Hello All, Be nice to your mother and wife today.

I am going to discuss how end users are setting themself up for failure or delayed success in implementing manufacturing operations management systems. It starts by not recognizing and realizing that a plant’s capacity should not be based on head count or limited by the labor resource. The mistake that most (not all) manufacturers are making right now is attempting to optimize their plants either through continuous improvement methods or manufacturing operations management systems or a combination of both WITHOUT THE REQUIRED ADDITIONAL HEADS or skill sets or training to actually succeed or have any chance of success.

HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY. For instance, if plant engineering or corporate IT are funded and moving forward with requirements for a product tracking and tracing systems and are not getting dedicated knowledgable people from the product design, quality and production teams, the project will fail. Many times in the last few years, I have run across projects where directors and supervisors tell the executive IT or engineering sponsor that they will support the project then do not due to their head counts. Bottom line: Adaptive manufacturing systems can not increase efficiency or lower rework or increase yield unless real human resources are applied. After the system has built up a real knowledge base and actually made the plant adaptive, yes, the labor can be reduced. But not until then.

“The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s.” The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned from 161 AD to 180 AD) was perhaps the only true philosopher-king in the history of the world. He formulated his pantheist Stoic beliefs with a passionate religious conviction. He shared the basic Stoic belief in the divinity of the cosmos as an intelligent being with a soul and stressed (perhaps too fatalistically) the harmony of all things (or lack thereof)and the importance of resigning oneself to whatever happened.

I’ve always thought that he meant that you’ve got to meet the unexpected head-on, grapple with it (like a wrestler), rather than try to tiptoe around it (for the sake of political advantage or status quo).

This is how I view where we are today with ISA-88 and 95. In 2008, we are tiptoeing around the obvious changes and challenges to preserve the 1990 status quo and politics of the first generation of automation after paper and relay electronics. In the 1990s, when the standards were started and conceived, the developers were putting forth the first draft efforts to organize batch manufacturing systems and the business-to-manufacturing interfaces in the process industries and make-to-stock big batch. The committees correctly saw that much of their work was applicable (and still is) to discrete and hybrid batch industries, but failed to recognize, directly seek out and include more than a token representative in the drafting process from the discrete and hybrid batch industries.

I am sure I will get some debate on this, but the fact is the primary contributors, authors and reviewers of 95% of the material are from the big batch and process industries. So now that ALL TYPES of manufacturing are having to go global and figure out their version of the pull supply chain, even process and big batch industries are having to create discrete workflows for single-order fullfilment. What that means is that the discrete and hybrid industries are EITHER requiring their vendors to build a custom application implementation or data model based on the 95 B2M data model and/or 88 batch application data model OR building the custom 95/88 implementation model themselves. Why? Because these manufacturers want what the process and big batch already have in their 90’s DCSs. — a single-plant model to take across their plants to make the interfaces, reports and analytics consistant, repeatable, accurate and last but not least, configurable as opposed to custom. Note though, that to accomplish this, process and big batch manufacturers’ sold their plants’ souls to a DCS vendor and standardized on a vendor implementation model and not an open-standard model.

So where are we? ISA95 is still an interface or data exchange model that is predominately controlled by big batch and process vendors and consultants with a few end-user heros. The discrete and hybrid batch industries like the 95 models, but want Part 4 to be an implementation model. This will not happen unless those companies actually participate and draft it. Otherwise the configurable world for these industries is 15 years off, and a new standards committee has to be formed to do this work utilizing a new group of authors/engineers from those industries. So get used to the hight cost of custom, inflexible systems. Adaptive manufacturing is still a buzz word for your industries for a long time.

So while I was participating in the ISA-95 in Austin virtually from Idaho, IBM presented a short overview (attached) of itsr new product, Reference Semantic Model. RSM provides the first comprehensive set of MOM standards templates for IBM’s (and others) new manufacturing services bus products. IBM has brought together methods to map and configure multiple MOM standards so any manufacuring company is now able to build a single corporate set of templates to establish the standard work basis for production transformation relatively quickly.

This is Lean IT! IBM has filled the holes between the standards with its best-guess configuration which was based on a survey of many industry experts. The first impression is that the templates and configuration are heavily influenced by and towards process industries. The batch, hybrid and discrete configuration of the MOM standards are still needed. IBM seems to view this product as simply addressing building of B2M and B2B interface schema, but not the information or application models that the non-process industries are demanding. But this is a revolutionary step forward and MUST be recognized as such. IBM is giving all its configuration to the standards committee of ISA88/95, MIMOSA, OPC, OAG and others to incorporate into their standards through the peer-review process. ALL END USERS should be involved. There is no patent, just copyright being claimed by IBM.

