X-Change 2016, Wonderware Southern Africa’s 24th annual User Conference, was held at a new facility in the heart of Sun City from 17 to 20 April. The conference was host to 350 local and international industry professionals and this year featured the introduction of new solution integration possibilities and approaches in the areas of HMI and Supervisory Control, Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) and Plant Information Management (PIM).
The 4th industrial revolution is in full swing and starting to affect the way businesses operate and decide on infrastructure solutions. The Internet of Things is bringing an avalanche of connectivity possibilities and forcing cleverer ways of transforming data into decision-support information. At the same time, the cloud is lowering hardware and software infrastructure costs by providing ready and secure accessibility to computer resources as well as the Internet of Services.
But this is only the start, because all these technologies and all the application solutions in Wonderware’s arsenal are only the tools to the next step – industry-specific solutions that can be developed and configured to suit any environment faster than one can draw up a list of requirements. What went before are connectivity and information intelligence tools. What is coming next is the intelligent industry-specific enterprise.
Keynote addresses
Keynote presenters included Ravi Gopinath, executive VP, Software Business, Schneider Electric, who spoke about driving the transformation of the industrial software market. Rob McGreevy, VP Information Operations and Asset Management, Schneider Electric, talked about current and future product technology, the roadmap ahead and product release plans. He was followed by award-winning financial broadcaster, writer, TV presenter and master-facilitator Bruce Whitfield, who spoke about ‘the upside of down’ and how South Africa has always bounced back from adversity and how the JSE has continued to grow for over 100 years in spite of these challenges.
Mainstream presentations
Delegates were treated to 45 sessions of new industrial operations and enterprise information technologies from Wonderware, Schneider Electric and partners ACP, MDT and Software Toolbox among others. The presentations made it clear that the power of current and planned integrated solutions spanning from PLCs to business intelligence is not only meeting, but also exceeding end-user expectations of cost savings, efficiency, versatility, mobile intelligence and time-to-value.
User presentations
20 end-user and system integrator presentations illustrated the successful application of Wonderware solutions in a number of southern African projects across various industries. These were all entries in the X-Change 2016 Open Competition and the companies involved included Cennergi (Wind Farms), Egoli Gas, Hulamin, Lonmin (two presentations), Namibia Breweries, Rio Tinto, The South African Breweries (two presentations) and Sibanye Gold.
X-Change 2016 award winners:
• Best HMI and Supervisory Control Project: SAB implements super-critical visualisation solution to safeguard million-Rand batches. At SAB Alrode Maltings plant, a single batch is actually a living organism, which could be worth in the region of R2,5 million. Therefore, the visualisation of its status and the rapid identification of problems are essential to avoid massive financial losses. By using established standards and a comprehensive device database, SAB saved months of design time and costs. System integrator Advansys was commissioned for this implementation.
• Best Manufacturing Operations Management Application: Sibanye Gold optimises energy and resource usage in a complex environment. Sibanye Gold uses System Platform to match equipment usage with production schedules in order to minimise the use of energy. The idea is to maximise production using the least energy – not something easily achieved in the complex mining environment. They also match real-time predictive maintenance with demand scheduling to make maintenance planning more effective.
• Best Plant Information Management System: Historian plays a central role in utilities management at Namibia Breweries. Optimal utilities management contributes to a greener environment and a healthier bottom line. At Namibia Breweries, Wonderware Historian helps to generate daily, weekly and monthly consumption reports for water, electricity, chemicals, thermal energy, solar generation, carbon dioxide and air, to compare results with KPI targets. Linking Historian tags to the company’s production system has also led to faster and more accurate problem detection.
• Top system integrator award: Business Connexion, but with stiff competition from Convenient Software Solutions, Systems Anywhere, Control Systems Integration and Bytes Universal Systems.
Collaboration Expo
Nineteen local and international hardware and software solution vendors demonstrated their real solutions to real problems. Every year, these industry solution providers choose the unique opportunities offered by X-Change to network with existing and potential customers and to highlight their capabilities.
What did delegates take away?
The most important was probably that current and planned industrial software process control and IT offer some alluring prospects for increased wealth creation. Therefore, perhaps the question delegates are asking themselves is “If my thoughts could be turned into reality, what should I be thinking about next?”
See the full conference review at www.x-change.co.za
For more information contact Jaco Markwat, Wonderware Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 607 8100, jaco.markwat@wonderware.co.za, www.wonderware.co.za
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