When plant floor managers, equipment providers and corporate executives debate the issues, there’s a fair chance that they will have some problems understanding the terms each of them uses to describe the ultimate flow of production.

After a decade of ongoing development, the standard is making life simpler for those who must talk to many different groups as plants evolve. “ISA-95 helps in both design and implementation when you can verbalize how the system will be built. In the past, people had many different definitions for work cells, units of operation and many other terms,” says Kirby Powell, director of MES systems at Kline Process Systems, a process control system integrator based in
Reading, Pa.

Out to lunch

That’s a lot of effort for a standard that’s got far less awareness than its usage suggests. Kline Process is a case in point. The system integrator has been using the standard for a few years, with plans to continue expanding usage. But Powell and his counterparts don’t typically make a big deal out of its usage. When they do mention it, many end-users start thinking about lunch.

“Most of the smaller customers have heard of ISA-95 and know standards are good, but they have no idea of what value it brings,” Powell says. Most software providers are now beginning to follow the standards, making integration simpler, he adds.

Even equipment vendors who have been employing the standard for years say that only their largest customers are starting to understand the role the standard plays. “We’re finally getting to the point now where people understand the benefits, but they’re not necessarily known to all,” says Maryanne Steidinger , U.S. marketing director at the MES Business Unit of automation supplier Siemens Energy & Automation Inc., in Spring House,
Pa.

This lack of understanding doesn’t bother the developers of the standard. They are bullish about the adoption throughout the industry, whether end-users know they’re using it or not. “This is a very exciting time for the standard,” says J. Keith Unger, chair of the SP95 committee that oversees ISA-95.

Industry trends seem to point to even greater use, as companies attempt to link all aspects of their businesses together. “One of the benefits is that it helps create a singular vision of what the MES should do for the manufacturing function and what information is needed for business applications like ERP,” Steidinger says.

No simple solutions

While awareness and usage of the standard are growing, observers note that industrial applications are extremely diverse, so users shouldn’t expect too much. Knowing the limitations of standards is as important as understanding the limitations of a technology or system component.  

“There are often irrational expectations for standards. People think they’ll all be like the 110 volt outlet, but most won’t let you just take one application and plug it into another,” says Rick Bullotta, a vice president at SAP Research, in Palo Alto, Calif., who focuses on future manufacturing.

Though variations are often considered a potential problem, that’s not a major issue for the semantics of ISA-95. Most developers feel that adding a few terms is a necessity, not a negative, in manufacturing environments. SAP, the big Germany-based ERP vendor, makes extensive use of ISA-95 while acknowledging that it won’t ever offer the compatibility provided by some standards. “In our world, standards are best practices. When you look at ISA-95 today, every implementation is different, with extensions and customization,” Bullotta observes.  

Save later

As with many standards, implementation takes longer at the outset, but substantial time savings come with later projects. That’s particularly true when older systems are being linked together. “If you have two legacy systems on either end of a line and you want to leverage ...