Making a way through a maze of plant-floor applications
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[July 10, 2006]

Making a way through a maze of plant-floor applications

(Manufacturing Business Technology Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Executives at Rockwell Automation
attribute the
appeal of the vendor's Logix control platform to the fact that Logix addresses
process and production management in discrete, batch, and continuous process
industries; as well as drive, motion, and machine safety applications. Now
Rockwell is hoping the same calculusone platform to address multiple
disciplineswill spark sales for its FactoryTalk suite of plant-management
software.

The FactoryTalk name has been around for several years, mainly as a
data-sharing technology. But Rockwell has expanded on FactoryTalk's services,
including a plant data model, to arrive at a service-oriented architecture
(SOA) for plant analytics and production management applications, according to
Kevin Roach, VP of Rockwell Software.

This gives Rockwell a modern SOA foundation, says Roach, while at the
product level, the FactoryTalk suite has been aligned around six overarching
disciplines: design and configuration of plant-floor systems; production
management (e.g., recipe management); data management; quality and compliance;
asset management; and production performance & visibility. In practice,
Roach says, users are out to address one or more of these disciplines, rather
than choose from a dizzying array of software niches.

Will the simplification strategy work? It has with Logix, as evidenced
by a 26-percent sales increase for the control platform during Rockwell's
fiscal year 2005. With plant software, however, while Rockwell doesn't break
out sales numbersmaking it difficult to gauge real momentumit clearly is
out to grow its software business just the way it re-energized its control
business.

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