Automation frameworks gain users, tie into plant intelligence

The last few years have seen increased maturity in the supervisory control market, but that doesn't seem to worry the plant automation vendors and smaller specialists that offer the software. Supervisory control may be slow growth, but new software architectures are catching on with users looking for a more standard, reusable approach to plant information management.

Mark Davidson, a VP for the Wonderware and ArchestrA business units of plant automation vendor Invensys, says the uptake for its ArchestrA architecture continues to be strong. As of May, he says, more than 150 customer projects were making use of the architecture, which combines integration capabilities with a framework for common automation functions or "services," such as alarming, security, and event management.

About a dozen customers are using ArchestrA as a standard framework for plant automation and information management, Davidson says, but the framework also can be used for smaller point projects. "Even companies that plan to use it widely will typically prove it out on one application, gain benefits, and then use it for other purposes," he says.

Craig Resnick, a research director with Dedham, Mass.-based analyst firm ARC Advisory Group, says most of the plant automation system vendors have developed software architectures. "These architectures allow more open connectivity than in the past," he says. "Another motive is that the major vendors have made acquisitions, so a vendor can write all of its software to hook into an architecture, which makes it easier for it to be an integrated, single-source vendor."

The adoption rate for architectures is hard to track, says Resnick, since users typically don't buy the architecture; instead, they buy applications that hook into an architecture. What's more, he says, "The architectures aren't necessarily causing companies to convert from one vendor to another, but we do see them being adopted to make it easier for a company in an installed base to upgrade to new solutions or retrofit existing systems."

Resnick says the new architectures support improved plant intelligence through better connectivity. "They do open up the elusive goal of shop-floor to top-floor integration," says Resnick, though adding, "There are degrees of openness with architectures. One way to rate their effectiveness is to see to what extent they support open standards like OPC [OLE for Process Control] or ISA 95 [a standard for integration to higher-level systems]."

Resnick says the market for supervisory control is growing in the single digits and is relatively mature. Plant intelligence, as part of a larger Collaborative Production Management market growing at 15 percent per year, will likely grow in the double digits, he says.

At a recent series of plant intelligence seminars Invensys held with Microsoft Corp., says Davidson, more than 75 percent of attendees said their companies were involved in plant intelligence initiatives. While Invensys offers specific plant intelligence solutions, Davidson says the right architecture can support the trend by simplifying the way plant information is captured and organized. Says Davidson, "You can model data in a plant-centric way and put context to it, irrespective of the systems you have at the control level."