Process Execution and control blurs the dis-tinction often made between MES and SCADA technologies by offering a bit of the functionality of both, while reaching into the controls area as well. As a result, it ensures efficient global supply chain management by responding to the total scheduling needs of the manufacturer.

By Garry Diver

Seeing the problem properly can go a long way towards finding the proper solution. And in this regard, in manufacturing — like life — experience can be a great teacher.

If you are willing to learn.

By our track record, software companies seem to be slow learners. Users have consistently complained that software is too complex to implement, too difficult to learn, and too ponderous to use. Subsequently, the benefits vendors promote are slow in coming, if existent at all.

Fortunately, the evolution of information technology is emerging from its infancy. Much of this has to do with the state-of-the-art of such core technologies as object-oriented programming and Internet-enabled applications. But it also has to do with the humbling of vendors such that they can truly hear what customers are saying. The truth is, manufacturers looking to invest in automation are not interested in technology. Their focus remains on solving business and production problems. This has caused some software developers to reconceive the design of solutions to exploit the immense power of the microchip in new and different ways.

Some software companies are starting to take a little instruction from life, trying to see problems as manufacturers see them. Technology may be nifty, but it is no "field of dreams:" if we build it, they will come. Even if they did come, they certainly won't come back unless vendors learn to understand the manufacturing imperatives that determine success and profitability.


Achieving Peak Supply Chain Performance
Much is made of managing the supply chain, perhaps nowhere as critically as in the food industry. On this fact alone, the food industry is ripe for automation, and the challenge is exceptionally demanding. Product mix is high, margins are low, and everything depends on the product being available when the customer wants it. These factors make the food industry emblematic of some of the toughest challenges all manufacturers face.

Food processing is a highly "recipe-centric" production process. The recipe is at the heart of both the product and the process, and it is the precision blending of component ingredients with precise compliance to the process that ensures high yields, little waste and faultless adherence to schedule.

There are numerous discrete steps that comprise a run of product on a line, then packaging it appropriately to ship to fill a customer order. There is the planning phase, with some requisite level of material procurement and receiving. There is the order management phase, with the development of detailed scheduling against production constraints. And then there is the execution phase, with the necessary sequencing, monitoring and control, quality and work tracking, and packaging. The best-case scenario has everything happening according to plan. In the real-case situation, however, few things ever do. Even with the best of technology.

So the question for the manufacturer in search of an automation solution remains: What is the technology solution that can best assist me in responding to unplanned events on the plant floor so that I can make quality product at low cost, within the window of time to service my customers profitably?

Good question.

And within the question, there is good instruction as to how to go about building a solution to best address the problem.


The Emergence of the "Problem" Suite vs. the Application Suite
Historically, software vendors have taken a horizontal approach to perceiving the problem, and thus, constructing a solution, or more exactly, a series of solutions to be linked together to solve the problem. At the top of the classic hierarchical pyramid resides the planning system. This is where the recipe is defined, the material plan calculated, procurement initiated, and orders processed.

Beneath this sits the execution layer, where customer orders become work orders on dispatch production sheets; where ingredients move through processes and are monitored, tracked and packaged. At the lowest level is the control layer, which monitors equipment, assesses performance compliance and signals critical situations.

Initially, software vendors resident at the top of the pyramid attempted to add functionality that reached as deep into the pyramid as possible. MRP vendors tried unsuccessfully to manage plant floor capacity, scheduling and WIP (work in process) tracking in an attempt to bridge all the way to the control layer. Later, given the then-state-of-the-art of processing technology, this was finally deemed untenable.

Subsequently, the technological solution that software developers settled on was segmentation of the pyramid into the classic planning/execution/control model that carried us well into the 1990s.

This three-tiered approach fostered the "building-out" of horizontally organized suites of applications. This included MRP II, eventually MES, and controls. Within each of these areas are certain prescribed organizational functions. Perhaps the primary quantitative characteristic that determined which layer an application resided in was time. At the planning level, time was measured in weeks, months and quarters. At the execution level, it was measured in hours and days. And at the control layer, it was regulated in minutes, seconds and fractions thereof. This was a feasible model from a cost/benefit perspective, in part, because of the limitations of the computational horsepower required to drive the data manipulation at each layer. Expensive host computers dominated the top of the pyramid; mid-range computers ruled at the execution layer; and microprocessor-based controllers ran the plant floor. This segmentation was determined primarily by the limitations of the computing technology.


The Layerless Pyramid
The pyramid remains a useful, if not viable, model. What is critically important, however, is how solutions are structured within the pyramid. This leads us back to the importance of how we view the problem.

The challenge in the food industry — if not all packaged goods industries — is to ensure that what is done on the line is synchronized with the supply chain needs: from component material supply, to production, distribution and shipment of orders. Bradley Ward Systems refers to this domain within the production process as the realm of process execution and control (PEC).

Process execution and control blurs the distinction often made between MES and SCADA technologies. PEC is a bit of both, and reaches into the controls area as well. It is a pyramid, in a sense, within the classic plant hierarchy pyramid. It is an integrated process that embraces the full functional scope of the production line, and views the challenge more in accordance with the way production management sees it. As a result, it ensures efficient global supply chain management by responding to the total scheduling needs of the manufacturer to reflect increasingly on demand production.

The most critical business issues PEC addresses are twofold: reliable connectivity within the enterprise, ensuring maximum throughput with greatest yield; and reliable synchronization and output to the entire supply chain, ensuring optimum execution performance.

Viewing the solution holistically, PEC more closely mirrors the reality of the charter of the production line. Operators, process engineers, and ultimately, the plant manager are not interested in MES and SCADA, per se, but rather in making highly reliable, repeatable quality runs of goods. The objectives are to reduce waste and costs, improve yields and return on investment, and adhere to good manufacturing practices.

Process execution and control technology focuses specifically on achieving these objectives. It is the comprehensiveness of the focus, moving outside the marketing boundaries of traditional components of MES and SCADA, that ensures reliable performance and conformance of the entire process. And while the activity focus of PEC is local, the strategic focus is global: meeting the demand of the market that is pulling orders through the plant.

The expertise domain necessary to support the full scope of PEC includes elements of MES, SCADA and controls. Because the expertise domain is, by necessity, broad spectrumed yet specific to the industry, the technology vendor focus must be narrow.


Focus of Industry Domain Expertise Key to Solution Success
Throughout the software industry, we see greater focus on specific industry domains. Broad, cross-industry, generic solutions put too much of the onus of implementation on the manufacturer. This impacts not only cost and time-to-benefit, but the ability of the solution to ably address the problem.

We are now seeing greater emphasis within particular industries for solutions that scope out a "problem-suite" approach to production issues. Manufacturers are demanding products which deliver solutions, not tool kits which must be tailored to address specific issues. The process execution and control architecture short-cycles "time-to-benefit" by delivering a solution that is out of the box, designed to be put in place, put to work and deliver results.

We think this provides manufacturers not only a solution that will achieve the level of competitive benefit they seek, but will also do so quicker, at less cost, and with greater reliability over the long term. This is the kind of technology even manufacturers will consider neat stuff.

Technology even a manufacturer would love. What a radical notion. And about time, too.

Copyright © 2020 by APICS — The Educational Society for Resource Management. All rights reserved.

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