MES only to connect DCS to ERP?

J

Thread Starter

Jess B

I'm interning at a simple batch process operation which uses SAP ERP effectively as an MES. Scheduling and confirmations are done directly in ERP by manual input.

At the lower levels, the DCS is ISA-88. Master recipes are authored directly in the various DCS batch software.

Connecting ERP to DCS for information exchange would make sense, in theory building on ISA-88 with ISA-95 in MES and using B2MML to connect to SAP with a single control recipe flowing from SAP to DCS and back up. Is this single control recipe a realistic possibility? I see how recipe maintenance in DCS may be elevated to MES but I struggle how it would all hold together without putting in the same info at the very top in ERP (which is far more than it needs).

Is it sensible to consider implementing an MES essentially to only coordinate flow of data (control recipe,confirmations,batch info) if there is no short term need of using to actually manage operations which will remain in ERP?

While ISA-88 has practical benefits, it seems to me ISA-95 is not as pretty or easy in the real world as the theory suggests and only really makes sense if committing to the activity operation models.
 
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