Automation software has grown more important to the overall manufacturing business over the past several years. Suppliers in this hotly contested market sector have moved applications literally from the shop floor to the executive suite. Human-machine interface and supervisory control and data acquisition (HMI/SCADA) software was a well-defined and understood segment for many years. The functions now available from software in this category extend from providing better information to machine and process operators to providing crucial real-time information for enterprise software systems.
One company has been touting a new architecture for its automation software that it claims will move users to a more competitive position. In doing so, it may move the developer into a better competitive position, as well.
Invensys, a London -based conglomerate, has based the new ArchestrA automation software architecture on Microsoft’s. Net platform. Promoted for two years, the first product, Wonderware FactorySuite A2 Industrial Application Server (IAS), began shipping earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Invensys itself has been going through some restructuring. It recently anno-unced that it will be divesting several businesses and keeping primarily the industrial businesses, which include Wonderware. Foxboro, another division of Invensys, is likewise integrating the platform into its process control product line. Apparently, much of the company is counting on the success of ArchestrA to give it a competitive advantage.
Capturing competencies
Mark Davidson, Invensys vice president of ArchestrA marketing, says that products and applications built on Invensys’ ArchestrA architecture can make businesses more competitive by enabling them to capture their unique competencies and experience into software applications. By allowing rapid software reconfiguration to suit ongoing process and business improvements, the package also enables manufacturers to be more agile, while lowering the life-cycle costs of developing, owning and deploying applications.
One of the major problems faced by manufacturing businesses is that real-time information required by enterprise systems is hosted by factory-floor legacy control systems. The legacy platforms have different means of communicating. It’s impossible to just plug a cable into each controller and a central computer and start sending data. Something must translate.
ArchestrA is built on open networking protocols so that an engineer can map each controller and store it in an industry-standard SQL database. The system also provides administration, software deployment, and device and network diagnostics, and includes functions such as security, scripting, history, configuration and data modeling.
Does an engineer need to know how to program the controllers, the automation software and Microsoft SQLServer, too? It would be hard to find someone with enough expertise and time to do all that, so, Invensys has built the platform on something it calls the “Plant Model.”
Engineers graphically lay out their plant on a personal computer (PC) using their domain expertise, rather than starting with a blank screen and calling functions in C. With built-in drivers and open protocols, engineers can configure the system to communicate to any brand of controller and link to a sophisticated database. Since brand is not a factor, the engineer can standardize how data is gathered, stored and integrated with enterprise systems.
Pump cloning
Another tool designed to make things better for beleaguered engineers is the concept of templates. Starting with the plant model that describes overall plant operation, an engineer can drill down to parts or processes. Take, for instance, a pump in a process plant. There can be a pump template that describes a type of pump and typical controls for it. Each time a new pump is added, the engineer clones the template, adds current information, clicks on save and has added a new component to the process. With engineering costs often a significant portion of a project’s expense, this ability to reuse templates provides a cost reduction.
Davidson points out that the pharmaceutical and regulated industries provide an immediate example of ArchestrA’s benefits. Once a new application is created and validated, the template can be used in other processes, making it easier to get the derived process validated. This reduces cost of compliance and expedites getting products to market.
An issue that concerns both engineers and business managers is the overall lifecycle of an automation installation. Once implemented, an automation solution must last from five to 20 years, depending upon the type of manufacturing and its business model. During that time, components start to degrade, and new technologies become available that could improve parts of the process. How can the system be continually improved without a major re-engineering expense? Because the basic design of ArchestrA is built upon open standards, incremental upgrades can be made without serious process disruption. Built-in software change management and networked software distribution capabilities further enhance this ability.
One last point Davidson makes relates to customers’ interests in software standards. More and more companies have plants spread around the world. One set of manufacturing software standards applicable in every plant simplifies training, installation, maintenance and integration with enterprise systems. He maintains that the company built its architecture with that fact in mind.
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See sidebar to this article: Preventing environmental damage
