Gary Mintchell's Feed Forward

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms has gone on a product release frenzy lately. Here are a few.

The first "miLink" application, Tool ID, is designed to read the tooling information from the RFID chip on the tool holder, and move the information into the appropriate registers in the CNC control without having to modify the CNC control in any way. It enables an end user to cost effectively implement technology to automate their processes where the integration cost would have previously been prohibitive. Additionally, miLink allows the flexibility to reconfigure the application in just minutes to fit with the ever-changing needs of the manufacturing environment. The unit can be reconfigured to handle a different memory map if customers want to add or delete data that is being stored on an RFID tag.

In a second release, it announced availability of miView, a machine intelligence solution designed to provide companies with accurate and unbiased data automatically to help teams improve the efficiency of their processes and eliminate waste. GE Fanuc combined its machining industry and data collection domain expertise with GE's Lean Six Sigma culture and manufacturing knowledge to design a solution that is built specifically to address the unique challenges being faced by discrete parts manufacturers today. miView is an out-of-the-box solution specifically designed for machine tools, providing connectivity to current and future equipment that can help users begin to collect information right away. It is a web-based application that allows the information to be accessed freely anywhere on the network, without per-user licensing, and provides comprehensive data collection from GE Fanuc, Fanuc, Siemens and the other third-party CNCs integrated into new and existing machine tools.

It also announced the availability of Proficy Cimplicity GlobalView, a scalable application that enables real-time monitoring, data analysis and plant floor control from within a web browser. Multiple users can connect to the same system to analyze the situation and make quick fact based decisions. GlobalView includes the Relay Server, which makes deploying HMI/SCADA on a massive scale possible. With a Relay Server deployed in the GlobalView architecture and multiple GlobalView servers underneath, customers have the ability to truly globalize their applications and support 100s of simultaneous users with the only limitation being server hardware.

And last, but not least, it announced version 1.2 of Proficy Workflow. It allows operations experts to create and modify work processes much more quickly than before.

A new Form Designer eliminates coding for display screens and forms. Now, production teams drag and drop in a graphical WYSIWYG environment to build forms and displays for manual data entry and automated entry, from barcode readers and other devices. Furthermore, the new displays are not just viewable and actionable through Proficy Workflow; they can also be an actionable part of other applications on the Proficy SOA platform.

ActiveX Task List can be used within any ActiveX container. Operators can now follow step-by-step instructions within their usual day-to-day software such as a HMI, integrating their work instructions for ease of use

A dynamic task list, dubbed My Task List, allows the production expert to control what the operator sees during the execution of the workflow. The Task List has multiple panes, which can be hidden, expanded and so on. Proficy Workflow Version 1.2 will be available in November.
 

Carl Henning hasn't posted much this year on the ProfiBlog, but here's a good one--Profinet's not a star (only --topology, that is). Good read. I think Carl has discovered what I've discovered--it's hard to keep up your daily work, travel and blog all at the same time.

Here's a video report of the Advantech conference in China.

(Somehow Libsyn truncated my podcast. Working on a solution. Sorry.)

Longwatch Introduces Operator’s Console Recorder

Longwatch began life as a video security company whose gig was the ability to compress video files to send over slow, legacy networks. However, broadband and Ethernet growth rendered that point moot. So Steve Rubin, of Intellution fame and invester in the company, took the reins and looked for the real core competency. He found it in video recording. Rather than just record remote video for security purposes--probably a smallish market--he turned it into a sort of video historian to aid troubleshooting by showing just what the operator console displayed during situations.

The Operator’s Console Recorder is a software module that automatically records images being shown on multiple HMI or SCADA operator’s displays. The module takes its signals directly from each HMI screen’s video software driver, so it records the actual video being sent to the HMI. The software can accommodate video signals from an unlimited number of HMIs to show what operators were watching at the time of an event, alarm or process upset.

