Standard plant portals due out this summer

Better, standards-based communication between shopfloors and business systems – and better, real-time access to information for managers in both environments – are set to emerge from SAP in the form of a suite of portals, starting this summer. SAP is developing several business style dashboards for operational plant and factory managers, harnessing messaging based on its Netweaver integration platform and the emerging ISA S95 manufacturing execution standard. First will be the Plant Manager dashboard, which, according to SAP’s Eddie Whitfield, “will be released with SAP ERP 2005 in June.” To follow next year are Production Supervisor, Quality Inspector and Maintenance Worker Dashboards. “These are very key developments for manufacturing companies,” says Whitfield. “There’s still a major disconnect between ERP and the shopfloor… We expect these dashboards to provide much better plant level visibility.” SAP says it surveyed 80 plant mangers to define the requirements of its dashboards. “The common problem was that information gets to plant managers too late: it goes from the shopfloor to maintenance to the supervisor, production scheduler, and only then to the plant manager. By then there’s no time to react.” The problem is most acute in the discrete sectors – SAP cites high tech, industrial machinery and medical devices. But most will recognise the picture, including plant managers in the process industries. And it applies equally to highly automated plants and those where there’s very little automation. Developing real-time communications between the business and plant worlds is hardly new. But what’s intriguing about this development is twofold. First, it’s being based on the ISA standards, which have strong user acceptance and guidance. Second it’s potentially universal. “This is a standards-based messaging system for automation products and any ERP system,” Whitfield told MCS.