Posts tagged ‘Invensys’
Invensys Acquires Skelta Software
Invensys Operations Management has acquired Skelta Software, a privately held software company headquartered in Bangalore, India. Founded in 2003, Skelta provides enterprise business process management (BPM) and advanced workflow software solutions. The Skelta BPM suite offers business process modeling and execution and includes unique, integrated capabilities for business rules management, forms management, document management and business activity monitoring. It also includes connectors to Microsoft SharePoint, BizTalk and Office.
“This acquisition further extends our Enterprise Control System strategy,” said Sudipta Bhattacharya, President and CEO, Invensys Operations Management. “Skelta technology will enable Invensys Operations Management and our global network of ecosystem partners to deliver new, easy-to-configure workflow, collaboration and process-centric applications. This, in turn, empowers our customers and partners to be more productive and innovative.
“Every business needs the flexibility to respond to new business challenges in real time, Bhattacharya continued. “By extending our open Wonderware System Platform and InFusion Enterprise Control System offerings, we further accelerate the development of applications that improve collaboration and workflow across people, systems and documents.”
Skelta offerings enable customers to build powerful BPM solutions to accelerate customer deployments with a high return on investment and lower total cost of ownership. Skelta also offers prebuilt solutions, such as accounts payable, document management, and governance, risk management and compliance, to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. These offerings include advanced collaboration tools, real-time work flow processes and new application development tools, delivered and serviced by more than 80 partners, including systems integrators and valued-added resellers, who will join Invensys Operations Management’s global network of more than 3,000 ecosystem partners.
Said Sanjay Shah, CEO of Skelta Software: “Our customers will continue to work with the same strong Skelta team and continue to receive the same excellent products and services, but now they will be backed by an industry-leading company with global capabilities, allowing us to further expand our suite of BPM software, services and solutions.”
The business will continue to be managed by Skelta’s executive team, adding approximately 130 employees to Invensys’ operations in India.
Skelta BPM is a completely embeddable business process management and advanced workflow framework, and like Invensys’ ArchestrA software framework, it is built on Microsoft .NET technology, making it open, extensible and scalable. The Skelta BPM software will extend the Invensys Wonderware System Platform and InFusion Enterprise Control System with new workflow capabilities that can help customers improve their process execution, standardization, quality control, regulatory compliance and environment, health and safety programs.
Skelta BPM technology links manufacturing and infrastructure operations systems to business and departmental workflow systems, helping customers achieve better business results in real time. Personnel at every level of the operation, including quality managers and planners, can use the resulting solutions to help control their daily workflows, as well as improve demand response, issue resolution and corrective and preventive actions. For example, because it is being integrated with the InFusion ECS, Skelta technology will help make it quicker and easier for customers to initiate a production change sequence as a result of a large order or to manage workflows associated with maintenance issues, such as faster recovery from unplanned downtime. Preconfigured industrial and manufacturing-specific workflows will be built into future Invensys offerings, with the goal of reducing the cost and complexity of implementing high-value workflow solutions while driving productivity excellence.
Invensys Software Improves Well Field Performance
Invensys Operations Management announced the release of its Well Field Application, a software suite that monitors, manages and enhances the performance of oil and gas well fields in real time. Built on the company’s Wonderware® System Platform and InTouchTM human machine interface solutions, the software provides reports, alarms, call outs, data storage and process data management on all well field assets. Its management capabilities are driven by a real-time overview of the entire field, supported by functions that look deep into the operations of each well to extract detailed production information. That information can be used to create reports, alarms and graphics that call attention to underperforming assets. These reports and alarms can then be sorted by asset, route, operator or foreman and accessed via the Web, viewed on handheld devices and sent via email or text message, helping to eliminate delays and reduce maintenance costs. Additionally, any process variable, such as flow rate, pressure and volume, can be compared and measured to help identify assets that are performing below expectations.
