This document summarizes a paper by Thomas Schulz on using a flexible and modular software framework to achieve operational excellence in manufacturing. The paper discusses how continuous improvements can reduce costs and increase quality and yield. It also notes that common information systems lack adaptability to manufacturing changes. The author proposes using a service-oriented architecture and modular components to allow incremental development of reusable software that can adapt to changes. This approach aims to establish flexibility and alignment between business and IT objectives for operational excellence.

1. SCHULZ, Thomas: Flexible and modular software framework as a solution for operational excellence in
manufacturing. In: Proceedings of Factory Automation 2012, Veszprém : University of Pannonia, pp. 8-11, 2012
Flexible and modular software framework as a solution for
operational excellence in manufacturing
THOMAS SCHULZ
GE Intelligent Platforms Europe S.A., Landwehrstr. 54, 64293 Darmstadt, GERMANY
t.schulz@ge.com
Abstract: Continuous improvements in key areas of manufacturing operations can help reduce
manufacturing costs, protect profit margins, and increase yield while maintaining product quality. With a
phased approach to Operational Excellence, it is able to apply a continuous improvement regimen,
delivering value-added results. Open and layered Software Solutions deliver information that enables the
optimization of manufacturing activities from order launch to finished goods and allows manufacturers to
react effectively to changes in demand, to compete at a high level, and to enhance profitability. The
ability to adapt to flexible requirements and frequent changes has emerged as a new paradigm for
successful implementation of Operational Excellence Solutions. Hereby common information systems are
mostly not able to fulfill the requirement of adaptability for manufacturing changes. The purpose of using
open and layered frameworks is to establish incremental and iterative development of reusable software
components and models based on an industry standard architecture for complex manufacturing systems.
Keywords: Operational Excellence, Manufacturing Executions Systems, Software Framework
1 Introduction section. The finally conclusion in Section 4
Today’s manufacturers operate in an increasingly concludes this paper.
demanding environment that includes global
competition, increasing pressures for cost 2 Operational excellence
reductions and new products, quality-driven Solutions for operational excellence in
compliance, and improvements in on-time. Rapid manufacturing require a large amount of data.
technological advancements provide operations Small changes in the manufacturing environment
managers with tremendous opportunities for can produce many different changes to the data
improvement. Pressure of intense competition input for the framework model. As a
requires organizations to seek out new tools for manufacturing system progresses from a concept
handling their current processes and also gaining to a detailed design to an installed and operating
access to new markets. facility, the data model of the software framework
The growing complexity of information must change.
technology landscapes in manufacturing is a Typical small changes include equipment
challenge for many companies. A large number of selection and location, control rules and operating
standard software packages - mostly extended and procedures for equipment and material handling
modified – individual software solutions, legacy systems, arriving material and customer order
applications, and different infrastructure characteristics, and operating hours. Some
components lead to high cost and limited ability examples of changes that have a broader impact
to respond quickly to new business requirements. are new products that are being made, complete
The paper is organized as follows. The next new production processes or even changes to the
section describes operational excellence in plant layout. The speed of these will increase in
manufacturing, the challenges that manufacturing the future and will have continuous impact on the
operations and manufacturing software systems commercial success of companies in several
are facing nowadays. Section 3 introduces a manufacturing areas [1].
software framework for modular and flexible
applications bases on a service-oriented 2.1 Manufacturing operations
architecture. The illustration of the flexible and The ability to adapt to frequent changes has
modular solution path is given in the end of this emerged as a new paradigm for successful
business operations. Hereby common information
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2. systems are mostly not able to fulfill the • Product flexibility enables a manufacturing
requirement of adaptability for business or system to make a variety of part types with
organizational changes. However, the ability to the same equipment.
adapt to changes is crucial for business • Operation flexibility refers to the ability to
organizations and the support of business produce a set of products using different
processes by information systems plays a crucial machines, materials, operations, and
part. sequence of operations.
According to [2], the challenges that • Capacity flexibility allows a manufacturing
manufacturing organizations are facing nowadays system to vary the production volumes of
present are wide ranging and include: intense different products to accommodate changes
competition, global markets, global financing, in demand, while remaining profitable.
global strategy, enhanced product variety, mass
customization, service businesses, quality 3 Software framework
improvement, flexibility, advances in technology,
A framework is the realization mode of the
employee involvement, environment and ethical
configurability of information system. It includes
issues.
an integrated collection of components that
Several articles on manufacturing flexibility
collaborate to produce a reusable architecture for
like [3] and [4] describes several types of
a family of related applications (see also [8] and
flexibility such as machine, labor, material
[9].
handling, routing, operation, expansion, volume,
Implementing software frameworks used for
mix, new product, market, and modification. In
operational excellence in manufacturing is still a
this paper, we define manufacturing flexibility as
challenging task due to the heterogeneity of data
the ability of manufacturing to adapt its
structures and information systems. Traditional
capabilities to produce quality products in a time
techniques approach software design and
and cost effective manner in response to changing
implementation as if a system will remain static
product characteristics, material supply, and
and have a long and stable life. The problem
demand, or to employ technological process
stems in our case from dynamics.
enhancements.
