by Gary Mintchell | Jan 14, 2016 | Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
Do you know which clouds your company’s files are stored on? Did you even know you had a “shadow IT” problem? This sounds like the problem of the 80s and early 90s when forward thinkers brought PCs into the office because IT took so long to provide information or update reports. Or the past five years as people brought in their tablets and smart phones.
In this case, it’s either the Rolling Stones singing, “Hey! You! Get off of my cloud.” Or maybe Joni Mitchell, “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.”
According to Cisco, over the past year unauthorized use of public cloud services has growth 112 percent with the average large enterprise now using 1,220 individual cloud services.
So, Cisco has developed and released Cloud Consumption as a Service. The software discovers and continually monitors cloud usage across an organization and helps organizations reduce cloud risks and costs. It also delivers detailed analysis and benchmarking that helps the IT team proactively manage cloud usage across the organization.
Employees and business groups are increasingly going around IT to get the cloud services they need to do their job. The phenomenon, dubbed shadow IT, is growing exponentially and becoming a major headache for IT leaders. Recent analysis by Cisco reveals the average large enterprise now uses 1,220 individual cloud services. That’s up to 25 times more than estimated by IT. And the average number of cloud services has grown 112 percent over the past year, and 67 percent over the past six months.
Using the new software-as-a-services product, customers can reduce financial and security exposure by identifying risky cloud services, cloud use anomalies, and compliance issues. They can also cut cloud costs by finding ways to consolidate redundant services. Perhaps most importantly, the ability to discover and monitor cloud usage helps IT team better understand the needs of employees and internal teams. When combined with industry benchmarking, this critical information helps IT teams formulate a more strategic cloud strategy for their organization.
Making Educated Decisions on Cloud Services
CityMD is a fast-growing urgent care organization with 50 facilities across New York City and New Jersey. After using Cloud Consumption, CityMD were surprised to discover employees were using nearly 400 cloud services, with IT only formally supporting 15-20.
“Now that we have full visibility into our cloud usage we can make educated decisions about the services that are right for the business and get a better idea of what risks we may face,” said Robert Florescu, vice president of Information Technology at CityMD. “Our company was founded by ER doctors, so they want cloud services fast. With this information at our fingertips we can partner more effectively with our business groups. We can also proactively ensure we have the appropriate security and compliance measures in place.”
From IT Consultant to Business Consultant
To help Cisco improve the new product a number of Cisco partners participated in an early adopter program. Executives at Aqueduct Technologies and World Wide Technology describe the reaction of customers and the potential impact on their business..
“I recently had a conversation with a VP of IT at one of my larger customers. I was able to show him data in the Cloud Consumption dashboard and he was amazed at services he didn’t realize he was using,” said Chris Jennings, the President and chief strategy officer at Aqueduct Technologies—a regional partner based in Boston, Massachusetts. “We then had the opportunity to help them identify public, private and hybrid solutions that can impact their business. Cloud Consumption gives us the insight to transform our relationship from an IT consultant to a business consultant.”
“We want to empower customers to monitor and manage cloud services,” said Jim Melton, the technical architect of the Cloud Practice at World Wide Technology—a national partner headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. “Cisco Cloud Consumption not only helps with this goal, it also provides insight to help define the next steps in a customer’s cloud journey, and concrete data to build the business case for their cloud initiatives. Cloud Consumption is helping us move from a product-centric conversation to a solutions-oriented, business outcome approach with our customers.”
Price and Availability
The new Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service is now available globally via qualified Cisco channel partners. The new service costs approximately $1-2 dollars per employee per month, depending on the size of the business.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 11, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Internet of Things, Operations Management, Technology
Remote monitoring and diagnostics is a key driver for the Internet of Things strategy adoption in manufacturing and production. Advances in both the technology and services involved in this area appears to be the area of best economic return these days.
Rockwell Automation recently released news about its take on a diagnostic reliability service. Rockwell doesn’t tie it to the Internet of Things, much to its credit. But this solution fits within the broad trend I’ve seen developing.