I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU ATTEND THE DEEP DIVE OF THIS PRODUCT TOMORROW MORNING AT 8:30 CENTRAL TIME. ISA 95 meeting to the Deep Dive on Thursday April 17, 2008 at the ISA 95 Meeting. Live Meeting and dial-in are below.

8:30am central -12:00 RSM Model Review Model H. Falk/IBM
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Hello All,
Again, I am getting lost in the high demand for systems and methods for implementing MOM systems and methods by companies to transform their production capability from Make-to-Stock paper-based manufacturing to the 21st Century “TO BE” adaptive manufacturing form. I need to provide this blog more time. With that said, I will be better. But I need you as a reader to be better as well. Please tell this group about your production transformation issue and journey.

So this week I have been participating in the ISA-95 Committee Meeting. As usual, the debate and contributions have been very good by the core group. End-user participation is still GREATLY NEEDED for THE STANDARD for adaptive manufacturing at this point in history of manufacturing and social transition. f all the comments submitted (Very good and informed comments) at this meeting , NONE of them are from end users. This real crisis is a true crisis and need to be raised to your executive management as such. THE QUALITY AND USABILTY OF THIS STANDARD WILL DETERMINE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR COMPANY. DISAGREEE? WHY?

As manufacturing companies transform their linear, primarily continental supply chain of the 20th century to a “necessary to complete” globally distributed supply networks and exchanges, they are realizing that their IT infrastructure must change. Most companies have isolated systems for each department with hard-coded interfaces between the applications to support each other and the general business processes of each department. There is a major trend underway with in the supply chain and IT departments to change the approach to system infrastructure to one that first starts with the design of the business process in a business process managment (BPM) system. Systems and interfaces are then designed to support end- to-end business processes, not department-focused systems. “We reduced processing time from 6 weeks to 48 hours and the associated labor by 70%.” “We increased transaction capacity by 50% and reduced staff and processing time by 30% each.”

Towards this end, GE Fanuc has been developing an industrial BPM engine operation for process management for the last 3 years to bring this same transformation to the typical approach to developing production opeations systems. The product, Workflow Module, is being released Q3 of this year. It orchestrates the enterprise BPM events and tasks with those of the plant workflow processes in recipes, routes, work instructions, alarm situations and event situations. This product is based on a service-oriented architecture utilizing MS.NET’s Workflow engine, but then applies ISA-95’s process and product segment structures with resource definiiton libraries. The 95 structure is native, which makes the resulting application data model native. This allows the data collection, analytics, reports and interfaces to be configurable. This change in methodology for developiing manufacturing opeations and process systems will be revolutionary, but strongly resisted by the process industry vendors of DCS systems who have been programming production workflows in their proprietary data models for 15 years. But now as companies have to move to make-to-order distributed supply networks to survive as global companies the discrete and batch industries are in immediate need for the industrial BPM approach for adaptive manufacturing.

Many vendors and integrators ask me who should be targeted in a manufacturering company and how to sell MOM or MES solutions. You can target heads of manufacturing (production director, operations director, etc), middle ‘manufacturing’ management (production/manufacturing/engineering managers), financial directors or the executive level. At this point in the history and adoption of integrated MOM systems, most seem to get the best results doing the bottom-up sell for the single plant unless it is a multiplant, corporate IT initiative. I think the best/most responses are from the manufacturing functions as opposed to the financial ones at this time. I guess this reflects that manufacturing folk feel the most pains that MES fixes, although some financial managers also have an eye on the manufacturing KPIs, but these are the leaders and innovators.

My belief is that at this time in history the financial people require solutions for lowering mfg cost, but you must be able to provide justifiable evidence and a demostrated methodology based business case.

The plant management has the real need for MOM solutions, but have no resources and no budget and generally do not know how to do an IT CAPEX justification or know how the ROI methods prove it.

The supply chain people desperately need real-time visibility into capability and capacity, but typically trivialize the plant solutions and their integration since they do not know that the available capability mix of resources is continually changing across a shift and day.

The product engineering people want to reduce cost, but more important is predictable cost.
So bottom line…know who the customer is, the language of your coach and your internal and external competition.

