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Monday, February 26, 2007 |
While I was in Houston last week attending the Fieldbus Foundation annual meeting, I took the opportunity to stop and see Amit at Moblize (frequent commenter to this blog and blogger in his own right). More on that later, but we discussed the importance of standards--especially XML (and all the technologies that go with it). I link to Emerson Process Experts occasionally, but I'll put the whole post here to remind you of someone who is doing a great job of getting important information out into the automation community (whether you use Emerson or not). Here Jim discusses XML. Sounds like that if you're not on the XML bandwagon yet, you'd better start. By the way, Jim has a day job just like the rest of us. I highly recommend other companies looking at this format and doing their thing.
Gary
Using Standards-Based Stylesheets for Electronic Batch Records. In an earlier post I discussed common transactions between enterprise, manufacturing execution, and control systems. At the heart of this exchange of information is Extensible Markup Language (XML) to pass types of data between systems in a standard, text-based way.
For instance, if you subscribe to this blog's RSS feed, it means you have an RSS reader which translates the XML data in the RSS feed and displays it in a readable format.
Another example is our Google search appliance that crawls the Emerson Process Management website to help you find things faster. The search results are in XML with eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) to make the returned search results readable. Also, the latest version of Microsoft's Office (Office 2007) switched from saving data in a binary format to an XML format.
The uses for XML extend far beyond these examples and include the work being done with OPC Unified Architecture standard and many more.
I caught up with Dave Marschall who is an integration consultant in our Life Sciences industry center. He shared with me how he and his team were using the XSL/XSLT stylesheets in the process of creating custom electronic batch reports which contain information from the enterprise planning systems, manufacturing execution systems and control systems. XML is commonly used to store this batch report data from these various systems.
The XSL/XSLT stylesheets allowed the team to create different renditions or views of the same XML data. A production view might include process operations events and alarms, operator comments, equipment usage statistics etc. A quality assurance/quality control view might contain material usage, lot history, expirations, environmental data, laboratory data requests/results, etc.
Dave described a recent project where the addition of Quality Specifications data allowed the customer to add intelligence to these views of information. Instead of just displaying the data in a tabular format, the XSL/XLST stylesheets could perform comparisons between actual results versus the specifications, and change the color or highlighting of any discrepancies.
This change of colors was used to help the process manufacturer quickly scan dozens of pages of report data and identify areas of concern like out-of-spec conditions. The logic also triggered additional batch details where these abnormal conditions occurred to assist in the review process. The net effect of embedding this intelligence into the batch end report was quicker reviews of the batch which meant quicker release of the final product.
By using a text-based standard XML and XSL/XSLT approach, the solution can be well documented and more easily changed over time to meet the changing needs of the process manufacturer.
By Jim Cahill . [Emerson Process Experts]
9:45:25 PM 
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I was lobbying for a CEO Forum at the next ARC event because this event has become the only gathering of top automation industry suppliers. Plus, I'd like to hear a technology and industry roadmap from these leaders with a chance to question each one in some detail (not just me, but all the users, too). After a few conversations, especially one with Andy Chatha, president of ARC, it appears that too many people think that the CEOs would just take the opportunity before a crowd to make a blatant sales pitch. No one pays good money to attend a conference to hear yet another one of those.
This idea was reinforced in the 2006 edition of the Forum when one CEO, instead of just introducing his end user, took 20 of the alloted total of 30 minutes for a sales pitch. I remember the incident, but I don't remember the culprit. Therefore I'll refrain from speculating. This reflects a problem with industry CEOs (not all of course, but too many). In the high tech industries you would get a technology overview mixed with the company's response to that. I have no problem with that--you can't expect the leader of a company to be neutral. But Andy's right, 20 minutes of PowerPoints solely about the company's products just kills a conference.
I suggested to Andy that he get the Guy Kawasaki thoughts on panels--and he said he had printed them out to review. So maybe there will be better panels. But I doubt that I'll see any...
7:15:56 AM
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Wow, what a busy couple of weeks. I was thoroughly busy at the ARC Forum (but not at the conference) then paid for it last week scrambling to finish the March issue of Automation World before heading off to Houston and the Fieldbus Foundation annual meeting (more on that in the next post).
There actually were some good product announcements at the Forum in Orlando. Here is a summary.
Invensys Process Systems and Invensys Wonderware, along with SAP announced they have joined to develop "Packaged Composite Applications" based on xMII technology that SAP obtained with the Lighthammer acquisition. The two new applications are Real-time Finance and Real-time Production Execution. These applications have achieved "Powered by SAP NetWeaver" status.
Real-time Finance is designed to help align process manufacturing operations with business objectives in a real-time mode, not the usual daily, monthly, annually generated reports. Real-time Production Execution enhances production agility by providing a pre-integrated solution for dispatching, executing, monitoring and evaluating manufacturing production and performance runs in equipped discrete, batch and hybrid plant operations.
Meanwhile, Invensys Wonderware also announced Wonderware Information Server 3.0, formerly known as SuiteVoyager. This application is a Web-content server for all Wonderware graphics, reporting and analysis applications. It acts alone or in conjunction with existing information technology portal environments such as Microsoft Office or SharePoint servers or a MySAP portal. Wonderware Historian 9.0 bundles IndustrialSQL Server with the new Information Server. Further announced was an upgrade to ActiveFactory.
ILS Technology LLC, a Boca Raton, Fla. supplier of database connectivity technology, announced deviceWise 2.0. This product links programmable logic controllers, RFID readers, printers and other intelligent devices in a network to support bidirectional data flow with enterprise and peer systems passed upon WebSphere, Oracle, BEA, Jboss, SAP, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and other database, messaging system and application server platforms. The company also announced a joint development agreement with Mitsubishi Electric Corp. where it will use ILS's deviceWise 2.0 framework to expand it Q-series programmable logic controller functionality to database connectivity, service oriented architecture connectivity and configuration management.
Tandberg, an Oslo, Norway supplier of visual communication technologies, announced FieldView, a high-resolution mobile video system that enables remote workers to visually collaborate and troubleshoot field issues with centrally located experts.
7:05:53 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
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