SOA and Manufacturing

An SOA is a framework that enables the integration and interoperability of dissimilar systems. At its heart are three basic elements: a collection of callable services, a protocol to access them, and a catalog of all the services that are available. Bridging these fine-grained functional services to a business application is the role of a complementary technique to SOA — business process modeling.

SOA is a collection of applications -- abstracted so they appear to be services -- residing on a network. These services communicate among each other in a Web-based language with a common interface. The data from these applications are used and combined across whatever part of the IT infrastructure is SOA enabled.

For example, there might be several applications tied into a company's inventory management system. Instead of running each related application on its own applicationserver, behindthe corporate firewall, companies could push the applications out to Web servers and access that data as a service.

SOA enables organizations to make the transition from an application-centric view of the world to a process-centric one. Within an SOA, the traditional stand alone application paradigm is replaced by a process-centric view of IT systems comprising services that enable communication among applications in a distributed environment. Systems are integrated, but flexible; manufacturers can easily call upon different functionality as needed to support the process, while maintaining the integrity of the data and IT architecture.

Although the concept of SOA has been with us for some time, its more widespread use is a newer phenomenon. According to Gartner Research, by 2008, SOA will be a prevailing software engineering practice, ending the 40 year domination of monolithic software architecture." In addition, Gartner projects that "by 2008, more than 75 percent of then-current application packages either will be natively SOA or will expose SOA interfaces through a wrapping layer of interfaces."

According to the Yankee Group, 2006 will be the year of initial SOA project completion on a broad basis. The research firm broke down the level of acceptance by vertical markets, citing wireless carriers, financial services and government as leaders among verticals in current SOA installments. Over the next year, the Yankee Group said retail shows the fastest adoption rate, followed by manufacturing and wireline telecoms.

According to the survey, the surge of SOA implementation in 2006 reaches saturation in many verticals:

The Yankee Group also said embracing SOA is cheaper than other types of IT overhauls because the technology is based on the Web. That's interesting to a lot of large enterprises, especially the ones involved with numerous partners and acquisitions.

The SOA platform enables manufacturers to seamlessly integrate enterprise application management tools and other components into their ERP system -- effectively merging critical best-of-breed components within a widely accepted enterprise-wide IT infrastructure capable of driving lean manufacturing processes throughout the extended supply chain.

One example of the SOA platform enabling the seamless integration of EAM includes a leading manufacturer of frozen food products that needed to monitor its mission-critical refrigeration units. Because of the underlying SOA architecture, this manufacturer was able to easily integrate its refrigeration alarm system with its EAM system. The result was the ability to monitor and track exception alarms coming from the Refrigeration Management System and automatically create work orders that maintenance technicians could immediately implement. The SOA platform has allowed this manufacturer to easily integrate two disparate systems to detect problems coming from the Refrigeration

Management System as they occur, which has significantly reduced the potential spoilage of its most profitable product lines and prevented any disruption to the supply chain.

As manufacturers work to adopt the principles of lean manufacturing -- the IT infrastructure will need to support these initiatives. While still an emerging technology, SOA offers a promise of both integration and flexibility -- a powerful combination that can drive efficiencies for delivery of superior products at minimum cost.

Starthis Software is unique in that is both fully SOA and SCADA compatible, means that connections are faster, more reliable, more secure, easier to manage, and less expensive to maintain. No expensive computer systems are needed to translate and communicate data from PLC's to servers, creating a tremendous cost savings for the factory integrator. PLC's can know be connected without PC's, that need constant updating and maintenance, now it is just a straight connection for faster speed and ease of use.

Starthis provides this essential integration between business systems and plant operations on the same server platform and the same SOA architecture as the other business applications. This creates an efficient, flexible, unified architecture for managing the demand-driven real-time manufacturing enterprise Starthis has the tools to deliver real-time monitoring and reporting to everyone in enterprise who needs timely and accurate data about all the work-in-process on the plant floor. The data can easily be moved into an enterprise database or enterprise application.