Following on the success of the X-CHANGE 2002 User Conference in March, Futuristix-Wonderware's breakfast road show got under way on 21 May. This annual, countrywide event, co-hosted this year by Microsoft and Dell Computers, is in the diaries of most manufacturing and industrial automation professionals interested in significantly improving their production efficiency through better control and increased IT integration of business systems and the shop floor.
"These breakfast sessions are designed to be highly informative and to show solutions operating in realtime rather than as slide shows," says Mike le Plastrier, MD of Futuristix-Wonderware. "This year, we are going one step further in proving the practicality of offered solutions by using ProDef to show the rapid design and development of a live process and the automatic generation of PLC code in realtime as well as the linking of all the developed logic to the InTouch HMI scada solution. In action, will also be MASS AutoSave, our disaster recovery and change management solution which brings IT discipline to the shop floor and that allows production managers to sleep better at night."
ProDef allows process engineers and programmers to rapidly develop industrial applications that integrate their existing or new control system resources. ProDef is used to write functional specifications and control code for such devices as Siemens, Allen Bradley, Modicon and Mitsubishi PLCs as well as Wonderware's InControl soft PLC solution. ProDef is also used to configure HMIs such as Wonderware's InTouch and to integrate with batch controllers such as Wonderware's InBatch. ProDef automatically documents projects with HTML using XML and XSL style sheets.
MASS AutoSave is a realtime interactive change management and disaster recovery programmable device support (PDS) software system that provides full documentation, audit trails, security, uploads, downloads, comparisons and archiving. It uses a Windows environment and is fully integrated with programme-panel software. MASS AutoSave unites the plant's automation software under one common user interface that creates a centralised, documented, well defined, more productive and secure automation programme environment.
MASS AutoSave supports a wide variety of brands and types of PLCs, robots, HMIs, and any other intelligent device including Rockwell/Allen-Bradley, Modicon, Siemens, Square D and GE Fanuc.
Also on show will be Wonderware's soon-to-be-released InSQL 8 Production Historian and Web-enablement solution SuiteVoyager 2. "So, we will go from an idea to complete and documented PLC and scada software, to Process Historian, to full Web portal and finally to complete disaster recovery in just two 40 minute sessions," says le Plastrier. 'We expect that one of our biggest problems will be to convince delegates that what they are seeing is actually happening live and in realtime. On the other hand, what would be the point of offering solutions that do not live up to the increasingly sophisticated and profit-oriented expectations of our system integrators and end users?"
For bookings, call Michelle Giammartini at Just Conferences on 011 723-9900. Alternatively, use the website: www.futuristix.co.za
Mike le Plastrier, Futuristix
011 723 9900
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