Closing the Gap

企业软件供应商一直声称their connectivity runs from the business operation right down to the plant floor. What that meant in the past was an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) terminal on the plant floor, right next to an automation system terminal. That made it only slightly easier for the data entry specialist to transfer data—manually—back and forth from the ERP system to the automation system.

ERP and plant automation systems have long been connected, just not to each other. Factory systems use the technology of Foundation Fieldbus, Profibus, DeviceNet and other device technology. On the business side, integration to supply chain and customer relationship management systems is maturing. A gap has persisted between the plant and business systems—until the past year or two.

Washington Quality Foods, in Halethrope, Md., is in the process of connecting plant floor information to the company’s Baan ERP system. “The desire is to get the actual inventory usage—which the automation system knows—to the ERP,” says Tony Murray, director of information technologies at Washington Quality Foods. “Once the ERP knows a batch has been completed, it adjusts the inventory.”

Murray notes that a fully integrated system from the batch to the ERP will bring other direct benefits. “The scheduling piece is very important. There’s a big difference between a production schedule produced by the ERP system vs. one created using manual steps,” says Murray. “The ERP anticipates equipment constraints, required time frames, seasonality and customer priority.”

一个完全集成的企业的好处are wide ranging. Real inventory visibility allows for less investment in materials. Better scheduling means improved use of assets. But the biggest benefits come from greater responsiveness to customer demand. Greater visibility delivers production agility. Also critical is the ability to see and manage product on the floors of multiple plants, breaking down the traditional blind-silo effect that comes from multiple sites that each run on a different automation system. Integration lets managers view real-time data at all plants.

Integrated batch manufacturing is still relatively new. The technology has been around, but it’s getting deployed only recently. “People have been talking about integration for a number of years. It’s become a checkbox on request for quotations (RFQs),” says Paul Myers, InBatch product manager at Wonderware, an Invensys plc company based in Lake Forest, Calif. “But now, people are starting to implement it. Early adopters are doing it for better planning, better scheduling, quality assurance and inventory management.”

Myers notes that manufacturers with multiple facilities are using integration to determine what plants should make what. “With better information between plants and business headquarters, companies can decide where the best place is to have a run of these candy bars.”

With plant-to-ERP integration, manual tasks can be turned over to the automation systems. “Humans now mostly monitor and intervene when things don’t go as planned,” says Patrick Martin, product manager for batch and MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) at Switzerland-based ABB Ltd. “The integrated system automatically starts the batch or populates the order. This is typically decided at the business system level since that system knows whether there is enough material and also knows what batch is most important.”

While some of the integration was prompted by the need to satisfy regulatory bodies, the larger benefits are efficiency, not compliance. “Regulation is driving some of this integration in the food areas, particularly in Europe, where there are more regulations,” says Martin. “But manufacturers are becoming more comfortable with electronic systems and are willing to let the systems take care of things that were previously done by hand. And the interoperability between software systems with standards like ISA-88 and ISA-95 make it easier to facilitate the passing of information.”

The reason for the gap between capability and deployment is that the decision-making process at large companies—the early adopters of batch integration—is slow. “It takes time to evaluate the benefits and get those benefits through to everyone in the organization,” says Pamela Mars, batch product manager at Honeywell Automation and Control Systems, in Phoenix. “Process automation is in the plant, and the ERP is in IT (Information Technology). It crosses boundaries, so you have to bring the plant and IT people together.”

Analytical fodder

When the plant information is integrated into the ERP system, it becomes fodder for the ERP’s analytical capabilities. Those analytics can help reveal production bottlenecks. With all the varied benefits of integrated batch management, it’s still inventory and asset management that carry most of the weight for return on investment (ROI). “The ROI comes from aligning the purchase order with the actual manufacturing,” says Martin Hannssman, director of the vertical products group at Brooks Automation Inc., in Chelmsford, Mass. “The plant can operate more efficiently if there is better information from purchase order to production, then plant managers can assign finished goods to work orders. With better work order understanding, they can better understand their inventory needs.”

The visibility produced by the integration also allows managers to analyze the flow of materials and production. The company can create a template for optimal production, and compare that template to individual plants. “Integration highlights some of a plant’s inefficiencies and bottlenecks, so the manufacturer can solve those problems,” says Wonderware’s Myers. He also points to the added benefit of having actual inventory consumption data. “Better information between the plant and the business headquarters makes for better inventory control.”