The cornerstone of operational excellence
journey is tightly integrated Framework of Proficy
2.1 Manufacturing software systems software solutions, which enable the critical
Manufacturing shop floor information and control capabilities needed to meet improvement goals. In
flow management is still a challenging task due to this section we introduce the core concepts
the heterogeneity of data structures and needed to implement our approach of modular
information systems. The objective of vertical and flexible application systems.
integration from the enterprise application (ERP)
to the production control level (DCS, PLC) is still
3.1 Service-oriented architecture
unrivalled. The exchange of data between these
Software architecture is the fundamental
two levels is done either manually or semi
organization of a system, embodied in its
automatically. Most of the existing solutions are
components, their relationships to each other and
missing needed flexibility and scalability.
the environment, and the principles governing its
In the context of manufacturing systems, there
design and evolution architectural description is a
are many publications of literature that deals with
collection of products to document an architecture
defining and measuring the flexibility of these
[10].
systems. Buzacott states in [5] that the definitions
A Service-oriented Architecture (SoA) is
of flexibility, action flexibility, and state
defined from Barry and Krafzig specific software
flexibility apply well to the manufacturing
architecture based on services as fundamental
systems environment. Setchi and Lagos explain in
elements for integrating and developing
[6] that manufacturing systems of the next
applications [11, 12]. Key concepts of SoA are
generation must provide increased levels of
service components, services data and service bus
flexibility, reconfigurability and intelligence to
embedded in the application frontend with the
allow them to respond to the highly dynamic
service repository. Services are specific software
market demands.
components and communicating with each other
For practical purposes it seems advisable to
by sending and receiving messages. When acting
concentrate on three objectives of flexibility as
as a service provider a service publishes its
defined by Chryssolouris in [7]:
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3. Factory Automation 2012
interfaces that can be invoked by other services • Process Visibility gain visibility into your
that play the role of a service requestor. process by automating real-time data
SoA provides an opportunity to achieve broad- collection for visualization and delivering the
scale interoperability while offering modularity level of insight required for intelligent
and flexibility to adapt to changing requirements. decision making.
A SoA is characterized by the loosely coupling of • Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
the services involved. Using SoA in an accurate regimen helps you shift the focus from
way Zaigham and Erl reporting the following runtime efficiency to throughput efficiency.
benefits [13, 14]: By contextualizing data from several
• Seamless connectivity of applications dimensions such as equipment availability,
• Location transparency and High scalability performance, and product quality, and
• Enhanced reuse of modules and applications performing trending and correlation analysis,
• Parallel and independent development you can gain deeper insight at all levels of
• Flexible at maintenance and requirement the business, as well as critical process
changes parameters.
• Reduced cost of development • Process Reliability builds upon the OEE
regimen and focuses on manual processes
3.2 Flexible and modular solutions and scheduling with the greatest impact on
The Proficy software framework from GE consistency and repeatability. It also enables
Intelligent Platforms has helped many companies demand-driven supply chain agility.
develop a solid understanding of potential • Partial Operational Excellence involves
Operational Excellence improvements that exist understanding and controlling the impact that
within their operations today, and where different suppliers of raw materials have on
additional value can be found in the future [15, process quality and yield, the main drivers
16, 17]. for local Operational Excellence. Being able
to predict and react to changing materials and
process dynamics ensures first-pass quality
every time, and helps determine the ideal
conditions from which to generate maximum
yield.
• Enterprise Operational Excellence is the
final step across the enterprise with seamless
integration from the plant floor to the ERP
system, including Warehouse Management,
Production Planning and Maintenance. It is
critical to drive supply chain excellence by
coordinating the real-time status of orders,
inventory changes, and overall process
Fig.1: Cost-effective project development performance.
Figure 1 shows the main components of cost- A popular method for driving rapid operational
effective project development. Key issues are: improvement is to measure overall equipment
• Reduced implementation costs and time effectiveness (OEE). The OEE measure attempts
• Minimize downtime for deployment of new to reveal these hidden costs [18] and when the
or modified services measure is applied by autonomous small groups
• Faster time to solution on the shop-floor together with quality control
tools it is an important complement to the
• Flexible service deployment options
traditional top-down oriented performance
• Minimized modification time after change of
measurement systems. These projects rely on
technical requirements
obtaining information about availability of
equipment, throughput of the equipment and the
The Operational Excellence journey from GE
quality of what is actually produced.
Intelligent Platforms offers a continual process for
There are a variety of ways to perform these
capturing data, analyzing information, making
calculations but the most efficient and reliable
process changes, and validating the improvements
way of performing the calculations is to base them
to meet expectations. It includes five key steps:
on automatically collected data as opposed to
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4. manually entered information, which is more Manufacturing Systems: State-Of-The-Art
prone to operator error. Automated systems and Review. In: Industrial Informatics, Proceedings of
plant historians provide an excellent foundation the 2nd IEEE International Conference on
for automatically collected data and a secure Industrial Informatics (INDIN '04). Berlin, 2004,
storage mechanism to ensure accuracy. pp. 529-535.
[7] Chryssolouris, George: Manufacturing
4 Conclusion Systems: Theory and Practice. Springer-Verlag,
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rapidly changing landscape that includes Reusable Classes. Journal of Object-Oriented
emerging competitive threats, shifting compliance Programming, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1988, pp. 22-35.
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Service-oriented Architecture (SoA) is an engineering - Recommended practice for
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