Effective Manufacturing Intelligence solutions provide real-time visibility, event management and analytical tools that enhance proactive and predictive control and drive execution.
Bridging the divide between enterprise level decision-making and the shop floor remains a barrier to improving manufacturing performance. Even as technology advances, the gap seems to be widening instead of shrinking. As manufacturers capture more data and gain better control of processes, solutions proliferate, adding new challenges to gaining full visibility and integrating multiple data sources.
How do manufacturers approach this problem today? Traditionally the approach has been to connect ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) directly with MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems). More recently, new categories of technology solutions have emerged – Manufacturing Intelligence (MI). To date these solutions have been loosely defined and generally lumped together with MES. What role do they play in bridging this gap? What gains are being realised by companies implementing these solutions?
To answer these questions and more, Aberdeen conducted a benchmark research during September-October 2006, surveying 440 companies.
But first, a definition is in order. Manufacturing Intelligence in the broadest sense implies a synergy in joining enterprise level data with operational execution. Manufacturing Intelligence as a tool enables the collection and aggregation of data from multiple sources, whether from HMI (Human Machine Interface)/SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), ERP or MES. However, if a unified view is the only objective of Manufacturing Intelligence, then a simple portal or dashboard would suffice. To truly add value, Manufacturing Intelligence must deliver on the promise implied in its name. It must add a level of intelligence, which elevates the solution category from a platform to an application. Instead of operating as simply another data collection system, effective Manufacturing Intelligence solutions provide real-time visibility, event management and analytical tools that enhance proactive and predictive control and drive execution.
Manufacturers continue to feel the pressure to reduce operational costs, fuelled by external pricing pressures from customers and competitors. The net result - enterprises actively seeking ways to create or sustain a competitive advantage. The number one priority in bridging this gap was simple data collection. More than half of survey participants (55%) indicated that their top priority was to pull data from the shop floor to provide visibility to enterprise applications, with the ultimate objective being the goal of reducing variability in order to improve product quality. Yet, the road to integration is a two way street. Not only does data needs to be collected from the shop floor and passed to enterprise level systems, ERP needs to tell the execution systems what to make and when to make, and also provide access to current and planned inventory.
Manufacturers face several challenges in bridging the divide between ERP and the shop floor ranging from difficulty of integration with existing systems to the lack of unifying manufacturing architecture, as well as the difficulty associated with supporting multiple applications. These three challenges are closely related and each serves to further complicate the others. In addition, the aging of technology and the presence of proprietary systems cannot be ignored as a significant challenge.
Source: Aberdeen Group, October 2006
Manufacturers are responding to these challenges by automating data collection and standardizing plant or factory control applications and systems. Both of these approaches require architectural improvements, typically coupled with the harmonisation of execution systems.
So how are manufacturers going about addressing these priorities? Implementation of MES is definitely on the rise, and 65% of participating companies are taking the approach of integrating MES with ERP. In addition, 37% are integrating ERP with Manufacturing Intelligence and 22% are integrating MES and Manufacturing Intelligence. Note these numbers add up to more than 100%. These efforts are not mutually exclusive. While it may indeed be expeditious to pass data directly between MES and ERP, Manufacturing Intelligence sits squarely between the top-down approach of ERP and the bottom-up approach of MES. Aberdeen found Best in Class companies in particular reaping significant benefits by inserting this layer between the two, thereby aggregating data from disparate sources, enabling actionable intelligence. This “layer” however may in fact be delivered as part of an MES solution, as an extension to enterprise applications or as a separate Manufacturing Intelligence solution. Aberdeen also observed instances where Manufacturing Intelligence, together with enterprise applications was sufficient to meet intelligence needs without MES.
Leading ERP, MES and Manufacturing Intelligence vendors are also providing response alternatives by collaborating to enable interoperability by adhering to prevailing standards including ISA-95 and OAGIS. These standards serve to streamline the integration process, providing guidelines to reduce the cost and risk associated with integration.
In integrating MES to ERP, there are typically 8 to 16 touch points such as schedule updates, passing of production orders and completions, as well as inventory data. By adopting industry standards and evaluating solutions with advanced integration capabilities, web-services and service-oriented architecture (SOA), manufacturers are able to effectively model processes and contextualise data from differing sources, which will aid in the support of integration of multiple applications and systems. The next logical step is therefore to add a level of intelligence beyond the aggregation and integration of data.
While dashboard and portal technologies alone do not deliver actionable intelligence, these tools do provide a necessary base for visibility, as well as a launching point for event based triggers and alerts. Best in class companies are 5-15% more likely than all others to connect individuals at all levels of the organisation. Aberdeen found plant managers/vice presidents of manufacturing the most likely to monitor activity through portals. Interestingly enough, as we move up and down the chain of command, we are almost equally likely to find individuals armed with portal capabilities, with best-in-class companies leading the way.
The path to Best in Class status involves not only the implementation of portal capabilities, but also in coupling them with predictive, real-time analytic capabilities and event management. Through enabling a portal view into processes as they occur and monitoring events and drilling down into areas of concern, Best in Class manufacturers are taking a proactive view of manufacturing and providing the tools that look beyond symptoms to provide the details to enable root cause analysis. Visibility, whether gained through portals, dashboards or alerts delivered to wireless devices should be able to trigger corrective or preventative action when necessary.
ISA-95: ISA (International Standards Association) has developed a series of international standards addressing the integration of enterprise and manufacturing control systems. The series establishes models, terminology and object model attributes and defines activity models of manufacturing operations management that enable the integration between the two. The modelled activities operate between business planning and logistics functions and process control functions. In addition, the scope of ISA-95 also includes a model of manufacturing operations management and an identification of data exchange.
OAGIS: The OAGIS (The Open Applications Group Integration Specification) standard was developed to address the need for creating a standard business language to enable applications’ interoperability with the most current release also incorporating the ISA-95 model.
The Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group: A number of organisations have been researching and developing standards to apply to the same or similar problems. While this brings many of the best and brightest minds together to develop these standards, the fact that multiple standards emerge can defeat the purpose of standard and become problematic. This is why OAGi, OPC, MIMOSA, WBF and ISA have joined forces to lead the Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group to produce a harmonised guideline to reflect a convergence of manufacturing interoperability standard. It will facilitate the development of reusable integration software objects and components and provide a foundation for additional alignment of architectures in the future.
Manufacturing in real-time is becoming more of a necessity in order to remain competitive. This means manufacturers at all stages of implementation of solutions require visibility from the shop floor to the top floor. To improve manufacturing performance and eliminate the visibility barrier, Aberdeen recommends the following steps to success.
Keywords: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Manufacturing Intelligence (MI)
