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A capital idea in process automation -
By Mark Taft
Two primary market drivers will cause manufacturers to spend capital
expenditure (CAPEX) on automation systems and related applications
in the coming year. The first is the drive to continue to increase
manufacturing productivity in order to respond to the new manufacturing
capacity coming on-line in developing regions. The second is compliance
with regulatory and safety requirements.
Opportunities for productivity improvement lean heavily beyond
traditional manufacturing process optimization toward business process
optimization. This is not new.
The opening salvo from manufacturing process companies to gain better
business optimization came in the last decade when they spent billions
of dollars to install a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
The companies justified these systems on the entire company's need
to integrate the business world with the shop floor. In many cases,
the project to install and assimilate the ERP system overwhelmed
the organization, and total integration never happened. Business
process improvement requires the adoption of best-in-class processes
and automation and streamlining of those processes wherever possible.
Integration of shop floor automation with business systems is a
necessary foundation for this to occur.
Legacy integration
Automation users will continue to feel the impact of the need
for real integration between existing control systems and the other
information sources in the plant, such as business systems
Take a look at the automation system on the shop floor. It is a
collection of aging and disparate, loosely connected systems. That
alone can lead to difficulty in getting information from the manufacturing
operations to all the people that need it in a timely and usable
fashion, and acts as a barrier to increased productivity gains.
Meanwhile, manufacturers have invested heavily to install state
of the art ERP systems in an effort to improve productivity. Companies
have not implemented the integration for myriad of reasons, including
project over-runs, lack of resources, and technology barriers. While
most of the ERP installations have now stabilized, they are not
providing the productivity boost expected due to this lack of integration.
And while the new ERP system that should work with plant floor automation
systems is not fully integrated, there is pressure to upgrade the
aging automation systems on the factory floor to address rising
lifecycle costs, risk to operations, and technology barriers to
productivity improvements.
Quality time
In the near future, there will be solutions that facilitate
true integration and information exchange between these systems,
unifying collaborative production management, ERP and other systems
so real-time information allows a manufacturer to make choices and
decisions that have a positive impact on the business.
Morgan Stanley estimates $65 billion worth of automation systems
installed in process manufacturing facilities have reached the end
of their traditional lifecycle. This represents a challenge to users.
These "closed" systems are a barrier to the integration necessary
for business process optimization. The majority of the automation
systems installed in North America are mature systems that will
need a migration plan or an upgrade to help manufacturers remain
competitive. The issue is the investment-intellectual and capital-in
these systems is massive. Automation users know they need to move
their operations forward, while at the same time get as much value
out of their existing investment as possible.
The other area of focus for CAPEX investments in automation
is coming from regulatory and safety requirements. Users need to
satisfy these requirements in a way that is a natural extension
to their automation system. For example, in the life sciences industries
compliance with the FDA 21-CFR-Part 11 regulations are driving business
process changes and investments.
The emergence of new regulations, the cost of insurance, and
the cost of compliance in the traditional fashion with process automation
safety requirements is causing customers to look for more effective
and cost-efficient methods to protect lives, equipment, and the
environment. Users need automation that incorporates the capability
to support embedded safety and process control functionality in
a single control, operations, information management, and asset
optimization environment.
Behind the byline
Courtesy : Mark Taft is senior vice president for systems
marketing with the Process Automation business area at ABB Inc.
You can reach him at mark.taft@us.abb.com.
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