One of the big incentives for integration is the ability to respond more quickly to customer demand. “When you get a view of what assets are available and what assets are not available, you get a more agile, more flexible environment,” says Don Lovell, a business consultant who works with Rockwell Automation Inc., in Milwaukee. “When you get that visibility, you can respond to customer demand much more quickly.”

The agility that comes from greater visibility also provides more opportunity for product customization. “In a perfect scenario, you have the ability to focus on an order of one,” says Thomas Troy, global MES solutions architect at Rockwell. “We built a system for a manufacturer of lenses for eyeglasses. Each product is custom. The order comes down from the doctor, and machine settings are changed on the fly for that custom product.” He also points to a manufacturer that runs 1,400 stock keeping units (SKUs) and does it on two lines with 15 changeovers per day. “He runs a tremendous number of products across a narrow set of assets,” says Troy. He notes that the plant, based in North America, is successfully competing against manufacturers in China.

Customers want increasingly more customized products, and integrated batch manufacturing helps make that possible. “There are two aspects of customer demand improvement with integration” says Jonas Berge, general manager of Singapore operations for SMAR International Corp., a Houston-based process control instrumentation vendor. “One is the shorter time span of production, and the other is customization. With growing environmental regulations, customers require different chemical content in products at different locations.”

Because most of the early adopters of integrated batch management are large global manufacturers, it’s not surprising that many take the integration beyond the four walls of the factory and use the technology to connect multiple plants. “There is a real need for multi-plant visibility. That’s a trend that’s been on the upswing for two or three years,” says Matt Bauer, director of information solutions for Rockwell. “More and more manufacturers are taking that visibility seriously.”

With global visibility, manufacturers can compare plants to identify weaknesses and strengths among factories. “Manufacturers want to use integration across multiple plants so they can develop a standard to reduce their lifecycle costs and move production from facility to facility,” says Wonderware’s Myers. “The company may have different automation systems at different plants, but when the information goes up to the ERP, it’s all in the same format. There’s a huge benefit in standardizing and consolidating that information.”

The manufacturers themselves have become the driving force in asking system vendors to give them global visibility of their plants. “We are typically focused on the four walls on the plant, but manufacturers are asking us to roll up the technology so they can see it across plants,” says Rockwell’s Troy. “They want to contextualize production across all their facilities so they have the product information from every plant floor at their fingertips.”

Integrated batch manufacturing offers a range of benefits, most of them coming with clearly measurable ROI. The integration helps keep inventory at lowest possible levels without risking shortages, and also helps identify plant bottlenecks. The visibility from integration also helps companies keep tabs on multiple plants around the globe. But perhaps the most important benefit is the agility and flexibility this integration provides in managing customer demand. Being able to effectively juggle multiple customer needs can actually improve the company’s position in the market.

Integration hub

When an MES is present, it usually becomes the integration hub between the plant and the ERP system. “Some manufacturers use a centralized MES to pass information to the ERP—plant data goes from control to the MES, and the MES is the integrator to the ERP,” says Honeywell’s Mars. “Other manufacturers take plant data directly to the ERP when they don’t have the need for an MES.” In the absence of both MES and ERP, batch reports can be disseminated as HyperText Markup Language (HTML) documents using a Web server.

The data that is passed from the control system to the MES and ERP systems are typically reports for each batch. The information includes production actuals, material consumption, asset utilization and alarms. The software at the MES and ERP level uses the data for production scheduling, tracking, management, execution and analysis, as well as resource management. The MES and ERP systems can pass information down to the control systems as well. This can include recipes, formulas, production templates and scheduling.

Michael Bryant, executive director of the Profibus Trade Organization, in Scottsdale, Ariz., notes that information can be used for more than just scheduling red and blue paint on Volkswagens. The information processed through the MES and ERP systems can become the basis of decision-making during exceptions, as well as for security. “What happens if the paint runs low and you can only make 45 blue cars, not 50?” says Bryant. The ERP system can tell the plant what should happen next to avoid a holdup. The security information determines who can step in to alter the schedule during an exception.

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See sidebar to this article: Running the connectivity data pipes