Research Triangle Park (4 August 2008) - The ISA88 Committee has approved a new ISA88 Technical Report on Machine and Unit States. This technical report incorporates the OMAC Packaging Workgroup’s PackML and PackTags documents with the industry standard ISA88 terminology.
The technical report addresses the implementation of ISA88.00.01 in discrete machines and demonstrates how to apply the standard to discrete machine states and modes.
The “standard” method of programming discrete machines is generally considered to be solely dependent on the machine and the software engineer, or control systems programmer. This constant change offers little additional value and generally increases the total costs, from the designing and building of the process to operating and maintaining the system by the end user. The technical report breaks this paradigm and creates a standard programming methodology as a consistent way to install, communicate, operate, and maintain a unit or machine. The report cites real control examples as implementations, and provides specific tag naming conventions; it also cites a number of common terms that are consistent with batch processing and ANSI/ISA 88.00.01.
“I believe that the technical report will become an important complement to the widely used and respected ISA88 standards—significantly reducing system integration time and costs for dedicated process and packaging equipment. It will enable the packaging flexibility and agility that is now required for 21st century manufacturing,” said Dennis Brandl, Chairman of the ISA88 Committee and President of BR&L Consulting.