Wonderware launches infrastructure, applications for production and performance management

“Customers are looking to do much more to leverage their investments on the plant floor,” says Ann Croom, president of InSource, a Richmond, Va.-based software reseller serving manufacturers throughout the Southeast. A long-time Invensys Wonderware partner, Croom is excited about Wonderware's recent delivery of the new System Platform, a bundling of common system services seen as a kind of robust, industrialized operating system that all factory applications need and benefit from.

“It's the culmination of everything Wonderware has been putting in place in terms of ArchestrA,” says Croom. Using the ArchestrA development platform, System Platform marks an emerging trend among solution vendors: to provide more comprehensive integration and development capabilities that enable greater dynamic adaptability leveraging factory-floor information. Similar efforts in this vein include Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk, and Invensys' InFusion product—also based on ArchestrA.

System Platform pulls together a set of services that streamline plant system architectures, simplify modular adoption and implementation, and reduce cost of ownership. The platform supports both the supervisory control layer and manufacturing execution system (MES) layer, presenting them as one seamless information source. Says Wonderware Program Manager Steve Garbecht, “You don't have to go back and reengineer at the MES level what you've already done at the supervisory level. We connect to ERP and other systems through APIs. Once you have connection to all data sources, the next big thing is how to maintain and sustain it. We provide the ability to import and migrate legacy or existing system information.”

That particular ability works well for InSource's integrators. “It's great for us,” says Croom, “because it enables us to focus less on the parts and pieces, and more on the functions that the customers want.”

Wonderware also recently announced availability of two application modules that sit on top of the System Platform and leverage its common services: the Equipment Performance Management and Equipment Operation Management modules. To accelerate time-to-benefit, Wonderware also is making available to its partners pre-configured QuickStart demo templates that can be easily adapted for customer implementation.