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Automation Today

• Overview
  Efficiency - Your key to competitiveness

News and events

• Automation University across the EMEA region
• Automation Fair 2006
• Brau Beviale 2006
• Event diary

Feature story

• Calculating total value of ownership for OEMs

Case studies

• The Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture proves itself in a high-demand food packaging environment
• Gaining a competitive edge thanks to close work with Rockwell Automation and the implementation of the latest Allen-Bradley hardware
• Maintaining quality through tightly controlled process variables

Product Focus

• Servo drive technology available in expanded power ranges
• Ideal batch solutions for smaller operations
• Drives management goes wireless
• Add more flexibility and reliability

OEMs benefit from FactoryTalk

Rockwell Automation recently announced its FactoryTalk software strategy – an integrated suite of highly scalable, modular and standards-based production performance software applications.

FactoryTalk features tight integration with Rockwell Automation’s Allen-Bradley Logix control platform, as well as extensive connectivity to third-party and legacy systems. It leverages a service-oriented architecture (SOA), a set of integrated services that facilitates data sharing among multiple automation software applications. This currently includes security, diagnostics, auditing, data model, licensing, real-time data, historical data, configuration and alarms & events.

“Our vision for FactoryTalk includes helping an OEM to ‘information-enable’ a machine with modular software components,” explains Matt Bauer, director of marketing at Rockwell Software, Rockwell Automation. This approach makes it significantly faster and less costly for end-users who employ Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture to incorporate new assets into a plant’s existing information environment.

FactoryTalk applications address a wide range of typical production functions and processes, which Rockwell Automation groups into six primary “production disciplines”:

• Performance and Visibility – FactoryTalk solutions for the creation and display of key metrics and content in the context of operational effectiveness, including overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) analysis, human-machine interface (HMI), reporting and online analytical processing (OLAP). Products available today in this category include RSBizWare PlantMetrics and RSView.

• Production Management – FactoryTalk products in this category include solutions for order execution, tracking and interactive manufacturing process control. Current offerings include RSBizWare Scheduler, RSBizWare Batch and Propack Data PMX.

• Asset Management – FactoryTalk applications, such as RSMACC, create a foundation for optimising maintenance and plant operations through risk mitigation procedures. This includes comprehensive diagnostics, calibration and real-time monitoring, as well as auditing equipment and network health.

• Quality and Compliance – This encompasses FactoryTalk products for automated quality control, assurance and analysis, SPC/SQC, specification management and regulatory reporting. Offerings available today include RSBizWare eProcedure and Propack Data PMX SkillTrack.

• Data Management – FactoryTalk software for automated and manual data management, including event, process and production, archive, third-party connectivity, plant models, master data (recipes and specifications), document storage, aggregation of multiple sites with synchronization, and recipe management. Current offerings in this category include RSBizWare, RSSql, RSLinx and RSBizWare Historian.

• Design and Configuration – Includes continued enhancements to software solutions, such as RSLogix 5000, used for the design and implementation of discrete, batch, process, motion and safety applications controlled by solutions leveraging the Logix control platform. This discipline also includes Arena simulation applications.

The development of the FactoryTalk suite further enhances the value of the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture. The Allen-Bradley Logix control platform is recognised by industry as the most versatile multi-disciplined control system available. Rockwell Automation will leverage the following information-enabled attributes of Logix within the FactoryTalk suite of production management and performance software:

• Scope of Delivery – The Logix control platform offers the capability to execute sequential, batch, process, motion and safety control, eliminating the need to integrate multiple controllers

• Scalability – The Logix control platform is available through a wide range of controller offerings designed to match individual application needs. FactoryTalk software applications can be implemented as embedded, stand-alone, plant-wide or multisite solutions.

• Real-time Information – The Logix control platform and FactoryTalk plant-wide information software suite feature premier integration, as well as connectivity to legacy and third-party systems. This helps provide low-cost integration and a more efficient flow of real-time information.

“OEMs using Rockwell Automation’s Integrated Architecture – which includes both the Logix control platform and FactoryTalk software suite – will have a distinct advantage because of the ease with which the architecture scales and extends – ultimately decreasing costs and increasing their ease and speed of deployment,” Bauer concludes.