This is reportedly the largest conference of its type in South Africa and is designed to inform system integrators and other partners of how new developments in the Wonderware stable of products can help their businesses to the benefit of their end-users.
High on the agenda was the ability to develop end-user solutions more quickly, easily, professionally and profitably while new solution developments were geared towards greatly improved productivity and performance. Key to the successful management of today's complex production processes is situational awareness whereby operators need help to focus on optimising processes in their charge.
Until now, it was thought that realistic HMI (Human-Machine Interface) graphics was the answer but it turns out that the real answer is informative rather than realistic graphics - but why not have the best of both worlds with the release of InTouch 2014 - the world's favourite HMI (which can now be used on any fixed or mobile device).
It was also shown how thin clients (industrial PCs without moving parts) can greatly improve process control reliability and drastically cut maintenance and system management costs while virtualisation makes software independent of the hardware on which it runs, slashes the number of physical servers required and provides rock-solid redundancy that guarantees system availability through thick and thin.
One of the highlights of the conference was the introduction of a brand new process control concept from Foxboro known as Foxboro Evo. Until now, the industrial automation world revolved around two approaches: The Distributed Control System (DCS) and the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.
Foxboro Evo, known as a Process Automation System (PAS), combines the best of these worlds by offering a seamless hardware/software integration of systems under the unifying influence of Wonderware's ArchestrA technology. Invensys customers can now benefit from a true merging of world-leading technologies to give them unprecedented flexibility and reliability in any mining or manufacturing environment.
Following the presentations, guests were treated to dinner and a networking opportunity with fellow leaders in the manufacturing arena.
