ISO TC 184 SC5 WG1
Organization, Strategies, and Philosophy
James G. Nell
US Department of Commerce
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
Gaithersburg MD 20899
1998-November
ISO TC 184 SC5 WG1
Organization, Strategies, and Philosophy
James G. Nell, NIST, USA, and Convenor TC184 SC5 WG1, Modeling and Architecture
TC184 SC5 WG1 Organization
TC184 Industrial Automation Systems and Integration has a scope that covers standardization in the field of industrial-automation systems and integration concerning discrete-part manufacturing and encompassing the application of multiple technologies; that is, information systems, machines and equipment, and telecommunications. The exception to that is in electrical and electronic equipment as dealt with by IEC technical committees. In these areas coordination occurs between IEC and ISO, specifically among TC184 and the IEC TC 44, TC 63, TC 3, and TC 93.
TC184 SC5, Architecture, Communications, and Integration Frameworks scope is standardization in the field of architecture and communications including an industrial-automation glossary and the requirements for global-programming-language environments. The chair is Emmanuel G. dela Hostria, US and the secretary is Greg Winchester, US. SC5 has four working groups:
· WG1 Modeling and Architecture
Convener: James G. Nell, US
Secretary: Greg Winchester, US
· WG2 Communications and Interconnections
Convener: Volker von Rhine, DE
Secretary: Vacant, supported by DE
· WG3 Industrial Automation Vocabulary (Disbanded)
TC184 is resolving need for a terminology facility
· WG4 Manufacturing Programming Environment
Convener: Udo Graefe, CA
· WG5 Open Systems Application Frameworks
Convener: Graeme Meyer, NZ
TC184 SC5 WG1: Modeling and Architecture
WG1 develops standards that coordinate existing, emerging, and future standards for the representation of enterprises to facilitate computer-integrated manufacturing. WG1 plans to produce standards that relate to information infrastructures, integration frameworks, enterprise models, and enterprise modeling and simulation.
ISO14258, Concepts and rules for enterprise models [1], has just been published by ISO as an International Standard. The standard specifies concepts and rules for computer-understandable models of a manufacturing enterprise to better enable enterprise processes to interoperate. The standard is very careful not to specify standard enterprise processes, standard enterprises, standard organizational structures, or standard enterprise data. In addition, this standard does not specify the enterprise-modeling process, but forms the basis by which enterprise-modeling standards can be developed where they are needed.
ISO 15704, Guidelines for enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies [2], has just completed balloting as a Draft International Standard. The standard defines requirements for enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies, as well as requirements that such architectures and methodologies must satisfy to be considered complete. The scope of these enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies covers those constituents deemed necessary to carry out all types of enterprise creation projects. These architectures also cover any incremental change projects required by the enterprise throughout the entire life of the enterprise, including enterprise creation, major enterprise restructuring efforts, and incremental changes affecting only parts of the enterprise-life cycle.
WG1 is developing a standards-landscape tool to help plan WG1 future projects by defining a logical path of planned standardization from the high-level, or enterprise-level, standards to levels low enough to be in the domain of factory-floor applications. For resources we are using input from industry; the Generalized Enterprise-Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) [3]; ISO TR 10314, Shop Floor, Reference Model for Standardization [4,5]; the CEN M-IT-04, Standardization for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies [6]; and the TC184 and SC5 strategic plans [7,8].
The current versions of ISO 14258, ISO 15704, and their parts, and other relevant documents are posted on a World-Wide-Web site for a persistent reference. Activities of the WG1, such as agendas for upcoming meetings, past meeting minutes, schedules, and planned standardization are also posted on this World-Wide-Web site: http://www.nist.gov/sc5wg1/.
Standardization Strategies
The SC5 Strategy Planning Group is the advisory body to SC5 tasked to define and review the SC5 standards strategy. The SC5 standards strategies assume that SC5 will be the mechanism by which TC184, according to its own strategic plan, will provide an integrating overview across all areas of industrial automation. As such, TC184 will rely upon SC5 as the developer of standards that integrate the standards of the other TC184 SCs, as well as the standards of other relevant bodies. Therefore, the plan makes references to work under the responsibility of TC184 SCs and other bodies.
