Process Manufacturing

Microsoft's Reference Architecture for Process Manufacturing

Microsoft is at the forefront of today’s technology advancements including connected devices, cloud services, social computing, apps and mobility. Through the Microsoft Chemicals Reference Architecture (ChemRA) framework, we are working alongside our global process manufacturing industry partners to tackle head on the new requirements in information technology architecture driven by chemicals industry business complexities. Together we are finding ways improve efficiencies in the process manufacturing and downstream oil and gas industries.

The ChemRA Main Principles ensure consistency and technical integrity for the partner solutions built on the Microsoft technology platform. Read Implementation of the Chemical Reference Architecture for more information on these Principles and how they map to Microsoft technology.

Process Manufacturing Home

Natural User Experiences
Application Interoperability
Enhanced Collaboration
Business Insights
Solid Infrastructure

Natural user experience is about helping people interact with technology in easy and humanly intuitive ways to help maximize worker safety and productivity. New technologies take advantage of rich user experience, intuitiveness and rich device support across a multitude of devices – from smart phones and tablets to PCs and expansive operations command centers. New programming technologies, such as Microsoft Silverlight or the new HTML 5 standard, are opening new possibilities for applications in the business domains that run on many form factors. Intuitive interfaces now feature rich, composite dashboards and are accessible from mobile devices. These interfaces also incorporate natural human interaction allowing workers to use gestures, voice, and touch.
New web standards, web services, and web service extensions make it possible to create a new cycle of evolution in integration technologies. Further, the enterprise service bus (ESB) makes it possible to facilitate cross-application business processes beyond the enterprise walls to business partners, customers, and suppliers.

Microsoft offers many tools and technologies to help solve the interoperability issues for its partners and customers. Many of these tools and technologies follow open industry standards, such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web services. Some of the technologies offer data-based integration and others offer document-based integration or a hybrid of both.
Collaboration allows people to work together more closely, coordinate their efforts, follow detailed business processes, and respond to events as they happen. The process manufacturing industry will require even-greater collaboration to account for distributed research and product develop development, distributed supply networks and global customers. Communications technology is keeping pace with today’s global and on-demand collaboration – including real-time communication networks, Web conference, voice over IP (VoIP), even social media. Collaboration services and the Microsoft technologies that support them can be divided in three main areas: 1) Business Process Management Services, 2) Communication and Notification Services, and 3) Social Web.

Download the Implementation of ChemRA for more information.
Technological advances, including analytical and business intelligence tools, are helping companies handle their mountains of data and generate the tactical, operational, and strategic reports needed to make better business decisions. Portals and dashboards make it possible to extend reporting and business intelligence to everyone in the organization and present them with the needed reports according to their roles. Further, these technologies support the ability to present industry standardized and other corporate metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) on any device. The Business Insights principle applies the Microsoft BI platform, as well as BizTalk and System Center.
Chemical and oil refining facilities are considered critical infrastructures by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Therefore, applications deployed in these organizations require solid, reliable, highly performing, scalable, and secure infrastructures. Microsoft has been providing such infrastructure to its hardware and software partners for many years, including those that support Security, Systems Management: System Center, System Center Configuration Manager (SSCM), System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), Virtualization, Hyper-V, App-V and High-Performance Computing.
- End user success story:
- Manufacturer Evaluates Scalable Cloud Processing for Engineering Design (Air Products)