With travel, soccer work and an anniversary interrupting work, I’m finally getting around to recapping the RSTechEd event. This isn’t so much a long news story as a bunch of notes and observations.
Here’s Sr. Vice President Steve Eisenbrown giving an overview of the business:
And brother Bob Eisenbrown was MC:
Frank Kulaszewicz, VP & GM in controls and integration software:
Manufacturing Intelligence is growth opportunity. They describe it as “closed loop decision support.”
They have developed a dual go-to-market strategy. After forming Rockwell Software and acquiring/developing enterprise software, Rockwell developed a direct sales team targeting enterprise customers. Now, especially with the integration of Incuity technology into the VantagePoint products that are targeted to the factory, they have products for the regular distributor channel.
They have described target areas for Integrated Architecture as process, information, safety and OEMs. Now they are adding Enterprise Energy Management.
They see safety and energy as current growth areas.
Idea is objects are in the controller and used by manufacturing intelligence (analytics plus visualization).
By adding modeling from Pavilion to VantagePoint, they see a future in predictive KPIs.
I’ve observed that the key thing to watch with acquisitions is how well they are integrated within a couple of years. In Rockwell’s case, they’ve done good job with Incuity, with Pavilion coming along.
Asset Center – assets are all electronic assets, software and firmware, can include Endress + Hauser instruments.
Information Services are to be embedded in the controller.
Virtualizing networks, controllers is a key theme and trend for future development.
Steve Eisenbrown, “We can now cover 95% of process applications. We can now call our controller a DCS.” And another quote, “Automation is an enabler and accelerator of productivity.”
Integrated power and control — for Rockwell too, but energy as part of BOM so it can be managed.
Jeff Soplopp, the idea with energy is not measure to control (as in single points) but measure many points then multivariate modeling to optimize.
And a new tool was introduced to automate PackML to FactoryTalk metrics. That was very cool and well received by attendees at the session.
