ASCI Retains WBF Experts to Develop B2MML Compliance Program

The Industrial Interoperability Compliance Institute (IICI) is an industry consortium which establishes an ISA Interoperability designation to identify and promote interoperability standards compliant products and systems. The IICI vision ensures interoperability between enterprise, supply chain, and plant operations systems such as ERP, SCM, MOM, LIMS, PLM, CMMS, WMS, APS, SCADA, process control systems, and other manufacturing and production applications. The IICI members believe industrial interoperability standards allow manufacturers to build lean IT systems through common definitions of data and processes.

“B2MML and the other MOM standards provide the IT systems foundation for Lean operations through common ‘standard work’ definitions for data, processes and transaction across all plants. The standards provide a homogeneous approach for realizing adaptable global manufacturing,” explained Charlie Gifford. “Adaptive interoperability throughout business and manufacturing processes result in configurable manufacturing operations systems that enable configurable business process, interfaces, reports, and metrics; a requisite for being successful in 21st century global markets.”

The B2MML Compliance Program will be released in 2009. The program will ease the integration of business and manufacturing systems, following the ISA95 data exchange and transaction definitions using the WBF’s B2MML Data Exchange Schema standard (Business to Manufacturing Markup Language). The initial focus will be on the B2MML schemas for Production Schedules, Production Performance, Production Definition, Process Segment, Material Information, and Equipment Information. The services will support B2MML exchanges in both a non-transactional mode (ISA95 Part 2) and in a transactional mode (ISA95 Part 5). The testing environment will be based on web services to be provided by IICI.

“Part of IICI’s mission is to improve production and supply chain productivity by assuring the ability of manufacturing IT applications to interoperate through standard XML schemas and services,” said ASCI Managing Director Andre Ristaino. “The B2MML Compliance Program will make that mission a reality in 2009, and getting industry veterans on board to develop the program is a critical step for advancing the initiative.”

Business planning for IICI was completed in March 2008 by a Technical Advisory Board comprised of 10 leading global manufacturing companies. IICI expects to complete the operational development of the Institute by first quarter 2009. At that time, the Institute will begin conformance testing and offer interoperability technical support to the manufacturing marketplace.