Invensys Process Systems (www.foxboro.com), Foxboro, Mass., and Invensys Wonderware (www.wonderware.com), Lake Forest, Calif., teamed up with SAP AG (www.sap.com), the German-based enterprise systems vendor, to announce development of “Packaged Composite Applications” based on the xMII technology that SAP obtained with its 2005 acquistion of Lighthammer. The two new applications are Real-time Finance and Real-time Production Execution. These applications have achieved “Powered by SAP NetWeaver” status.
Real-time Finance is designed to help align process manufacturing operations with business objectives in a real-time mode, not the usual daily, monthly, annually generated reports. Real-time Production Execution aims to enhance production agility by providing a pre-integrated solution for dispatching, executing, monitoring and evaluating manufacturing production and performance runs in discrete, batch and hybrid plant operations.
In a separate announcement, Invensys Wonderware also unveiled Wonderware Information Server 3.0, formerly known as SuiteVoyager. This application is a Web-content server for all Wonderware graphics, reporting and analysis applications. It acts alone or in conjunction with existing information technology portal environments such as Microsoft Office or SharePoint servers, or a MySAP portal. Wonderware Historian 9.0 bundles IndustrialSQL Server with the new Information Server. Further announced was an upgrade to Wonderware’s ActiveFactory product.
ILS Technology LLC (www.ilstechnology.com), a Boca Raton, Fla., supplier of database connectivity technology, announced deviceWise 2.0. This product links programmable logic controllers, radio frequency identification (RFID) readers, printers and other intelligent devices in a network to support bidirectional data flow with enterprise and peer systems based upon WebSphere, Oracle, BEA, Jboss, SAP, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and other database, messaging system and application server platforms.
The company also announced a joint development agreement with Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (www.mitsubishielectric.com), Cypress, Calif., by which Mitsubishi will use ILS’s deviceWise 2.0 framework to expand it’s Q-series programmable logic controller functionality to database connectivity, service oriented architecture connectivity and configuration management.
Tandberg (www.tandberg.net), an Oslo, Norway, supplier of visual communication technologies, announced FieldView, a high-resolution mobile video system that enables remote workers to visually collaborate and troubleshoot field issues with centrally located experts.