“The Invensys Well Field Application provides operators and enterprise managers with a single point from where they can see and measure the operation of their well field, helping them to achieve productivity excellence. By combining our extensive experience in oil and gas operations with our proven supervisory control and data acquisition products, Invensys is able to offer a unique integrated, comprehensive real-time solution,” said John Gilmore, Jr., Director of Upstream Oil & Gas, Invensys Operations Management. “This product enables our oil and gas customers to work smarter by pulling together, into one operations management package, real-time information from existing networks, both hardware and software, to improve the overall productivity of their operations.”
The application is data driven and further extends Invensys Operations Management’s open Wonderware System Platform, which means that users can easily configure assets, wells, operator responsibilities and similar data themselves, saving engineering and programming costs. Operators can quickly add hundreds of wells at a time to the configuration, and the solution contains proven templates to integrate many real-time automation and information systems, as well as any control and data-acquisition hardware. This is particularly valuable for maturing well fields that are operating with multiple generations of automation equipment.
In addition to managing the physical assets of the field, the Invensys Well Field Application provides tools for improving human resources functions. Best practices and training methods can be identified and developed using summaries and comparisons that can be organized by area, team, lift type or custom group. Training of new operators is also made easier because of how the system logically organizes and presents information.
Invensys Simplifies SCADA with Wonderware System Platform 4.0
Invensys Operations Management announced the release of its Wonderware® System Platform 4.0 software, which delivers new information services, new device connectivity functions, tiered historian capabilities and improved Web visualization. These enhancements enable plant operators to manage and control equipment and processes more effectively. In addition, information systems personnel can more easily integrate and make use of real-time manufacturing information, and users can be updated continuously on the company’s overall operations performance.
Wonderware System Platform’s new tiered historian capabilities simplify data time-stamping, information aggregation, retrieval and reporting, and improve information security and disaster recovery across distributed operations. The platform historian is also available as a standalone offering, Wonderware Historian 10.0.
The Information Server 4.0 component of the platform now provides the rich experience and performance of real-time ArchestrA graphics for Web visualization for more functional and effective KPI reports and HMI graphics. Using the company’s open platform, customers’ graphical configuration efforts can be reused easily and managed across their manufacturing enterprises, both as Wonderware InTouch® HMI graphics and inside their Web applications.
“The Wonderware System Platform 4.0 software provides a single, scalable and open platform for SCADA, HMI, MES and EMI software, addressing the business and functional needs of industrial automation, operations and information personnel,” said Steve Garbrecht, director of product marketing at Invensys Operations Management. “Its plant model-based, integrated configuration environment provides a logical representation of the physical processes being controlled and supervised, enabling rapid configuration and deployment of component object-based industrial applications. This software platform solution allows our engineering teams, along with our ecosystem partners and customers, to accelerate flexible innovations that are aimed at achieving operations excellence.”
New Invensys Solution Improves Refinery Margins
Invensys Operations Management announced the release of its Refinery-wide Performance Optimization Solution. The company has leveraged and integrated multiple technologies from its solutions portfolio to deliver different aspects of real-time business operations management to the refining industry. From simple control loop performance management and rigorous unit optimization to LP vector updating for multi-unit planning optimization, customers will be able to optimize all of their refining assets and reap cost savings and margin improvements of up to 25 cents per barrel.
“Based on the collective feedback from the more than 50 customers who are already using the solution, as well as our own industry expertise, we believe the Refinery-wide Performance Optimization Solution is the most comprehensive refinery performance enabler in the marketplace, capable of delivering millions of dollars in savings each year,” said Don Clark, VP Industry Solutions, Invensys Operations Management. “It enables companies to quantify and understand the financial impact of their business decisions in real time and ensures that their technology does not fall into disrepair as they pursue operations excellence related to safety, the environment and asset management. With a sustainable, tuned optimizer, our customers are also able to ensure optimal refinery planning by automatically downloading updated planning model LP vectors that can further drive the profitability of their refining operations.”
