East coast swing
By Kevin Parker, editorial director -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 2/1/2006 7:00:00 AM
Research-firm surveys of manufacturing executives say plant-floor integration is top of mind today in ways not seen in years. Manufacturing system vendors were waiting—as manufacturers addressed other priorities, given limited resources—for this moment to arrive.
A definite buzz was sparked in the space when SAP acquired manufacturing intelligence vendor Lighthammer. People still talk about what the acquisition means, and SAP now partners—it seems intensively—with several prominent manufacturing execution system (MES) vendors, giving it a plant-floor "narrative" few ERP vendors can match.
Boston is home to at least several manufacturing system vendors, visited as part of a recent East coast swing.
When last we spoke with Brooks Software, it had embarked on an ambitious strategy to open up its MES from an almost exclusive focus on the semiconductor industry to address other discrete manufacturing verticals.
On January 31, the company will have announced a regulatory compliance management suite for medical device manufacturers, called MEDIC solutions for Medtech manufacturers.
Joseph Vinhais, Brooks' VP of regulatory compliance, says Brooks' service-oriented architecture and SAP certification "will provide manufacturers with a more complete solution at significantly less risk."
Jeff Nestel-Patt, director of marketing, says the vendor already competes against other SAP partners, including Siemens and Visiprise, and that about 15 percent of its revenues comes out of high-tech manufacturing.
Iconics is one of the last privately held SCADA vendors—the others having been snatched up mainly by automation vendors—and one that still cherishes its relationships with engineers on the cutting edge. Yet it too is moving up into the manufacturing-intelligence space, and says it's the only vendor doing so with "full support" of Microsoft SharePoint portal.
Over the course of the next five years, at Johnson Controls Interiors (JCI), which produces about $19 billion worth of automotive interiors a year, Iconics, working with Tata Consultancy, will replace supervisory control systems and provide intelligence solutions in JCI's more than 500 global locations.
Consolidation has left many companies with plants running wildly disparate legacy systems. Thus, the impetus behind many manufacturing-intelligence deployments is the need for operations uniformity. But can any system allow apples-to-apples comparisons?
"Plants do have their own histories, and there may be several hundred applications used across a range of plants," says Jindrich Liska, an Iconics VP. "You need enforced metrics and coherent communication of KPIs. But you look at downtime, not number of pieces produced."
What makes GE Fanuc Automation different in its approach to execution, says Harry Merkin, director, commercial programs, is that it serves a broad base of customers all over the world. Alluding to the fact that MES success has been largely found in highly regulated or high-tech industries, Merkin says, "You wouldn't think of Nissan as an MES candidate, but we're in there."
In November 2005, GE Fanuc announced that Nissan North America has chosen Proficy as its manufacturing intelligence solution to reduce downtime in U.S. plants.
Merkin says the role of "plant IT departments is proving critical in bringing visibility to plant floors," as their tendency is to impose standards, while recognizing benefits follow from enterprise visibility.
GE and Fanuc end joint venture begun in 1986
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