Extend enterprise integration capabilities of Wonderware's manufacturing solutions to include Microsoft Dynamics AX

Lake Forest, CA: Source: Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine — Invensys Systems business unit Wonderware is extending the integration of its open manufacturing software solutions built on ArchestrA technology to the Microsoft Dynamics AX business management solution as part of the two companies ongoing efforts to link the plant floor to the "top floor" of the enterprise through links with back-end business systems.

This new capability will utilize the ISA-95 standard for enterprise-to-control system integration and will enable more seamless transfer of production order and material transactions between Microsoft Dynamics AX and multi-vendor plant systems that are integrated with Wonderware's software solutions, according to Wonderware.

"Wonderware's existing enterprise integration capabilities have been designed to improve synchronization of business processes and manufacturing operations activities on the plant floor, effectively bridging the gap between the real-time domain of the plant floor and the transactional domain of business systems," said Mark Davidson, vice president of global marketing for Wonderware.

In response to the continued growth in market demand for integrated business-to-manufacturing solutions, Wonderware and Microsoft have collaborated to help customers improve manufacturing throughput and on-time delivery with more accurate, real-time information for production planning, execution and predictable order fulfillment.

At the same time, the companies say that the integration helps reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) through the use of industry standards and the reusability of engineering and best practices.

Wonderware's production and performance management, supervisory control, human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software solutions are built on the open standards-based ArchestrA technology. By using standard business-to-manufacturing markup language (B2MML) messages, customers can automatically download production schedule and bill-of-material (BOM) information to plant systems, obtain real-time views of actual production order status, including alerts, and receive real-time feedback of actual material consumptions for accurate report-as-finished journals, according to the solution provider.

"Our intention to evolve the enterprise integration capabilities to include integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX is a natural step in Wonderware's longstanding technology and business relationship with Microsoft," Davidson said. "We believe this will provide a great combined solution for small to mid-size manufacturing customers.