The solution deploys a layer of technology across plant devices and equipment to monitor and perform analysis, and create a continuous improvement approach to reliability maintenance, reducing operational risk. As part of the service, a Rockwell Automation domain service expert also closely tracks equipment performance to advise on reliability improvements to the production facility.
“Our customers have access to a huge amount of data within their assets, but they often struggle to turn data into useful operational intelligence,” said Ryan Williams, product manager, Rockwell Automation. “In the past, companies relied on maintenance personnel on-site to check the status of equipment in the field and then develop corrective action plans. Now, with the diagnostic reliability service, they can transform maintenance data into asset intelligence. This helps build a more Connected Enterprise, leveraging interconnected data systems and producing actionable information. Companies can better prioritize choices on maintenance and production, and do more with less.”
The solution automatically collects identity and health data from all networked devices on the production control network. The data is then modeled with asset management information to trigger events and send alerts to necessary personnel for proactive maintenance. With the service, Rockwell Automation asset reliability professionals assist users in applying the intelligence on their critical equipment to inform data-driven maintenance decisions and increase productivity.
Case in diagnostics
Case in point: A major oil and gas company used the diagnostic reliability solution to help centralize information gathering and monitor hundreds of critical control assets across a California rural valley. The company also needed inventory of all the field devices in its process control network for a companywide cybersecurity policy. The automated identification and monitoring solution helped the company’s California business unit comply with the new corporate policy, reduce costs associated with field service manpower through proactive maintenance, and increase its daily oil production.
Through integrated, automated device identification and tracking, other customers using the diagnostic reliability service can realize approximately 70 percent reduction in manual data-collection time.
The diagnostic reliability offering is applicable to all manufacturers, with an industry emphasis including oil and gas, mining metals and cement, auto tire and rubber, and consumer packaged goods.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 8, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, Data Management, Operations Management
I chatted this week with two executives from GE Digital. Jeremiah Stone is the General Manager – Industrial Data Intelligence Software at GE Digital, and Jennifer Bennett is the General Manager – Manufacturing Software Solutions (Brilliant Factory) at GE Digital.
The conversation opened with the idea that it’s about data. Companies must become data-driven. But then it’s also beyond data. Not all data sets are equal. And it’s not just about finding anomalies–it’s really about finding that data and anomalies that matter most to business success.
Then we went a direction that I’ve never gone with GE before–remote monitoring and diagnostics (RM&D) targeted to reliability engineers. The often overlooked skillset of reliability engineers, and how their knowledge offers a distinct competitive advantage to companies battling it out in the industrial market.
As the advantages from unlocking big data insights continue to benefit enterprises of all sizes, data scientists – the gatekeepers and analysts of this data – have become an increasingly popular career choice. In fact, The Harvard Business Review proclaimed data scientists to be “the sexiest job of the 21st century.” But with more advanced Remote Monitoring and Diagnosis (RM&D) technologies being utilized to find and address problems before they happen, reducing the costs of planned and unplanned downtime, the emerging industrial superstars are reliability engineers.
This list summarizes our conversation:
- RM&D in the cloud uncovers the gap of reliability-centered maintenance and operations. This new technology shines a light on an old problem for customers– frustrations around the fact that they’re not able to executive consistently on maintenance and operations.
- Successful asset monitoring is more than just software. Organizations have a false sense of security that if they install monitoring software, they instantly have a handle on their operations. But the real secret in handling the complexity that monitoring creates with RM&D is the reliability engineers that can run and interpret the technology.
- Identifying anomalies in RM&D is not the problem. Identifying anomalies that matter to operations is the problem. RM&D create numerous alerts so it’s hard for an organization to know which ones to really focus on. Reliability engineers have the expertise to shift through the notifications and identify false positives, telling their organizations which ones to ignore and which ones to pay attention to.
