New Year means new products

It is the beginning of the New Year and that means it must be time for new product announcements.
The ARC Advisory Group’s annual conference in Orlando, Fla., was a good time and location to unveil some new product lines. While releasing new products used to be a once a year thing, the time frame for the announcements had condensed considerably. Companies released a new line in early February and surely will release another revision of some sort later on in the year, most likely at ISA EXPO 2009.
Here is a sampling of some of the product releases from the ARC conference:

Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc., launched its Human Machine Interface (HMI) platform — the GT16 series that features advanced multimedia capabilities.
The GT16 series combines video and sound capabilities with embedded communications interfaces to provide an unparalleled multimedia platform.
The GT16 series multimedia HMI can transform applications from still images to motion images with a video capture and store feature, a monitor display/RGB input, and a sound output interface.
The company is also partnering with Cognex to integrate the In-Sight vision system into Mitsubishi’s iQ platform.
The goal behind the Mitsubishi Electric-Cognex partnership is to offer users a standard set of integratable products, rather than an untested set of components patched together to perform a specific function. The solution offers accessibility to all features and functions of logic, motion, HMI, vision, and robotic domains in a manner such that each task is a part of a single system.

Kepware Technologies created offerings to deliver OPC interoperability for license with OEM software products.
Kepware is now offering its OPC technology as licensable components to incorporate into third-party automation software solutions. OEMs can now leverage OPC Clients and OPC Servers as pluggable components to meet the latest specifications for OPC-Classic and OPC-UA.
OPC technology, managed by the OPC Foundation, is the interoperability standard enabling data transfer between all software products in the automation marketplace.
Also, Kepware will now be the primary provider of connectivity to field devices for Sèvres, France-based ARC Informatique, which makes PcVue and PlantVue. ARC Informatique is a HMI/SCADA provider that works with end users and OEMs.

Honeywell unveiled its Experion LS control system. The new line can bring a distributed control system (DCS) to the small and medium manufacturers that do not need the power of a full blown DCS.
Experion LS can manage all continuous process control applications and optimize batch and sequence-oriented applications typically found at specialty chemicals, pharmaceutical, food and beverage and consumer goods producers. The new product offering is scalable from a single PC and controller to multiple stations.

Within the FDT Group, 12 international companies have joined the non-profit organization in the last year, a 20% increase.
These companies are: Aplisens (Poland), AUMA (Germany), Baumer (Switzerland), Dresser Masoneilan (USA), Klay Instruments (Netherlands), KUKA Roboter (Germany), Larsen & Toubro Emsys Division (India), Mitsubishi Electric (Japan), Petronas (Malaysia), SSS-Smart Software Solutions (Germany), Technical University Dresden (Germany), and Weidmüller (Germany).

Emerson Process Management introduced its Syncade Smart Operations Management suite, real-time production management software. The modular, scalable Syncade Suite extends the PlantWeb digital plant architecture by integrating real-time intelligent plant-floor data with procedural, off-line and transactional plant business processes, decisions and asset management.
Emerson officials said the Smart Operations Management suite can replace the traditional client-server, program intense MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) software of the past decade. Syncade uses Microsoft.NET framework-based software to deliver ISA95 Level 3 standards-based functionality.

Yokogawa Electric Corp. unveiled its Real-time Production Organizer (RPO) suite of manufacturing execution system (MES) platform packages that integrate the vertical production execution workflow across departments.
Based on the ISA-95 manufacturing execution model, RPO performs the definition, dispatch, execution, analysis, and tracking functions, thereby speeding up the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. The RPO packages bring users: Business oriented operations through shared information between planning and management; quick operation changes through cooperative operations; safe and stable operations through plant-wide monitoring, and improved operator productivity.

ILS Technology launched VSInet, an addition to the company’s secureWISE platform, a hosted remote services product offering.
VSInet can provide secure monitoring and access to information technology devices and systems. VSInet is an offering that also allows service providers to provide cost-effective remote-product services without an upfront investment in datacenter hardware, allowing them to concentrate on serving their customers instead of managing their connectivity. VSI gives remote-based service organizations the ability to utilize the Internet as a secure, efficient service-delivery infrastructure to perform remote monitoring and on-demand management access.