Proficy Workflow from GE Fanuc optimises production.
GE Fanuc has announced its breakthrough new software solution, Proficy Workflow, powered by the new Proficy service oriented architecture (SOA). “Proficy Workflow provides an industrial business process management (BPM) solution that digitises and streamlines production processes, from work instructions to corrective action and monitoring,” says an enthusiastic Daniel Coetzee, manager for Africa, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms.
Designed to bring the power and results of BPM to the industrial environment Proficy Workflow helps companies deliver BPM to production operations through three key initiatives:
* Integration – coordinating processes across the enterprise.
* Digitisation – driving processes electronically.
* Lean – defining a process improvement framework for business transformation.
Coetzee continues: “With Proficy Workflow, companies can improve, eliminate and automate steps in production decreasing time-to-value on materials, speeding response, lowering total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) and ensuring sustainability. This new industrial BPM software combines manual and automated work processes without custom code, allowing production experts to solve problems immediately without demands on IT.”
Built on an SOA platform, the system integrates information and services on a Plant2Enterprise basis, adding value to all existing ERP, MES and HMI systems. Companies can integrate business and production processes across systems and departments for reliable, repeatable process execution. Additionally, the software provides for the integration of people and their functions allowing for customisation to aid decision making.
“A key tool that will enable today's plants and factories to realise the strategy for operational excellence is the ability to define the process or workflow steps required to achieve a logical execution path,” explains Coetzee. “Proficy Workflow has been designed to help move manufacturers, processors, and OEMs to a single environment, where existing systems connect and interact with each other to maximise information value in a way that increases productivity.
As an industrial BPM solution, Proficy Workflow takes a production flowchart and digitises it, connecting the people, materials, equipment and systems involved in the work process. Unlike BPM in the enterprise – which operates in hours and days – industrial workflow has a time frame of seconds and sub-seconds.
Coetzee notes: “By digitising processes with industrial workflow, users can capture process, traceability and quality data, drive lean initiatives based on factual information, and close the loop for production improvement.”
Common applications include:
* High-level processes and data management between systems.
* Digitisation of good manufacturing practice (GMP) tasks and work instructions.
* Hazzop analysis and critical control point (HACCP) monitoring procedures and corrective action.
* Alarm and event response.
* Plant task management.
* Work-cell and machine setup.
According to Coetzee, with Proficy Workflow, users can digitise a process that involves one or many steps. Also, the workflow can take place in one station with one user or be spread across the plant following a common set of rules.
The workflows follow the execution path logic developed by the power user through easy-to-use graphical authoring tools. Each step could include linked documents such as work instructions – or any information that pertains to how the user should complete the process.
To accommodate exchange and storage of data, Proficy Workflow and Proficy SOA comply with the latest industry standards, including BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and S95. The software follows S95 standards for a common framework and data model in which different systems can communicate and give context to data found in static and realtime systems. Once standard data models are in place, workflows can use the data within the models to carry out their execution and have a place to store results of execution.
Industrial SOA technology also provides the realtime platform to achieve a centralised production configuration and management environment. “The breakthrough combination of Proficy Workflow and the Proficy SOA architecture gives companies the power to respond to changing business needs with composite applications, that leverage existing production systems through the SOA data and services repository,” concludes Coetzee.
Proficy Workflow will be available in the second quarter of 2008, please visit www.gefanuc.com/workflow.
For more information contact Daniel Coetzee, GE Fanuc Automation, +27 (0)31 583 3640, [email protected], www.gefanuc.com
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