Beyond the buzzwords
Manufacturing performance software leverages plant information in pursuit of the real-time enterprise
By Craig Resnick and Greg Gorbach -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
Manufacturers operate in an environment that requires information exchange across every domain of the enterprise. Even more so in a global business climate that demands integrating operations and systems, collaboration must move beyond the buzzword and instead become a cornerstone.
Remember that every process offers a link to real-time data for the enterprise as a whole. This is especially critical to Real-time Performance Management (RPM), a strategy that ARC defines as using dynamic performance targets to drive an enterprise to optimum potential.
RPM is served by manufacturing performance services (MPS) software, a component of collaborative production management systems. MPS offers a common basis for using information from the plant floor to connect with enterprise systems and business partners. This connectivity places new demands on manufacturing, and typically requires coordinating disparate sources and platforms.
MPS also delivers a new performance capability to users at the plant level, and throughout the distributed manufacturing enterprise and supply network. By establishing real-time data collection from the plant floor, MPS exposes manufacturing information to the rest of the enterprise.
RPM to the highest power
MPS enables running an RPM strategy from the bottom up. As a plant-centric component, MPS taps production, planning, quality, engineering, inventory/materials management, maintenance, and asset management applications via a portal, Web browser, or wireless device. These solutions typically scale to work across multiple plants and locations.
The functionality of MPS solutions is comprised as follows:
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Service-based connectivity to various plant equipment and legacy systems;
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Manufacturing-context information, often based on a plant model or historian;
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Aggregation, transformation, and conditional processing of data;
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Distributed visibility via dashboards or portals; data interfaces for Web Service applications and other applications; and
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Creation of new performance applications to leverage existing data and systems.
Some MPS vendors may include a business process management or execution engine, and modules for SPC, analytics, decision-support, or execution. These suppliers also may enable integration with ERP systems, enterprise platforms, and other business systems using OPC, ISA S95, OAGIS, or the like.
Scalability, management, and deployment—and common context of data across multiple facilities—are proving important for large manufacturers. Some look for a standardized data model to support this kind of functionality. Another approach is to integrate elements of synchronized business processes, manufacturing-initiated supply chain alerts or events, and new business processes to support operations based on existing data sources.
Suppliers in the space
Until a few years ago, the only place where plant-floor information from a multitude of sources could be found in a single location was in the production management system. Many CPM/manufacturing execution system (MES) suppliers even positioned themselves as a solution to the "spaghetti integration" problems companies faced when trying to pull together information from many sources.
This tactic was based more on the idea that CPM products provided a centralizing application, rather than any specific integration or information management functionality. Today, however, CPM products are quite likely to have this functionality.
More recently, a small number of suppliers took a narrowly focused approach, initially concentrating on the data and its manufacturing context, and serving it up to people and applications. Over time, these pioneers established a new approach to dealing with manufacturing information, based on the use of new technologies. They are now adding even more value for their customers by supplying additional modules to allow users throughout the plant or extended enterprise to enhance manufacturing performance using decision-support, analysis, quality, or other packaged functionality that leverages the newly available information. In the meantime, many start-ups are targeting the niche.
Another group—the HMI/SCADA suppliers—are targeting this niche, and they are sure to have an impact. Having awakened to the realization that they are well-positioned to create and offer MPS software solutions to their existing channel and customers, most if not all of these suppliers now have an active MPS software program under way.
Recommendations
Manufacturers can use ARC's MPS software model as a template for providing real-time data collection and connectivity at the plant floor, establishing operational context, and exposing manufacturing information to the rest of the enterprise.
MPS software suppliers should leverage technologies and standards such as XML, OPC and ISA S95 to develop products that gather, organize, and expose manufacturing information and deliver the required performance capabilities that manufacturers need to support distributed enterprises and supply networks.
Top-ranking plant-operations suppliers
| Rank Company | Total revenue (in millions of dollars) | |
| 1 Siemens Automation & Drives | 11,000 | Total for global automation business; $1.89 billion in software-related revenues; manufacturing execution push based on ISA S95, SAP partnership |
| 2 ABB Automation Technologies | 11,000 | Plant automation vendor; no software-related breakout available; aquired HSB Reliability Technologies and Systems Group |
| 3 Invensys Process Systems | 4,902 | $498.6 million software-related; includes Wonderware, Foxboro, SimSci-Esscor, & Avantis |
| 4 Rockwell Automation | 4,411 | Estimated $740 million in software-related revenues for supervisory control, MES, asset management; supports Windows Server 2003 and XP Server Pack 2 |
| 5 Emerson Process Management | 3,816 | Automation vendor offers process control, asset management solutions; no software-related breakout available |
| 6 GE Infrastructure | 3,400 | ARC Advisory Group estimates $275.6 million software-related revenues for GE Fanuc and GE Security Software; recently acquired Edwards Systems Technology |
| 7 Honeywell Process Solutions | 1,800 | No software-related revenue estimate available; process control, asset management, production management, scheduling for process industries |
| 8 Aspen Technology | 305 | Supply chain & plant operations solutions for process industries; competing with ERP vendors for investment dollars |
| 9 Brooks Software | 120 | MES plus plant scheduling and monitoring, simulation; seeks to profit from movement of MES model from capital-intensive to materials-intensive industries |
| 10 OSIsoft | 100 | Real-time performance management vendor was original spark for data historian market; users find more than 200 application classes for this innovative technology |
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