ISA-95 “Vertical” and “Horizontal” Integration

ISA-95 is an international standard which has been used for 20 years; recent transformations in operations management and computing technology has caused some to question its importance.

ISA-95 has now become extremely important – it is necessary to understand what this standard does before we can understand its importance.  This standard is an “information exchange model” focused on “level 3” (operations management functions), with specifications for information exchanges between level 4 (enterprise software) and level 3, and level 3 to level 3.

Before 2010, many operations management implementations were relatively simple, using what the author calls “vertical” integration – the dominant pattern was exchanges between level 3 and level 4, such as the following example:

In recent years, more industrial facilities have adopted the use of operations management software, including many more software components, and more customer industries, such as petroleum refining, mining etc.  For many implementations, the dominant pattern is exchanges between level 3, such as the following example:

In the above diagram, several of these activities are often implemented with multiple applications, such as work management, electronic logbook, laboratory information management, material movement tracking, data reconciliation etc. – some implementations have more than 20 applications for a single site, with multiple sites (a few dozen in a large petroleum company, several hundred in a large food and beverage company).  Much of the information exchange is level 3 to level 3 or what the author calls “vertical” integration.

So, why has ISA-95 become very important now?  One of the main reasons is that information is exchanged 10-100 times more frequently, with 10-100 times more detail.  Materials have sub materials – even mining, petroleum refining and petrochemicals deal with molecules or groups of like molecules.  Lots have sub-lots; work has much greater detail.  Determining the suitability of a previously trusted software application (including the ubiquitous Excel files) for this information exchange becomes easier when assessed against this standard.

The Benefits if Using TOGAF with ISA-95

Blog by Stan Devries:

ISA-95 is the strongest standard for operations management interoperability, and its focus is on data and its metadata.  ISA-95 continues to evolve, and recent enhancements address the needs of interoperability among many applications, especially at Level 3 (between process control and enterprise software systems).  One way to summarize ISA-95’s focus is on business and information architectures.

TOGAF is the strongest standard for enterprise architecture.  One way to summarize TOGAF’s focus is on business architecture, information architecture, systems/application architecture and technology architectures.  When considered with this perspective, ISA-95 becomes the best expression of the data architecture within TOGAF, and ISA-95 becomes the best expression of portions of the business architecture.  Central to the TOGAF standard is an architecture development method (ADM), which encourages stakeholders and architects to consider the users and their interactions with the architecture before considering the required data.  The key diagram which summarizes this method is the following:

The circular representation and its arrows summarize the governance features.  One example is the architecture vision (module A in the above diagram).  This vision could include the following principles as examples:

•          Mobile will be a “first class citizen”
•          Interaction with users will be proactive wherever possible
•          Certain refinery operations must continue to run without core dependencies
•          Take advantage of Cloud services when possible

This framework provides a better language for each group of stakeholders.  The following table, which is derived from the Zachman framework, maps these stakeholders to a set of simple categories:

The categories of “when” and “motivation” enables the architecture governance to consider transformational requirements, such as prevention of undesired situations and optimization of desired situations.  In this context, ISA-95 adds value in Data (what) and Function (how), for all of the stakeholders, but it doesn’t naturally address where, who, when and why.  Furthermore, ISA-95 doesn’t have a governance framework.  In this context, “where” refers to the architecture’s location, not equipment or material location.

TOGAF lacks the rich modeling for operations management, especially for equipment and material, which is provided by ISA-95.  The combination is powerful and it reduces any tendency to produce passive, geographically restricted architectures.