- Cloud-based business strategy is becoming less about technology and more about knowledge sharing. The benefits of utilizing cloud technology are increasingly becoming centered on the fact that organizations can internally share and learn from a pooled knowledge base, no matter the location. The cloud offers a way for reliability engineers to capture and preserve knowledge that is crucial to the business’s ongoing success.
Stone said that this idea ties in to GE’s strategy itself. As disciples of Deming, the company is data driven, and a lot of that means remote monitoring and diagnostics for GE’s fleet. Incorporating technologies such as those from the SmartSignal acquisition, company engineers and managers are now excited. With the RM&D, they now can execute on goals, avoid failure, achieve greater reliability, and be more proactive. “Now we are excited to bring tools we use to the rest of the industrial world.”
Today’s RM&D enables excellence in manufacturing from a larger, systemic view, in order to deliver business advances, added Stone. Now engineers and managers can look at the entire scope/span of problem, not just one process or loop. “We help companies on the journey beginning with an assessment of where they are and what they want to achieve. We offer professional services to help them figure out what are outcomes they want to achieve. Not just getting connected to get data but doing it in a way that makes sense.”
Bennett pointed to the variety and complexity of data. “The problem has been all data has been in silos, but the value is upstream and downstream. Some challenges in manufacturing are often quite complex. Data flows from contexts requiring tracking back to cause. The platform we’re building on Predix brings data together. We can make insightful decisions. In RM&D we’re looking at history records, maintenance records, and the like. In the past we relied on people who have knowledge and experience for data. Now we can combine and analyze.”
We started discussing workforce and the challenges of recruiting and retaining younger people. Stone noted that young people today are looking for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. “What was magic 20 years ago isn’t now. We find a sense of curiosity in new people and a desire for a job with meaningful impact.”
One improvement in the job situation is the ability to spend more time problem solving and less time gathering data. According to studies, a typical data and analytics project required 80% of the time just collecting and collating data. Stone noted, “Our focus is on dramatically minimizing amount of time to get the data so people can start moving toward problem solving and analytics. Traditionally reliability engineers have been frustrated by availability of data. We are talking about taking it from calendar time to wrist watch time. Then we give collaborative capability. Both newer and more senior engineers are delighted with this new possibility to spend more time problem solving.”
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 4, 2016 | Commentary, Internet of Things, News, Operations Management
Following on to last week’s quick post of PTC’s Internet of Things acquisition of Kepware, I’ve gone a little deeper into the build up to and the strategy of the acquisition.
First off, the Internet of Things is a strategy. It isn’t a “thing.” PTC management seems to “get it.” As you’ll read further down, PTC is not pursuing a simple bolt-on strategy such as what several companies have come to me to help justify. This appears to be a serious attempt to assemble a complete ecosystem / platform going beyond a simple IoT play to offer a business solution to customers.
Warning note. PTC is acquiring software companies and attempting to blend their technologies into a coherent whole. We’ve witnessed many of these seemingly simple processes go south quickly. But PTC has done this before in its core market, then again in the services market. I have confidence the company will show the way in a complete solution.
PTC is paying a large premium for Kepware–Up to $120 million for a company with about $20 million in annual sales. It obviously thinks there is a tremendous upside to its IoT business.
From the press release: PTC announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kepware, a software development company that provides communications connectivity to industrial automation environments, for approximately $100 million, plus up to an additional $18 million based on achievement of certain strategic initiatives and financial results. The acquisition will enhance PTC’s portfolio of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and accelerate the company’s entry into the factory setting and Industrial IoT (IIoT).
Founded in 1995 and located in Portland, Maine, Kepware serves customers in more than 120 countries in such industries as manufacturing, oil and gas, building automation, and power and utilities. The company’s flagship product, KEPServerEX, connects disparate devices and control systems, providing users with a single source of industrial data.
Kepware’s KEPServerEX will become a strategic component of the PTC ThingWorx IoT technology platform. Once the companies’ products are integrated, machine data will be able to be aggregated into the PTC ThingWorx platform, integrated with a wide array of internal and external information, and then automatically analyzed using ThingWorx machine learning capabilities. The integration will allow organizations to gain enterprise-wide insight and to proactively optimize mission-critical processes – enabling them to improve operational performance, quality, and time to market.
