X-CHANGE has become a landmark event in South Africa’s industrial calendar because it provides the practical and applicable information end users want to hear – all under one roof, all by authorities in their field and all in three days. Last year’s conference was held at the Wild Coast Sun and the numbers show why it is the most successful conference of its type on the continent:
• More than 340 delegates.
• Four keynote presentations.
• Twenty international presenters.
• Seventy-seven breakout sessions including 14 end-user presentations.
• Twenty-six Expo stands including three dedicated to specific industrial automation and information domains.
This year promises to be even better!
What’s in it for you?
A lot of value in a short time: X-CHANGE provides in-depth information sharing, education and networking opportunities in a power-packed three-day event. Attend product roadmaps, solution and industry overviews, deep-dive technical breakouts and customer success story experiences. The conference also features two days of demos and displays in the Collaboration Expo, along with entertainment and many networking opportunities – all helping you optimise your operations and change the way you play your game.
If you are a regular attendee, you will know all about the value this event brings you. If you’re a newcomer to the conference, here is what you can expect:
• Let 20 or more world-class presenters from across the globe bring you up-to-date insights you won’t find anywhere else – and they are not just at the speaker’s podium – have one-on-one meetings with them about your own issues.
• Visit over 20 exhibitors from the best system integrators and solution providers in southern Africa. See the depth of knowledge and expertise available to you right here and now.
• Meet delegates from Africa’s top mining companies, leading food and beverage companies, best manufacturing companies and leading utility providers so that you can see how they have addressed problems you might be facing.
• Choose from a dozen end-user presentations showing what remarkable results they have achieved with Wonderware solutions. Forget brochures – this is ‘walking the walk’ of reality.
• Attend your selection of more than 45 top-rated technical presentations by industry experts on various topics of interest to your industry including what to expect in the near future and how you can turn this into bottom-line profits.
• See how operational and business processes can be integrated into a formidable competitive advantage.
• Make use of unparalleled networking opportunities with your peers, solution vendors and world-class professionals.
In spite of its name, X-CHANGE is open to everyone and not only to Wonderware users. Its solutions feature extensive integration facilities which will help you get the most from your existing assets. It is not coincidence that the world’s leading industrial companies make use of Wonderware, as they know that this remarkable suite of inclusive solutions looks after their past investments while catering for unlimited future capability.
Some of the topics that will help you change your game
Innovation and the future: Winning in the 21st century is going to depend on many things but in the high-tech world of industrial automation/IT, a major component will be innovation. Just as you have to find innovative ways to achieve your business goals, Wonderware needs to be just as innovative in providing you with the solutions that will help you get there. Being part of an annual investment of €1,1 billion towards innovation and development will help us do just that – after all, innovation has been the company’s motto for 25 years.
Facing the issues: Technology is only an asset if it can be shown to have benefits, and X-CHANGE does this by looking at some of the issues you may be confronting right now:
• Greatly improving operator effectiveness: New alarm management and HMI approaches using situational awareness principles have resulted in a 26% improvement in operator efficiency.
• Mobile operations: Real-time monitoring/control of plant operations from anywhere, anytime, from any device and on any network is now a reality.
• Independence from the control room: Mobile technologies combined with context-sensitive HMI software can provide the right people with the right information wherever they might be in the plant.
• The Cloud: It’s here to stay and promises independence from hardware, greatly reduced CAPEX, infinite data storage and access from everywhere.
• Big data vs actionable intelligence: The huge amounts of data generated by the industrial automation environment can now be accessed, collated into contextualised information and managed by those who need that information rather than programmers.
• Making the most of available human resources: Remote Operation Centres is allowing companies that have production facilities geographically spread over multiple locations to centralise their pool of engineering and maintenance expertise.
Then there are the virtues of virtualisation, the cost and operational benefits of thin clients, cyber security, the Internet of Things and, and, and ... there is simply not enough room to explain it all here.
On the product side, Wonderware and Schneider-Electric commit annually to an investment of over €1.1 billion towards innovation and development. At this conference, you will see not only the current benefits of this investment, but also where it will go in the near future. And of course, all the latest advances and products from Flow and Relevance software, as well as new products from MDT Software, ACP ThinManager and Software Toolbox will be on show.
Conclusion
X-CHANGE is designed to address today’s challenging issues facing the mining, manufacturing and utility industries. If the only constant is change, you need to be able to change the way you play your game. X-CHANGE will give you the information you need and suggest the options you have to do just that.
So, if you want to book your seat, present a paper or reserve an exhibition stand, please visit www.x-change.co.za
For more information contact Jaco Markwat, Wonderware Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 607 8100, [email protected], www.wonderware.co.za
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