ARC Forum Roundup part two
This is a long post, but then there was a lot of news at this year's ARC Forum. We sent two editors and that wasn't enough to keep up. I set up a Flickr account in order to post photos from the session, but I found I couldn't take notes and try to get good pictures at the same time. Several people suggested that I should clone myself to cover it all, but I don't think the world is ready for two of me.
The ARC Advisory Group, compliments of Sid Snitkin, is promoting yet another three-letter acronym called DOM. This stands for design, operate, maintain. They foresee this as a measurement tool similar to OEE (operating equipment effectiveness) which is a pure number derived by dividing percentages by percentages. Don't know if this can get any traction. OEE is already hard to use because the underlying calculations are hidden from view and definitions are vague. So how vague will these numbers be?
RosettaNet, an international collaborative standards organization previously focused on the supply chain, has started an initiative to begin working with manufacturing. This could have tremendous potential toward pushing and adopting global standards-especially for data exchange. End users at the event expressed impatience at the glacial progress shown by the current standards processes.
The Hart Communications Foundation is attempting to start a Users' Group. If you use Hart (or have it in your plant and should be using it), contact the organization to help out or at least to track its progress.
Yokogawa CEO Isao Uchida announced at a reception at the Forum the Vigilant Integration Partners (VIP) initiative. This is called an open, non-exclusive, standards-based and interoperability-driven partnership that enables Yokogawa customers to integrate best-in-class field devices supplied by VIP member companies with Yokogawa's Centum production control system and Plant Resource Management (PRM) asset management system. Companies joining initially are Dresser Masoneilan, Flowserve, Metso Automation and Samson AG-all manufacturers of control valves. Uchida further announced it has achieved working integration of GE Energy Bently Nevada line of vibration monitoring systems with the PRM system.
Siemens Energy & Automation has integrated technology from its IndX division into its manufacturing execution system software dubbing it Simatic IT Intelligence Suite. This software product incorporates an analytics server and real-time data warehouse to serve as a plant visibility and product traceability platform.
Software services firm AgilTek has expanded its service offering into Lean Manufacturing announcing partnerships using its AgileConnect service with Cumberland Group lean consulting and lean software companies Pelion Systems and Ultriva.
Informance International showed its latest version Informance 7 calling it "a complete portfolio of manufacturing intelligence solutions. This solution offers global manufacturing visibility and decision support.
For those who wonder about Java in manufacturing, it made an explicit appearance with a company new to me called "*this" (starthis). This is a Java-based Service-Oriented Architecture software suite designed to provide information visibility. I haven't run into Java true believers for several years. I think that Sun representatives stopped coming to the forum in 2000. They tout the "only truly open platform" versus "proprietary" Microsoft and openly compete against OPC (based on Microsoft technologies COM and DCOM). While I like Java as a programming language (I downloaded a JDK and learned to use it when it was brand new in the early 90s), they'll face an uphill battle against OPC, a technology firmly embedded in just about everyone's products. Plus, the next release of OPC will be built on worldwide standard XML. But a little competition is good for everyone. I want to see how *this is doing this time next year.
Nexus Solutions announced a new version (3.2) of it Nexus Oz OPX software for "real-time operations excellence solutions." I can't summarize the software from its announcement and a brief conversation I had with them gleaning through all the typical software buzzwords, but modules include sensor and controller diagnostics, equipment performance model, knowledge model and engineering explorer model.
Online Development's xCoupler product that provides communication from Rockwell Automation's ControlLogix controllers and IBM WebSphere MQ databases now supports bi-directional communications.
Finally, I missed the ProSoft Technology press conference because an interview ran a half-hour overtime. I caught marketing director Richard Theron as we were both rushing for planes at the conclusion of a meeting and just got a press release. Unfortunately, I cannot thoroughly summarize its new product, but here's what I can glean from the press release. TermLinx is a hardware/software product targeted to bulk terminal management. It offers "seamless" database connectivity for truck, rail and marine operations to corporate host management systems. It integrates with "most major programmable controllers and batch controllers."
8:11:59 AM 
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