Until recently, in fact, integration of plant floor automation and other systems throughout an enterprise was prohibitively costly. Most plant floor automation systems were based on proprietary architectures that required complex, inflexible, custom-written interfaces. Not only was implementing and maintaining such integrated systems costly, but upgrading them was also difficult, if not impossible. Also complicating the process was the fact that business management applications such as SCM systems, and plant floor systems play fundamentally different roles. Plant and enterprise systems have their own objectives and characteristics, Roddy Martin, AMR Research s research director of manufacturing strategies said.
Business systems coordinate resource and planning transactions around the customer order.
Within the past few years, however, systems providers and their customers have rallied around open plant architecture standards, simplifying the task of integration. Intellution, for example, uses Microsoft s technology as the basis for its iCore architecture, which is the framework of the company s Intellution Dynamics software. Carefully The importance of successful plant automation-SCM integration makes it imperative that manufacturers undertake such projects carefully. There are numerous issues that companies must examine as part of the implementation process. Dick Hill, vice president of ARC Advisory Group, points out several of the most critical.