Thursday, March 23, 2017

Shop-Floor Decentralization: Shop Floor Marketplace Emerges

By Francisco Almada-Lobo, MESA Member and CEO of Critical Manufacturing

MESA’s 2017 Smart Story Awards is kicking off the submission period on April 1st and will stay open until May 31st.  

In an interview with the winners of the 2016 Smart Story Awards, the top winning story from Critical Manufacturing raised some questions about the shop floor. More specifically, attendees wanted to know more about shop-floor decentralization. Here's the full answer:

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Working Towards an Industrial Ontology Foundry to Facilitate Interoperability

By KC Morris and Serm Kulvatunyou, Systems Integration Division, NIST

Ontologies for industrial problems have been a topic of research for several years.  Recently they are also appearing in activities by consortia groups working on standards.  These efforts, though overlapping, have been disjoint.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single place, a foundry, to go to find a community-vetted ontology suitable for your industrial needs or at least as a starting point for your work?  That was exactly the topic of the workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last December when a group of industry, government, and academic researchers met to discuss the possibilities for such a place. 

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Cybersecurity Guidance is Available for Industrial Safety Systems

By Eric Cosman, Cybersecurity Working Group  Co-Chair

Information systems employed in Operations (including industrial control systems) are often subject to very stringent requirements related to information integrity and performance. Functional needs such as these can lead to the identification of secondary requirements and constraints in areas such as cybersecurity. The challenges associated with securing industrial control and related systems have in turn been topics of considerable discussion, debate, and analysis for the past several years. The ISA99 committee and IEC Technical Committee 65 Working Group 10 have developed the 62443 series of standards that provide requirements and guidance on all aspects of the subject. This information is deliberately expressed in broad terms, allowing it to be applied across a wide range of industries and situations.