Common visualisation strategy cuts costs

Rockwell Automation has developed a scaleable and unified suite of monitoring and control solutions for virtually anywhere in the manufacturing enterprise.

Rockwell Automation has developed a scaleable and unified suite of monitoring and control solutions for virtually anywhere in the manufacturing enterprise.

To remain competitive in today's global marketplace, manufacturers must have the right information in the right place at the right time.

Rockwell Automation's ViewAnyWare strategy offers just that.

Products, platforms and software are seamlessly integrated from machine-level operator interfaces to supervisory-level HMI.

The ViewAnyWare strategy maximises Rockwell Automation's proven expertise in Allen-Bradley electronic operator interface and industrialised PC hardware and Rockwell Software's supervisory control software and combines those strengths with interoperability and a common development environment across platforms.

The result is a scaleable and unified suite of monitoring and control solutions for virtually anywhere in the manufacturing enterprise - offering faster application development and implementation, better productivity, flexibility, and overall lower costs.

For users, this means that solutions support an operator interface that closely matches the application, offer integration capabilities for lower cost and better performance, provide backward compatibility and forward-friendly features, and act as a single source of accountability for hardware, software, and networking portions of the application.

A common development environment can eliminate the need to be familiar with two development packages (one for machine level operator interfaces and one for supervisory HMI), speeding-up development and implementation time.

In this way, end users can quickly achieve a return on their investment and lower the total cost of ownership.

ViewAnyWare's common development environment is provided through RSView Studio, for both the machine-level and supervisory-level products.

"The ViewAnyWare strategy encompasses the next generation RSView Enterprise Series of integrated software products as well as next-generation Allen-Bradley hardware products.

The RSView Enterprise Series includes a full suite of new machine-level and distributed, supervisory-level design and runtime software components", says Paul Herron, UK Product Manager for Rockwell control and information.

RSView Enterprise Machine edition is a machine level family of products for designing and supporting PC-based and embedded operator interface solutions for individual machines or small processes.

Included at this level are a Windows2000-based development system, called RSViewStudio, and a separate runtime system called RSView ME station.

The runtime system was developed for deployment on RAC6182 Windows CE-based industrial computers, next generation Panelview dedicated operator interfaces and Windows2000 PC based platforms.

RSView Enterprise Supervisory Edition is targeted at supervisory level monitoring and control applications that support the need for a distributed and scaleable architecture.

Supervisory Edition includes runtime servers and clients, allowing customers to develop and deploy multiserver/multiclient applications.

Applications are developed using RSView Studio development system.

Rockwell Automation plans to deliver an unprecedented level of interoperability among its products (for example, ControlLogix processors, ProcessLogix and RSLinx) and OPC-compliant interfaces.

Incorporating the full range of Allen-Bradley hardware platforms means that open system platforms, such as the Allen-Bradley RAC6000 range of industrial computers and future dedicated operator terminals in the PanelView family, will take full advantage of the benefits and scalability of the RSView Enterprise Series.

Paul Herron comments: "Rockwell is working hard to ensure that its hardware and software work together to provide a common user experience across the range of ViewAnyWare products.

We're bridging the gap between machine-level and supervisory-level applications to provide a common user experience across a complete architecture of products.

The result is greater productivity, flexibility, and a lower total cost of ownership".

The Rockwell Automation Information Platforms business is currently developing a complete family of next-generation PanelView products (PanelView Plus) that will form an essential part of the ViewAnyWare architecture.

These highly optimised embedded products will be configured from the RSView Studio common development environment and will support application reuse, portability, and interoperability across the full range of ViewAnyWare-compatible products.

ViewAnyWare, together with Logix for control and NetLinx Open Architecture for communication, make up Rockwell Automation's Integrated Architecture strategy.

Logix provides a single integrated control architecture for sequential, process, motion and drive control, with greater performance and flexibility.

It includes the Logix control engine and a scalable offering for hardware and software based control systems.

It uses a common control development environment for all applications regardless of size or complexity.

NetLinx provides the common set of features and services for DeviceNet, ControlNet and EtherNet/IP Networks.

Users can easily manage information from shop floor to top floor and seamlessly integrate their complete system as they control, configure and collect data.

The 'producer-consumer' messaging model offered by NetLinx can move data across networks with minimal application code for storing, translating and forwarding data, and give a reduction in the 'gateway' hardware needed.

Rockwell Automation's integrated architecture is uniquely positioned to offer customers a complete automation solution, which helps manufacturers increase throughput, lower costs, achieve superior quality, and improve reliability.

Rockwell Automation bridges the gap between traditional, dedicated machine-level HMI devices and distributed, supervisory-level PC-based HMI systems.

It is one of few automation suppliers with world-class competence and a proven track record in dedicated operator interfaces, open industrial computing platforms, and PC-based HMI software.

ViewAnyWare brings all these together.

The common design-time environment, application reuse, and scaleable architecture across the entire operator interface continuum is clearly a competitive differentiator.

With its ViewAnyWare strategy, Rockwell Automation is uniquely qualified to offer customers a complete automation solution.

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