I have been contrasting my experience on the ISA-95 committee with my previous experiences with other software development and integration “industry standards”. Over the past 20 years a large number of software standards have been proposed, with some fully developed, but few adopted in any significant way. Although all standards begin life with the idea that they will help solve real problems, most fail for reasons familiar to anyone who has spent time in the software development or systems integration industry. - Short-sighted vendor adherence to their proprietary interests
- Overly ambitious scope or complexity
- Does not include or specify functional components
- Late delivery – industry solves problem before standard becomes available
- Lost focus – fails to address key issues when complete
- Vendor-driven with little or no end-user involvement
- Poor adoption by vendors due to implementation cost, competitive issues, etc.
- Conflicts with competing standards
Likewise, the few really successful standards seem to share similar characteristics, including most or all of the following: - They solve a widely recognized problem
- There is financial benefit to both vendors and end-users
- Broad-based real multi-vendor support
- Strong industry-leading champion or champions
- Balance of vendor and end-user involvement
- Well developed focused functionality
- Includes or specifies functional components
Some of the best examples of widely adopted standards that have enabled the development of superior applications and integrated solutions include: OPC exhibits the best and most complete combination of successful characteristics. Consider the prospect of developing complex, highly integrated manufacturing systems without these standards. I would rather not. ISA-95 has the characteristics of a successful standard. It is currently being applied to real-life situations by some of the user members. It solves a significant problem in an increasingly technologically complex environment that requires tight integration of products from multiple vendors. Most major vendors of process information and management systems are participating in the development of this standard. ISA-95 consists of an object model that details the information flow and content between layers and components and a matching XML schema. Much of the object model and XML schema comes from an already established standard (ISA-88 and B2MML). In addition to the many vendors large and small contributing to the development of ISA-95, it helps to have the largest enterprise software vendor SAP with a large user base endorse the standard. NWA, the largest vendor of SPC software to the Process Industries, is an active contributor to the Quality part of ISA-95. End users working with the completed section of ISA-95 have noticed that the accommodations for their quality functions were inadequate, and the committee decided to create a specific Part for quality. I have been impressed with the process the committee uses to develop the standard, with their focus on immediate usability, scope control, and insistence on end-user involvement. For NWA, the addition of a specific ISA-95 Part for Quality will provide unified communications of quality-related information between process components and business layers. This will lead to significant benefits as the use of Manufacturing Analytics becomes the primary means for manufacturers to understand and evaluate their processes. It will be easier to combine process data and related information from different applications. This will also simplify the delivery of analytics results to users and other applications based on their roles and requirements. The transition of manufacturing systems from “reactive” to “predictive” response models through the application of Manufacturing Analytics becomes much more feasible and significantly increases the bottom-line value of highly integrated manufacturing and enterprise systems.
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Industry Solutions 
