the boundary is artificial from a data point of view, it’s real from an operational or cultural point of view. “We deal with plant engineers. They think one way and the business side looks at it another way,” says Dave Emerson, system architect at the Yokogawa U.S. Development Center, in Carrollton, Texas. “So ISA95 becomes a framework for the plant and enterprise to set the schedule. There’s a lot of benefit just in having an agreed-upon language.”

A good portion of the manufacturers using ISA95 use it together with B2MML, which takes ISA95 a step further, and uses Web-based language to further define the communication between systems. “What ISA95 does not say is what the data is and how it’s going to change. B2MML is XML schemas that give that definition. You have different tags, bold or paragraph,” says Emerson. “Every industry, every company, has differently designed messages. B2MML let’s you know how to organize it.”

B2MML fills a gap in ISA95, defining how data appears from one system to another. “ISA95 doesn’t deliver the actual schemas for integration. That’s in the XML documents,” says Bob Mick, vice president of emerging technology at ARC Advisory Group Inc., in Dedham, Mass. “The World Batch Forum took one of the big steps out of the way when it introduced B2MML.”

If ISA95 delivers the ability for mixed systems to read each other’s data language, B2MML defines that language into a coherent schema. “B2MML is a way to facilitate the exchange of data,” says Siemens’ Lemert. There are a lot of different areas where it can help, such as defining a production schedule and defining the process. Once you define that, you can use B2MML to capture the manufacturing data and track what has been produced.”

“The same concepts in ISA95 can be used for warehousing or PLM (product lifecycle management). You can talk through the same interface to both the SAP and the PLM systems,” says Wonderware’s Sowell. “In the 1990s, products were not so differentiated. But now there are product changes with every order, so you have to interact with the PLM system.”

Beyond ERP

According to one of the gurus of ISA95, its development is already extending beyond the ERP and control systems. Now some of the connections enabled by ISA95 include neither ERP nor a plant system. “In the Standards Committee, we’re extending further to exchange information in manufacturing operations,” says Dennis Brandl, head of BR&L Consulting Inc., in Cary N.C., and editor on the ISA95 committee. “How does the MES (manufacturing execution system) talk to a warehouse system? If you’re in the middle of production and you need more materials, what is the standard way to request them? We hope to have that type of connection in standard-speak relatively soon.”

The growth in the use of ISA95 has been consistent. The manufacturers that first started using it were the large companies that are usually on the technical edge. Now, however, its use is filtering down to smaller companies and the vendors that provide the systems that manufacturers wish to connect to. “The adoption has been pretty steady among end-users,” says ARC’s Mick. “The system suppliers like Siemens and Oracle are now building it into their products. That means not as much mapping needs to be done.”

The use of ISA95 has also spread to a wide range of industries. And its ability to connect to a variety of systems beyond manufacturing and ERP means it can be applied to new uses beyond sharing recipes, production schedules and inventory consumption. The data can also be used for compliance and managing equipment. “ISA95 is now used in multiple industries and for many purposes,” says Bob Lenich, data management director at automation vendor Emerson Process Management, in Austin, Texas. “We’re now seeing it used for regulatory purposes and asset management, in addition to its use for managing product orders and materials management.”

ISA95 and B2MML will continue to offer increasing support for sharing information among the plant, the enterprise and other systems. Perhaps the most promising future for ISA95 is its use as a tool to share information beyond the original intention of connecting the control platform with the ERP system.

To view the accompanying sidebar article to this story, "The 5 Pieces of ISA95", go to www.automationworld.com/view-4054
To see how a major manufacturer uses standards , visit www.automationworld.com/view-4001