Thursday, May 29, 2008

Siemens day This week's travels take me to Atlanta (actually 10 or 20 miles north to Alpharetta / Norcross / Roswell / Cumming). In the midst of my travels, I'll take time this afternoon to moderate our Webcast seminar sponsored by Bosch Rexroth on "Safety PLCs Are Not Enough." There is still time to register for the 2 pm EDT live session, or you can see it on-demand anytime starting tomorrow. The speakers will take a comprehensive look at the entire machine safety system and discuss various applicable standards. Yesterday was a deep dive into what's going on at Siemens Energy & Automation, the US arm of the German automation giant Siemens AG. I've written before about how I think that SE&A is getting its marketing act together and it's really starting to show. Always known for well engineered products, Siemens is beginning to put all the marketing pieces together. Once there was just one marketing communications (PR) person for editorial contact to try to get stories. And Siemens has many groups. Even in my former days of just writing about products and technologies, it was hard to get something from the product groups. We've been writing a different style of article at Automation World, and trying to get better stories has been hard. So, part of my mission was to let them know what kind of stories we're looking for. This should translate into additional interesting stories about the intelligent application of automation. The first meeting covered networking. Ethernet and wireless were topics du jour. Siemens supports the efforts of WirelessHart and ISA100.11a and does not side with the companies said to be trying to obstruct and delay the adoption of these standards. Since those latter companies publicly say they are supporters and what I've learned is from "unnamed sources," I'll stop here. But Siemens sees the value of a wireless standard and what wireless can do for customers. Siemens is also exploring the benefits of wireless sensor networks and other technologies in discrete manufacturing in addition to process (where all the publicity seems to be). The next set of meetings was with control and HMI. That's perhaps the best known of Siemens' product lines in the US. One idea we discussed was what I've lately heard called "edge" computing. The problem is that the ERP system needs timely manufacturing data in order to fulfill its long awaited promise of providing management information for enhanced decision making. All that data resides in machine and process controllers. But sucking that data into the ERP would flood the network and the software. So, what is needed is a computing device between the source of the manufacturing data and the ERP to consolidate and forward only relevant information--not all the bits in the data table. It's a problem that the microcontroller people at Siemens has seen and they have been working on that area. The last stop was the "GA400" building and a discussion of motors and drives. This was the first comprehensive discussion of those products I've ever had. It has been a "closely held secret." Siemens actually has a large physical presence in the US in drives, with three major facilities. It is also one of the largest motor manufacturers in the world. The product line up in drives includes both AC and DC and scales from very small to huge medium voltage. Drives are a hot topic right now because of increased emphasis on energy efficiency in manufacturing. But integrated safety has also become a hot topic. 7:39:45 AM    comment []