The plan also assumes that SC5 itself cannot produce all of the standards needed to fulfill the objectives stated in this plan. In some cases, SC5 must rely on other bodies to produce standards that act as catalysts or substitutes for SC5 standards.
The Industrial and Economic Environment in which TC184 SC5 WG1 Operates
Assumptions about conditions expected during the medium term of three to seven years.
· Manufacturing enterprises, due to competition, must continue to deliver increased customer satisfaction and improved quality, with increased efficiency, at lower costs--both of production and ownership--in a shorter lead time
· Customers are moving away from traditional process-oriented standards to an overall performance-related approach to products, which gives businesses some flexibility in determining how the required performance is to be delivered
· Although there is a clear business opportunity for standards that contribute to these objectives, the awareness of users and vendors about existing standards, their status and usefulness and the ongoing work is at a very low level. The level of implementation of existing standards is poor, with very few being widely used and implemented. This in turn leads to a growing base of existing vendor-specific solutions, since the current and future standards will only apply for the next generation of systems
· The increasing use of open standards is already leading to a reduction in resources for formal standardization from the major vendors, impacting both technical activities and the national standards bodies themselves
· The contents and descriptions in standards are very complex and even for most experts in the user industry not understandable. Documentation for guidance and implementation is generally poor, difficult to use or non-existent
· During the medium term of three to seven years, computer and information technologies will continue to change and progress very rapidly
· The new ISO directives will have imposed a tighter schedule for the development of standards. There will be a maximum of three years from new-work-item proposal to International Standard approval and a new-standard proposal shall be very well defined at the start. As is currently the case, the approval of five countries ready to support the work with nominated experts will continue to be essential for any further steps in the standardization work to occur.
Enterprise-Level Trends Expected from the Above Assumptions
· There will be increased use of collaborative structures, involving partnerships that may be created and dissolved rapidly to meet changing market needs.
· The various business functions through the life cycle of a product will be undertaken by increasingly integrated processes. The functions will continue to be optimized to drive down costs and cycle times. For example, the support of complex engineering products will be integrated with the technical definition of the product and the management of its configuration through its life cycle
· Manufacturing equipment will need to be capable of being deployed more flexibly to support manufacture of a variety of products
Technologies and Associated Standards Needed to Support Above Trends
· Business-information requirements that are clearly specified, along with information flows that are optimized, to form the backbone of both internal communication and delivery to the customer
· Elements of manufacturing equipment that are designed for easy integration through local and remote networks
· Modular sets of information-technology tools, used as building blocks that can be assembled into systems with a minimum of integration costs
· Simulation tools to model business processes and operations, and to evaluate the business impact of proposed changes
· Real-time management and maintenance of assets, using multimedia for delivery and presentation of information
Needs from the Standardization Process
In general, the standardization process will need to make more efficient use of its resources, and to work to develop its market in parallel with the standards process. More specifically, the standardization process should provide for:
· Features and functionality that are based on actual and future needs of the users
· Confirmation of industry interest through nomination of experts and/or endorsement of the need for the work
· Funding resources that are managed and directed to match industry priorities
· Cooperation with other standards bodies to avoid duplication and conflict. This would include joint development
· Development work undertaken with careful project planning using small working groups and using phases where first results can be achieved rapidly
· Close cooperation with ongoing research and development work
· Supplementary guidance information for industry, users and vendors, that can be given in an easily readable and understandable short form
· Management of standards to ensure consistency of changes
· Implementers involved from the start of the process and pilot implementations encouraged in parallel with the standardization process
· Monitoring of implementations and addressing of barriers to their progress by standards bodies
TC184 SC 5 WG1 Priorities Regarding Work Items
The priority for WG1 when considering new-work-item proposals will be:
· Standards that enable integration within the manufacturing domain
· Standards that enable integration of the manufacturing domain with other enterprise domains
WG1 will not consider proposals that are not at all concerned with the manufacturing domain.