In its June 2015 research report, entitled The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype, the McKinsey Global Institute identified the factory as one of the largest sources of potential value to be realized from the adoption of the Internet of Things. PTC has established a dedicated business segment and has formed a strategic alliance with GE to pursue this brilliant factory opportunity. The acquisition of Kepware is intended to complement the alliance with GE.
Kepware and PTC share many common customers that will be able to realize value from the acquisition. Industrial environments already leveraging Kepware technology will be able to benefit from the added breadth of capabilities available in the PTC ThingWorx IoT technology platform. The acquisition of Kepware will also provide a fast-to-value connectivity option for PTC customers to gain visibility into data from a vast range of industrial controls and production equipment, enabling them to kick-start their smart, connected factory initiatives.
“PTC is committed to helping manufacturers, infrastructure operators, and others realize the enormous value inherent in the Internet of Things,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO, PTC. “With this acquisition, we will gain entry into heterogeneous factory and operating environments with robust technology, an impressive list of customers, and a high-quality, profitable company with incredibly talented employees.”
“Kepware and PTC share a common vision of helping organizations realize the potential of the Industrial Internet of Things,” said, Tony Paine, CEO, Kepware. “We believe this acquisition will benefit our customers, partners, and employees – and ultimately drive software innovation for industrial automation markets. We are excited for the opportunity to become part of PTC.”
Over the past 12 months, privately-held Kepware generated approximately $20 million in revenue. PTC expects to draw on its credit facility to finance this transaction and expects Kepware to be neutral to its FY’16 non-GAAP EPS. The transaction is expected to close in early 2016, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval. PTC intends to maintain the Kepware partner ecosystem and to continue developing and enhancing the Kepware technology, once acquired.
PTC Internet of Things Acquisitions
2014
Thingworx
The acquisition of ThingWorx positions PTC as a major player in the emerging Internet of Things era.
Axeda
The acquisition of Axeda allows PTC to leverage its core IoT technology to enable companies to establish secure connectivity and remotely monitor and manage a wide range of machines, sensors, and devices.
2015
ColdLight
The acquisition of ColdLight’s Neuron automated predictive analytics platform will enrich PTC’s technology portfolio and extend PTC’s position as a leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) market.
GE Alliance
GE and PTC announced that the two companies are partnering to deliver an innovative manufacturing solution that will be available within GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. This new GE-branded manufacturing solution leverages the capabilities of PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment. The result is an industry-hardened solution that features flexible dashboards and powerful data analytics integrated with GE’s software capabilities on the manufacturing plant floor.
ThingWorx IoT Platform
- ThingWorx Composer
ThingWorx Composer is an end-to-end application modeling environment designed to help you easily build the unique applications of today’s connected world. ThingWorx Composer makes it easy to model the things, business logic, visualization, data storage, collaboration, and security required for a connected application.
- Codeless Mashup Builder
ThingWorx “drag and drop” Mashup Builder empowers developers and business users to rapidly create rich, interactive applications, real-time dashboards, collaborative workspaces, and mobile interfaces without the need for coding. This next-generation application builder reduces development time and produces high quality, scalable, smart connected applications which allows companies to accelerate the pace at which they can deliver value-add solutions, resulting in greater market share against new and existing competitors.
- Actionable, Correlated Data from People, Systems and Things
ThingWorx is the only platform that can store and correlate data from three dimensions: people, systems, and connected things. This capability allows companies to make business sense of the massive amounts of data from those three dimensions – making the data useful and actionable. The platform supports scale requirements for millions of devices, and provides connectivity, storage, analysis, execution, and collaboration capabilities required for applications in today’s connected world. It also features a data collection engine that provides unified, semantic storage for time-series, structured, and social data at rates 10X faster than traditional relational databases.
