A growing list of applications and technologies currently available to monitor, control and interrogate production processes are becoming widely accepted decision-support tools at all levels of the organisation.
No longer is scada viewed as something that only belongs in a manufacturing company's 'engine room'. As the primary source of knowledge about the performance of the company's wealth-creating processes, scada systems are helping organisations make real-time decisions at all levels thanks to facilitating technologies that are making information transparent and independent of their parent applications.
"Merely two years ago, scada was still perceived as something dedicated to the control of realtime processes and remote from the mainstream of a company's IT activities," says Mike le Plastrier, MD, Futuristix-Wonderware.
"Although scada solutions, such as available from Wonderware, have grown enormously in functionality and ease of implementation, some of the most important developments have been in the areas of information portals and control gateways that have made scada an integral part of a company's other activities. In time, this integration will include all aspects of business processes and will help align the realities of the shop floor to the strategies of the boardroom.
"Unifying companies means integrating their production, maintenance and business processes in a way that will help them focus on achieving their strategic objectives. There has been a lot of talk about this but not much concrete action. The main reason is that it is not easy and that solution vendors would rather remain in their comfort zones of specialisation than cross application boundaries. Many businesses that bought the vision of the integrated enterprise but that jumped the gun have had to shut their doors because they did not have the complex infrastructure necessary to back their glitzy e-commerce façades. The web is the easy bit. The difficult bit is manufacturing on demand and the complex logistics this entails.
"Everything depends on everything else and today, the emerging co-operative technologies from Wonderware and other stables are helping to glue it all together while handling all the incredible, yet necessary, complexities of competitive production in the 21st century. And it is all happening more rapidly than many people think.
"If manufacturing companies stop manufacturing profitably and competitively, they simply cease to exist. Production processes are therefore key and scada and other solutions must first address this all-important area. But they cannot do so without acknowledging or cooperating with supportive business and IT processes.
"In the end, Wonderware's 'bottoms-up' approach shows that manufacturing companies are not assemblies of disjointed processes and 'divisions'. They are unified entities that are free to jockey for market positioning without having to worry unduly as to the supportive technologies that will help keep them there."
Futuristix-Wonderware is hosting a series of breakfast seminars countrywide to keep production, IT and plant managers up-to-date on these rapidly evolving technologies and applications. Only two remain. They are:
Mon 18 June, Klerksdorp, TBA
Tues 19 June, Rustenburg, Karos Safari Hotel
Should you want to attend, kindly call Michelle Giammartini at Just Conferences (011) 723 9900.
Futuristix
(011) 723 9900
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version