Trapped, but still learning

A captive and attentive audience is always a great thing and for suppliers at the ARC Advisory Group’s 12th annual forum this week in Orlando, Fla., there was plenty of opportunity to launch new products and offerings.
Here are just a few samples:

Kepware Technologies is partnering with Oracle to provide plant floor execution data to Oracle’s manufacturing applications.
Kepware's OPC server technology, called KEPServerEX, allows users to set up communications from equipment to control and business systems via a range of available plug-in device drivers and components. Kepware is adding new features to KEPServerEX including, OPC Client functionality that will it to act as a gateway from any OPC Server including third party device drivers as well as HMI/SCADA or historian products; a first level of data analytics from real-time plant floor data and complex data tags.

Yokogawa Electric Corp. unveiled its CENTUM VP, an integrated production control system.
A traditional DCS controls and monitors a plant, but Yokogawa officials said CENTUM VP goes beyond that by integrating plant information management, asset management, and operation support functions, which should achieve a unified operating environment.
“CENTUM VP is designed to empower real-time decision makers at all levels of a plant’s operations,” said Satoru Kurosu, Senior vice president of Yokogawa’s Industrial Automation business.
The CENTUM VP system consists of a unified architecture based on a single real-time plant database, continued high reliability and compatibility and an intuitive human machine interface.

While Emerson did talk about its wireless initiatives, they also discussed products dealing with the alternative fuel arena.
Emerson’s latest products ranged from its Ovation SCADA software for wind energy management, to Fisher C1 Series controllers and transmitters for oil and gas operations, Rosemount Analytical AccuMax technology for boiler and furnace operation improvement, and Rosemount sapphire-tube enclosed thermocouples for gasification applications.

In a press conference to further elaborate on its 11 December partnership announcement, Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc. and Paris-based Dassault Systèmes, a PLM software supplier, discussed further details on how it will help manufacturers develop the digital factory.
Rockwell and Dassault will link manufacturing design to factory-floor control by integrating Rockwell’s RSLogix 5000 control programming and configuration software together with Dassault’s Delmia Automation PLM software. The result will be manufacturers can expect to reduce the cost of engineering and ramp-up time, and to continually optimize their manufacturing operations with an accurate, real-time, simulation model, officials said.
This move also comes after Siemens’ $3.5 billion deal for PLM provider UGS. The PLM space will become very interesting this year.

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, introduced its e-F@ctory manufacturing solution.
e-F@ctory is Mitsubishi Electric’s plan for manufacturing and unifies its control hardware and networks with enterprise IT systems offered by partners, including IBM and ILS Technology.
Mitsubishi bases e-F@ctory on four main components: iQ Automation; iQ Works; the CC-Link network architecture, and the MESIF (Manufacturing Execution System Interface) or eMESIF (enhanced MESIF).

ILS Technology, IBM and Mitsubishi also gave further details on their late January partnership about a service oriented architecture (SOA). The three companies developed a reference architecture that can help customers meet industry standards more quickly for device-to-IT connectivity.
IBM brings its integration services, SOA Foundation for manufacturing and project management to the alliance. While Mitsubishi brings its automation system with direct enterprise computing connectivity. ILS Technology adds its deviceWISE embedded software integrated into the Mitsubishi Electric e-Factory Portfolio and links IBM’s and plant floor technologies together for those segments.