Hello All and Good Day,
So last week the usual industry protagonists and innovators attended; BUT the number was less than 150. WHY, WHY WHY are 500 people not at this conference? This conference, year to year, has better content than any analyst, vendor or standards conference. Please tell me. I am at a loss other than the fact that WBF (or ISA) has never been good at marketing to IT or mfg IT groups; but all on the 88 and 95 list servers know about it, and MESA advertises it. People this is THE USERS GROUP. USE IT.

Hello All,
Sorry for long pause. I was on a wonderful vacation with my family for spring break. I am currently at the WBF Conference in Philadelphia. Tonight was the Process Automation Hall of Fame Dinner. One of new members was Vernon Trevathan. He spoke about the components of necessary for human resource development for automation engineers in the USA and globally. He made a good case, but failed to speak to the basic need to make the business case for internal engineering knowledge for automation and manufacturing operations management experts. Currently, this business case is not being made to the executives of manufacturing companies. They only want to pass the buck by outsourcing the plant expertise to vendors and system integrators. This is stupid and dangerous since it assumes manufacturing innovation is a commodity. No new product development and innovation is possible if you cannot engineer a cost-effective way to bring the product the to market.

I voiced the following opinion at the last ISA-95 meeting and then last week on the ISA-95 List server. Bottom Line: The standard is getting widely used but is getting updated with no or very limited end-user input. I have made call for end users to step and get involved, but only two did. The vendors are saying the end users do not have time and that they represent their opinions in the standards. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS AND WRONG!

Let’s debate.

End users, I need, WE need, your opinions on this NOW, since you will be the ones living with it and creating more custom hybrids of 88 and 95 that still require custom translation for compliant interfaces.

Since I come from the discrete and MTO batch worlds, I find many, many end users utilizing product and process segments for execution, not just for Level 3 to 4 exchanges and business views, but to describe Level 2 and 3 manual and automated workflows and even for master and control recipes utilizing 95. Why? Because they want their interfaces, analytics and reports to be more configured from the application data model and transaction set. They want reduced complexity. Otherwise, the B2MML+ interface is simply less custom, but still custom translation. Many of these companies find that doing just the current 95 to 88 or 88 to 95 adds too much complexity. Now we want to add another operations segment for level 3 detail distinction.

There are good arguments for and against this. So at Sun Valley meeting I argued this point to exhaustion and compromise on the first day. I believe that the big process vendors and companies drive these standards to the “exchange only” form so as not to disrupt their DCS platforms. In the discrete and MTO batch world, they are just beginning to automate their MOM workflows from paper to interoperable systems mapped to business processes, and they see the need for the expense of custom interfaces, analytics and reports as very excessive even to the 95 or OAGIS baseline. Remember, at least 80% of batch manufacturers are still using their own standard as opposed to an 88 hybrid. Why? I see large process manufacturers, SAP and large DCS vendors driving 95 into a vertical industry-specific form. It is an ISA standard after all. If this is what is wanted by actual contributors, this is great. Just understand when other industries customize it to their needed form. Non-process end users will simply use it as a starting point for custom application and interfaces, which throws interoperability out the window in the supply chain.

The proposed changes in Part 2 propose transformation of the process segment (business view) at scheduling/dispatching into an operations OR (not and) work process segment for execution of the actual order. I thought that we agreed on that middle ground of JUST the operations segment that would then identify the activity (production, quality test, maintenance, inventory) in the properties. I see the 95 group divided, since many application data models and some software products have utilized the “process segment” in level 3 for execution and in discrete in level 2 and 3 for execution.

End users from all verticals need to get involved on the list server discussion and through the submission of comments NOW; otherwise the result will be that each customer will have a custom application of 95 and 88 to describe work execution in terms of either 88 structures, a process segment or an operations segment. Currently, many end users NOT in process industries (where the vendor’s DCS data models control the existing Level 3 and Level 2 applications installed base and have for years since these industries automated in the 80s and 90s)) are applying 95 to the floor with a process segment for discrete execution or are applying an 88/95 transformation at the master or control recipe.

To reduce complexity and transformation, I have even seen a large global tobacco company reject 88 entirely and utilize a hybrid 95 execution application to create recipes and discrete routes that map seamlessly to each other. Also, I have seen a large global beverage company do the opposite, using 88 for batch and discrete execution and then use a 95 data collection data model for analytics, reporting and interface configuration. To reduce complexity further, I have also seen a large global brewer corporately apply a pure 88 scheduling and execution application across batch and discrete workflows from Level 2 to Level 4 where custom BatchML and 88 tables were built in SAP. This was true interoperability and adaptability. Very nice capability model for batch.

