ISA-95 and Operations Transformation

Tyhe questions around S95 where and how to use continue to grow, especially as the guidance for operational system alignment, we though it was time to give an update.

The ISA-95 standard has been in place for over 20 years, and recent progress in operations management transformation and Cloud adoption have triggered questions about this standard.  The author offers an observation:

·         ISA-95 is essential for higher performing operations who are implementing sustainable improvements, in conjunction with best practices such as lean.

Higher performing operations often have the capability to achieve and sustain best practices which directly produce best business performance.  A key enabler to this improvement is exchanging operations knowledge in more detail and more frequently.  Examples include:

•          Tracking of containers in high-volume continuous food cooking, so that successfully cooked containers can be recovered after a machinery failure with compliant tracking and reporting.
•          Assessment and tracking of ore grades in mining from the pit to the port, including in the stock piles and in the rail cars, so that yields and prices can be optimized.
•          Assessment and tracking of chemical components in petroleum refining and petrochemical manufacturing, so that yields and costs can be optimized.
•          Detailed and accelerated distribution of new manufacturing instruction in consumer-packaged goods, food and beverage and discrete/aerospace manufacturing, so that new products can be introduced much faster.

Each of the above examples depend upon exchanging “insight” in great detail throughout the manufacturing/processing and its associated supply chain.  Lean principles can be reliably applied, including eliminating wasted work; specialists can reduce time spent on producing useful information and focus on continuous improvement.

ISA-95 provides an information exchange model, and standardizes how activities are defined and relate to each other, such as quality, inventory, maintenance, production and the notion of “work”.  Sets of information are exchanged as “events”, and the relationships between activities and events are standardized.  Without this information exchange model, knowledge workers don’t have a sustainable operations management system, and as a result, the organization doesn’t have sufficiently useful information.

How can architecture decisions be made?  Consider the following information model in light of the 3 implementation options summarized above:

Wherever these functions are implemented in different locations (with or without Cloud), what mechanisms are necessary for requirements such as “business continuity”, “access control” etc.?  How much context must be exchanged between sites and the Cloud to recover from network and Cloud outages?  Only an appropriately detailed and standardized information model can help.

ISA-95 focuses on the functions of operations management; it is independent of the implementation, including technology and location.  It is the foundation of high performance operations management transformation.