The solution leverages Invensys Operations Management’s SimSci-Esscor® ROMeo® optimizer and Wonderware® Intelligence enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) applications. The backbone of Invensys’ Online Performance Suite, ROMeo software is the industry’s leading unified modeling environment for offline and online optimization and is being used to optimize operations in refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants worldwide. The Wonderware Intelligence EMI application acquires critical process and optimal performance data from the ROMeo optimizer and models and aggregates it with data acquired from other operational data sources, including laboratory information management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, manufacturing execution systems and refinery process historians, to provide deeper insight and tracking of refinery performance. The Wonderware Intelligence software can calculate and make readily available unique and extremely valuable key performance indicators to all plant personnel, allowing operators and executives to measure the real-time financial impact of the optimizer through flexible Web-based dashboards.
With clear, measurable and visible benefits that can total millions of dollars per year, refining companies that utilize the solution can make better decisions about how to deliver long-term, sustainable benefits. Additional attributes of the Refinery-wide Performance Optimization Solution include:
- A scalable software platform that allows incremental, scalable deployment, all within a common architecture that helps ensure rapid ROI and the ability to grow as the benefits grow;
- The ability to layer the Wonderware Intelligence EMI solution on top of existing SimSci-Esscor ROMeo optimizer installations;
- Refinery-wide modeling to identify the most profitable processing of different crude oil feedstocks, which can help ensure the highest value product pools;
- Closed-loop optimization of individual units and naphtha pools, as well as the refinery’s utilities and hydrogen systems;
- Refinery-wide mass balance data reconciliation to identify faulty meters and optimal yield accounting; and
- World-class refinery solutions talent from Invensys that have a proven track record of enabling success.
For more information about refinery optimization please visit iom.invensys.com/optimization and download the free white paper “Achieving Competitive Advantage from Refinery-Wide Business Performance Optimization.”
ExxonMobil Agrees to License Refinery Process Models
Invensys Operations Management has entered into an agreement with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co. (EMRE) that allows Invensys to sub-license a suite of EMRE’s refinery process models to third parties. The suite of models will be delivered through Invensys Operations Management’s market-leading SimSci-Esscor® optimization software, using its ROMeo® solution to enable clients to model and optimize process units.
“With depressed demand, decreased margins and increased environmental mandates, refiners no longer have the option to simply operate at maximum throughput,” said Sudipta Bhattacharya, president and chief executive of Invensys Operations Management. “Over the course of the coming decade, we will see a drastic shift in the oil industry as refiners constantly optimize their operations in the face of changing feedstock and energy costs, product specs and margins. Refiners will increasingly rely on accurate modeling technologies to construct a refinery-wide picture and assess the financial impact of different operating scenarios. Our SimSci-Esscor optimization software and ROMeo solution, combined with EMRE process models, enables refiners to make improved economic decisions throughout the refinery, from crude feed to final product blending.”
While traditional modeling solutions can only simulate individual process units or provide point solutions to solve a specific problem, Invensys Operations Management’s SimSci-Esscor solution provides a scalable software environment that enables companies to optimize refinery-wide performance, as well as other aspects of refinery profitability, such as utilities and instrument/equipment health monitoring. Additional benefits are derived from leveraging the data generated by rigorous models to enhance planning and scheduling decisions, leading to increased refinery margins.
“These modeling improvements allow refiners to better optimize their operations,” said Charles Darnell, global manager for optimization, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co. “We use ROMeo technology in our plants for multiple applications and continue to work with Invensys to develop improvements in this technology.”
Invensys to Implement IntelaTrac for Chevron Upstream
Invensys Operations Management announced that it has contracted with Chevron to provide the Wonderware IntelaTracTM mobile workforce and decision-support system to support Chevron’s upstream operations. IntelaTrac’s configurable software and ruggedized mobile hardware solution enables workers to better manage workflow, procedural and general management tasks that focus on plant, production and field operations, maintenance management, production, inventory and logistics tracking and compliance applications.
Invensys will provide the IntelaTrac solution to assist operators, field engineers, technicians and supervisors in creating inspection and regulatory procedures. It also will assign, schedule and execute rounds and report findings that are prioritized based on the level of severity of the issue. IntelaTrac provides the capabilities for an organization to create and define procedures based on best practices, as well as regulatory compliance rules and regulations. Procedures are re-usable across many operator and technician rounds to ensure that inspections are performed on a routine basis as mandated by overall corporate policies, as well as regulatory agencies.
