Managing Automation - October 2008 - (Page 38)

[ INTEGRATION ] Transformation TechWatch Integration For example, companies that perform spend analyses of procurement activity often use software to determine their top 10 or 20 vendors in terms of purchasing power, SAP’s Mahimainathan says. “The more you know your suppliers, the better you’re able to leverage your purchasing power. If you’ve got multiple versions of the same supplier data being pulled into a BI application, the resulting reports will often show inaccurate rankings — and this is information you rely on during negotiations.” Without MDM, many manufacturers spend a lot of time cleansing data pulled from various transactional sources before putting it into analytical applications, says Greg Howard, vice president of product marketing at engineering and manufacturing software provider Aspen Technology Inc. “With MDM, instead of three opinions, you ask the master data model for its opinion and it’s already done the reconciliation,” Howard says. And time, of course, is money. “A major global chemicals company we work with has estimated they spend $50 million a year just looking for information before they can start a maintenance task or a small engineering project,” says Andy McBrien, product manager at AspenTech. “This is just simply digging through filing cabinets and drawings and the like.” Manufacturing-specific MDM — that is, MDM applied to normalize data from plant floor systems — essentially works in the same way as its enterprise countermanagingautomation.com parts. “At the enterprise level,” says AMR analyst Alison Smith RELATED ARTICLES: in a recent research report, “opThe Timeless Quest for Accurate Data www.managingautomation.com/accuratedata erational data stores, specialized analytics databases, data marts, MDM Ingrained in Plant Floor Information Systems and portal frameworks are stanwww.managingautomation.com/integration22 dard fare when it comes to visiA New Structure for Corporate Data bility and analysis of data from www.managingautomation.com/corportatedata disparate applications.” She advises companies to look for ways COMPANIES MENTIONED: to mirror such architectural eleAspen Technology Inc. ments within the manufacturing www.managingautomation.com/aspen environment. Hewlett-Packard At the plant floor level, says www.managingautomation.com/hp Claus Abildgren, marketing proHoneywell gram manager for MES and www.managingautomation.com/honeywell EMI at Wonder ware, MDM IBM boils down to an overarching www.managingautomation.com/ibm need for a consistent view of a Oracle manufacturer’s products and www.managingautomation.com/oracle3 how they are made. SAP “The need is the same among www.managingautomation.com/sap3 manufacturers,” Abildgren says, Wonderware “whether they’re struggling to www.managingautomation.com/wonderware keep accurate inventory records, Industries manage work orders, or consolidate recipes or formulations. It’s a topic that can have many names and come in different flavors, but at the end of the day it comes down to maintaining unique definitions of the information about your products as well as the data models used in the systems that manage that information.” REPURPOSING DATA Another advantage to deploying an MDM strategy within a manufacturing plant involves data reuse. Manufacturers, experts say, can save time, for example, by leveraging the data in the master data model for design engineering changes. “When it comes time to do a revamp, instead of having to figure out the current operating condition of the asset, you’ve got that. It’s managed by the master data model,” AspenTech’s Howard says. “The master data model provides an electronic starting point for your reconfiguration.” Besides coordinating manufacturing data, MDM is also commonly used to help manage customer information. Honeywell, another IBM customer, used an MDM solution to manage a complex hierarchy of customers and suppliers, IBM’s Corrigan says. The company wasn’t looking to simply manage customer or supplier data, but to understand its relationship with each organization. The result was a change in the way sales and aftersales service were conducted, based on that “total relationship” view of an organization. By tying a Web-based user interface into the master data, users had access to a 360-degree view of a customer or supplier. In this scenario, the consuming application pulls data directly from IBM’s WebSphere Customer Center to create and manage a single view of their customers across the organization. By using services-oriented architecture (SOA) services contained within the product as the means of access, Honeywell has reduced the integration and maintenance effort. Additionally, the product’s information services maintain the integrity of the master data. Finally, for many companies, the biggest MDM challenge is not deciding which MDM tools to use, but finding and accessing the myriad sources of data throughout the enterprise. “A lot of data resides in spreadsheets, and many processes are still very manual,” Corrigan says. And the challenge is compounded because manufacturing environments tend to be heterogeneous, comprising different hardware, legacy systems, and other technology. “People have already done a lot of work installing applications,” Oracle’s Laik says. “The next challenge is to get all those applications to actually talk to each other and play well together.” s maonline ma October 38 2008 http://www.managingautomation.com/accuratedata http://www.managingautomation.com/integration22 http://www.managingautomation.com/corporatedata http://www.managingautomation.com/aspen http://www.managingautomation.com/hp http://www.managingautomation.com/honeywell http://www.managingautomation.com/ibm http://www.managingautomation.com/oracle3 http://www.managingautomation.com/sap3 http://www.managingautomation.com/wonderwave

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managing Automation - October 2008

Managing Automation - October 2008 Contents Take 1 Systems Integration Market Braces for a Wave of Consolidation Kinaxis Launches Program to Lure i2 Customers Patent May Give Mobility a Needed Shot in the Arm New Group Aims at More Efficient Smart Devices Solar, Life Sciences Will Be the Next Frontier For Robots Notes Cover Story:�2009 Companies to Watch Special Report:�Siemens plus UGS: Is the Merger Working? Transformation:�Driving Energy Efficiency Integration: How Clean is Your Data Industries:�Fed Raises Red Flag on Chemicals Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - October 2008

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