Foreword

Foreword
What would you call IT integration projects that had under a 50% success
rate, took more than two years on average, and rarely ever meet the original
requirements? The term “failure” would be my top choice, yet this was the state
of the art in ERP-to-shop floor integration projects prior to the use of the ISA-95
Enterprise/Control System Integration standard and B2MML, the WBF Business
To Manufacturing Markup Language. These two standards have changed the
landscape of ERP-to-shop floor integration, transforming risky and expensive
integration projects into low risk and affordable integration projects. The payoff
for these projects can be very large, as manual and error prone processes are
replaced with near real-time automated data transfers. Several companies have
reduced their final inventory by over 60%, freeing up hundreds in millions
of dollars for other investments. ERP systems need massive amounts of data,
and much of that data comes from the shop floor. When manual data entry and
reconciliation processes with long delays in data entry are replaced with near
real-time information, then ERP reports and predictions can be based on actual
values instead of estimates.
Yet, despite the advantages obtained by using the ISA-95 and B2MML
standards, they are not well known outside of manufacturing automation
departments. This book by Bianca Scholten provides an excellent explanation of
the standards and a tutorial that intertwines definitions, end user quotes, and real
integration project stories. This book will allow you to understand many of the
complex concepts in the ISA- 95 standard using simple examples and step-by-
step plans for integration projects. This will provide invaluable help to any ERP-
to-shop floor integration project.
When the ISA SP95 committee started work on the ISA-95 standard there was
a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Sales personnel for ERP systems rarely
understood any of the complexity of the shop floor systems and sometimes
made extravagant claims of the ERP applicability to shop floor and real-time
processes. Likewise sales personnel for shop floor systems, such as DCS, PLC,
and SCADA systems, rarely understood the complexity of their customer’s
business processes and minimized the issues of integration. I, like many
members of the SP95 committee, had been involved in multiple integration
projects and had seen good, bad, and ugly integration projects and MES projects.
We also knew that if we could capture the best processes and best practices then
we could help any manufacturing company.
Even though many of the original committee members came from the process
industries (chemical, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, consumer products)
the goal was always to address the full range of manufacturing types, from
airplanes to zippers. This was an ambitious goal, and it took a lot of hard work
by the volunteer members of the committee. It also took the commitment of
control system vendors and ERP vendors, to support their employees during
the six year development. There were personal commitments by members to
finish the standards, with several individuals working on the standards despite
job changes, company changes, a recession, and even layoffs. The result was
a set of standards that have been widely useful, in industries as diverse as
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 The Road to Integration: A Guide to Applying the ISA-95 Standard in Manufacturing

food production, oil pipelines, automotive manufacturing, and biotechnology.

The standards have allowed IT professionals, manufacturing professions, and
business professionals to share a common language and a common model for
integration. The ISA-95 standard also provides the first formal model for the
functions normally identified as MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems),
allowing companies to compare different vendor solutions, and even more
importantly, compare operations in their own manufacturing sites.
Like any standard, the ISA-95 standard and IEC 62264, the international version,
was a consensus document. It reflects the experience of hundreds of experts from
dozens of companies and countries. Because of this diversity of backgrounds
and depth of experience we were not able to capture in the standard all of the
knowledge shared in the meetings. We knew that the best methods to apply
the standards also needed to be refined and documented. Bianca’s book is an
important supplement to the standards, capturing in tutorial format what we were
unable to put into the standards. I hope that you learn as much from reading this
book as I did, the comments and quotes from the early adopters of the standards
provide valuable lessons for anyone starting an ERP-to-shop floor integration or
MES project.

Dennis Brandl
Editor of the ISA-95 standard

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