Paul called us by the time of the keynote speech given by Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors, the cool guys that make an electrical roadster.

To my surprise it turns out that Eberhard had been given the boot by Tesla last year for undisclosed reasons, he himself made fun of the whole story during his speech.

The next big expectation speech is the "Wodnerware Roadmap" by Rashesh Mody, who will reveal the 'how and when' of Wonderware's brand new MES toy.

Interesting enough, from the initial feedback it appears that Beeond is possibly the most successful solutions provider for Wonderware MES, with 3 Factelligence-based projects on new customers this year...

London Heathrow, Terminal 4, on my way back home one nice September afternoon. On my 2 hours layover I wander around the terminal, looking for some time to kill. It’s a Saturday, and I don’t feel like pulling out the laptop after a busy week. I need some coffee.

As I pass the Currency Exchange kiosks I glance at a familiar sign, and the unmistakable branded scent veers me towards the girl at the counter. Starbucks Coffee. “Doppio Espresso, please”, I like to say that, because I have to fake the way English speakers pronounce these words; if I say it the “proper” way (my native language is Italian), most of the times they don’t understand me.

But that’s the point. I could have gone to a Costa Coffee (all over the British airports) or other java powered outfits. The reason why I always go for the green “Starbucks” sign is for the very same reason they made themselves such a success: those two words “Doppio Espresso” will give me almost exactly the very same thing no matter where in the world I am.

This is the power of the standardization. Of course, you wouldn’t find any of those green signs in Italy like you don’t find Pizza Hut or Dean Martin’s CDs… but at least you would still drive your car on the right lane.

Those who travel frequently will recognize themselves being in the habit of sticking to widely available brands, products, hotel chains, wireless providers, etc. It is just so convenient and limits the risks, improves the decision time and most important, often does not require translation (everybody can say “Coca Cola”).

This proves the need for my job: the standardization of systems and processes in an organization.

I spent the week meeting Jean Vieille in Paris and Bianca Scholten in Belgium for our common activities in the ISA 95 interoperability standard. The progress made in the last couple of years for the adoption of this standard is quite impressive.

This made me think about the Swiss Army Knife : I imagined at some point a Swiss soldier - patrolling the beautiful Alps looking for a war he wouldn’t join - pulling out a pocket blade to start carving a pipe out of a dried tree branch. Of course, Swiss people are usually quite inventive and industrious, so I pictured our young fellow struggling to carve a round and deep hole in the center of the wood piece. A nail or more pointy tool would do, hmmm, how about a corkscrew! To seal the joints with some spare leather he starts chewing on the tip of his belt: “what a treat if I had my scissors…”.

The Business to Manufacturing Markup Language (B2MML) has reached its forth major release, which now includes the transactions as per the ISA 95 Part 5 specifications. The Web Service Definition Language ISA 95 working group [link to codeplex.com ] started working on the actual implementation of those transactions.

To quote Keith Unger [link here] as he often comments in the committee meetings, “in order to build this room people used more than one standard”. We are at a point where in order to achieve interoperability and harmonization of enterprise systems we need more that one blade.

To that, I would like to point out the joint efforts made by the Open O&M standard consortium to release a multi-purpose collaboration solution for manufacturing and maintenance management systems. I am part of another working group that will be looking at the touchpoints between ISA 95 and SCOR.

With SAP playing a big role in the standard value proposition, we cannot forget our meetings in Redmond last June where Microsoft showed interest and commitment in ISA 95. Plus, the usual suspects (ABB, Invensys, Rockwell, Siemens, IBM, and others).

It’s really worth to stay tuned to follow this new trends that drive the market and the consensus in the world of manufacturing intelligence, not only for ISA 95/B2MML but to all those efforts to baseline the communications in such a diverse offering in terms of solutions, platforms and best practices.

“Is that for here or to go?”, as they say at Starbucks. Mind you, the double shot in UK costs about 4 bucks…

April 2007

Beeond President and CEO Costantino Pipero has co-authored the newly released ISA Guide entitled "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Manufacturing Operations Management: ISA-95Best Practices Book 1.0." More on the book at   Amazon.com

About ISA
Founded in 1945, ISA (www.isa.org) is a leading,global, nonprofit organization that is setting the standard for automation by helping over 30,000 worldwide members and other professionals solve difficult technical problems, while enhancing their leadership and personal career capabilities. Based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, ISA develops standards; certifies industry professionals; provides education and training; publishes books andtechnical articles; and hosts the largest conference and exhibition for automation professionals in the Western Hemisphere. ISA is the founding sponsor of The Automation Federation (www.automationfederation.org). 

• May 3, 2007 - World Batch Forum2007 - Beeond President and CEO Costantino Pipero willpresented his White Paper entitled "SustainableBusiness Process Management with BPMN, XAML and B2MML".

• March 6, 2006 World Batch Forum2006 - Beeond President and CEO Costantino Pipero and Kishen Manjunath, Honeywell Process Solutions presented a White Paper  entitled "ISA S95 Implementation Best Practices Workflow Descriptions using B2MML".