in the context of a guiding principle or manufacturing philosophies such as lean, JIT and Six Sigma. Smart industry-specific, real-time integration scenarios are simply a tactic towards benefits such as reduced cost, latency, waste or improved return on assets," Pollard stated.
Surveying the current drive towards such integration in the UK process industries, Pollard sees good progress, though only within the context of the early stages of a fundamental market shift. For many manufacturers, he said, the big constraint on adoption remains the degree of de-centralised, plant-specific policy making and a lack of a unified architectural approach.
"Many companies have built up a large portfolio of heterogeneous plant systems with no common architecture, no common purchasing strategy, no justified application or technology portfolio," Pollard explained. "The clear contrast to modern ERP policies is quite stark. However, we do now see clear recognition of the 'definition of the problem' and the 'targeted end goal'. It's the how, when, who and how much that people's minds are focusing on."
According to Pollard, ERP systems such as SAP require a standards-based integration and intelligence layer that can essentially protect the purity of the ERP from the very complex automation and control technologies. In SAP's case this includes its MII (Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence) product and the standards would typically be driven by ISA95, B2MML (Business to Manufacturing Markup Language) type approaches.
Secondly, he said, there is a need for clarity in the architectural setup in terms of the system of record for primary data - such as formulae, recipes and quality - and how business data models reside across the very different worlds of the enterprise versus the high-volume, real-time execution systems. Likewise, there should be a top-down rationalisation and standards-based approach to the ISA Level 3 and 2 systems rather than the de-centralisation of the past.
"Finally," said Pollard, "there needs to be direct and tangible linkages defined and prioritised that show how the real-time integration supports the corporate manufacturing strategy, be it lean, six sigma, time-to-market reduction, asset optimisation, compliance, agile cross supply chain collaboration and optimisation mechanisms. Then the technical platform and foundation is given the business value to give the very top executives the confidence to manage the tricky change management and investment issues." According to a spokesman for the group, most Akzo Novel operations have implemented process control systems, varying from light systems for not so complicated production processes to heavy systems such as Honeywell's for complex and high-throughput production systems.
"In the latter case we do have several MES systems on top of the PLC-oriented automation, which is an integral part of the production process. Our standard for ERP is SAP and again in the more bulk-oriented processes we do have integration implemented between MES and SAP," the company explained.
For Akzo Nobel, the main driver for further integration is to have "a more holistic view on the total chain from production towards supply," with the emphasis very much on the speciality chemicals part of the portfolio. This, said the spokesman, will also allow for further optimisation of the production processes and therefore improve the cost base and delivery time.
The level of integration of the process facilities at BASF differs depending on the requirements of business and operative processes, existing automation technology and the expected benefits of a process integration, according to Christian Siemens, a BASF spokesman who lists the key drivers for further integration as "market pull and technical push."
"The 'market pull' requires an optimisation of capacity utilisation, whereas process integration enables a higher planning accuracy, can help reduce off-spec production and accelerate the operative workflows, such as automatic transfer of test results from LIMS to batch control," said Siemens. "Thus, process integration helps us meet the customer's requirement of higher product diversity and shorter delivery time, as well as the requirements by customers or legislators concerning process retraceability."
The "technical push" concerns open system architectures providing standard communication technologies adapted for the needs of the process industry. This includes methods for process optimisation, such as scheduling and modelling, which should deliver a reduction in engineering costs for automation and business software.
BASF, meanwhile, expects its software suppliers to better meet the requirements defined by NAMUR and other user organisations. They should also provide more modular and open products with connectivity for online and configuration data, which are easy to configure and reasonably priced, Siemens stated.
Last word, though, to Dermot Coady, marketing director of MTL Instruments, who highlights the barriers to fully integrated process operations, not least at plant device level — an area, he noted, that is well outside the remit of IT companies.
"Many major IT and networking companies have tried to enter the process control market and to date have been largely unsuccessful," he said. "This is due to the lack of understanding of the key requirements associated with the industry, such as the need for real-time mission critical systems and components, environmentally hardened components, hazardous area and safety critical applications.
MTL sees wireless and industrial Ethernet technologies as the main enablers for integration, along with the availability of appropriate defence-in-depth, cyber security systems. Users, Coady noted, are concerned with opening up their system to the corporate systems because of the potential for attack.
And, concluded Coady, although there is progress in the integration with business systems, "process control remains an island and any integration is taking place by the introduction of communication highways within the plant".
How to link disparate systems
Many manufacturers have invested, over many years, in multiple production systems, which were never designed to communicate via open and flexible technologies, such as Ethernet, TCP/IP and web-technologies.
These companies, typically, also own such a wide array of different control systems and automation networks. Their engineers believe it impossible - or at least too costly, complicated and time consuming - to unify these systems.
However, the latest connectivity technologies enable operators to combine the disparate parts of their existing production system so that devices share data and make it readily visible to everyone who needs to see it.
Production managers and engineers continue to use and install closed networks, closed protocols, closed HMI systems and proprietary SCADA databases, according to Dave Hammond, product manager for Ethernet and communications products at MAC Solutions (UK) Ltd, based near Redditch, UK.
"There are many control and automation suppliers who will happily sell companies proprietary 'upgrades' to their existing plant control systems, often with significant time and cost implications," said Hammond.
"Manufacturers who rely heavily on the technology of one key automation vendor will often be unaware that there are alternative, truly-open, connectivity solutions available, since it is often hard to find a truly 'unbiased' supplier of open connectivity solutions," he claims.
Hammond recommends a three-stage approach for customers going down the integration road, starting with 'device connectivity', then 'OPC data connectivity', and onto 'visualisation of information'.
The first step is all about physical conversion and involves migrating existing, closed physical connections to an open physical connection. The second stage involves moving from an existing, closed communications protocol to an open communications protocol. And the final step, the presentation conversion, involves moving from an existing, closed method of information presentation to a truly open method of presenting this information.
This approach, said Hammond, helps manufacturers to achieve seamless, integration of production data with business systems, including SQL databases, ERP and MES systems, and to capture and unify data from both new production machines and legacy production alike.