TC184 SC5 WG1 Work Program and Objectives
Strategic Objective: Enable enterprise agility and extension through architecture, data/information model, physical model, and profile standards for the integration of systems within an enterprise and between enterprises.
Needed Areas of Work to Achieve Objective
· Concepts and rules for enterprise models (International Standard Q3, 1998)
· Requirements for enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies (DIS available Q1, 1999)
· Enterprise-modeling execution and integration services (CEN work occurring; no SC 5 NP submitted)
· Neutral representation of manufacturing ontologies (no NP submitted)
· Management and reconciliation of context-dependent semantics; Alignment of context-driven semantics across enterprise domains (no NP submitted)
· Modeling of sharing and exchange processes in the extended enterprise (no NP submitted)
Strategic Objective: Ensure consistent, integrated standards that can be used by the industrial automation community, including other standards developers.
Needed Areas of Work to Achieve Objective
· SC 5 as technical oversight group for TC 184 (no standards development involved)
· Application program (semantic) repository, involving SC 1, SC 2, and SC 5 WG 4 model alignment (no NP submitted)
· Inter-SC model integration (no NP submitted)
· Develop list of industrial automation standards and reference documents to confirm and verify need for work items and to define their scope (no standards development involved)
· Joint SC experts meeting (no standards development involved)
ISO TC184 SC5 WG1 Philosophy
WG1 has reviewed several enterprise-reference architectures; for example the GERAM [3], developed by the IFAC/IFIP Task Group on enterprise integration, the CIMOSA, developed by the AMICE consortium [9], the PERA, developed by Purdue University [10], and the GRAI-GIM developed by the University of Bordeaux [11]. They have similarities. WG1 feels that the development of architectures and enterprise designs will continue regardless of any attempt to standardize them. In fact standardizing these things may impede the way to integration. WG1 conclusions:
· WG1 is not standardizing an architecture since architectures are best developed for the specific needs of the developer; for example each enterprise will choose its own life-cycle focus and set of processes that it needs. The TC184 SC5 WG1 standard ISO 14258, Concepts and Rules for Enterprise Models, must be a top-level document that provides the concepts that relate to creating enterprise models for all manufacturing enterprises. These architectures should be developed with the ISO 14258 enterprise-model concepts in mind. Then, models developed for use within that architecture will be consistent with models developed for an architecture developed by another group. This way WG1 does not have to rationalize each and every group that decides to create an architecture.
· Given any enterprise-representation architecture, a good set of enterprise models will enable many things: for example, enterprises can make more informed phased investments to improve integration capability, enterprise information will be sharable in both intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise scenarios, enterprise performance can be better predicted, enterprise building and simulation is more consistent, and enterprise operators can have a better and more consistent understanding of complex interactions among processes.
· WG1 recognizes that technology is developing in several areas simultaneously and the specific technology a specific enterprise process will confront on either an intra-enterprise or an inter-enterprise interaction event will change continuously. Therefore the reasonable approach, it seems to WG1, is to provide for and encourage mediating architectures. Process interactions should allow each side to advertise with which technologies and level of technology it is equipped, and let the process software mediate the communication rather that standardize everything in advance. This will encourage development in the vendor community and a use of de-facto standards that may allow developments and interoperability to occur simultaneously.
· The WG1 responsibility in this approach is for our standards to give a guideline structure and rules for the information required on each side of the mediation. This structure is what is envisioned for the document ISO 14258; that is, to present rules, guidelines, and constraints for enterprise models. Each compliant model would contain the same sort of information that the mediation process would need to effect interoperability.
Enterprise-Model Interoperability
Concepts
An enterprise model is information. It consists of structured data and rules about the information that applications use to do their work. An enterprise is large and complex, meaning that many models for many purposes are required to describe what is happening at any one time. Because of the diversity of the applications in an enterprise the information contained in the models is encoded in many formats depending upon the needs of information generators and information users. Models can be in the form of organigrams, spreadsheets, engineering drawings, process-flow data, CAE, CAD, and CAM files. These are the so-called islands of information or automation.