The ISA-95 Part 1 Update: A Modern Foundation for Industrial Integration

By: Chris Monchinski 

The ISA-95 committee, in collaboration with Joint Working Group 5 in IEC and ISO, continues to evolve the ISA-95 standard (IEC 62264) to meet the demands of today’s digital industrial landscape. Originally developed to address the challenge of integrating monolithic systems like ERP, MES, and SCADA, ISA-95 remains a foundational framework for reducing integration risk and maximizing information exchange in manufacturing environments. 

Much has changed in the 20+ years since its inception. Today, we see cloud-native ERP, MES, and historian systems, along with distributed control and telemetry. Systems are more modular and containerized, and the appetite for rich, contextualized plant-floor data is being fueled by demands for advanced analytics and AI. 

The core purpose of ISA-95 remains: to standardize the interface between enterprise and control systems. This latest release of Part 1 reaffirms that mission—providing robust model and terminology for modern integration challenges, while recognizing that the landscape has fundamentally shifted.  A major update in this release is an acknowledgment that integration technologies have evolved—from point-to-point connections to message buses, and now to Industrial DataOps and iPaaS platforms. These modern architectures help enforce a semantic consistency and are facilitated by strong data governance.  ISA 95 has become a de-facto ontology with a complete, normalized set of models and relationships to represent industrial data.  This new class of applications will ensure that enterprises represent their valuable manufacturing data in a common semantic context from its very creation and simplify data exchange and integration. 

Another key recognition is the need to clearly understand the value and flexibility of the ISA 95 models when applied to new digital architectures.   A common misconception is that ISA 95 can only be applied where clear demarcations exist between systems (often represented as levels).  The concept of levels is a valuable way to simplify the explanation and understand the scope of an integration challenge.  However, these levels should be considered more as logical spheres or boundaries around system(s) that need to exchange data.  ISA 95 does not need these logical spheres in a specific hierarchy or subordination.  ISA 95 defines the first level of these key manufacturing spheres as functions.   Our ISA 95 Part 1 Figure 7 has been revised to demonstrate these functions and their generalized information exchange.   This figure is a combination of a function view and an information view of the enterprise, as defined in ISO 15704.  This new representation simplifies information exchanges allowing for flexibility and scale when implemented in any current or future technology. 

From ISA 95 Part 1 Ed 3, 2024, Figure 7, Copyright © ISA - USED WITH PERMISSION 

ISA 95 allows for the boundaries between systems and their represented information exchanges to be established to match the challenge of each unique integration.   In this way, ISA 95 can represent data from an individual sensor on the plant floor with its dataset pushed to the edge and cloud; but with the ability to transmit not just raw data but the metadata which puts that sensor's data in context (what site, area, work center, etc.).  The full set of ISA 95 data models allow for multiple dimension of context to be represented for this sensor's data point across a physical, production, maintenance and quality dimension.   Enhancements in this release also include more precise modeling of role-based equipment vs. physical assets and the application of the ISA-95 capacity model for accounting and planning purposes. 

If you’re new to ISA-95, this is a great time to engage with a standard that enables modular, interoperable system architectures. For seasoned practitioners, this update reflects an evolution—retaining the foundation while preparing us for what’s next.   As someone who has been with ISA-95 since its early days and now serves as chair, I can confidently say: the best is yet to come. 

You can find the released versions of ISA 95 here. https://www.isa.org/standards-and-publications/isa-standards/isa-95-standard 

And as always, we welcome all forward-thinking contributions and participation in the standards community that maintains, adapts and promotes this important industrial standard. https://www.isa.org/standards-and-publications/isa-standards/isa-standards-committees/isa95