As far as the standard goes, there are many end users whom I have worked with or taught who want the 95 committee and Part 4 to go much further
1. Address more than just the exchanges in and out of an activity model. Address the exchanges between function within the activity models. We actually did this in the 95/SCOR Alignment Working Group.
2. Address the data models for each activity model application so that the interfaces, reports and analytics are configured rather than a customer mapping and modeling translation.
3. Address execution
4. Address configurable back applications of data collection, analysis, tracking and interfacing
5. Address the discrete application
6. Outline Level 3 business processes by production type

Yes this very hard. Exchanges are easy and only solve 25% of the interoperability issue. You still are not producing an adoptable interface.

Why are we here? All of this was done because the resource-starved 88 and 95 committees (for years) did not address discrete execution or the 95 Level 3 exchanges or data models until Part 4 for 15 years as the world moved to a pull, make-to-order global economy. Now we have a global market place that needs these standards completed to a higher state, and the end users are not getting involved. We now have a large number of variations out there which will only grow larger if we have an confusion on the operation segment for Level 3 exchanges and scheduling and then a work process segment for execution, data collection and analysis.

Other than Jean and Bianca, the European community’s is simply participating in the development of the 95 standards BUT are, by far, the largest group of end users. It is time to step up Europe and get involved. I loudly voiced my opinions and experience examples at the last 95 meeting, but I had no backup. Maybe I am just wrong. The 88 and 95 committees in the US are dominated by the process industries, so the limited resources focus on THAT Level 3 problem set ,as I would if I worked for large process company and invested time and money in the committee.

The European manufacturing base is applying these standards to make their remaining plants that have not been outsourced more adaptable and competitive in the global market. So these plants are right sizing their batch and discrete process for flexibility. The USA base is next, in my opinion. This is why Europeans are applying 88, hybrid 95 or both at the execution applications. Europe needs to get involved much sooner than at the IEC step. This is why 95 is a process standard and addresses only exchanges and not execution or even the Level 2 exchanges which, again, has led to many custom 88 and 95 custom hybrid implementations.

Having just an exchange standard is leading to custom implementations, since the applications have to still be converted into a B2MML, BatchML or future MOMML form, and the original application data model, more than likely, does not have a capability model that separately models work segments and resources independently. Most Level 3 products just model a product-related segment or route or recipe which FAILS to abstract out the resources and segments for plant capability analysis that can be applied for true adaptable manufacturing in a product independent manner. The Lean zealots loves this flaw about the current Level 3 product set on the market.

So we as a group have actually solved very little towards our original 88/95 goal of separating resources from product types for adaptability.

We need to make our meetings more virtual and inclusive even though this does do not work very well. We need more actual end-user examples other than the 3 or 4 we reuse in a knowledge center of some kind. Who wants to step up and do this? We can make our VOICE of the customer better. Actually implementation and business cases should drive the standard, not vendors and lack of resources.

Geoffrey A Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm, is happening now and over the next couple of years for MES or MOM software vendors. Manufacturers are finally spending big IT dollars to install manufacturing operations systems in their plants and integrate them into their enterprise business proceses. This is to meet their global manufacturing need for Lean supply chains. These companies are realizing an optimized supply chain requires an optimized plant to adapt to the supply chains’ changing demand. Response is profit.

What is interesting is that these companies are having to make vendor selections based on the hope that the selected vendor (big or small) survives the approaching consolidation. What is interesting about this technology chasm event is that it is not the software’s quality or functionality that will make it become space dust in the chasm. It is whether the vendor understands that they are selling a just tool for developing and maintaining an ever-changing engineered MOM solution to a plant’s workflows based on what it makes, how it makes, where it makes, and how much it makes.

What is occuring is that many of vendors are simply not able deliver due a large lack of experienced talent so their project become non-scaling, frustrated customers. The good MOM system integrators, who are building the best products out there, have no channel to sell their products and no money to build a channel, to develop the plant modeling and application training, or the mentoring program to scale the software sale. So basically, no vendors or SIs currently have all the functioning parts of a business to be successful, but the manufacturers are still having to make a selection or bet on who and what will still be around in five years. This is complicated even more by the ERP vendors coming into the level-3 solutions space with large dollars, beta product and no operations experience. The whole space is the like the Wild West. Lets start a pool. Bets any one?