Managing Automation - December 2008 - (Page 30)

[ SPECIAL REPORT ] “brown paper approach,” in which processes were documented on large sheets of paper pinned to the wall and each step was highlighted with Post-it notes. “ARIS can manage a database of information and within a few keystrokes, update layers of processes at once,” he says. But, Troschinetz says, changing the business process also means changing human behavior. That’s why he holds BPM workshops to ensure that the tool is being used. CONTENT CALLS Manufacturers are learning that simply deploying SOA infrastructure is not enough to support big integration projects. They also need business terminology and semantics that are commonly understood across the enterprise. Arne Svendsen, head of manufacturing services and automation at Arla Foods’ global IT group, for example, has been pioneering the company’s One Arla effort, which aims to unify production processes across 65 global sites and eventually tie them together with ERP. Although work began several years ago, Arla Foods is only about halfway through the MES standardization part of the project. To date, only 10 sites have started integration between Wonder ware’s MES system and Arla’s SAP ERP system. “That’s primarily because it’s only been in the last two years that the business case [around integration] has taken off,” Svendsen says. managingautomation.com On top of lacking a strong business case, a roadblock has been RELATED ARTICLES: A More Agile IT Architecture resolving how disparate systems inwww.managingautomation.com/progressive27 terpret data. To that end, Arla needs Trolling the BPM Waters more than Web standards. It needs www.managingautomation.com/bpmwaters content standards so that the differSOA’s Big Ideas ent systems it relies on use comwww.managingautomation.com/edges14 mon terminologies. Web Services and ROI Arla’s MES vendor, Wonderware, www.managingautomation.com/edges19 has packaged Web standards within component libraries that include COMPANIES MENTIONED: Business to Manufacturing Markup As One Technologies Inc. Language (B2MML), an XML imwww.managingautomation.com/asone plementation of the ISA-95 integraIDS Scheer tion standard that defines a common www.managingautomation.com/ids terminology around production Software AG schedules. It is common terminolowww.managingautomation.com/softwareag gies — how recipes are defined, for TIBCO instance — that can make or break www.managingautomation.com/tibco an SOA deployment, Svendsen says. Vordel Limited And while B2MML is a good first www.managingautomation.com/vordel step, he adds, there is more work to Wonderware be done. www.managingautomation.com/wonderware “Call it semantic standards,” maonline Svendsen says. “But we need groups like the compliance institute to ensure we have that layer in place. Otherwise, SOA moves from old-fashioned function calls to calling it Web ser vices at a technical level, but not much has really changed.” The compliance institute Svendsen refers to is the Industrial Interoperability Compliance Institute (IICI), a newly formed standards test center that operates under the ISA’s umbrella. IICI is working on a manufacturing maturity model based on the ISA-95 standard. It will test and certify the various semantic standards, such as the XML B2MML schema, that are needed to get business and manufacturing systems communicating using SOA. Today, the problem is that there are too many standards emerging within what is supposed to be an intuitive SOA environment. So IICI, together with other standards bodies, is working to come up with a framework that not only creates libraries with objects that can be reused, but also defines a common language and outlines a framework of work processes that can be replicated. “At the end of the day, SOA works fine until you realize you have to build a semantic information model by which you are going to apply SOA, and that’s where the governance comes in,” says Charlie Gifford, chief manufacturing consultant at 21st Century Manufacturing Solutions LLC, who is also leading the IICI effort. In this case, governance is not just managing XML messages, but rather outlining “who owns those definitions and what change management processes you must go through to add or change the definition, and how to propagate that through [the systems],” Gifford says. All of this work continues several years after the introduction of Web standards because SOA is still an emerging technology when it comes to manufacturing. “Fundamentally, I think that SOA provides a key piece of the puzzle, a methodology for making and organizing the piece-parts, but it’s not the complete story,” says Mike Brooks, venture executive at Chevron Technology Ventures. “By itself, it’s not even a ‘bag o’ parts’ it’s a way to make the parts. That’s a long way from any complete solution, and it’s going to take a vision, backed by strategy, programs, and projects, to get there.” And along the way, business will have to change. “This is the toughest par t, managing change with people and their roles in the business,” Mazda’s Ballingall says. I ma December 30 2008 http://www.managingautomation.com http://www.managingautomation.com/progressive27 http://www.managingautomation.com/bpmwaters http://www.managingautomation.com/edges http://www.managingautomation.com/edges http://www.managingautomation.com/asone http://www.managingautomation.com/ids http://www.managingautomation.com/softwareag http://www.managingautomation.com/tibco http://www.managingautomation.com/vordel http://www.managingautomation.com/wonderware

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

Managing Automation - December 2008 Contents Take 1 Business Objects Chief Says Union with SAP Meets Objectives After One Year Yes, Emerson, Too, Is in the MES Market Infor Chief Puts Off IPO, Restarts Buying Plans Kronos Now Tracks Shop Floor Machines IQMS Rolls Out User Interace, Other Upgrades Notes Five Ideas for Demand Planning Building on the SOA Blueprint Innovation Now A Team Effort Lean %2B Technology = LEAN^2 Finding Flaws Before They Spread Product Scan Advertiser Index Next

Managing Automation - December 2008

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