ILS Technology connects ERP to the Siemens' S7 PLC family
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/28/2009 12:00:00 AM
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| ILS Technologies deviceWISE is a software framework that provides intelligent and secure connectivity from the plant floor devices to the enterprise, as this ILS Technologies diagram shows. |
Boca Raton, FL – ILS Technology LLC, an industry leader in enabling intelligence through connectivity, announced on April 21 the latest deviceWISE Embedded Edition product for the Siemens S7-300 family of programmable logic controllers (PLCs). With the move, ILS Technology says it has extended its deviceWISE technology to all major PLC vendors worldwide in its continuing effort to improve shop floor to enterprise connectivity.
This product is the result of a joint development and marketing agreement with Siemens Industry Automation Division that began in 2008. Siemens created a new communications processor that is capable of using ILS Technology’s deviceWISE framework to expand the functionality of its Simatic S7-300 Series PLCs in the areas of database connectivity and service oriented architecture (SOA) connectivity.
“As a global leader in automation systems, Siemens understands the end-customer benefits of establishing enterprise-to-automation connectivity in real-time,” said Fred Yentz, president and CEO of ILS Technology. “The joint development project substantially supports our company’s goals of enhancing connectivity between the plant floor and the enterprise. This increased level of connectivity enables greater business intelligence by allowing companies to operate with peak efficiency and productivity.”
The deviceWISE platform is designed to break through layers of data transfer between enterprise and automation systems to allow secure, real-time connectivity that can unlock the full capabilities of next-generation automation solutions, says ILS Technology.
“End users and OEMs need to simplify the process and lower the cost of providing real-time information from their control systems to their IT systems, allowing enterprise applications to be more closely coupled with data from the plant floor,” said Craig Resnick, research director, ARC Advisory Group. “This joint development enables users of the S7-300 family to quickly and cost-effectively expand their plant-floor-to-IT connectivity options, increasing profitability and producing an return on investement to justify funding in these capital-scarce times. It also further validates ILS Technology’s deviceWISE framework as a vendor-neutral solution capable of being deployed into a multitude of diverse applications.”
Herbert Wegmann, general manager of Siemens AG, Industry Sector Industry Automation Division, I IA SC IC, says the collaboration provide best-in-class connectivity solutions to customers.
The deviceWISE framework links PLCs, radio frequency identification (RFID) readers and other intelligent devices in a network to enable bidirectional data flow between systems running, IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Servers, and other software. Connectivity provides companies with an accurate picture of the production environment, allowing them to monitor and retrieve information faster and to respond to operational issues in real-time, ILS Technologies says.
“Existing deviceWISE certification and validation with IT frameworks from Oracle and IBM as well as other industry standards provide Siemens and their customers with immediate incremental value,” said John Keever, executive vice president and CTO of ILS Technology. The collaboration shows “how important seamless device-to-enterprise communication has become to Siemens and the entire automation market,” Keever says.
The deviceWISE platform eliminates the use of intermediate PC technology for this connectivity and therefore reduces installation, maintenance and security issues, while shortening long system-integration cycles. Using deviceWISE with the new Simatic CP 343-1 ERPC for the S7 family, users can process data and send it to a variety of external systems. These include databases, message and queuing systems, such as Oracle Manufacturing Operations Center and IBM WebSphere, in addition to simple systems like email servers. deviceWISE becomes a power tool for the system-integrator marketplace allowing difficult device aggregation. deviceWISE also increases the value provided by intelligent devices in production, enabling OEMs to analyze the data that is transported to enterprise applications and in turn increase the value of their intelligent devices for customers, ILS Technology says.
www.ilstechnology.com
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- Edited by Mark T. Hoske, Reed Business Information, www.mbtmag.com.
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