The Importance of the Plant Nervous System
Last week we went and visited a very nice pet food facility (well, as nice as pet food facilities can get). Great people, great attitudes, good automation, well run, etc.
We wanted to get a grasp of what all they had in terms of systems, both hardware and software. At Flexware, we have always drawn what I call the “Plant Nervous System” drawing because it helps everyone visualize the systems relative to the functional footprint of the factory.
It starts with the standard “4-level” Purdue reference model that looks something like this:
We use Microsoft Visio to do our Plant Nervous Systems drawings and include things like:
- All PCs, Servers, Thin Clients, Printers, Scanners, etc. that people interact with.
Some clients actually want routers and switches too, but that is up to you. If you send me an email, I will send you an example plant nervous system drawing in Microsoft Visio format. mailto:scott@manufit.com
