Integration strategies

One of the things that still strikes me after having been part of big Product and Plant Lifecycle Management projects during the last decade is how little focus there is on integration strategies. By integration strategy I mean decisions on how information should flow between authoring tools, PLM platform, procurement and supply chain. In other words between different departments within the company as well as external companies in the value chain.

In my view you may have the perfect platform for managing engineering information across engineering disciplines, but it still isn’t worth much if the information flow to and from project execution, procurement and supply chain is severely hampered.

Essentially there are 3 main strategies for integration

• Point to point integrations: Each system integrates through an adaptor to whatever system needs information from it (traditionally this has led to so called spaghetti issues. Lots of integrations that are hard to change since it is very difficult to foresee how a change in one system will affect the processes in other systems).
  

---

• Data warehouse (Enterprise Service Bus):  Solves the point-to-point mapping issues by converting all data flows to a common, neutral, format and storing them in a data warehouse. When a system publishes information, it publishes it in its own structure to its own adaptor and the adaptor changes it to the structure of the data warehouse. Each system acts like it is the only one in the world.
  

• Dictionary approach: If a common dictionary (or Rosetta stone if you will) is built on an industry standard or even a proprietary company dictionary, then changes in one system only needs to be mapped to the dictionary, not to attributes in other systems. Changes in one system will not affect any of the other systems in terms of their integration since everyone maps to the dictionary. This is the approach promoted by standards like ISO 15926 to solve interoperability issues.
  

---

I’ve often heard the following: Of course we’re not doing point to point anymore. We’ve got an Enterprise Service Bus that takes care of it…… But then, what goes on behind the scenes?
The Enterprise Service Bus has a nice Graphical User Interface for creating integrations where you simply drag and drop attributes from one systems adaptor and maps it to attributes from another systems adaptor…

Consequence: Point to point issues are re-created in the Enterprise Service Bus, even if the exchange format is completely neutral.

A clear integration strategy could also yield considerable business benefits even outside solving internal integration issues. What would happen if a dictionary approach was selected, and the dictionary was an industry standard?
Well, then information could be supplied to other companies, like operators, customers or suppliers on that industry standard format without having to develop special integrations for interoperability with other companies in the value chain.

Some points to ponder
Bjorn Fidjeland