Intelligent move: GE Fanuc offers SOA-based workflow suite
-- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/24/2008 8:56:00 AM
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms' long-rumored move into service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based plant operations suites is coming into view with availability in June of Proficy Workflow, a solution that Greg Millinger, Workflow/SOA product manager, says is the first native application released for the new Proficy SOA environment, and breaks new ground in “industrial business process management [BPM].”Adds Millinger, “The adoption rate for BPM is accelerating, and strong ROI is being attained. We apply that same approach to the arena of real-time devices, PLCs, and supervisory control—including connectivity to the enterprise."
By uniting Proficy solutions and third-party elements in a common services environment, a comprehensive approach to automating workflow can be taken, using embedded Microsoft configuration technologies pervading across Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and other products.
“The need for workflow arises, for example,” says Millinger, “when an execution system is in place but gaps are apparent over time. This allows those gaps to be filled in as part of the workflow, whether Proficy-based or not.”
Proficy Workflow, says Craig Resnick, research director with Dedham, Mass.-based ARC Advisory Group, “appears to meet this criterion of a tool that will help move manufacturers, processors, and OEMs to a single environment where existing systems are connected and interacting with each other to maximize the information value of each asset.”
Common-use cases that Millinger is seeing include batch management, work instructions, HACCP monitoring, Lean Six Sigma, and alarm and event response.
“With this release,” says Millinger, “we’ve laid down the platform. Over the next three years, we will see integrations and then solutions for the platform.”
Over time, these solutions will look less and less like hard-coded applications. Instead, a repository of Proficy and third-party elements will be used to configure industry-focused solutions that are about 70 percent complete, with integrators and users tapping additional repository elements to configure complete solutions.
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