Level3 derives its name from the ANSI / ISA-95 Standard, which is an international standard for developing an automated interface between manufacturing operations/control systems and enterprise functions.  One of the objectives, of the 95 standard, is to provide consistency and uniformity of interface terminology and thereby reduce the risk, cost and error associated with system implementation. 

In the standard, five systems levels are defined:

• • Level 4 (Business Planning & Logistics) – “Financial Systems and ERPs….”
• • Level 3 (Manufacturing Operations Management) – “The systems that control the workflow or maintaining the records of the process”
• • Level 2 (Control Systems:  Batch, Continuous, Discrete) – “The things that control the process”
• • Level 1 (Sensors and Valves) – “The things that sense or directly manipulate the process”
• • Level 0 (Process) – “The Process”

As you can see, Level 3 covers basically coordinating the manufacturing process and also exchanging information between the Control Systems and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

 Coming from that namesake, this blog will serve as a venue to discuss various topics:  Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM), Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS).   Aside from the alphabet soup, we will discuss, in general, the integration of data from the ‘shop floor’ up; these include advanced SCADA systems, Historians, reporting and IT Topics. 

Whether you identify your role as Operations, IT and/or Engineering, we hope that you find something of interest and contribute.