Wireless Apps, Cloud Services Transform Decision Making, Data Management for Packaging Lines

Manufacturers are constantly under pressure to increase efficiency, streamline operations, contain costs, and increase productivity, particularly when the competitive landscape is strong and consumer demand for creative new products is constant. They need to accomplish these goals—and expand too. It is a tall order.

Have you considered IntelaTrac for Workforce Management? New Updated Features!

http://iom.invensys.com/EN/Pages/IOM_NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=617

Wonderware IntelaTrac is a mobile asset management and workforce enablement solution. Using handheld devices, it informs, manages and enables collaboration of a remote workforce.

Version 4.3 of IntelaTrac was just released. Key features include:

• Dynamic assignment of assets
• Image mark-up

Dynamic Asset Assignment allows for the configuration of Task Groups and Tasks within Procedure Builder to allow for the “Field Assignment "of the asset, in lieu of creating a separate procedure for each asset beforehand. This is especially useful when doing rounds or maintenance inspections.

Image mark-up has the ability to annotate and mark-up the image at the job site. As found, as left or any other note can be captured and saved for further review and analysis. This makes real time situation updates possible for more accurate condition management.

TechNavio Report Identifies Invensys As the Market Leader in MES

http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/135633/

According to the latest research findings by the independent London-based global research firm TechNavio, Invensys is the leading vendor in the Global MES Market for the 2012-2016 forecast period.

Speaking on this occasion, one of the senior analyst and co-author of this report said,“Invensys is dominating the Global MES market because of its cutting-edge technology for the development of its superior, state-of-the-art, user-friendly and reliable MES solutions. The company has a wide presence across various discrete and process industries such as oil and gas, chemical, automotive and petrochemical. In addition, the company provides consistent service and support to its end-users, which is helping it to retain the leading position in the Global MES market.”

Your Voice Matters! Take The Metrics that Matter Survey from MESA.

LNS RESEARCH AND MESA INTERNATIONAL INVITE MANUFACTURING PROFESSIONALS TO TAKE THE NEW ‘METRICS THAT MATTER’ MANUFACTURING RESEARCH SURVEY.  

 

 

 

Manufacturing executives and managers face many challenges today in improving and optimizing business performance. But with so many metrics available to measure production, it can be difficult to know which are really driving the most value, along with how to best put in place metrics programs and supporting technologies that can accelerate results.

In conjunction with MESA International, LNS Research has launched the biennial ‘Metrics that Matter’ research survey. The 2013-2014 survey and research report is focusing on the trends and correlations between specific operational metric improvements, the use of Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) software applications, role-based metrics reporting, and the effect of emerging technologies such as mobility, big data, and cloud computing on metrics programs.

Click here to take the survey by November 15, 2013 - and receive access to LNS Research’s Performance Management Research Library for one year.

SmartGlance- Mobile BI tools

An effective and efficient system of Business Intelligence is capable of delivering accurate company information, as and when needed in formats that can be understood easily. The mobile BIsolutions provided by SmartGlance render sufficient details for enabling the effective, informed and timely decision making process for enterprises.

What You Missed: Invensys Expo Showcased Operator Effectiveness, Mobility, Big Data and the Cloud

http://www.automationworld.com/expo-showcases-operator-effectiveness-mobility-big-data-and-cloud

Invensys' Rob Kambach speaks of Operator Effectiveness through new generation InTouch HMI

 

 

What did you miss at last week's Invensys Software Conference & Technical Support Symposium?  A lot!  Besides stellar presentations, a riveting general session, and outstanding keynote speaker, futurist Jack Uldrich, there was an interactive Expo area featuring the latest offerings from Invensys and its partner community.

 

Offerings around big data, the cloud, mobility and operator effectiveness underplayed the theme of #SoftwareRevolution. From new SmartGlance features to situational awareness capabilities from InTouch 2014, this year was all about looking at industrial software in a new way--as a partner bringing you more productivity, profitability, and empowerment.

SmartGlance Now Supports all Major Platforms!

With the release of a native SmartGlance App on the Apple, Android App Stores and Windows Marketplace, SmartGlance is now available on all platforms iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 and 8. Now, All employees within an organization, irrespective of the smartphone they use, can use SmartGlance to monitor their business from their phones.

