Professional Documents
Culture Documents
White Paper
July 2008
by John Theron, VP Product Management Incuity Software
Preface
One of the challenges encountered when implementing business intelligence solutions is ensuring that users can easily access the information theyre looking for. This can be especially important in manufacturing enterprises, where operational and business information tend to be incompatible. The elements defined in the ISA-95 standard are useful building blocks for configuring a manufacturing model. Although the ISA-95 standard was designed originally to facilitate information exchange, it also can be used as a model for organizing manufacturing information as part of a business intelligence solution. Adoption of this standard can facilitate easier access to manufacturing information to better support integration of enterprise and control systems. ISA-95 organizes manufacturing information in a model that represents equipment, material and personnel resources, products and the production process itself. This allows users who understand the business to find information without having to know the physical location or the source of the data. This paper describes how users of Incuity EMI, a business intelligence solution for manufacturing, can use ISA-95 elements to build a Unified Production Model (UPM) that truly reflects their manufacturing environment. The UPM organizes information from multiple disparate sources into logical structures that aid navigation and provide context. It can also be directly populated from business systems and manufacturing systems using the Business to Manufacturing Markup Language (B2MML) and can send data to these systems using B2MML.
(PLCs), distributed control systems (DCS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems; (HMI) systems, process historians, planning systems, maintenance management systems, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and laboratory information management systems (LIMS);
agement (SCM) systems, product lifecycle management (PLM) systems and content management systems.
The UPM combines and consolidates the data from all of these sources and presents it via a single, consistent interface that is independent of the data sources. Users dont need to know where the data actually resides. They dont need to navigate different user interfaces nor understand the many access protocols for the different data sources.
The Unified Production Model can also store reports, dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs), production scorecards and queries created by users across the enterprise, which makes it possible to reuse this content because the model provides a consistent interface thats organized along business lines. For example, a report or KPI created for a production line with one type of control system can be run against a similar line with a different type of control system simply by changing the parameter that specifies the production line. The Unified Production Model also presents a consistent interface to applications that query the model, by abstracting the complexities of individual data sources.
ties with simple data types (e.g., Boolean, double, string, mime, enumerated, etc.) For example the pump property Rated Output would be of type double. Types can also have reference and collection properties that define and constrain relationships with other types. The property Pump Speed might be a reference property pointing to a tag that measures pump speed. A connector to a control system might have a collection property containing a collection of tags. Finally, types can have operations. For example a connector might expose an operation that synchronizes it with its data source. Incuity EMI comes with libraries of predefined types, called packages. Users can choose to inherit from and extend existing types or to build new types from scratch to model the most complex manufacturing processes. Once a type has been defined, items (instances of this type) can be created in the Incuity namespace. Incuitys ISA-95 library introduces the following types to the model:
Equipment types define both equipment and classes of equipment. Equipment maintenance information and equipment capability tests are also defined. es of material definitions.
Material types define materials, material definitions and class The model includes inventory of raw, intermediate and finished
materials. Quality tests on material are also included. fications of personnel.
Personnel types define people, classes of personnel and quali Location types (the Equipment Hierarchy Model) define a hierarchy of equipment levels and locations.
Process segment types define groupings of the equipment, Production capability types define the capability (available,
material and personnel resources needed to carry out a production step. committed or unattainable) of equipment, material, personnel and process segment resources for a period of time. personnel resources are needed to execute a product segment (production step) for a specified quantity of product. Product Definitions reference external Product Production Rules, Bill of Materials and Bill of Resources.
duced and resources used, and the actual start and end times of production.
Figure 2.
At the core of the Unified Production Model are some number of Incuity types that are always present. These include tag, time period, equipment, material, personnel and production types. ISA-95 types have been mapped to these core types so that items such as tags and time periods that are already defined in the namespace can be properties of ISA-95 items.
The disadvantage of using the general types is that there are no constraints on the number and types of properties and tags associated with the equipment. Specific types provide these constraints and can be used to enforce model integrity. Specific types also inherit from ISA95 base types, but tightly specify their properties. For example, equipment of type pump might be defined as having only two properties, a Rated Output property of type double, and a Pump Speed reference property. Users often begin modeling with general types and progress to specific types once the model is more fully understood. Users can continue to refine and extend the model by evolving new types based on existing types as well as by creating new types from scratch.
Integration Services
Incuity connectors to control systems, historians, databases and applications collect data using a range of database connections, web services, OPC interfaces and proprietary interfaces. These connectors can leave the data at its source and surface the data as required, cache the data or warehouse the data depending on the data source.
Analysis Services
Data in the model can be aggregated, summarized and further processed on either a scheduled or event driven basis. Incuity can also orchestrate the data movement between control systems and ERP systems. This can be done using the B2MML web services for receiving B2MML packages from control systems and ERP systems to populate the Unified Production Model. When the B2MML packages need to be assembled from multiple sources, or when
source systems do not have B2MML capabilities, Incuity can populate the Unified Production Model via standard connectors. Incuity can also send B2MML packages to control systems, ERP systems and other consumers of B2MML.
Presentation Services
Users access the Unified Production Model to analyze the manufacturing business and create reports, dashboards, trends and graphs in Excel or via the analytical tools. These reports and dashboards are stored back into the Unified Production Model to ensure there is a single version of the truth. The reports and dashboards can be shared across the manufacturing enterprise by publishing them to the Incuity portal. Pre-configured reports against ISA-95 structures (production performance reports, schedule reports, capability reports) provide insight into the manufacturing process.
Figure 3. An Equipment Capability Report
Summary
The incorporation of ISA-95 elements into Incuitys Unified Production Model allows organizations that adopt the ISA95 standard to benefit not only from improved ERP and control system integration, but also from a well conceived and broadly applicable framework for organizing business intelligence for manufacturing. The end result is information aggregated from all sources and presented in proper context so that people can make better business decisions about operations.
IncuityEMI is a product of Incuity Software, a Rockwell Automation Company. For more information on Incuity and its products, please go to www.incuity.com or contact us directly at info@incuity.com.