“Chevron wants a mobile platform capable of supporting many business work processes and an ‘out of the box’ solution,” said Eric Moorehead, North America client care executive program leader, Invensys Operations Management. “Our IntelaTrac solution has been used by Chevron in its downstream business process for several years. By extending the availability of IntelaTrac, Chevron anticipates being able to support many new business processes using a single mobile platform for operations, maintenance, reliability tracking, production data collection and safety inspections across the enterprise.”
Invensys Releases InFusion ECS 2.0
Invensys Operations Management has released the next evolution of its groundbreaking InFusionTM Enterprise Control System (ECS). InFusion ECS 2.0 features new software platform updates and includes:
- Superior integration with the company’s Foxboro I/A Series® distributed control system and SCADA hardware and software offerings;
- Open integration with virtually any other automation or information system; and
- Enhanced platform integration with the company’s latest advanced applications, including its Wonderware® batch, manufacturing execution systems (MES), mobile workforce management, enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) and enterprise business system integration offerings.
With its new capabilities and an integrated offering that can reduce the total cost of ownership, the InFusion ECS 2.0 helps customers consolidate information across their existing automation and information systems. By enabling real-time access to critical business intelligence, industry users are better able to balance competing strategic objectives related to safety, controls, assets, productivity and the environment to maximize their overall profitability.
“Process manufacturing is facing what could be characterized as a perfect storm. The loss of experience as a result of the shifting demographics, the need to operate proactively rather than reactively, the ability to empower knowledge workers with actionable context and more are all new challenges that require changes in our processes and tools,” said Dave Woll, VP consulting services, ARC Advisory Group. “Invensys Operations Management’s ability to use an open technology platform to transcend disparate systems provides the unique opportunity to collaboratively apply Invensys and other best-of-breed solutions. With the InFusion 2.0 solution, it is significantly easier to provide, manage and contextualize information for a wide variety of operations users, allowing them to drive and deliver greater production value in real time.”
Introduced in 2006, the InFusion ECS utilizes open, industry standards-based ArchestrA® technology that easily and affordably unites process and production control with business operations control. The system provides functional object templates for a broad range of control and manufacturing operations applications that work within a single development and management environment. The InFusion ECS can help save significant time, effort and money by improving the ability to view and synchronize information from multiple systems and applications; improving collaboration, execution and operations management across a variety of functions within the enterprise, as well as improving the ability to create and replicate solutions across the enterprise.
Invensys Operations Management also has the world’s largest industrial ecosystem partner network, with more than 3,000 systems integrator, hardware and software companies participating. Many of these partners have been working with Invensys for several years, building complementary expertise and specialized domain solutions utilizing ArchestrA technology. The combined knowledge and proven delivery capabilities of Invensys and its ecosystem partners that use ArchestrA technology can now be leveraged to expand and accelerate InFusion solutions for customers. The installed base of software licenses containing proven ArchestrA technology inside of multiple Invensys brands now exceeds 220,000.
“Our customers tell us that they need to operate a real-time enterprise so they can react to business variables and balance environmental, productivity and control trade-offs without jeopardizing profitability or plant safety,” said Sudipta Bhattacharya, president and CEO, Invensys Operations Management. “Most systems are isolated and only allow optimization within specific processes or plants. The InFusion ECS, however, allows manufacturers to optimize their operations across the entire enterprise. We are very excited to reach the next milestone in the evolution of the InFusion Enterprise Control System, and we are confident it will help our customers accelerate their move toward becoming a real-time enterprise.”
Invensys Supports Field Device Integration Cooperation
Invensys Operations Management announced that to accelerate deployment of field device integration (FDI) technology, it has joined other key suppliers to enlarge the scope of the EDDL Cooperation Team and become part of the FDI Cooperation. The FDI Cooperation will initially consist of the FDT Group, Fieldbus Foundation, HART Communications Foundation, OPC Foundation and PROFIBUS Nutzerorganisation, as well as ABB, Emerson, Endress+Hauser, Honeywell, Invensys Operations Management, Siemens and Yokogawa.
