Making a way through a maze of plant-floor applications
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/1/2006 6:00:00 AM
Executives at Rockwell Automation attribute the appeal of the vendor's Logix control platform to the fact that Logix addresses process and production management in discrete, batch, and continuous process industries; as well as drive, motion, and machine safety applications. Now Rockwell is hoping the same calculus—one platform to address multiple disciplines—will spark sales for its FactoryTalk suite of plant-management software.
The FactoryTalk name has been around for several years, mainly as a data-sharing technology. But Rockwell has expanded on FactoryTalk's services, including a plant data model, to arrive at a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for plant analytics and production management applications, according to Kevin Roach, VP of Rockwell Software.
This gives Rockwell a modern SOA foundation, says Roach, while at the product level, the FactoryTalk suite has been aligned around six overarching disciplines: design and configuration of plant-floor systems; production management (e.g., recipe management); data management; quality and compliance; asset management; and production performance & visibility. In practice, Roach says, users are out to address one or more of these disciplines, rather than choose from a dizzying array of software niches.
Will the simplification strategy work? It has with Logix, as evidenced by a 26-percent sales increase for the control platform during Rockwell's fiscal year 2005. With plant software, however, while Rockwell doesn't break out sales numbers—making it difficult to gauge real momentum—it clearly is out to grow its software business just the way it re-energized its control business.
