ISA 95 is an international industrial communication standard to enable communication between different levels of a manufacturing enterprise. It helps data from the field, or the plant connect with enterprise systems and applications.
At this level, one can find sensors and intelligent equipment that create or gather data in a manufacturing process. This data and intelligence are further used to manipulate the line equipment and devices.
This layer consists of enterprise systems that administer the manufacturing operations in line with the business goals. ERP, CRM (customer relationship management), SCM (supply chain management) are some of the enterprise systems that use data from level 3 to drive business decisions.
The different layers are defined in such a way that it is independent of the industry or product manufactured. It can apply to any type of manufacturing like discrete, process or hybrid.