The Rockwell Automation University held at Emperor’s Palace on 18 and 19 August was a smoothly organised and interesting affair that showcased convergence, the integrated architecture and the incorporation of safety systems into the platform. In his opening address managing director Francois Retief identified a number of emerging trends which will see the company driving plant-wide optimisation into future: “The need for plant-wide optimisation is becoming evident through increasing productivity targets, energy sustainability, operational excellence, cost reduction and regulatory compliance initiatives. The convergence of manufacturing technology offers a real promise of addressing these challenges and Rockwell Automation is uniquely positioned to help our customers solve these issues.”
Retief defined manufacturing convergence as the integration of the plant floor with the enterprise IT systems to unify people, processes and technology to achieve higher levels of business performance. The integrated architecture from Rockwell Automation facilitates this convergence by creating a platform for information to flow across an organisation so that key market challenges such as productivity, globalisation, innovation and sustainability can be better addressed through shared access.
Retief’s ideas and the role and nature of the integrated architecture were elaborated for SA Instrumentation and Control during a conversation with Rockwell Automation strategists Clive Barwise and Bart Nieuwborg after the address and a tour of the exhibits. They discussed the Rockwell Automation view of the plant wide information system of the future with gusto. The integrated architecture will see the rise of peer to peer systems with decentralised databases resident on controllers that coexist in an Ethernet web and communicate through a FactoryTalk cloud that permeates all levels of the organisation.
Clive Barwise and Bart Nieuwborg
Nieuwborg and Barwise believe that Internet concepts are the primary mechanisms of convergence between the organisation’s office and control networks. Hence the strategic partnerships with Microsoft and Cisco to meet the growing demand for Industrial Ethernet and collaborative data sharing between the shop floor and the top floor. The two agree that the relationships are symbiotic in nature giving Rockwell Automation access to the traditional Cisco/Microsoft domain and vice versa. Nieuwborg believes that one of the key drivers for the integrated architecture is the cost/node and that over time Moore’s Law will remove this as a barrier to entry. For now he says that a phased approach is working well for customers as they swap their legacy systems for Ethernet wires, the FactoryTalk suite and Allen-Bradley control in a converged integrated architecture solution.
The approach seems sound. When coupled with Retief’s commitment to provide the local market with the combination of skilled people and technology that ensures customers get the best possible performance from their investments, the future looks rosy.
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