By Andy Graham, Solutions Manager, SolutionsPT
Manufacturing and process organisations everywhere are increasingly undertaking digital transformation and technology modernisation projects. These efforts may be built up from the operational edge, or deployed down from the enterprise, or more likely a bit of both. But system designers quickly realise one thing – there is no single industrial automation software product for addressing such a broad scope of monitoring and control.
Instead, a portfolio of products is needed to revolutionise the endeavour of interconnecting the edge, the production line, each individual plant, all manufacturing sites, and the enterprise. This requires an edge to enterprise strategy implemented with a suite of software products working together at every level. This holistic approach provides a common data-centric source-of-truth and a single line-of-sight to enhance operator productivity. This allows end-users to gain a better understanding of their business so they can make timely and fully informed optimisation decisions.
Greater than the Sum of a Portfolio
True digital transformation integrates many different but related aspects of any any operation. Users need to:
- Automate equipment and processes
- Gather Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) data
- Analyse performance
- Capture knowledge and share best practices
- Visualise real-time process data via local, mobile, and web-based user interfaces
- Standardise across the enterprise
Effectively executing so many disparate tasks calls for a hybrid, on-premise and cloud-enabled, architecture for development, storage, and visualisation. This type of smart platform must seamlessly connect operations, workers, and the enterprise. It quickly becomes clear that smarter, connected operations require a powerful comprehensive portfolio, greater than the sum of its parts.
Operational Agility
AVEVA understand the challenges users face and the tools they need to succeed. By deploying these software products with flexible and scalable architectures, users can access all the functionality necessary for operational agility. Here are a few examples of tools included in the software products to accomplish these tasks:
- Capability to deploy graphics anywhere across the web via the cloud, to mobile or on-premises users
- Cloud-based collaboration so users and developers anywhere can quickly create, improve, and manage configurations and devices
- OPC UA Server for real-time data handling
- MQTT Sparkplug B support for IIoT connectivity and bandwidth reduction
A change in one place is effortlessly updated through all applications. Integrated version management facilitates rapid change management and configuration evolution. Users can easily collaborate and share their knowledge leveraging a single graphics library, consumable by other enterprise users located anywhere in the world. Visualisation runs on desktops, thin clients, or native mobile applications for the best user experience —regardless of platform. These systems are scalable worldwide in even the largest enterprises, with no constraints on tag counts, I/O quantity, or the number of web or thin clients.
AVEVA’s Edge-to-Enterprise strategy offers all these benefits and more, ushering in a new level of performance for controlling, visualising, and optimising industrial operations.
