Integrated information flow in manufacturing systems using a relational database

In the chemical industry, the growing demand for efficient, economic and just-in-time production of goods with constant high quality leads to the goal of complete automation of a company´s production processes. This can only be achieved, if the information flow between the various IT systems in the company work without problems. There are IT solutions in the chemical industry providing a complete informational integration by coupling process control systems (PCS) supporting recipe based control to plant management systems (PMS) like SAP R/3 (using the module PP/PI). However, not all PCS support recipe based control as it is not necessary for a lot of processes. Hence, it is necessary to find a means that integrates these less complex systems. The paper presents an approach to the coupling of PCS with varying functionality to SAP R/3. The proposed solution employs a relational database as middleware between PCS and PMS. The information flow for three different basic coupling scenarios (PCS with recipe management, PCS with sequential function charts, and PCS with only measurement and control objects) is examined and the pros and cons of the three scenarios are discussed