5 Future Requirements to the Production IT

"Even if it is the dream of many innovation drivers, not many companies are able to dispose of all old machines overnight and start all over again in the spirit of a green-field approach. In reality, the brown-field approach is essential. And this is one of the most important requirements for the production IT of tomorrow:

1. The production IT of tomorrow must be able to handle both modern and older machines – how to do it that is rather secondary.

A further indispensable aspect is the opening of the systems, i.e. the provision of standardized interfaces. Today, more and more companies need a wide variety of special solutions that need to interact with the set standard system. Therefore, powerful interfaces are essential. The REST principle, which enables extensive interaction between IT systems via service calls, has proven to be effective. This is the only way for networks to get the most out of effective applications. In short:
2. Tomorrow’s manufacturing IT must be open and interoperable, with standardized interfaces.

However, people in production also have requirements for the IT that are based on available technologies. Data entry should be automated wherever possible, and the system should also support operators if they have to enter values manually. Evaluations and dashboards must be arranged clearly and flexible enough. Technical refinements such as the use of smartphones or tablets should be used systematically. Requirements could be:
3. Production IT should be user-friendly and ergonomic.

At this point, many will expect cloud computing or the Internet of Things (IoT) to place significant demands on manufacturing IT. The opposite is the case: Production IT puts specific requirements to the IT environment. The focus should be on the availability of applications and the necessary security of the associated data and not on the desire to use the cloud. The IoT can be a useful tool for procuring and distributing data for the production IT. That means:
4. The production IT of tomorrow must clearly define its requirements for the IT environment and not vice versa.

When it comes to data, the step to "big data" and "analytics" is quite close. Of course, production IT also plays here a major role. In order to continue to produce efficiently and according to specifications in future, production IT has to record and process an increasing amount of data. To do this, powerful tools are required for their analysis. Depending on the IT architecture, analytical functions can either be integrated or connected as required. Therefore:

5. The production IT of tomorrow must include or be able to efficiently integrate powerful analytical functions.

An integrated Manufacturing Execution System (MES) such as HYDRA from MPDV already meets most of these requirements today – in order to fulfil all of these some manufacturer have to adjust their system.

Open platforms as an alternative

According to Ms. Kletti, another solution for tomorrow’s production IT is an open platform architecture. The purpose of such an approach is to combine arbitrary applications from different providers. MPDV refers in this context to the growing ecosystem around the Manufacturing Integration Platform (MIP).

Free choice

The future offers the manufacturing industry the choice between an out-of-the-box solution with an MES like HYDRA and a do-it-yourself strategy with a platform like MIP. I recommend that manufacturing companies act now, but approach it with caution. It is important to think carefully about what the particular company really needs and then introduce a suitable production IT step by step – for example an MES or a platform like MIP."