Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 - (Page 8)

starters MANUFACTURING EXECUTIVE REPORTED AND WRITTEN BY MARK HALPER Technology Strategies for European Industrial Leaders Rocking the Enterprise With Shop Floor Ties he hue and cry that expensive ERP systems do not deliver manufacturing benefits unless companies tie them to the shop floor keeps growing louder. Count Rockwell Automation as a leader of the rally. Early this year, Rockwell’s Paris office began looking for integrators to help tie Rockwell’s shop floor software — FactoryTalk and Logix — into ERP systems from SAP, Oracle, and others. Rockwell’s EMEA Software Marketing Manager JeanLuc Bonnet says the company is determined to tie its factory software into just about any enterprise application, including ERP, product lifecycle management, and supply chain management. The idea is that ERP could automatically send a work order to a machine via manufacturing execution systems (MES) software, without requiring anyone to re-enter the order. That alone would save time and money and cut down on the chance of error, “but it’s only a small part of the advantage,” Bonnet says. He points out that MES software can take note of materials used and job status, and send the information directly back to the ERP system, which then knows right away to order more raw material and to prepare an invoice. Rockwell’s European integration partnership program, however, is off to a slow start. So far, the company has a total of one partner, Sweden’s SYSteam Engineering. Bonnet says the company is close to signing two more. Maiden voyager SYSteam is a believer. “Manufacturing businesses have all the pieces of the infrastructure jigsaw; what T they need is a solution provider with the ability to bring their information systems from completely disparate environments together effectively,” says SYSteam Director Dick Nyström. Integration, he adds, “will present immense opportunity for manufacturers in flexibility, resource management, and output capability.” That’s a diplomatic way of saying a company’s expensive ERP system is something of a dumb workhorse unless it connects to shop floor software, which can give flight to an intelligent Pegasus. That was certainly the point that the radical MES thinkers who gathered in Prague last spring were driving home (see “Road Trip,” p. 10). Meanwhile, Rockwell will strive to add partners to its program. If it succeeds, the automation company will be riding an important wave — getting the most out of those plant floor assets — that only promises to grow more critical over time. Take Two RFIDs and Drink Plenty of Optics ermany’s Bayer Group, famous for its aspirin, is stepping up efforts to commercialize its process production technology for the pharmaceutical and chemicals industries. Bayer Technology Services had stands in three different halls at this year’s Hannover Fair, where it showed off a raft of technologies. Perhaps the most eye-catching was an identification technology that relies on the unique characteristics of a material to transmit information about itself through laser optics. The ID process requires no marking up of the material, as long as the material’s surface is non-reflective. Bayer claims this yields “forgery-proof authentication” and calls the product ProteXXion. The company also displayed more “conventional” identification technologies, such as RFID. The €400 million technology group showed products that serve manufacturing tasks ranging from the mundane — Bayer’s LEXYS LabelPrint, for instance, automates the labeling process — to saving the environment. Its Bayer Climate Check and Climate Impact Analysis tools examine the raw materials, supply chain logistics, and energy consumption involved in the production process. Bayer says the tools can help prioritize methods, improve pump operations, adjust heat flows, reduce supply chain energy consumption, and cut CO2 emissions. Nothing’s a panacea, but this sounds like something the environment doctor might want to order. G 8 September 2008 Photo: Manufacturing Executive

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Opinion By David Humphrey Starters Road Trip Part 1: Innovation or Efficiency? Part 2: The Innovation Gap Opinion By Lisa Bodell Special Report: Great Aspirations Supply Chain: The New Money Machine Product Design: Fruehauf Gets into High Gear with 3D CAD Business Intelligence: Food Distributor Turns Up the Heat on Manufacturers Software: Manufacturers Face SaaS Hurdles Dialogue Opinion By Pierfrancesco Manenti

Manufacturing Executive - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.