Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group

A Collaborative Venture of OAGI, WBF, ISA, MIMOSA, and OPC

The objective of the Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group is to develop an industry guideline that defines generic business process models between the operations management and business layers of the manufacturing support system. (Overview - Sep 2006 - PPT File - 850KB)

The guideline is intended to:

• be applicable to process, discrete, and mixed-mode manufacturers,
• reflect a convergence of  the manufacturing interoperability standards work underway within ISA-SP95, OAGi, WBF, MIMOSA, and OPC
• facilitate development of reusable integration software components for processes in the form of web services in an open standard XML format, and
• provide a foundation for future alignment with the OPC Unified Architecture model, the MIMOSA open systems architecture, and the PackML work of OMAC.

In establishing this working group, OAGi, WBF, ISA, MIMOSA, and OPC are pledging to collaborate in manufacturing interoperability standards development efforts.  The nature of the collaborations will evolve and be subject to separate agreements as appropriate and necessary.  However, each organization pledges it will exert its best efforts to maintain open lines of communication and send representatives to each other's separate ongoing standards development meetings relevant to this collaboration.

Membership
Customer Advisory Council
Infrastructure Support
Intellectual Property Rights
Process
Schedule
Meeting Minutes
Information
Press Releases

Membership

At this time OAGi, WBF, ISA, MIMOSA, and OPC are the Principal Member Organizations of the working group.  Each organization has two voting representatives that serve as active, contributing members of the working group.  Each organization determines how to select their representatives, but technical expertise, commitment to be an active and collaborative participant, and an absence of commercial, proprietary positions are required. 

The Customer Advisory Council (described below) may designate up to three of its members to serve as voting members of the working group with the same membership criteria.

A quorum is defined as one voting member from each of the 6 represented organizations.

Other Member Organizations are encouraged to appoint non-voting advisory associates. The associates will monitor working group activities and contribute through the voting working group members so that the longer-term objectives to align the guideline with other industry standards can be more efficiently achieved.  The organizations invited to appoint associates include NIST and OMAC.

Additional Principal Member Organizations or Other Member Organizations may be invited to join the Working Group on majority vote of the signatories to this Memorandum of Agreement.

Customer Advisory Council

An advisory council  composed of representatives from end-user companies balanced between process, discrete, and mixed-mode manufacturers will collaborate and agree upon a recommended, prioritized list of business processes (scenarios) to be addressed by the working group.  These business processes will be documented as simple interface data flows and prioritized by the council to provide guidance and support to the working group.

The council will:

• identify industry specific needs and business scenarios with areas of overlap across industries,
• identify the underlying technologies to support deployment of standards based software components as Web Services, and
• explore interoperability standards and guidelines, and software deployment strategies to ensure a viable and unified market opportunity is available to the software suppliers. 

This end user customer guidance and support is critical to assure that the working group addresses issues that reflect market need and can lead to suppliers implementing the guideline in the form of commercial product.  It is expected that the working group will establish appropriate linkages with vertical industry groups so that the initiative reaches broad industry segments.

Infrastructure Support

ISA will provide the necessary administrative and infrastructure support at its expense to facilitate the activity of the working group.  This includes creation and maintenance of web sites including SharePoint collaboration sites, creation and maintenance of email lists, provision of MS Live Meeting services for online meetings, provision of meeting facilities at ISA headquarters, administrative staff support to manage work group activity, and marketing and public relations efforts to communicate about the working group activities.

Intellectual Property Rights

The guideline will be openly and freely available.  The guideline will be jointly copyrighted by the Principal Member Organizations and will be made available for public use royalty free.

Each Principal Member Organizations retains the right to adapt the guideline or prepare derivative works that can be separately and individually copyrighted and distributed under a business model defined solely by the individual Principal Member Organizations.

