White Paper. July ISA-95: A Foundation Model For. Business Intelligence for Manufacturing. Preface

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1 Business Intelligence for Manufacturing ISA-95: A Foundation Model For Business Intelligence for Manufacturing 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 they re 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.

2 Business Intelligence For Manufacturing The investments that manufacturing companies have made in standard business intelligence solutions have not typically resulted in better manufacturing decisions. That s because typical business intelligence solutions tend to embrace traditional business data sources that were designed to enhance business applications such as sales, marketing, finance and human resource decisions. Business intelligence solutions for manufacturing represent a different kind of challenge. They, too, require the capabilities of mainstream business intelligence solutions, but they also need to integrate data from the control systems, historians and human machine interface (HMI) systems deployed in the manufacturing environment. Typically, the business and manufacturing environments have been incompatible. With massive investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, enterprise data warehouses and enterprise historians, most companies are reluctant to embark on yet another green field project. They d prefer to leverage the information assets they already have in their existing business systems. The best way to do this is to deploy federated business intelligence solutions that can leave the data in these systems, surface it as needed by users, and warehouse it when appropriate. Incuity EMI s Unified View Incuity EMI is a business intelligence solution that helps enterprises make the most of their manufacturing information. Central to Incuity s design is the ability to integrate information from multiple heterogeneous sources into a single unified view of the manufacturing business, called the Unified Production Model (UPM). The primary purpose of the Unified Production Model is to integrate data from the organization s many different manufacturing data sources, including: Control systems such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), distributed control systems (DCS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems; Manufacturing applications such as human-machine interface (HMI) systems, process historians, planning systems, maintenance management systems, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and laboratory information management systems (LIMS); 2

3 Business systems such as ERP systems, supply chain management (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 don t need to know where the data actually resides. They don t need to navigate different user interfaces nor understand the many access protocols for the different data sources. A Manufacturing Business View The second purpose of the Unified Production Model is to organize the data to reflect the manufacturing business so that it s more understandable to users. Organizing data along manufacturing lines allows people to find information using business concepts such as equipment hierarchies and material groups instead of using IT concepts like table names and tag names. Links and references in the UPM maintain data relationships and ensure that users can access data with appropriate context. Data from one system (e.g., a temperature measurement) becomes more valuable when seen in the context of data from other systems (e.g., what was being produced or who was the customer?). Figure 1. A View of the Unified Production Model (UPM) 3

4 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 that s 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. ISA-95 Model As a Starting Point The Unified Production Model can be developed from the ground up to represent any business operation, but it does represent a significant engineering effort. Although most manufacturing operations have much in common, it usually makes sense to use an industry standard as a starting point for creating a model. There are many standards available that define business information structures, but good manufacturing standards are less common. The ISA-95 standard which was developed jointly over several years by both manufacturers and suppliers has gained the most traction because it s broadly applicable across different manufacturing and production environments. The ISA-95 standard models all key manufacturing elements. Resource models cover the quantitative data on equipment, materials and personnel needed for production. The model also includes qualitative information about the availability of these resources, how to make products, production schedules and production performance. ISA-95 therefore provides an excellent framework for organizing manufacturing information in a way that reflects virtually any manufacturing business. This is why the Incuity Unified Production Model incorporates the complete set of elements and types defined in the ISA-95 standard and in the Business to Manufacturing Markup Language (B2MML). ISA-95 Types & Items Incuity s Unified Production Model is based on classes called types and instances of types called items. A pump is an example of a type, and Pump 101 is an example of an instance. Types can have proper- 4

5 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. Incuity s 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. Material types define materials, material definitions and classes of material definitions. The model includes inventory of raw, intermediate and finished materials. Quality tests on material are also included. Personnel types define people, classes of personnel and qualifications of personnel. Location types (the Equipment Hierarchy Model) define a hierarchy of equipment levels and locations. Process segment types define groupings of the equipment, material and personnel resources needed to carry out a production step. Production capability types define the capability (available, committed or unattainable) of equipment, material, personnel and process segment resources for a period of time. Product definition types define what equipment, material and 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. 5

6 Production schedule types specify the definition and quantity of material to be produced, and the planned resources, location, start time and end time of production. Production performance types define the actual material produced and resources used, and the actual start and end times of production. Figure 2. An Example of a Segment Requirement 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. Evolving the Model The Unified Production Model supports general ISA-95 types and specific ISA-95 types. General types are freeform types that inherit from ISA-95 base types, and are designed to allow users to create flexible items in the model browser. For example, users can add an item of type ISA-95Equipment.GeneralEquipment, and then add any number of properties and tags to the item. This equipment item can also contain a collection of other equipment items to reflect the equipment hierarchy. This allows users to quickly create items to model the manufacturing environment without defining new types. 6

7 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. Information about an equipment hierarchy might come from an asset management database. Real-time data describing the same equipment s current behavior might come from a control system. Maintenance information about the equipment may be coming from a third source, a maintenance management system. The model serves as the framework for organizing the data from the many manufacturing data sources into structures that reflect the manufacturing enterprise. 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 7

8 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 Incuity s 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 or contact us directly at info@incuity.com. 8