Video images can be combined with the automatic data mapping capability of Longwatch's Video Historian, so the Console Recorder can automatically retrieve and replay operator displays simply by clicking on a time-based alarm or system message. Playing back what the operator was seeing at the time of an event can be a valuable tool for training and analysis purposes, and can help mitigate insurance and regulatory issues by eliminating guesswork and conjecture.

Videos used for monitoring plant activities can also be combined with the operator console videos and data from a process historian. This enables engineers, analysts or investigators to see what was happening in the plant, what the operator was seeing on the HMI screen at the time, and all relevant real-time data that occurred at the time of an event.

For example, in the case of a leak at a pumping station, investigators could watch plant video taken at a remote site showing fuel oil creeping across the floor of a pumping station, real-time data being acquired from pumps, valves and the receiving tank while the leak is occurring, what appeared on the operator’s HMI screen, and the alarm screen that came up when the leak detector went off. Investigators can then watch the operator switch the HMI screen to live video feed from the pumping station, observe the leak, and take action from the HMI to shut off the pump. Plant video would show the arrival of a maintenance crew to repair the leak. Analysis of all data and videos might show that the leak detector was poorly positioned and an alarm condition is needed for when fuel oil is being pumped but is not being received at the storage tank.

With a typical three-display system, as found in many process control applications, it would be possible to display remote pump video on one screen, video from the operator’s display at the time of the event on a second screen, and process historian data on a third screen, thus getting a simultaneous view of what happened and what the operator saw.

To help mitigate insurance and regulatory issues, the combined video and historian information could help determine that the operator acted correctly and the spill was cleaned up with no damage to the environment. The Longwatch Operator’s Console Recorder and Video Historian fills the gap between normal plant data acquisition and actual plant management, because it shows everything that happened during an event; i.e., what actually happened, what the data acquisition equipment monitored and recorded, and what was reported to the operator on the HMI screen.

Capturing the actual video feed to the operator HMI is a much better solution than traditional methods, says Steve Rubin, president of Longwatch. "Before Longwatch, recording and playback of an operator's HMI was clumsy and limited. One method was to put a camera over the operator’s shoulder. This is intrusive and intimidating, and the camera has a limited ability to read what’s on the screen," he explains. "In an installation with multiple HMIs, this solution would require a camera on each screen."

Another method is to use process historian data. "It's possible to recreate the console display the operator should have been watching by driving it with data from the process historian," says Rubin. "This requires the historian to record all the data values present on every display. However, no one knows which screen an operator was actually watching at the time of the event. An operator could have been looking at a trend display, not the alarm summary screen."

With the Longwatch system, there is no problem reading the screens, and no doubt which screens operators were watching. By combining video data from plant locations, video from HMI screens, and data from the historian, investigators can go back in time to see exactly what happened and make a better analysis of what to do about a similar situation in the future.

WBF has announced its forthcoming 2010 North American Conference to be held May 24-25, 2010 at the University of Texas, Austin. The theme is "Achieving Operations Strength." This is an opportunity to share and learn with the leaders in automation, control and manufacturing operations.

The conference is designed to help attendees learn from presentations and tutorials from people who have real experience on real projects and studies, and is a rare opportunity to network and exchange information with other manufacturing and automation professionals.  WBF provides an opportunity for you to share what really works and what doesn't work.

Keynote speakers, panels, and discussion forums and individual presentations will provide focus on case studies, current and evolving manufacturing methods and technologies, and implementation of industry standards including ISA88, ISA95, ISA99, B2MML and Make2Pack. WBF's collaborative activities with ISA, OMAC, and MESA will provide a broad and balanced view of the world of new manufacturing methods and technologies.

Can you contribute to the program? If you have been working in any of the areas mentioned above or if you have come up with new or improved ways of making manufacturing more efficient, less costly, of higher quality or just better, your colleagues would like to hear about it.  Please consider taking part in this exciting program, the formal call for papers will be sent out soon.