Each Principal Member Organizations retains the right to promulgate the guideline as a “standard” through the organization’s normal development and approval process.  In this instance, it is expected that the organization would clearly notate any variances from the original guideline and strive for harmonization rather than issue a conflicting or competing standard.

Should the efforts of the working group end prematurely before the completion of the guideline, the Principal Member Organizations will have royalty-free rights to use works in progress as they individually see fit.

Contributions to the working group automatically imply that the submitting participant agrees that:

• The working group may publicly disclose the contribution, and reference the name(s) of the participant(s) for the purpose of acknowledging and publishing the contribution.
• The participant identifies any holders of known copyright or patent interests in the contribution, and affirms that the copyright/patent holder grants to the Principal Member Organizations a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to include the contribution and derivative works within the copyrighted guideline arising from the working group.

A contribution is defined as any material submitted in writing or electronically whether at an in-person meeting or in any electronic conference or mailing list maintained by ISA for the Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group and which is or was proposed for inclusion in a Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group recommendation, guideline, or specification.

Process

The working group will:

• elect its chair, vice chair, and secretary at its initial meeting,
• convene open meetings (physically or online) at a minimum frequency of monthly,
• create sub-groups to work on sections of the guideline as appropriate,
• post works in progress in a public forum for comment and awareness at reasonable intervals,
• decide to expel members if cooperation, collaboration, and active contributions are not forthcoming based on a majority vote of all members, and
• strive for consensus agreement in every instance possible, but approve work on a majority vote of all members.

Schedule

The working group will

• convene its first meeting no later than May 2006,
• conduct open meetings (physically or online) on at least a monthly frequency,
• issue an prototype schema by July 2006,
• issue an interim guideline by January 2007, and
• issue the completed guideline by May 2007

Phased Approach

The working group will worked in a phased approach 

Phase 1 is focused on the OAGIS, B2MML and ISA-95 convergence as depicted in the attached figure.

OAGIS, B2MML, and ISA95 Relationships

Phase 2 is future work focused on convergence for the MIMOSA and OPC standards with the results of the Phase 1 work.

Phase 3 is future work focused on convergence of OMAC and Make2Pack standards with the Phase 2 Work

Meeting Minutes

• January 25 2007 Working Group Minutes
  • WG Interim Report
  • Item 4 - Overview - Sullivan
  • Item 5 - Overview - Unger
  • Item 6 - B2MML - Emerson
  • Item 7 - OAGIS ISA-95 - Connelly
  • Item 7 - OAGIS ISA-95 - Childress
  • Item 9 - ISA-95 Chapter 2 - Gifford
  • Item 9 - ISA-95 Chapter 3 - Gifford
  • Item 9 - MESA/ISA Call for Papers - Gifford
  • Item 12 - AIAG - Thomasma
• December 07 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• October 30 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• October 12 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• September 29 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• September 05 2006 Mapping Subgroup Minutes 
• August 30 2006 Mapping Subgroup Minutes
• August 25 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• July 28 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• July 17 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• June 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• May 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes
• May 2006 IOpCAC Update
• April 2006 Working Group Meeting Minutes

Information

For more information about the working group activities, please contact

You can join an email list to stay informed about the WG activities.

Press Releases

• 29 January 2007 ISA and OAGi Establish Memorandum of Understanding
• 17 January 2007 Major Enhancements to B2MML Now Available For Review Enhancements — Improve Support of ISA-95 While Maintaining Backward Compatibility
• 7 August 2006: Manufacturing Interoperability Working Group Establishes Guiding Principles for Convergence
• 11 May 2006: Multi-Industry Collaboration Launches Manufacturing Interoperability Initiative
• 23 March 2006: Manufacturing Interoperability Guideline Working Group - A Collaborative Venture of ISA, MIMOSA, OAGi, OPC, and WBF

Files

• Information on P2B Interoperability Standards for Discrete Manufacturing representing Nuclear, Aerospace and Defense Customers
• MESA Webcast - Emerging Technologies for Industrial Solutions