Manufacturing Convergence and the Power of Partnerships

In my nearly 30 years working in manufacturing, I’ve witnessed many significant technical evolutions such as flexible, scalable control systems and the growth of open networks and information systems across the plant. What’s remained constant, however, is the quest to help manufacturers get more goods to market, at higher quality levels, and at less cost.

Today, we face new challenges that extend beyond traditional productivity. We need to bring innovative products to market faster, meet local demands in a global market, and produce in safer, more sustainable ways. That’s certainly requiring new manufacturing processes, but it’s also compelling forward-thinking companies to unify manufacturing with other functions throughout the entire enterprise and across the supply chain. By leveraging a concept we call “Manufacturing Convergence”—the merging of traditionally separate functions and systems—we can create unique new capabilities to respond to these emerging challenges.

Embracing Manufacturing Convergence requires an open mind and willingness to question the status quo. It requires thinking about how to combine systems, technology and people in new and different ways. It challenges us to create greater value from our existing tangible assets and to leverage technology to unleash our greatest intangible assets: our creativity and our imagination.

Take the integration of the core technology disciplines of information and control. Imagine what you could do if you had streamlined information flow through the plant and process: reduce integration time, optimize process yield, and minimize equipment downtime.

However, without tight coupling of plant information with the process and machines, none of this is possible. Contemporary, convergence-ready control systems facilitate the flow of information without sacrificing the needs of real-time control and safety. Simple data interfaces are not sufficient. The control system must directly and deeply support object-oriented models of the machines and processes if they are to seamlessly converge with the needs of the plant information systems.

A powerful facilitator of convergence is a modern, high-performance communications infrastructure. By adhering to a standard, unmodified approach to the communications discipline, it is now possible to balance the security and manageability needs of IT with the performance and availability needs of the controls engineer. This same standard, unmodified approach will enable the rapid adoption of emerging technologies such as voice, video, and a range of mobility applications—unleashing even more opportunities for collaboration throughout the manufacturing environment. Imagine the possibilities.

A fourth, often forgotten technology discipline of the manufacturing world is power, the muscle of the factory. If power is not part of your convergence thought processes today, it should be. In a world hungry for energy efficiency and asset reliability, the convergence of power and energy management into control, communications, and information systems has become an imperative. Contemporary intelligent power control equipment allows energy to be a tightly controlled variable in the production process and an economic input for broader business optimization.

To enable manufacturing convergence in this tight economic environment, the architectural principles of scalability, openness, and information-enablement need to be applied across all of the technology disciplines. This not only facilitates integration among the disciplines, but it allows greater leverage of investments and resulting innovations made by others across a much broader range of industries. For example, Rockwell Automation has aligned its vision of Manufacturing Convergence and the associated architectural principles with other leading vendors to facilitate this leverage.

We’re working with Cisco to speed the convergence between traditionally separate approaches to networking taken by IT and plant operations. This has resulted in new, converged offerings and a shared industrial reference architecture to facilitate real-time collaboration between manufacturing, engineering and suppliers in an open, yet secure, manner.

With Dassault Systèmes, we’re expediting convergence of cutting-edge technologies in the area of digital manufacturing, with the aim to digitize design-to-manufacture processes. The ultimate goal is integrating CAD, product lifecycle management (PLM) tools, simulation software, analytical applications, and control technologies. This interplay between design and manufacturing will help increase efficiencies in the design process and reduce the time between design and delivery.

With Microsoft, we’re exploring new and unique ways to “mash up” data from disparate sources—including manufacturing—to deliver even more actionable data and facilitate collaboration.

Today’s most successful manufacturers recognize that this new economic environment requires broader thinking and a commitment to look beyond traditional productivity measures for success. Compressing time to market, delivering the right products to a constantly shifting global marketplace, and committing to safer, more sustainable production all require the more creative leverage of existing assets and more rapid introduction new innovations. Convergence of manufacturing disciplines offers a practical path to these objectives. Those that do it well themselves while leveraging expertise of others, will emerge as the market leaders.