“We need to continue supporting the move to a more open and integrated perspective in the plant because it allows manufacturing and process operations executives to make profitable tradeoffs in real time,” said Rashesh Mody, Sr. VP Portfolio and Strategy, Invensys Operations Management. “That is why we are fully supportive of the FDI project. In addition to being a strong benefit to users, it is also a benefit to vendors because now we can strengthen our focus on providing value-added applications as opposed to supporting hundreds of different devices.”
Invensys believes the FDI project will create a more user-friendly, hardware-independent choice for manufacturing operators. With FDT Group, the definition files provided by instrument vendors are plug-ins to the field device manager framework. This eliminates the need for manufacturers to rely on hundreds of independent diagnostic applications supplied by multiple vendors and the need for distributed control system (DCS) vendors to supply diagnostic applications for all available devices. The real value, however, is that with FDT, the device type manager advanced applications all vendors write can now plug in to any DCS. Customers can use these diagnostics for predictive maintenance, saving millions of dollars in unnecessary downtime and maintenance costs.
The FDI project was kicked off at the 2007 Hanover Fair. At that time, ECT welcomed FDT Group with the primary objective of harmonizing EDDL and FDT/DTM technologies. Since then, the project has carefully shaped the technology direction for the converged FDI solution. The addition of supplier companies, who have agreed to support FDI packages in their systems and products, will strengthen this effort by providing resources for the completion of this project.
Besides the finalization of the FDI specification, which is scheduled for mid 2010, the scope of the enlarged EDDL Cooperation Team is covering common design and test tools, common binary format and interpreter across the protocols of HART®, FoundationTM Fieldbus and PROFIBUS. The intent is to assure a uniform device integration solution for process industries across all host systems, devices and protocols as required by end users.
Invensys Releases Wonderware Enterprise Integrator 3.5
Invensys Operations Management, provider of process technology solutions, unveiled Version 3.5 of its Wonderware® Enterprise Integrator software, which enables secure integration of Wonderware manufacturing execution software (MES) applications, such as Operations, InBatchTM, Intelligence and other shop-floor applications with other enterprise systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain management (SCM) and laboratory information management systems (LIMS). The Wonderware Enterprise Integrator 3.5 solution allows a consistent approach in operations-to-enterprise integration, eliminating high-maintenance, point-to-point integration scenarios.
The newest version of Wonderware Enterprise Integrator offers out-of-the-box, site-to-enterprise integration services for Wonderware MES, with complete message history, secured delivery and store forward. Technology support for industry standards such as S95 and B2MML, as well as for service-oriented architectures (SOA), helps further reduce the total cost of ownership of integration and IT landscapes.
“Our Wonderware Enterprise Integrator software leverages the benefits of off-the-shelf software with the ability to extend to address specific data management capabilities, which are always required in integration projects,” said Michael Schwarz, MES and EMI marketing programs manager, Invensys Operations Management. “The software is designed to manage additional connectivity and data transformations as reusable add-ons, which enable effective multi-site integration rollouts and support company standards.”
Easy-to-use configuration, administration and status views offer fast, maintainable and more cost-effective enterprise integration compared to non-standard or customized software-based integration solutions. The product also allows customers to achieve business continuity in the case of ERP or business system unavailability and the ability to maintain data consistency by a menu-driven, Web-based user interface.
Cypress Envirosystems, Invensys Form Technology Alliance
Cypress Envirosystems, a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor Corp., and Invensys Operations Management announced they have formed a technology alliance to ensure seamless interoperability between Cypress Envirosystems’ wireless monitoring and control solutions and a wide range of Wonderware® software solutions, including the new Corporate Energy Management Application. The combined solutions can be set up quickly to make it simple for customers to conserve energy and cut costs in industrial and commercial facilities.
