Yokogawa Electric Corporation has recently announced the release of Real-Time Production Organiser (RPO). RPO is a suite of manufacturing execution system (MES) platform packages that integrate the vertical production execution workflow across departments and empower decision makers to organise their work quickly and efficiently.
Today’s plant operations need to be flexible enough to deal with the challenges of changing feed materials and market demands. However, there are many barriers in business processes that impede the flow of information between sections, posing serious challenges to agile plant operations. These barriers arise for the following reasons: Poor information integrity due to insufficient MES connectivity; information resolution gaps that cause misalignment between enterprise resource planning (ERP) and MES and lack of proper tools for closing loops in business focused manufacturing.
To address these needs and achieve its vision for production excellence based on VigilantPlant and the CentumVP platform, Yokogawa has developed RPO, the company says in a statement.
Based on the ISA-95 manufacturing execution model, RPO performs the definition, dispatch, execution, analysis, and tracking functions, thereby speeding up the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. The RPO packages bring customers the following benefits: Business oriented operations through shared information between planning and management; Quick operation changes through cooperative operations; Safe and stable operations through plant-wide monitoring and Improved operator productivity.
RPO consists of five platform packages. Each package supports a Web service, making RPO ready for a service oriented architecture (SOA). Users can introduce these packages in stages. The packages are:
1) Workflow Composer VP: standardises business work processes and organises their execution, supporting Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN).
2) Production Coordinator VP: coordinates information for accurate scheduling, providing an end user computing environment.
3) Production Instructor VP: issues specific work orders for correct and prompt operation, supporting execution monitoring and analysis for identifying best practices.
4) Production Supervisor VP: supervises real-time performance for quick action by key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring. Web components on a role-based dashboard support drill down analysis.
5) Production Tracker VP: tracks high-resolution production information for accurate planning and generates production accounting reports.
Satoru Kurosu, senior vice president and head of Yokogawa’s Industrial Automation Business Headquarters, comments: “The release of RPO marks another major milestone for Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant initiative. With RPO bridging the remaining gaps between production management and production control, our VigilantPlant solutions now cover customers’ needs at the device, control system and manufacturing execution system levels. We are excited to deliver this new suite of solutions together with our comprehensive lifecycle services, helping our customers achieve ongoing operational excellence in a challenging economic environment.”
Its major target markets and applications are plant production and operation management in industries such as refining, petrochemicals, and chemicals.
