In 2005, Automation World’s sister publication, Packaging World, sat down with corporate engineers from Procter & Gamble Co., the Cincinnati-based consumer products giant, to discuss the state of the Make2Pack (ISA SP88 part 5 committee) and PackML (ISA TR88.05) effort, two major standards activities in this area. A follow-up meeting was held recently at P&G corporate engineering headquarters to assess how much progress has been made—and how much work remains. Automation World caught up with Bob MacDonald, associate director, Corporate Engineering, Power, Control & Information Systems, Modeling Simulation & Analysis; Rob Aleksa, Corporate Engineering machine control section head, and vice chairman of the OMAC Users Group (for Open Modular Architecture Control); Pat Dollard, Corporate Engineering process control section head; Mike Lamping, Corporate Engineering machine control technology leader and ISA TR88.05 leader; and Dave Chappell, a P&G retiree who is chief technology officer at Complete Manufacturing Automation Associates, and chair of the ISA88.5 committee.

Automation World: What’s changed since your June 2005 conversation with Packaging World about ISA 88.5, known as Make2Pack, and ISA TR88.05, known as PackML?

Rob Aleksa: At that point in time, we looked at both Make2Pack and PackML as movements into the standards arena for machine systems. PackML was much further along at that time and it still is even today. So a lot of the context that we talked about were improvements to PackML to make it even more capable and move it to an industry standard. Make2Pack, which provides common definitions for the entire machine system structure, was in early development.

Dave Chappell: Actually, the original initiative, Make2Pack, was a WBF-sponsored working group effort between OMAC and WBF (the organization formerly known as World Batch Forum). We explored whether some of the WBF S88 standards could be of value to the machine systems area. Were there things in common between the process and machine industry? And Rob is the one that facilitated that joining. We reached the conclusion that there was an immense amount of synergy that could be realized from the two groups working together, and that’s when the ISA (the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society), through the SP88 committee, sponsored the part 5 work group, which is to develop modular automation in the control environment.

AW: There have been some changes to PackML since 2005. What effect has that had?

Chappell: PackML v2 was the version that existed when we did the first interview. Mike Lamping led the effort to create the next set of enhancements in PackML version 3. Mike has also led an effort to create the ISA technical report on how to apply the version 3 PackML guidelines and how they relate to ISA88. The technical report [ISA TR88.05] is out for review and vote. This activity is different than the part 5 standard (Make2Pack). The part 5 standard is expected to go out for final vote in 2008. The target date right now coincides with the WBF European conference, which is in mid-November 2008. So these are two separate efforts that are going on.

AW: What about the upgrade of PackML to version 3?

Chappell: There are some important changes that came in version 3 that are going to eliminate some of the barriers people might have had with PackML version 2. There was a period of time when we considered whether or not PackML should be rolled into the overall Make2Pack effort. A lot of the same people were involved in both efforts. The question was, should we combine it? In the end, we decided not to combine the two efforts. We didn’t want to slow down the PackML version 3 rollout. In the end, version 3 corrects a lot of the original early issues. It looks very good, people are using it and it’s been very successful. So now, we need to take the next step, which is getting PackML to be an official industry standard.

Robert MacDonald: Version 3 is an enhancement over version 2. It adds multi-modes and additional states. That’s really what version 3 was all about.

Mike Lamping: It continues to expand on the standard nomenclature, which drove more alignment with folks. Since the PackML team also included folks on the Make2Pack part 5 activity, we tried to incorporate similar nomenclature and definitions from part 5 in version 3. So it kind of worked out real well. These things should sing and play well together, because they’re all based on a common denominator: ISA88 part 1.

Chappell: It took us two years to ...