6. International standard for reference models (First published in Japanese in June, 2014)

  It seems difficult to tell Monogoto (story) to a third party even if it looks easy. If there is a last resort, such as bringing things up or showing them down, but if there is not such a way, we need to create a model. If it is fashion models, CAD models, and mathematical models, all of models represent some kind of object. The contents are communicated to a third party, and new information and actions are triggered by operations such as analysis and you can take a trigger out of it.

  In this sense, the reference model can be said to show the structure of the problem and the rules of the game to the business parties or various stakeholders. If there are already many players and their categories are known, such as fried eggs, it is possible to determine the reference model inductively. However, if the content is innovative or categorical, you can become a game maker by taking the lead and presenting the reference model as pioneers.

  In Europe and the United States, reference models in the world of manufacturing have already been proposed. ISA-95 defines a model that aims to integrate manufacturing operations management with the entire management system, such as production management, inventory management, quality management, and maintenance management. In this reference model, as shown in Fig. 1, we have a bird’s-eye view of the entire manufacturing in the manufacturing industry, and model it in the form of functional elements that compose it and the information flow that connects them 5).

  In terms of manufacturing, the model becomes complex in this way, and in order to bring it down to the level of activity, it is necessary to examine a huge variety of reality one by one. This is a distracting task.

  In the small chef example, the reference model was relatively easy to define. However, when it comes to the entire manufacturing industry, it is not so easy. What is different? This is because the small chef example is a bottom-up approach, but this time it is top-down. In the Western countries, it is good to decide on a monogoto framework from the top down.

  No matter how effective the bottom-up model is created, it will eventually reach an area where it must follow the rules of the world defined in the top-down, and the top-down will dominate the whole in the sense of total optimization. It is. It is not a denial of the bottom-up approach, but bottom-up lacking a top-down perspective is dangerous.

  How can you successfully incorporate a top-down approach? There are various techniques used to model complex reality. One of them is level division. ISA-95 uses four levels to organize the whole manufacturing process. In other words, the level of business management, the level of the manufacturing floor, and the level of control are clearly separated, and the interface between them is defined to reduce the complexity of the model within each level. Similarly, it is possible to classify from the viewpoint of life cycle such as planning and design level, production preparation level, production execution level, and maintenance and disposal level.