Infographic: Consumer Nutrition - Perception Versus Reality

Infographic: Consumer Nutrition - Perception Versus Reality

I really like infographics--they are a smart & compelling way to communicate.  This one shows the disconnect of nutritional needs 

How China is connecting a billion-plus citizens with the world’s longest high-speed rail line

http://www.microsoft.com/government/ww/public-services/blog/Pages/post.aspx?postID=380&aID=115

by Lane Swensen, Senior Product Marketing Specialist, Software, Invensys

Great article detailing the partnership of Microsoft and Invensys to meet the needs of the China Rail project.

Avantis Named Again as a Visionary in Gartner Magic Quadrant!

Avantis was once again named a visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Delivery Utility Enterprise Asset Management, published September 18, 2013.

Avantis is one of those workhorse product lines that just does its thing.  It's not flashy, it's substantive and dependable.  It has amazingly loyal customers (thank you!) who have been with the company though acquisitions, reorganizations, and realignments for over 25 years.

The Avantis customer base is broad--spanning industry, government, education, and infrastructure.  From a single to large multi-site implementations, Avantis has been bringing cost effective Enterprise Asset Management practices to its users. 

We are honored to be identified by #GartnerGroup as a member of the visionary quadrant, and believe that our customers and growth are testimony to our commitment to the market.

Tableau Software Recognizes Members of Partner Community at Sixth Annual Tableau Customer Conference

http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/press-releases/2013/tableau-software-recognizes-members-partner-community-sixth-annual-tableau

Tableau's Dashboard for Wonderware Intelligence Visualization

Wonderware was proud to be chosen as Tableau's OEM Partner of the Year!  Wonderware uses Tableau's award-winning dashboard as an integral part of our Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence offering, using Tableau's strong visualization capabilities to create compelling dashboards that depict relationships and status of different plant entities, such as yields/shift, downtime by line, or comparisons of energy consumption by plant.

Fujirebio: from a 15 hour review to just minutes

Fujirebio: from a 15 hour review to just minutes

The Visionaries of the Future: Invensys Software User Group Conference O...

Adding a Wonderware Historian provides greater insight into your process

Business Intelligence through an iPad: SmartGlance

The interactive business intelligence iPad visualizations provided by SmartGlance can empower the businesses to quickly explore all the vital information on these devices. They can now uncover the problem areas, find answers and spot the outliners for aiding the business process.

SmartGlance brings Business Intelligence to the iPad

The business intelligence-enabled iPad solutions provided by SmartGlance render impressive visual discovery, are attractive in providing dashboards which are boardroom style, excellent visualizations and reporting patterns.

Invensys Releases Industrial Cloud Historian for Big Data

http://iom.invensys.com/EN/pages/IOM_NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=611

Now available: a bundled data historian and reporting package to reduce implementation time and costs, improve on-demand performance for your enterprise.

For  months now, Invensys has been promoting our cloud solutions. In a partnership with Microsoft, these solutions are based on Azure and offer users worry-free use of applications and computing power.  Our first commercial offering, SmartGlance, provided smart device-enabled reporting on phones or tablets.  We've now taken SmartGlance and coupled it with an on-line Wonderware Historian to provide a reporting and analysis solution that is truly scalable, adaptable for the enterprise.

Call for Speakers: MESA 2014 NA Conference

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Call-for-speakers-for-MESA-s-2014-NA-Conference-.html?soid=1101863098727&aid=JE82GahksAY

Have you ever been interested in being a speaker?  Well, here's your opportunity!  MESA is looking for speakers that have passion, drive, and something to say about manufacturing operations solutions for our industry! Whether you are a large Fortune 100 company, or a small/midsize manufacturer, sharing your experiences are vital to the promotion and education of our industry.  Won't you join us in Greenville, SC next may?

Business Process Management Simplified: BPM in manufacturing … what’s the enterprise level opportunity?

Business Process Management Simplified: BPM in manufacturing … what’s the enterprise level opportunity?

