Rockwell Automation is offering a common visualisation strategy across the enterprise - a scalable and unified suite of monitoring and control solutions for virtually anywhere in a manufacturing enterprise.
To remain competitive in today's global marketplace, companies need the right information in the right place and at the right time. Rockwell Automation's ViewAnyWare strategy offers a way to achieve this effectively.
Platform-independent solution
The ViewAnyWare strategy maximises Rockwell Automation's expertise in Allen-Bradley electronic operator interface and industrialised PC hardware and Rockwell Software's supervisory control software. It combines those strengths with interoperability and a common development environment across platforms. The result is a scalable and unified suite of monitoring and control solutions for virtually anywhere in the manufacturing enterprise.
For users, this means that solutions support an operator interface that closely matches the application, offer integration capabilities for lower cost and better performance, provide backward compatibility and forward-friendly features, and act as a single source of accountability for hardware, software, and networking portions of the application.
A closer view of the strategy
ViewAnyWare solutions will share these attributes:
Facilitate application re-use and portability, interoperability with other Rockwell Automation products, and scalability from simple graphic displays to highly sophisticated supervisory systems.
A common development environment can reduce the time required to become familiar with a new design environment - speeding up development time and implementation for the user. Using this common development environment, end-users can receive return on investment quickly and lower their total cost of ownership. ViewAnyWare's common development environment is provided through RSView Studio, a design environment for both the machine-level and supervisory-level products.
"RSView applications, developed for embedded or PC-based machine-level HMI platforms, can be re-used and ported to more sophisticated supervisory-level HMI applications, reducing our customers' total cost of ownership," says Joe Bartolomeo, Rockwell Software HMI Marketing Manager, Rockwell Automation, West Allis, Wisconsin. "The ViewAnyWare strategy encompasses the next-generation RSView Enterprise Series of integrated software products as well as next-generation Allen-Bradley hardware products. The RSView Enterprise Series includes a full suite of new machine-level and distributed, supervisory-level design and runtime software components."
Rockwell Automation plans to deliver an unprecedented level of interoperability among its products (for example, ControlLogix processors, ProcessLogix, and RSLinx) and OPC-compliant servers by taking advantage of Rockwell InterNet Applications (RNA) technologies. (RNA is Rockwell Automation's implementation of the Windows DNA architecture as described below.)
The full range of Allen-Bradley hardware platforms, including optimised embedded systems, and open, Intel-based industrial computers
With ViewAnyWare solutions, customers can effect a common design-time environment between open and embedded solutions and/or between machine-level and supervisory-level solutions, covering the entire operator interface continuum from portable and simple graphic display products through distributed computing environments.
Effective use of the full range of Allen-Bradley hardware platforms means that open system platforms, such as the Allen-Bradley 6162 series industrial computers will take full advantage of the benefits and scalability of the RSView Enterprise Series.
Michael Offik, Industrial Computer Business Marketing Manager, Rockwell Automation, Duluth, Georgia, says: "We are working closely with the electronic operator interface group and Rockwell Software to ensure that our hardware and software work together to provide a common user experience across the range of ViewAnyWare platforms."
The Electronic Operator Interface (EOI) business at Rockwell Automation is also increasing the level of scalability, portability, interoperability and preferred compatibility with other Rockwell Automation products under the ViewAnyWare platform.
"We are bridging the gap between machine-level and supervisory-level applications to provide a common user experience across a complete architecture of products, resulting in greater productivity, flexibility, and a lower total cost of ownership," says Mark Hobbs, Electronic Operator Interface Product Manager, Rockwell Automation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The EOI business is currently developing a complete family of next-generation PanelView products (PanelView Plus), that will form an essential part of the ViewAnyWare architecture. These optimised, embedded products will be configured from the RSView Studio common development environment and will support application re-use, portability, and interoperability across the full range of ViewAnyWare-compatible products. EOI also plans to support the future migration of today's Allen-Bradley PanelView products.
Use of Rockwell Software open, flexible, robust visualisation software technologies
Reaching a common configuration environment requires equipping hardware platforms with HMI software. RSView has always made effective use of open technologies such as ActiveX, COM (component object modelling), open database connectivity, and OPC (object linking and embedding for process control) to provide a high level of customisation and integration among different applications, Now it will embrace and extend web-based technologies to provide more scalable solutions - enterprise-wide.
Adoption of an open and flexible architecture founded on Microsoft's DNA for manufacturing
In 1998, Microsoft introduced Windows Distributed InterNet Applications for Manufacturing (Windows DNA-M), a framework for seamlessly integrating multiple business applications within the enterprise. Manufacturing software suppliers, such as Rockwell Software, can take advantage of this framework to develop robust, feature-rich products that provide the foundation for enterprise-wide automation and information solutions. Customers can then deploy those integrated solutions to bring together disparate manufacturing and business software applications, providing an in-depth view of the entire enterprise. Rockwell believes that its common form, and function on multiple platforms for both open and embedded solutions is unprecedented. The three core Rockwell Automation business collaborate on design and code reuse to ensure a single-point-of-contact solution for customers.
ViewAnyWare effectively bridges the gap between traditional, dedicated machine-level HMI devices and distributed, supervisory-level PC-based HMI systems.
ViewAnyWare as part of an integrated architecture
ViewAnyWare, together with Logix for control and NetLinx Open Architecture for communication, make up Rockwell Automation's integrated architecture strategy.
Logix provides a single integrated control architecture for sequential, process, motion and drive control, with greater performance and flexibility. It uses a common development environment for all applications regardless of size or complexity.
NetLinx provides the common set of features and services for DeviceNet, ControlNet and Ethernet/IP networks resulting in lower total cost of ownership. Users can easily manage information from shop floor to top floor and seamlessly integrate their complete system as they control, configure and collect data.
Rockwell Automation's integrated architecture helps manufacturers increase throughput, lower costs, achieve superior quality and improve reliability.
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