Process control in the company
In the meantime, ERP systems are used in many manufacturing companies. The primary tasks of this system include planning material requirements as well as production planning and control. When such systems are deployed, precise planning of the interfaces and the data flow to the lower-level systems is indispensable. The ERP and MES systems are historically part of IT, while the PCS, SCADA and PLC systems are part of the world of automation. Due to the different areas and specialty classifications, it is very important to specify the shared interfaces precisely.
In project management, it is essential that both parties – from the IT environment and from the automation environment – work towards the project goal together and coordinate with each other regularly. The connection of the ERP system to production generally ensues via a manufacturing execution system (MES) as an organizational link. The MES collects the process data from the subordinate SCADA level and makes it available to the ERP system. The connection of ERP to MES is often made via remote function call RFC7 or RPC8. The process data from SCADA, which can come from different process control systems, are continuously transmitted to MES, e.g. via SQL9. The MES performs the allocation of the data to the batches and job data. All of the data recorded by the MES are thus available in the IT environment for evaluations and analyses. Detailed interface programming is frequently required for the automation of batch processes and the analysis of batch information. There are currently no uniform specifications available. A production order in MES can result in the processing of multiple orders on the PCS side. The User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries (Namur) is working on producing and establishing a batch interface specification.