Friday, May 5, 2006

UGS Visit If you noticed the gap in blogs, I was in Chicago Wednesday and Thursday for a series of meetings. Always have to check in with everyone in the office occasionally, but also Tim Davis and Mitch Vaughn of UGS were in town for a chat on Thursday. Tim is marketing and Mitch chief technologist for UGS production systems--formerly Tecnomatix--formerly USDATA. I had a few questions queued up, but first was what was a respectable HMI/SCADA/MES supplier doing within a CAD/PLM company? To wade through the acronym soup--USDATA was an early factory floor software company that developed what is now called FactoryLink for human machine interface and supervisory control and data acquistion. It later entered the manufacturing execution market with XFactory. It was acquired by Israeli company Tecnomatix which was in turn acquired a couple of years ago by UGS (not an acronym, I think). UGS is a computer aided design company that added product lifecycle management (CAD to PLM) then started to branch out through acquisition. UGS is a spinoff from EDS, the company Ross Perot founded and sold to General Motors. Why PLM and MES? Whereas most companies in the production managment and performance management market are entering from the control to HMI/SCADA area through acquisition of MES suppliers, UGS comes into the area through the whole product lifecycle area. Therefore FactoryLink and XFactory (now to be known as Tecnomatix MES--who comes up with these ideas, anyhow?) link into the enterprise through the product end not the automation end (although they do link to automation). It's hard to sit through one two-and-a-half hour session and determine which is best, but the combination certainly has cool benefits for UGS. First off, Mitch demoed a 3D HMI that'll just blow you away. All the animated 3D graphics that you would expect from high end CAD linked intimately with the HMI/SCADA database. What a great operator experience that would be. Ditto for the plant manager. They also showed a new traceability module for FactoryLink that has great potential. So, if you are like me and had almost forgotten about USDATA, just remember UGS and watch for them to make more of a splash the last half of this year. Things just may get interesting in that space linking the enterprise with the factory. 2:29:52 PM    comment []

ODVA at Hannnover I missed the ODVA press conference at Hannover, and boy did they have a lot to announce. I talked with executive director Katherine Voss later at the show and received this list of news. First, it has projected that more than one million total nodes of EtherNet/IP have shipped worldwide with more than 150 vendors promoting nearly 400 products. Next announced were a series of EtherNet/IP seminars designed to increase industry awareness and technical expertise of how to implement the network. The free, one-day seminars for potential users and vendors of EtherNet/IP products and networks will be held at various locations around the world. Upcoming confirmed dates and locations in 2006 are: May 19: Shanghai, China June 15: Guangzhou, China June 22: Southfield, Michigan, USA October 19: Houston, Texas, USA The association has published the CIP Safety protocol for EtherNet/IP in the latest edition of the CIP Safety Specification, Edition 1.1. According to ODVA, the CIP Safety protocol for EtherNet/IP meets the requirements of IEC 61508 up to Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3/Cat.4) and establishes the technical foundation for the implementation of CIP Safety on EtherNet/IP. The United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) has agreed to support EtherNet/IP as the industrial Ethernet network standard for plant floor applications in vehicle assembly facilities. To further this agreement, USCAR is proceeding with specific initiatives to accelerate its adoption in the U.S. vehicle assembly operations of its three member companies-DaimlerChrysler Corp., Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corp. Further, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ODVA have entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to research and develop industry standards and test methodologies for performance parameters of EtherNet/IP devices. The CRADA will be conducted in two phases. Phase One will consist of research and development activities at NIST's Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Md., to identify performance metrics and methodologies along with reporting standards. Phase Two of the CRADA will consist of activities at ODVA's Technology and Training Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., to establish commercial test capability at the facility to conduct and certify the results of performance tests. The CIP Motion Drive Profile has been published in the latest edition of the EtherNet/IP Specification (Edition 1.2). The CIP Motion Drive Profile establishes the technical foundation for the implementation of multi-axis, synchronized motion control on EtherNet/IP. Also in the latest edition of the EtherNet/IP Specification is CIP Sync. CIP Sync consists of a time sync object and associated services that allow users to synchronize devices, including motion axes, using "time." If required to meet application demands, CIP Sync can achieve clock synchronization between devices of +/- 100 nanoseconds. ODVA expects to see vendors start offering EtherNet/IP products compliant with the CIP Motion Drive Profile in 2007. 1:37:27 PM    comment []