WBF的扩大视野

WBF facilitates the interchange and development of information and knowledge in order to help its members succeed and to exert a positive influence on industry. Over the years, it has broadened its focus from purely batch process related issues to automation and manufacturing. Its new tag line: “WBF—The Forum for Automation and Manufacturing Professionals” aptly describes its expanded vision and current initiatives in driving horizontal and vertical enterprise integration and interoperability standards.

David Beckman, retired senior vice president for marketing at Emerson Process Management, gave the opening keynote address for the 2005 WBF North American Conference, held in Atlantic City, N.J., May 15-18. His talk was about leadership, but his emphasis was on future manufacturing and the enhanced role of process automation professionals. Beckman said that for years, the profits went more to investors than into investment in the company and its future. This is about to change, with increased emphasis on the value of people that do the actual work. Ian Nimmo, president of User Centered Design Services, and an expert on human factors engineering, delivered the second-day keynote. His message was similar to Beckman’s, about how operators are no longer low-level employees, but rather highly capable knowledge workers.

Joint working group

A paper presented by Tom Fisher Award recipient Lynn Craig, president of Manufacturing Automation Associates, and chairman of the ISA SP88 committee, described the tasks of the joint working group formed to define how the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society’s ISA-88 and ISA-95 standards should work together. The relationship between the two families of standards has not been well defined. Even though they share a significant amount of commonality, one of the biggest challenges will be to identify and resolve the overlaps and gaps that exist. The joint working group, co-chaired by Craig and Keith Unger, is expected to begin to define this relationship and generate a technical report in the near future.

开发植物性企业（P2B）集成标准的最大问题之一是许多现有标准的重叠和差距。ARC Advisory Group的John Blanchard和Bob Mick共同撰写的一篇论文讨论了采用ISA-95作为P2B互操作性框架的基础。演讲建议在P2B框架模型中标准化的基本元素作为流程，文档（企业对Manufcting Markup语言或B2MML），消息（ISA-95 Part 5），接口和注册表。Procter＆Gamble的David Chappell和Rockwell Automation的Adam Maki介绍了有关包装标准的论文。Chappell谈论了Make2pack

倡议的主要目标包括与ISA-88和ISA-95第3部分标准协调开放模块化架构控制工作组的PACKML指南，以及将PackML作为ISA和国际电动技术委员会（IEC）标准提交PackML的发展建议。查佩尔（Chappell）认为，这项计划将在制造业运作的方式上引发一场革命。他希望建筑，术语，模型和描述将在2005年底之前完成。

Maki观察到，完整的插入植物机械的梦想充其量是一个遥远的目标。目前，没有真正的标准方法来定义运动控制应用的结构。他建议现在是时候一起定义它们了。

WBF provides an excellent vantage point to understand the changes occurring in manufacturing, including batch, hybrid and packaging industries. ARC recommends active participation of manufacturers in WBF activities, because there is a deep reservoir of knowledge that can help users increase productivity, lower costs and improve response to changing market conditions.

Asish Ghosh,aghosh@arcweb.com, is vice president, and John Blanchard,jblanchard@arcweb.com, is principal analyst of manufacturing advisory services, at ARC Advisory Group, Dedham, Mass.