- Search-Based Intelligence
ThingWorx SQUEAL (Search, Query, and Analysis) brings search to the world of smart connected devices and distributed data. With ThingWorx SQUEAL’s interactive search capabilities, users can now correlate data that delivers answers to key business questions. Pertinent and related collaboration data, line-of-business system records, and equipment data get returned in a single search, speeding problem resolution and enabling innovation.
- Collaboration
ThingWorx dynamically and virtually brings together people, systems, and connected equipment, and utilizes live collaboration sessions that help individuals or teams solve problems faster. The ThingWorx data store becomes the basis of context aware collaboration and interaction among the systems users, further enhancing its value. Additionally, the tribal knowledge exposed during the process is automatically captured and indexed for use in future troubleshooting activities.
- Flexible Connectivity Options
ThingWorx “inclusive” connectivity strategy maximizes market opportunity and minimizes integration efforts. ThingWorx supports connectivity to devices via several methods, including 3rd party device clouds, direct network connections, Open APIs, and AlwaysOn connectivity.
KEPServerEX Overview
KEPServerEX is a communications platform that provides a single source of industrial automation data to all of applications. The platform design allows users to connect, manage, monitor, and control diverse automation devices and software applications through one intuitive user interface.
KEPServerEX leverages OPC (the automation industry’s standard for interoperability) and IT-centric communication protocols (such as SNMP, ODBC, and web services) to provide users with a single source for industrial data. Designed around the four product pillars of Proven Interoperability, Centralized Communications, On-Demand Scalability, and Industrial Strength, KEPServerEX is developed and tested to meet our customers’ performance, reliability, and ease-of-use requirements.
Product Features
KEPServerEX provides critical technical features that are centralized around accessibility, aggregation, optimization, connectivity, security, and diagnostics.
Accessibility
OPC
OPC is the leading standard for industrial automation connectivity. KEPServerEX supports the OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) specification and many of the OPC Classic specifications, including OPC Data Access (OPC DA), OPC Alarms and Events (OPC AE), and OPC Historical Data Access (OPC HDA).
Automation Interfaces
KEPServerEX has preferred access to leading automation software, including iFIX by GE Intelligent Platforms (NIO) and InTouch by Wonderware (SuiteLink/FastDDE). KEPServerEX also supports preferred access to Oracle MES and MOC solutions through their proprietary API.
IT Interfaces
KEPServerEX supports multiple interfaces for integration with IT applications, including ODBC for logging information to a database and SNMP for providing information to a Network Management System (NMS). With the advent of IoT and Big Data applications, KEPServerEX now includes the ability to communicate with Splunk software and cloud services via the Industrial Data Forwarder for Splunk.
Cloud Interfaces
With the IoT Gateway, KEPServerEX can seamlessly stream real-time industrial control data directly into Big Data and analytic software for Business Intelligence and Operational Excellence. Its customizable data format supports most MQTT and REST applications—enabling users to choose the vendors and communication methodologies right for their system.
Exporters
Some applications require information to be made available from a file or database. This information is typically exported at a predefined rate and includes both current and historical data. KEPServerEX has the ability to export historical Electronic Flow Measurement (EFM) data (via the EFM Exporter plug-in) or historical trend data (via supported drivers) to files and/or databases.
Aggregation
Centralized Platform
KEPServerEX is a communications platform that can support connections to thousands of data sources and provide information to hundreds of applications. The platform design simplifies the configuration of the connected applications by providing a single point of entry to all information. KEPServerEX also enables troubleshooting and issue diagnosis, provides control to the access of information based on user roles, and the ability to restrict the frequency of communications over bandwidth-limited telemetry-based environments.
Unified Configuration
KEPServerEX provides a unified configuration for managing connectivity to any data source. Anything can be added, configured, or deleted while the server is on-line and operational. Users can configure projects manually using a step-by-step wizard or programmatically through the export and import of XML and CSV files.
