ISA website peeks into standards development

08/03/2006

ISA's website is allowing users to preview ISA standards. Overviews, tables of contents, scopes, definitions, and other informative sections of the standards are now available to visitors.

"We think it's important to make the scopes and overviews of our standards available to the public. This feature gives automation professionals worldwide a sneak peek at ISA's standards, and provides a framework for understanding the variety of standards that we offer," says Ian Verhappen, ISA's standards and practices vice president.

ISA is globally recognized as a standards-writing organization, developing consensus standards for automation, security, wireless, safety, batch control, control valves, fieldbus, environmental conditions, measurement, and symbols. Accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), ISA has published more than 150 standards, recommended practices, and technical reports, through the dedicated efforts of a network of industry experts.

ISA’s noteworthy standards updates include: 

The Enterprise-Control System Integration committee, ISA SP95, is conducting a final review and voting on Part 5 of its widely used series of industry standards, focusing on business-to-manufacturing Transactions. ISA-95 standards help reduce the costs, risks, and errors associated with implementing enterprise systems and manufacturing operations systems, so they interoperate and easily integrate. The standards may also be used to reduce the effort associated with implementing new product offerings.

• The Manufacturing and Control Systems Security standards committee, ISA SP99, has completed a first round of voting on the first and second parts of its ISA-99 series of standards, and is reviewing input comments. The Part 1 standard, "Security for Industrial Automation and Control Systems: Concepts, Terminology and Models," defines the concepts, terminology, and models of industrial automation and control systems security, establishing the basis for the remaining standards in the ISA-99 series. The Part 2 standard, "Establishing an Industrial Automation and Control Systems Security Program," provides guidance for developing a program for the security of industrial automation and control systems. It will offer detailed guidance on process activities and key elements for establishing a cyber-security management system. 
• ISA recently formed its new SP101 standards development committee on human-machine interface (HMI) following input from industry users asking for HMI guidelines and standards. Establishing a set of industry standards in this arena could reduce operator mistakes and misinterpretations via clear and intuitive representations of conditions and operator control interfaces. These standards also could reduce learning curves for new operators, and allow them to move from one system to another, often within the same plant, with minimal retraining. HMI guidelines could also assist communications, reduce errors between geographically dispersed groups, and lessen reinvention costs.
• ISA's SP100 committee for Wireless Systems for Automation was formed in 2005 to establish standards, recommended practices, technical reports, and related information that will define procedures for implementing wireless systems in the automation and control environment with a focus on the field level. The committee consists of more than 200 automation professionals worldwide. Since its inception, SP100 committee has made significant progress. Major achievements include the definition of industrial wireless application classes, creation of taxonomy to describe SP100 work products, and the formation of a range of technical, administrative and educational workgroups within the SP100 structure.