The factory-floor-to-enterprise disconnect costs companies millions of dollars in wasted efficiency, says Greg Caster, a partner in the industrial equipment practice of Accenture, a New York-based consulting firm.
“By standardizing the factory floor on newer .Net and Intel technologies and providing seamless, real-time integration with enterprise Information Technology (IT) systems, manufacturers will save money on automation technology and gain a new level of control over manufacturing operations.”
The floor-to-boardroom connection is important because “it will offer manufacturers greater visibility, by allowing them to integrate operations within and outside their plants. They will be able to see, use and act on their most important information and operations, closing the loop between their plants, their suppliers and their customers.”
As a result, he says, the managers “will be able to make informed, real-time business decisions and enhance their financial performance.”
Accenture is working with Microsoft—as well as with Norwalk, Conn.-based ABB and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel—to help manufacturers bridge the gap between plant-floor operations and enterprise IT systems, as well as between plant floor and executive suite, Caster says.
“We designed and built an integration layer that is based on industrial IT and the Microsoft server to help enable the real-time exchange of data between the two.”
The integration component is between industrial IT and the enterprise resources planning system, he says. But, “there is no need for Accenture to build integration between manufacturing execution systems, data historians and the like.” That is because “ABB’s industrial IT platform already does this.”
However, that platform is not currently using .Net to a great extent, Caster says. “It uses COM, but .Net is part of the strategy.”
See the story that goes with this sidebar: Will Microsoft .Net connect the enterprise?
