ISA's widely used batch control standards to undergo revision

Research Triangle Park, NC (19 July 2006) -- ISA's SP88 Batch Control standards development committee has formed a working group to update the first two standards in the widely used ISA-88 series. The update project will focus primarily on ANSI/ISA-88.01, Batch Control Part 1: Models and Terminology, but will also consider revisions to ANSI/ISA88.00.02, Batch Control Part 2: Data Structures and Guidelines for Languages.

"ISA-88 has not only become the worldwide-accepted standard for batch control systems, but has also been widely applied in areas outside of batch," stated ISA-SP88 Chairman Dennis Brandl of BR&L Consulting. "This update project will clarify issues that have come up over the past several years in using the ISA-88 series. These may include terminology clarifications, documenting how the standard is applied in discrete and continuous manufacturing, enhanced definitions of equipment modules and control modules, and updates on the activity model to clarify alignment with the ISA-95 Part 3 Production Operations Management module," added Brandl, who also serves as lead editor for ISA's SP95 standards committee, Enterprise-Control Systems Integration.

Leading the working group is Paul Nowicki of Rockwell Automation. Serving as the lead editor is ISA-SP88 Chairman Emeritus Lynn Craig.

Other standards in the ISA Batch Control series include:

• ANSI/ISA88.00.03-2003, Batch Control Part 3: General and Site Recipe Models and Representation
• ANSI/ISA-88.00.04-2006, Batch Control Part 4: Batch Production Records

For more information about ISA standards, visit www.isa.org/standards.