Data Storage and Retention
KEPServerEX is capable of archiving the real-time data it collects to local storage. By leveraging the Local Historian plug-in, applications can access this historical data (via OPC HDA) for future analysis. KEPServerEX can also store information in any ODBC-compliant database using the DataLogger plug-in, which has a store-and-forward capability for when a database is unreachable or unable to process the information fast enough.
Optimization
Data Conditioning and Reduction
In addition to providing raw values to connected applications, KEPServerEX can perform linear or square root scaling, perform basic arithmetic expressions, or apply deadband calculations on raw data and provide its aggregate. This provides minimal bandwidth and resource utilization by providing only the most critical updates.
Redundancy
KEPServerEX is used in critical applications where highly-reliable systems are required for maximum uptime. It includes the ability to define redundant network paths, primary and secondary data sources, and applicable failover criteria.
Load Balancing
In large networks that have many devices and applications requiring information, flexible control is necessary to allow for customized load-balancing of data collection and information flow. KEPServerEX provides tools to schedule the frequency of communications and throttle the demand across the network.
Communications
KEPServerEX optimizes communications with devices by aggregating identical requests from different applications whenever possible. Multiple demands on data can be batched together into the fewest requests possible. These optimizations are unique to each protocol, and are designed to reduce network overhead and device processing.
Machine-to-Machine Linking
In a typical industrial automation network, devices and controllers must communicate with one another even if they are not from the same manufacturer or do not support the same protocol. KEPServerEX provides the ability to establish links between data values in different data sources, allowing Machine-to- Machine (M2M) communications as close to the device as possible.
Connectivity
Driver-Based Access
KEPServerEX offers the broadest range of drivers available, supporting devices across various verticals within the Industrial Automation Industry. While most drivers act as masters that initiate requests, there are many drivers that can emulate a device where communications are driven by a controller. KEPServerEX drivers also support a variety of wired and wireless network mediums for Ethernet, serial, and proprietary networks. Although most drivers connect directly with hardware devices, some are designed to connect with other applications—such as databases, custom software applications, or other OPC servers.
Telemetry Environments
Industrial automation equipment can be deployed in a dry and heated factory, but it can also be installed inside a vehicle, on a remote pipeline, or in a well or pump station. In these remote environments, there are often a variety of telemetry solutions in use like cellular, radio, or satellite modems. KEPServerEX supports these telemetry configurations and provides additional ways to optimize communications through virtual networks, timing parameters, device demotion, and by scheduling communications across devices.
Rapid Deployment
As automation networks have grown from ten controllers to thousands of controllers, tools that aid and accelerate deployment are critical to a solution’s success. KEPServerEX provides many tools that speed the deployment of new devices, including Automatic Tag Generation (ATG) and Device Discovery (when supported by the device and communication protocols). Users can also export, manipulate, and import an XML project file to programmatically define the configuration.
Simulation
As systems are configured, components must be implemented and tested before the entire system becomes available. KEPServerEX allows any data source to be placed into simulation mode prior to deployment. In addition, the Memory Based driver can be configured to create a range of static and dynamic data points. The Advanced Simulator driver can leverage a database and its contents to drive application-specific simulation data into connected applications.
Security
Configuration
Access to the KEPServerEX configuration can be restricted through the User Manager. This tool allows the administrator to define user groups and users with restricted access to certain project configuration tasks, and also provides the ability to disconnect client applications.
Runtime
There are various tools available within KEPServerEX to control user access to the server, data source, or data values. The Security Policies plug-in limits access based on OPC UA user credentials while supporting default handling for anonymous users (both OPC UA and other client interfaces). The ability to dynamically address information can be disabled, limiting user access to tags defined within the project. KEPServerEX supports a number of secure client standards including SNMP (v3 security), OPC UA, and OPC DA (DCOM security) to further restrict access to the server, as well as a number of secure device protocols to meet the requirements of DNP3, SNMP, and OPC UA data sources. Secure data tunnels can be configured by leveraging multiple KEPServerEX instances at remote endpoints to pass data through firewalls and meet authentication and encryption requirements across the Internet.
