International Standards for System Integration

The growing complexity of manufacturing systems and the desire to more tightly couple business processes with manufacturing operations is resulting in many efforts to understand the mechanisms and opportunities for system integration in industrial enterprises. To improve the efficiency of beneficial interactions between systems and system components, the international community is adopting a wide range of standards through formal development and review processes. For this presentation, the focus is on the standards efforts for industrial automation conducted by the International Standards Organization Technical Committee 184 Subcommittee 5 working groups (ISO TC184/SC5). The work products range from shop floor communication structures through enterprise level system concept management – all with a process centric orientation. Of particular interest are the enablers of interoperable components along the supply chain and support for systems throughout their lifetime. IMPACT OF STANDARDS ON INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION While many aspects of industrial automation can benefit from the use of International Standards, three benefits immediately come to mind. First, standards play an increasingly important role in both physical and logical tool use. From electrical connectors to data transfer protocols, standards support the creation of reusable parts and methods throughout the system life-cycle. Second, standards generally codify existing practice reinforced by substantial research. The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) is a leader in practice development and education for manufacturing enterprises. And third, standards create metrics against which an industrial enterprise can assess it own performance. An international standard emerges only after the subject matter has been carefully crafted to promote a practice that many agree works well in international commerce. While SME does not maintain formal liaisons with the ISO, its members are constantly using or being exposed to the ISO standards portfolio and some individual members participate in ISO related activities. Beyond the ISO, the SME does participate in identifying and instilling best practices in manufacturing operations. Knowledge of international standards and their sphere of use will enable the benefits of standards use to accrue to the broader industrial engineering community and their companies. THE INTEROPERATION GOAL Are we there yet? The success of our industrial age and our emerging information age is critically dependent upon meaningful interactions among elemental system components. While human elements of behaviour will continue to serve central roles in strategic guidance, we are progressing toward systemic component and system interactions across layers of enterprise structure for which human mediation is no longer essential. The use of adopted international standards enables the uniform selection of interaction mechanisms to drive more efficient and effective system performance. Central to TC184 SC5, as well as many other ISO subcommittees, is the effort to bring forward standardization that supports integration and interoperability in manufacturing enterprises. And while we