Skelta's Kalpa Shaw describes why BPM (Business Process Management) makes sense for manufacturing. Whether it's to establish a foundation for control, visibility or collaboration, it's a good start in building your Good Manufacturing Practices. For Wonderware, we've taken Skelta as our BPM "engine," adding connectors to System Platform, Avantis, Wonderware MES, and others, and call it ArchestrA Workflow.

Repost: Industrial Software: The Mobile Worker -- There Are 100 Apps for That!

Industrial Software: The Mobile Worker -- There Are 100 Apps for That!

Wonderware IntelaTrac enables workforce task management through mobility

 

Mobility is no longer for the consumer world! The industrial automation market has taken this form factor to really exploit the portability and collaboration factors of mobile devices and their apps.  This excellent article from Control takes an impartial yet thorough view of the new offerings from vendors like Wonderware that feature mobility as its core platform.

Free seminar: The Cloud for Industry

Hosted by Microsoft and Invensys, featuring Saugatuck Technology. Chicago, Nov 12 or Boston, Nov 14. Join us for a deep-dive into technology and solutions to help you gain scalability, productivity in your operations!

 

 

This seminar series has proved to be popular with customers who want more than just a passing discussion on why they should consider the cloud.  Experts from Microsoft and Invensys discuss the practicalities of the cloud--from security through device management, to applications that you can use now to gain efficiencies in your enterprise. 

 

We've added Saugatuck Technologies, a leading cloud industry analyst, to give you an impartial view of the momentum, and impact, the cloud is making on industry.

 

Lastly, there will be time for hands-on experiences with our cloud-based SmartGlance smart device-enabled reporting application, to see how you can put the power of the cloud to use for you.  

 

So register now--it's free, and it's local.  We'll see you in Boston or Chicago!

Invensys Software Conference & Technical Support Symposium: It Was The Place To Be!

 

opening session of Invensys Software Conference & Tech Support Symposium

 

What can you say about a conference offering over 190 sessions, outstanding customer speakers, compelling product roadmaps and unexpected social events? You'd say, another fine Wonderware/IntelaTrac/SimSci/Avantis party!

The 2013 Invensys Software Conference was titled "The Industrial Software Revolution Begins Now" and it delivered. Featuring presentations from Invensys, new family member InduSoft, global partner Microsoft, the conference covered not only customer case story successes, but technical tips & tricks from the field support engineers, product updates from all brands, and educational tracks from the Technical Support Symposium speakers. Whether you were there for a "one chili pepper" high level product overview to a "four chili pepper" technical deep dive, there was something for everyone's taste.

Something new this year was our social media challenge--who could tweet enough content over the 3 days to win a gift card? With over 250 tweets, the winner was the @everdyners group.

Other highlights were:

Expert: Food trends to watch as population grows, with comments

http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/headlines/market-trends/id40177/expert-column-the-future-of-our-food/

This article from Progressive Grocer aptly captures the needs and demands of customers as the food supply chain becomes more complicated and the information needs of the consumers becomes more pronounced. The public is becoming more educated, and the onus is on the suppliers to become more transparent, not only in the ingredients, but likely in the sourcing of location, the way the products have been processed, and the extent of the supply chain prior to final placement in stores.

We as providers to the industry can assist in the information gathering and oversight of the food manufacturing process. The technology is called MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and it's been around for over 25 years.  Tracking from raw materials through finished goods, MES offers supply chain transparency, processing visibility, and a "system of record" of the transformation.  As consumers demand more insight, MES is a great way for processors to create an environment of conformance & compliance, responding to government regulations (such as the Food Safety Act) as well as establishing an infrastructure for Good Manufacturing Practices for the processor as a means of self-regulation.

There are a number of providers of MES--check out www.mesa.org and of course Wonderware offers a wide suite of solutions to scale from a single plant through an enterprise. MES is the way the industry can respond to more demanding, and changing, consumer tastes.

SolutionsPT Blog : Integration Key to Optimising Performance in Batch...

SolutionsPT Blog : Integration Key to Optimising Performance in Batch...: An integrated solution to optimise real-time performance, specifically designed for complex batch processes is now available.  Wonderware I...

MESA's Metrics That Matter Study: YOUR opinion matters!

