FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition
Rockwell Automation announced the availability of its FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition (ME) software. This machine-level data historian is designed to help manufacturers mitigate the risk of machine downtime and reach continuous process improvement goals. The FactoryTalk Historian ME application is an embedded, solid-state module hardened for on-machine data collection that features a limited software footprint, no moving parts, and reduced risk of data loss due to network or other system interruption.
The FactoryTalk Historian ME software helps manufacturers transform manufacturing intelligence into process improvements by leveraging reliable, real-time production data to improve product quality, speed time to market and support regulatory compliance.
Rockwell Automation designed the application as part of a distributed, tiered architecture that allows employees in different locations and at different operating levels to view and analyze role-appropriate historical data. Operators, for example, can view data from the specific machine they are using while plant-level supervisors can view individual machines or complete lines to build real-time comparisons against standards and assess critical batch or process performance. Meanwhile, senior management can use the same technology to develop executive dashboards that compare key performance indicators (KPIs) of production activity across multiple locations.
A stand-alone design makes the FactoryTalk Historian ME module ideal for remote data capture in challenging environments, such as drilling rigs, wells and other previously inaccessible locations. The software helps to significantly reduce implementation time because it is directly installed in the Allen-Bradley ControlLogix backplane, then autodetects the controllers and configures all relevant tags to be historized. The application also leverages backplane communication to increase the speed of data collection and provide more granular data than is possible on a traditional, network-connected plant historian.
The FactoryTalk Historian ME software allows machine builders to pre-qualify the data collection of their machines to speed up on-site installation, configuration and validation efforts. Data-capture capabilities produce granular, historical data that helps provide effective sequence of events analysis, improving both product quality and customer satisfaction. For machine builders in highly regulated industries, the application helps provides continuous uptime and reliability to help meet government regulations.
FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI
Rockwell Automation also introduced FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI business intelligence software for manufacturing. The FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI software helps empower users at every level of an enterprise with information from Web-based dashboards and reports on key performance indicators from multiple manufacturing and business data sources. Manufacturers can better monitor and manage productivity in real time, and make more insightful decisions about business priorities, such as product quality, equipment utilization and global supply-chain management to help reduce costs in today’s competitive business environment.
The FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI software connects to multiple data sources – real-time, historical, relational and transactional – to create a single resource that can access, aggregate and correlate information via a Web browser. The new application is based on a unified production model (UPM) that provides a unified view of seemingly disparate manufacturing data and gives a context for relationships among equipment, product, materials and people. The UPM organizes various manufacturing and enterprise data using commonly referenced business terms, like “equipment,” “batches” or “manufacturing lots.” Access to this information improves decision-making for the manufacturing environment – from inventory to maintenance, quality to production all the way through the enterprise, including the supply chain.
The new business intelligence software allows users to report data through a variety of tools, including Microsoft Excel, Trend and SAP Business Objects Dashboard Builder, and view it through the FactoryTalk VantagePoint software, Microsoft SharePoint and other portals.
The FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI is the second application from Rockwell Automation to leverage technology it acquired from Incuity Software – the first edition, FactoryTalk VantagePoint, was announced in 2008. Both editions combine data produced by the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture system and other third-party production systems to provide a single access point for information that can help make better manufacturing decisions. With two versions now available, manufacturers can select the most appropriate feature set for their needs.
The new application can be used to address single or multiple manufacturing problems, on one manufacturing line or across a global enterprise. In addition, the FactoryTalk VantagePoint EMI software can be used to address specific manufacturing needs, like downtime reporting, status tracking or multiple control-system reporting. The software also can be bundled with services to provide a complete solution to satisfy unique vertical market needs.