Diagnostics
OPC Diagnostics
OPC Diagnostics provide a real-time and historical view of OPC events between any OPC client and the server, including method calls made by the client or callbacks made by the server. The ability to view actual communications and responses is invaluable when troubleshooting client accessibility. The diagnostics tools within KEPServerEX greatly speed deployment and reduce downtime.
Communications Diagnostics
Communication Diagnostics provide real-time capturing of the protocol frames transferred between the server and any device, as well as indications on the driver’s performance. All read and write operations can be viewed or tracked directly in an OPC client application using built-in diagnostics tags. This is useful when modifying key communication parameter settings (such as baud rate, parity, or Device IDs), because corrections are immediately visible.
Third-Party Diagnostics Integration
Diagnostics information can be viewed within KEPServerEX and by third-party applications. Diagnostics information is provided through system-defined tags and accessible to the same clients connecting to the data sources. KEPServerEX logs event information, which is accessible within the configuration tool or to any application that supports the OPC Alarms and Events specification.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 16, 2015 | Automation, News, Technology
In advance of this week’s Automation Fair at Chicago’s McCormick Place, Rockwell Automation has announced a couple of new product extensions–SoftwareStudio 5000 development environment and ControlLogix 5580.
“The addition of these applications [to SoftwareStudio 5000] significantly enhances our integrated development environment,” said Mike Brimmer, product manager, Rockwell Automation. “The expanded environment simplifies the design process and reduces the need for multiple tools, providing a more seamless system development experience.”
The Studio 5000 environment now includes the following:
- The new Studio 5000 Architect application is the central point within the Studio 5000 environment where users can view the overall automation system; configure devices such as controllers, HMIs and EOIs; and manage the communications between the devices. The Studio 5000 Architect application also exchanges data with other Studio 5000 applications and third-party electrical design tools to simplify the development experience.
- The Studio 5000 Logix Designer application is the design and maintenance software for the Allen-Bradley Logix5000 family of controllers and is used to configure discrete, process, batch, motion, safety and drive control. It simplifies the design process by providing an application-centric view of code; enhanced work flows for more efficient re-use of content; and collaborative tools that make it easier for multiple people to work together.
- The new Studio 5000 View Designer application is the design and maintenance software for Allen-Bradley PanelView 5500 graphic terminals. The Studio 5000 View Designer application provides an intuitive, modern design environment that helps users more easily build contemporary systems. It enhances integration between the control system and operator interface to improve programming efficiency and runtime performance.
- The new Studio 5000 Application Code Manager speeds system development by helping users build libraries of re-usable code that can be managed and deployed across their entire enterprise. Creating projects with Application Code Manager helps improve design consistency, reduce engineering costs, and achieve faster time-to-market and commissioning.
In addition, Rockwell Automation has updated the Studio 5000 environment with enhanced security and localized batch control. New security features include more user-authentication and access-control options, and a new privilege escalation capability. These features help improve productivity and system uptime by granting users the right level of access at the right time. Localized batch control allows controller-based batch sequencing and eventing to simplify system architecture for single-unit control and process skids.
The new ControlLogix 5580 controller provides up to 45 percent more application capacity and includes an embedded 1-gigabyte Ethernet port to support high-performance communications, I/O and applications with up to 256 axes of motion.
“With this new controller, users can meet future capacity and throughput needs as they design smart machines and work toward building a Connected Enterprise,” said Dennis Wylie, global product manager, Rockwell Automation. “The new port and additional capacity cuts the amount of control and communications hardware required, reducing system complexity, costs and required panel space.”
In addition, the product selection process is easier with the ControlLogix 5580 controller because users can now select the appropriate model using the total number of Ethernet nodes required. A single ControlLogix 5580 controller can support up to 300 Ethernet nodes.
The controller also supports enhanced security as part of a defense-in-depth approach to help protect facilities, assets and intellectual property. The controller incorporates advanced security technologies and software features, such as digitally signed and encrypted firmware, change detection and audit logging.
