SAP and Siemens to develop ISA 95 links

SAP and Siemens Automation and Drives last month announced a detailed plan to link their respective business ERP systems and plant level MESs (manufacturing execution systems). The deal is responding to production supervisors and plant managers concerns over rising IT spending and the need still to improve visibility both ways – between the business and plant systems – for all round performance and management improvement. With the integration work done between mySAP ERP and Simatic IT, they say their joint offering will go a long way to helping manufacturers address these issues – also cutting costs in implementation and maintenance. Foundation technologies will include SAP’s NetWeaver Enterprise Portal and Exchange Infrastructure, as well as the ISA 95 integration standard. The latter is key: both agree that this standard provides an essential backbone – enabling real time data exchange, with exception management, for minimum cost – and thus the all-important visibility. This is the route to good workflow and visualisation.