Doing flexible manufacturing right with S88 design

By Control Engineering Staff February 9, 2007

Drawing from his vast experience in the development of multiple control projects and the ISA-88 batch control standards, author and Control Engineering columnist Dennis Brandl’s Design Patterns for Flexible Manufacturing documents effective rules for applying the ISA-88 standard to both batch manufacturing (called the S88 design pattern) and continuous and discrete manufacturing problems (called the NS88 design pattern for non-stop production). As the chair of the ISA-SP88 committee, Brandl was instrumental in developing these patterns and subsequent rules while applying the batch series to several projects.

Published by the ISA, the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, his 350-page softbound resource (ISBN: 978-1-55617-998-3) clearly identifies elements defined in the batch series and those that make up the S88 and NS88 design patterns for flexible manufacturing. The book retails for $89 to ISA members ($99 for non-members).

The book also defines design patterns for control system programming, providing patterns for the organization of programmable logic controller (PLC), digital control system (DCS), and other control system application code. Automation professionals in a batch, continuous, or discrete manufacturing environment will find that the design patterns in this resource can be applied to a wide range of production systems, making systems easier to design and implement.

For more information about this resource or any of ISA’s resources, visit www.isa.org/books .

To learn more about flexible manufacturing or to read columns by Dennis Brandl, visit the Control Engineering website at www.controleng.com and search Brandl.

C.G. Masi, senior editor, Control Engineering , charlie.masi@reedbusiness.com