Invensys Operations Management is showing definite signs of life. I know, there are people out there who would love to argue with me, but there were many significant product announcements, about 1,300 attendees and considerable buzz in Nashville.
President and CEO Sudipta Bhattacharya emphasized the continuity of leadership over the past three years as a major factor for the success thus far of the turnaround. Once he had his team in place—something that really didn’t take that long—there have been few changes. Orders are up slightly, which is actually a very good considering that the year before saw the company land two major orders.
The company continues to launch initiatives that combine solution selling along with engineering and services. Bhattacharya cited the Modernization initiative as one that is gaining traction. At a follow up press conference, Vice President Rick Morse called this initiative one to sustain change with holistic extension of services through every stage of the automation lifecycle. True to the company’s direction under the leadership of Vice President Peter Martin, the initiative incorporates business plans, not just technology ones.
Key takeaways I got from the Modernization presentations included:
strong foundation of automation
infusion is open to customers’ existing investments
ability to modernize at your own pace
empower people
operational excellence and business optimization are complementary
Here is a summary of the product announcements:
ArchestrA System Platform and ArchestrA Workflow provide the core integration and collaboration platform inside of the company’s InFusion Enterprise Control System. Invensys notes these benefits, “When deployed, the software improves performance; strengthens security; simplifies installation; increases operator and engineering productivity and efficiency; and supports new high-availability disaster recovery implementations using Windows Server Hyper-V virtualization from Microsoft. In addition, ArchestrA System Platform 2012 software supports all the latest remote desktop services that are part of Windows Server 2008 R2.”
The company’s ArchestrA Workflow 2012 business process management software enables industrial users to model, execute, analyze and improve work processes inside and outside of their facilities, driving higher levels of collaboration, productivity and innovation. It allows critical operational workflows to be created, deployed, tracked and assessed to drive greater process consistency and accountability.
“What’s unique with the InTouch 2012 software in combination with the ArchestrA Integrated Development Environment is that users can design, build and deploy their critical process visualization systems, from anywhere on their network, using reusable templates,” Gary Nelson, product marketing manager for supervisory and HMI products said.
The new Foxboro Control System 3.0 and I/A Series features an Intelligent Marshalling solution and high-performance Foxboro Control Software and Simulation software. Intelligent Marshalling improves the approach to system implementation and design, and Foxboro Control Software 3.0, which allows users to integrate their plant systems, databases and software applications—address major phases of system modernization.
Foxboro Control Software 3.0 embeds the company’s ArchestrA System Platform and Wonderware InTouch HMI within the Foxboro I/A Series system, applying common object technology from process control up to the business system level and out to any third-party system. This allows users to integrate all of their plant devices, systems, databases and software applications.
The new Foxboro Control Software Simulation 3.0 offering simulates Foxboro Control Software 3.0 applications for rapid, high-quality systems checkout without the need for control hardware. Simulation capabilities include dynamic control of time, alarms and trends using the same configuration files that are used in a live I/A Series DCS. The software also provides an instant interface to the company’s SimSci-Esscor DYNSIM, Foxboro FSIM and Triconex TRISIM dynamic simulation engines, which are used to simulate plant operations, behavior and responses in conjunction with the DCS or simulated DCS.
In addition, Invensys Operations Management announced it has achieved the #1 market share position as a global provider of human machine interface (HMI) software and services in a recent ARC Advisory Group market study.