“We are pleased to join forces with Invensys and to leverage their Wonderware software solutions, which are widely recognized for their ease of use and the versatility they bring to manage diverse plant and facilities functions effectively,” said Harry Sim, CEO of Cypress Envirosystems. “Our combined solutions allow managers of existing facilities to automate processes with minimal disruption, significantly boosting operational efficiency while conserving energy.”
Cypress Envirosystems’ technologies enable older buildings and manufacturing sites to adopt the latest automation technologies at an affordable cost, and with minimal disruption to existing occupants, processes and staff. The products require minutes to install and typically provide payback within 12 months. The alliance with Invensys includes Cypress Envirosystems’ Wireless Gauge Reader, the Wireless Steam Trap Monitor, the Wireless Transducer Reader and the Wireless Pneumatic Thermostat.
The new Wonderware Corporate Energy Management Application transforms data into vital plant information to synchronize operations and business objectives. This application enables manufacturing, industrial and commercial facilities customers to easily and quickly implement energy management programs to achieve corporate-wide sustainability goals. It allows users to monitor, detect and notify personnel of energy inefficiencies when demand and usage limits have been exceeded and require attention. It also connects directly to meters through automation systems and building information networks, as well as accepts manual entry via Wonderware InTouch® HMI interface for operations management, control and optimization.
Field information may also be supplied from the Wonderware IntelaTrac mobile workforce and decision support system. The energy management application checks consumption and demand at main and sub meters operating a wide range of power generation methods, including power, water, gas, air and steam. Alarms activate when demand limits are exceeded, with visualization of alarms provided by InTouch software.
“Users have a growing need to extract data from their sustainability, energy savings and leak detection applications, but manufacturers are not always in a position to access this information because legacy systems are monitoring and controlling important processes such as water, steam, oil and natural gas consumption,” said Craig Resnick, Research Director, ARC Advisory Group. “The strategic alliance between Cypress Envirosystems and Invensys will provide solutions that will connect these automation islands and extend the lifecycle of legacy assets, enabling the deployment of applications that will result in energy and natural resource savings, increased plant efficiency and a quick return on investment.”
“Our open technology platform is a collaborative foundation that ecosystem partners use to develop a wide variety of targeted solutions for industrial automation and facilities management markets at competitive prices,” said Matt Bauer, VP Ecosystems, Invensys Operations Management. “Cypress Envirosystems is an example of the power in that approach.
Together we deliver an outstanding value proposition that overcomes a major issue for many organizations: interactive control of, and data collection from, traditional analog-style instrumentation associated with energy usage and management. Their low-cost conversion of legacy meters, dials and valves into a wireless digital environment creates rapidly deployable, highly cost-effective data sources for our corporate energy management solution. Together we offer a granular level of energy-usage visibility, tracking and control that simply has not been available in any of our served markets to date.”
The patent-pending Wireless Gauge Reader (WGR) clips onto the front face of an existing gauge to capture and transmit the readings. It installs in minutes and does not require removing old gauges, breaking pressure seals, performing leak checks, running wires or interrupting the underlying process.
The Wireless Steam Trap Monitor (WSTM) mounts non-invasively onto existing steam traps in minutes and uses a proven algorithm to detect steam trap failures, particularly expensive steam leaks. An estimated 15-20% of steam traps are malfunctioning at a given time, and the WSTM augments manual audits to detect failures in a timely manner and avoid wasting resources.
The Wireless Transducer Reader (WTR) provides a fast and inexpensive solution to read and transmit data from existing standalone transducers with no need to run wires. Packaged with clamp-on current meters and ultrasonic flow meters, the WTR is an extremely cost-effective and flexible method to obtain energy use characterization and baseline data for audits.
The patent-pending Wireless Pneumatic Thermostat (WPT) retrofits existing pneumatic thermostats to deliver DDC-like functionality in minutes. Compared with a cost of $2,500 or more per zone for implementing DDC systems, the WPT costs less than 20% as much and enables remote temperature sensing and control of setpoints, programmable zone control, self-calibration and Demand Response program usage.
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