Concepts standardizing modular automation control systems are closer to reality, with more than a year of Make2Pack progress and more than 4,000 hours in official meetings and conference calls. End users and some automation suppliers have been agreeing on language; creating, adapting, refining and combining models; preparing a report; and, ultimately, working on a specification to standardize the design models from manufacturing through packaging. Make2Pack—a joint working group of OMAC Packaging Workgroup, WBF (The Forum for Automation and Manufacturing Professionals) and ISA's SP88 committee—is developing the ISA 88 Part 5 standard: Modular Concepts for Automated Control Systems.

Will the packaging industry's machinery manufacturers give end users and automation vendors what they want—the interoperable, flexible vision of PackML V3.0? Those involved with the effort sure hope so.

The group's report, expected to be completed in March, marks the next step toward ISA 88 Part 5, an effort to give suppliers a detailed roadmap on how to structure software "to deliver the agile equipment and automation solutions to meet our ever-changing business requirements," notes David A. Chappell, chairman of Make2Pack. Chappell, of Procter & Gamble, joined with Coors, DuPont and Pfizer to invite other customers of automation and packaging equipment to firmly ask that everyone, end users, OEMs and automation vendors, follow the concepts in the emerging standard.

Why? Benefits for early adopters, as with other parts of S88, won't be lost when the standard is final, those involved say. Users benefit from consistent operational states, modes and measurements of operational equipment efficiency (OEE); a uniform control, look, feel and troubleshooting; faster machine integration, less downtime, a lower cost of ownership and simpler operations and redeployment; and significantly less validation time and effort.

For OEMs, development time is reduced, while programming is more easily reused with shorter debugging time and greater flexibility, less training, easier support, consistent specifications and more available resources to differentiate intellectual property.

Control providers need to do less training; have uniform libraries, easier acceptance and faster proliferation; have opportunity and less dependence on user standards; and can develop performance and capability-based decision making and better feature differentiation.

From similar standards efforts and several tests, enormous savings are expected; some packaging companies already are using S88 modularization techniques and have reduced design, construction and startup costs by more than 50 percent, compared to doing the same things without the standard, suggest those involved. Separating procedural instructions and control code into standard, modular pieces allows a change in procedure without having to rewrite control code.

Recent Make2Pack meeting goals, Chappell says, include developing a UML (universal modeling language), visualization for a digital device, material transfer requirements, a working HMI demonstration across vendor platforms, a modes overview and XML concepts.

The Make2Pack roadmap, most recently used at a Jan. 24 meeting at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, follows:

1a) Batch-cell procedural and equipment states; 1b) Batch unit states; 1c) Machine-line states; 1d) Machine states; 1e) State chart, the PackML state model with modes; 2) Batch-cell and unit interaction functions and named items; 3) Line and machine equipment phase interaction functions and named items; 4) Definitions; 5) Control descriptions; 6) WBF DigitalDevice, WBF VFD/VSD, WBF ServoDevice and Equipment Phase Device; 7) Describe procedure control for a machine; 8) Modes; 9a) Machine model refinement; 9b) Batch model refinement; 9c) Continuous model refinement; 9d) Unit model with objects and their relationships; 10) Compile report; 11) Advertising; 12) Develop working example; 13) WBF material transfer; and 14) PackML V3.0.

The Make2Pack meetings that are scheduled to wrap up remaining details include Feb. 14 to 16 in Milan, Italy, in conjunction with the IPACK-IMA show; a Feb. 27 conference call; and March 9 to 10 in Atlanta, at the World Batch Forum. Beyond that, work will continue to make Part 5 an ISA standard (vote by early 2007) and fast-track it as an IEC standard. Part 6 will focus on interaction of automation components, recipe phase and communications with manufacturing execution systems and enterprise resource planning systems. Part 1 may be readdressed to update definitions, language and details beyond its batch origins.

Mark T. Hoske, Control Engineering, mhoske@reedbusiness.com

For more information, see the following URLs:

For prior explanations of the efforts involved, see: “Pack Expo 2005: Unifying packaging automation standards”

www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA6255529

“WBF, OMAC, ISA harmonizing with S88 to develop new automation standard”

www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA528595

“Think Again: Comply or die

www.manufacturing.net/ctl/article/CA509813