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ISA-95 Series of Standards: Enterprise-Control System Integration
What Is ISA-95?
ISA-95, also known as ANSI/ISA-95 or IEC 62264, is an international set of standards aimed at integrating logistics systems with manufacturing control systems. It organizes technology and business processes into layers defined by activities taking place, and it outlines how an enterprise can set up an interface to communicate among these layers.
The ISA-95 standards framework is widely accepted as essential to modern manufacturing. It relies on the well-known Purdue Reference Model for computer-integrated manufacturing to describe network segmentation in industrial control systems. ISA-95 establishes an architecture based on the Purdue model that enterprises can apply regardless of the technology used. This equipment hierarchy model can also be applied across discrete, continuous and logistics industries.
ISA-95 Part 1 includes a summary of the scope of the manufacturing operations and control domain; a discussion of how physical assets of a manufacturing enterprise are organized; a list of the functions associated with the interface between control functions and enterprise functions; and a description of the information shared between control functions and enterprise functions.
ISA-95 Part 2 specifies conceptual interface content exchanged between manufacturing control functions and other enterprise functions. The interface considered is between level 3 manufacturing systems and level 4 business systems in the hierarchical model defined in Part 1 of this standard. The goal is to reduce the risk, cost and errors associated with implementing the interface.
ISA-95 Part 3 defines activity models of manufacturing operations management that enable enterprise system to control system integration. Part 3 of this standard describes a model of the activities associated with manufacturing operations management, level 3 functions and an identification of some of the data exchanged between level 3 activities.
ISA-95 Part 4 further defines the object models and attributes involved in data exchange between activities of manufacturing operations management defined in ISA-95 Part 3. The models and terminology defined in ISA-95 Part 3 and this Part 4:
Emphasize good manufacturing operations management integration practices during the entire life cycle of the systems;
Can be used to improve existing integration capability of manufacturing operations management systems; and
Can be applied regardless of the degree of automation.
ISA-95 Part 5 defines transactions in terms of information exchanges between applications performing business and manufacturing activities associated with levels 3 and 4 of the ISA-95 model. The exchanges are intended to enable information collection, retrieval, transfer and storage in support of enterprise-control system integration.
ISA-96 Part 6 describes a set of messaging services for information exchanges across levels 3 and 4 of the ISA-95 model, and within level 3, between applications performing business and manufacturing activities. Part 6 defines a standard interface for information exchange between systems.
ISA-95 Part 7 defines technology independent services and messages for associating and mapping aliases (equivalent identifiers) and associated context that are exchanged between manufacturing operations domain applications and applications in other domains. The identification of the organization and owner of each system and the lifecycle management of the equivalent object namespaces is outside the scope of this standard.
ISA-95 Part 8, the most recent update to ISA-95, specifies a method to define information exchange profiles for specific groups of implementations of ISA-95 models. The information exchange profiles specify object models exchanged on interfaces between level 4 and level 3 or between level 3 activities. The information exchange profile specifies verbs and nouns used for ISA-95 implementations.
The International Society of Automation (ISA) developed ISA-95 to create an abstract model for information exchange among manufacturing control functions and business functions in an enterprise. The ISA-95 standards framework defines the interface between these functions with the goal of building an exchange that is robust, safe and cost-effective. It also helps manufacturing personnel and information technology (IT) personnel collaborate by determining key terms for integration projects — and reduces the risk, cost and errors associated with implementing them.
The ISA-95 Model
The ISA-95 model consists of five layers or levels.
Level 0: Physical production processes
Level 0 describes the physical processes of running a plant. It refers to machinery and other assets in the field or on the floor.
Level 1: Sensing and manipulating the production process
Level 1 describes the collection of data and the manipulation of physical processes. It refers to sensors, smart devices, valves and other devices that sense or affect production.
Level 2: Monitoring and supervising control
Level 2 describes the monitoring and supervising of physical processes in the manufacturing environment. It refers to programmable logic controllers (PLCs), distributed control systems (DCSs) and other control devices.
Level 3: Manufacturing operations management
Level 3 describes manufacturing execution systems (MES) and other systems such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) that manage manufacturing operations. The ISA-95 standard primarily deals with the interface between levels 3 and 4.
Level 4: Business planning and logistics
Level 4 describes all the activities related to running a business. It includes enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
ISA-95, Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0
Technology has evolved several times over since ISA-95 was established in the mid-1990s, but the standards framework presents an abstract model that accommodates a wide range of technologies and systems. Its scope prioritizes activities, not technologies, and its intended purpose as a tech-agnostic communication model remains relevant.
In the current era of Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart manufacturing, data flows are more distributed, and the ISA-95 model originated as a hierarchy. Still, the levels allow practitioners to describe boundaries between systems, an essential step in integration projects. ISA-95 remains in wide use today among manufacturing enterprises as a reference architecture and as an effective way to drive interoperability.
In fact, ISA-95 is the most comprehensive definition of modern manufacturing information exchange in the world. Manufacturers rely on these standards to define, develop and integrate many complex systems and processes in Industry 4.0 and beyond.
Specific Questions?
For more information, contact us at standards@isa.org. If you are an ISA member, you can also view a list of standards committee members.
