To navigate successfully through today’s global wave of digital transformation and make disruptive technologies work for them, manufacturers, municipalities, utilities, and all other organisations will need to roll out just the right mix of technologies at just the right time. They will need to drive and manage change in processes, people, ecosystems, and technologies while keeping safety and cybersecurity at the forefront.
Everything is becoming more connected and intelligent. Streetlights, cars, gas turbines, and thermostats stream data. Buildings, refineries, oil platforms, mines, and wind turbines are optimising asset and operating performance. Parking meters and distributed power grids deliver value to both consumers and operators. Design software can link to additive machines to print parts directly.
There are countless ways to conduct the digital transformation journey, multiple technologies and suppliers to evaluate and endless choices to make along the way. This was the focus of the 23rd Annual ARC Industry Forum from 4-7 February in Orlando Florida.
Press announcement details
Announcements from vendors at the media session included:
AVEVA: CEO Craig Hayman discussed the significant developments made since the merger of AVEVA with Schneider Electric’s Industrial Software Business in 2018, its commitment to drive digital industrial transformation, and the announcement of a major update to its entire visualisation product portfolio through its cloud subscription model. The new update is designed to provide its customers with greater flexibility in licensing, configuration and deployment.
Bedrock Automation: Albert Rooyakkers, founder and CEO, announced a new offering that protects legacy systems, supports MQTT and manages human access to controls. He discussed how the company continues to push the automation performance envelope by bringing Open Secure Automation to the edge.
HIMA: Dr. Alexander Horch, VP R&D and product development, introduced the company’s Smart Safety Platform with built-in cybersecurity. By tailoring hardware and software to each other, it enables operators to reduce the complexity of their systems and buy only what they need. The platform can also incorporate existing systems to help lower operating costs and offer high security of investment.
Honeywell: Sam Wilson, global product marketing manager, Honeywell Industrial Cybersecurity, addressed the ‘David vs. Goliath’ nature of current industrial cybersecurity, including the big risk presented by small, removable devices. He provided an update on the state of common and overlooked cyber threats, insights into customer experiences, and Honeywell Process Solutions’ current technological and software developments for industrial cybersecurity.
Inductive Automation: Don Pearson, chief strategy officer, and Carl Gould, co-director of software development, previewed the latest version of Ignition 8, Inductive Automation’s industrial automation platform. The new system offers expanded functionality, web technologies, enterprise-empowering features, and a next-generation visualisation system called the Ignition Perspective Module, which the company designed to empower users to create appealing, mobile-responsive industrial applications that run natively on any mobile device and any web browser.
L+T Technology Services: COO Samir Bagga and Akshay Chandra, senior manager, strategic marketing initiatives, unveiled the company’s ‘Factory D.0’ solution. According to the company, this is a one-stop solution encompassing wireless material tracking, machine vision-based quality inspection, digital twin, energy optimisation, collaborative robotics, integrated 3D modelling/virtual reality, and other proprietary technologies and specialised know-how.
Schneider Electric: Chris Stogner, director of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Triconex safety offering, and Farshad Hendi, global safety practices leader in the industry services business, introduced EcoStruxure Process Safety Advisor, a solution that consolidates and contextualises past, present, and future operating risks and performance data for the entire enterprise across multiple sites and geographies, right down to the asset. They discussed the previously opposed concepts of safety and profitability in many industrial plants and how, by leveraging Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IIoT-enabled system architecture and safety applications, end users can create a closed-loop safety model to monitor any gaps between the design and performance of their operations.
Siemens: Bill Boswell, VP of marketing, cloud application solutions – MindSphere, announced new solutions, partners, and infrastructure for leveraging the IIoT with Siemens’ MindSphere cloud-based operating system.
Yokogawa: Satoru Kurosu, director, premium solutions and service business, and Oscar Santollani, VP, visual MESA software business at KBC (a Yokogawa Company), discussed how the company can help customers address their energy-related carbon emission reduction goals with its end-to-end energy optimisation solution and provided details about the new release from KBC of the core Visual MESA Multi-Period Optimiser analytics technology, designed to help reduce costly uncertainty in energy planning, scheduling, and trading over multiple time periods.
For more information contact Paul Miller, ARC Advisory Group, +1 781 471 1141, [email protected], www.arcweb.com
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