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Manufacturing-Metrics-that-Actually-Matter---Let-Us-Know-What-You-Think-.html?soid=1101863098727&aid=NwdmGVlAD5I

Invensys is a proud sponsor of the MESA Metrics That Matter Study.  Hundreds of respondees help to bring clarity to the current strategies, care-abouts and initiatives within the manufacturing community.  Join us, won't you, by taking this study?  Thanks!

Invensys and Microsoft, Together Again at the LATAM CIO Leadership Forum 2013

From Sept 30 through October 3, 2013 Invensys joined Microsoft’s Latin America CIO Leadership Forum in Miami, FL.  This event was created for CIO’s from government, industry and education, and offered a full program for both peer networking and deep-dive presentations.

Covering key IT topics as the cloud, devices and apps, mobility, big data, the forum also featured a case study from HP, and product updates from their CRM, Office and ERP teams.

Building on the interest for big data, the cloud, and mobility, Invensys showed solutions for food and beverage and CPG, water/wastewater and oil and gas.

Invensys Solutions for Food and Beverage, CPG were shown at the CIO Summit, based on Microsoft's technology stack

Bill Schiel and Marcelo Zaremba discussed with attendees scalable solutions based on Wonderware MES, SCADA as well as Consulting and Services offerings.

Invensys' Marcelo Zaremba discusses manufacturing operations solutions with CIO

For CIO’s, key care-abouts are keeping up with the pace of technology that is occurring today.  The cloud offers opportunities for cost savings, scalability, and ubiquitous access to applications enterprise-wide, but it also brings with it needed policies for security and standardization.   Mobility and the “Bring Your Own Device” momentum challenge CIOs with creating policies for compliance and multi-platform support. And Big Data feeds the needs for better analysis, knowledge management and decision making, but CIO’s must face multiple data source consolidation/acquisition and visualization.

Microsoft and Invensys, together have created solutions that build on the base technologies of big data, mobility and cloud.  For more information, please visit http://iom.invensys.com/EN/Pages/IOM_PartnersMicrosoft.aspx and for our cloud solutions based on Azure,  http://global.wonderware.com/EN/Pages/InvensysCloudforManufacturing.aspx

Repost, with comments: Cloud is the New Wild West

http://mobileenterprise.edgl.com/news/Cloud-is-the-New-Wild-West88883
We at Invensys have seen how customer, and really industry, interest in cloud computing has increased over the past year.  It started when virtualization became a common offering for industrial automation. Both VMware and Microsoft made offerings of ESXi and Hyper-V (respectively) "industrialized" so that automation software providers, such as Invensys and others, could use their technologies to provide application portability, as well as more strategic offerings such as High Availability and Fault Tolerance.

Virtualization, as Microsoft and others like to say, is a stepping stone to the cloud, because once you've isolated and "packaged" your application, it doesn't matter whether it's on a box on site ("on-premises") or truly in the cloud.  And if you check out the industrial automation industry, the number of cloud-based offerings, either hosted or as a Software as a Service, have tripled in the past years.  Applications such as remote monitoring, smart device enabled reporting, and process historians are now readily available in the cloud.  We anticipate the number of offerings to triple again, as technology becomes more secure and the infrastructure required to support the cloud products is stabilized and proliferated.  It's a great opportunity for manufacturers to cost-effectively be able to test products without making a huge investment in infrastructure, IT and hardware. 

So, if you would like to see what offerings are available--I have an event for you....it's an Eye Opener Seminar, either in Chicago or Boston, November 12 or 14th.  It's free to attend, there will be representatives from Microsoft, Invensys, and Saugatuck, and it can answer all of your questions about the viability, and use, of the cloud for industry.  You can register here.

SmartGlance recent release--Windows 8 support for PC & Surface Tablets

SmartGlance for Windows 8 (PC and Surface)

Win 8 Tiles and easy-to-use navigation

Introducing Live Dashboards: Dynamic and real-time changes of your KPIs and data

Multi column view and Auto sizing of columns

Pinpoint problems in just one glance by viewing multiple columns of data on each screen

 

GPS and Map integration

Easily locate your asset or plant from withinSmartGlance: