Posts tagged ‘Wonderware’
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.”
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 Introduces Corporate Energy Management Application
Invensys Operations Management has introduced the new Wonderware® Corporate Energy Management Application, which enables industrial automation customers to implement an energy management program quickly and easily and respond better to energy consumption challenges.
The application allows users to monitor energy and detect and notify personnel of energy inefficiencies. It connects directly to meters on a network through industrial controllers, and accepts manual entry via the company’s Wonderware InTouch® HMI and IntelaTracTM mobile solutions. The application is layered on top of the Wonderware System Platform, enabling integration with a wide range of applications, networks and I/O data sources. Application functionality includes recording consumption and demand at main and sub meters for a wide range of energy types, including power, water, chill, gas, air and steam. The application also associates production output to energy usage, providing the key performance indicators used in many sustainability programs. It can be installed in a matter of days, and pre-built reports give managers, supervisors and workers new visibility and information on how energy is used within the operation.
“Energy management at the enterprise level is not only the responsibility of plant managers and engineers, it has now become the responsibility of corporate management as well,” said Bill Schiel, manager of energy management solutions, Invensys Operations Management. “All departments within a company consume energy and add cost to a product or service, so all must be involved in developing an energy management strategy that can be quickly implemented to benefit the entire organization’s bottom line.”
With this Wonderware application, companies are able to create a variety of energy consumption Web reports based on time period, department, cost center and operational events. Real-time views of energy consumption are provided by Wonderware InTouch HMI, offering an overview of the real-time state of energy usage. With the Wonderware Corporate Energy Management Application, organizations can quickly meet business initiatives for energy reductions and resource management to achieve long-term sustainable results.
Invensys Announces ‘Powered by Wonderware’ Program
Invensys Operations Management, provider of technology and software to the process and manufacturing industries, announced a newPowered By Wonderware® program that delivers its Wonderware InTouch® human-machine interface (HMI) software in a Compact Edition form factor for Windows CE devices. The program was created in partnership with Advantech Corp., Arista Corp., Axiomtek, B&R Industrial Automation, Beckhoff Automation, Beijer Electronics, Kontron and VIPA. Powered By Wonderware certified devices are now available from these vendors, with pre-installed images ready for use out of the box.
“The Powered by Wonderware program, in conjunction with our partners, means that our customers can now order their HMI hardware with runtime software pre-installed, directly from their vendor of choice,” said Keith Jones, marketing program manager, Wonderware HMI/SCADA products. “This offers a certified combination of InTouch Compact Edition software and vendor hardware, tested by Wonderware and ready to use out of the box. Customers will appreciate the time they will save with the pre-installed software, as well as have confidence that their industrial computer panel is ready to run. In addition, InTouch Compact Edition software has never been more affordable, with users able to select the license size they need and take advantage of exciting new bundled pricing.”
By partnering with many of the world’s top HMI hardware brands, Invensys now offers clients the most cost-efficient version of Wonderware InTouch HMI software on a vast amount of hardware styles and ratings.
“Wonderware customers are assured that InTouch Compact Edition software is certified to function properly on all certified hardware and that, together with our partners, we will support the complete solution in every corner of the globe,” said Dan Fitzpatrick, global embedded program manager, Invensys Operations Management.
Powered By Wonderware is an ongoing open program, with Invensys planning to announce additional members in the coming months.
PetroComputing 