Top 5 Automation Applications Your Business Can’t Live Without

There’s a plethora of industrial software applications now available from a variety of vendors, both small, point-solutions based companies to the larger, all-in-one industrial automation vendors.  They offer everything from development environments through IT solutions.  But if you look at your critical needs, it comes down to using 5 applications:

1. Human Machine Interface (HMI).  For plant and process visibility, nothing compares to an HMI.  It’s technology that’s been proven for over 25 years, offered by every major industrial automation company, and is critical for visualizing and providing immediate feedback to your process, be it manufacturing, industrial (such as power gen, water/wastewater), or even building management/HVAC.  The leading HMI has been Wonderware’s InTouch.

2. Data Historian.  A Data Historian is basically a database that has been tuned and designed to capture time and event-based data, and structure it for reporting and analysis.  Like the HMI, there are a number of vendors offering historians, as either part of their hardware suite, or as standalone products.  Look for a historian that can capture a large number of data points (“tags”).  The newest feature tag capacity in the millions.  Wonderware Historian is one of them.  Normally, a reporting tool is also offered, with the ability to configure and distribute reports.

3. Workflow (Business Process Management).  Workflow is a technology that has been adapted to the industrial enterprise.  It allows standardization of processes, enforcement of procedures, and inclusion of “best practices.” You can append any process with a workflow to ensure compliance (for example, corporate practices or regulatory requirements).  Modern workflow engines offer functions such as escalation, mobile access to work tasks, and integration to both plant and business systems.  ArchestrA Workflow is an example of BPM software for industry.

4. Mobile Reporting. There’s a plethora of reporting products available, but few that are designed for a mobile (ie, smart phone or tablet) platform. These newer applications can access data from Historians (see #2) or any SQL-compliant application. They make information gathering and access easy, and on-demand, using a cloud for hosting the application. Wonderware’s SmartGlance is the leading mobile device-enabled reporting package for automation.  Applications such as Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (such as Wonderware Intelligence) also use smart devices to display Key Performance Indicator dashboards.

5. Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI). EMI is a newer category—it’s been around for less than 10 years—but it provides an additional level of data reporting and richness that you cannot achieve with SQL-based reports.  EMI provides reports where the data elements are put in context with one another—for example, productivity by shift, by plant—accessing different databases from different applications to present a more holistic view of the plant. EMI is equated with Dashboards, for that is the presentation layer, and these dashboards allow drill down for better analysis and understanding of real-time, and archived, events. Wonderware Intelligence is an example of an EMI product.

So there you have it, 5 “must have” industrial software products which allow you to design, visualize, monitor, and tune your operations, whether you are a manufacturer or industrial user.