Building Bridges to the Enterprise

A convergence of business pressures is creating a perfect storm of circumstances set to alter the role and function of control engineering in the plant. Control engineering's historic charter, to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the plant, has kept it an island unto itself for years....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Control Engineering 2006-05, Vol.53 (5), p.61-66
Main Author: Smith, Frank O
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Application programming interface
Automation
Control systems
Corporate objectives
Engineering
Enterprise resource planning
Information technology
Manufacturers
Manufacturing
Plant engineering
Product development
Product differentiation
Quality standards
Supply chains
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Summary:A convergence of business pressures is creating a perfect storm of circumstances set to alter the role and function of control engineering in the plant. Control engineering's historic charter, to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the plant, has kept it an island unto itself for years. Automation equipment and systems - and the data they generated - were primarily for use by automation experts. Management interested in those data had to pick up the phone or wait to glean it from a report. No more. "Information is the best game in town for differentiating your organization," says Eric Rogge, vice president and research director for Ventana Research. Information about one's own operational processes is increasingly key to competitiveness as product differentiation is marginalized by competition. Bottom line: leveraging plant automation data at the enterprise level is now vitally strategic. And, while it's a long way from being easy, bridges are being engineered.
ISSN:0010-8049
2163-4076