Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management, has released a powerful new HMI software product as part of its market-leading Wonderware® InTouch® portfolio. Designed to run with modest hardware requirements and operable on embedded versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems, InTouch Machine Edition software is tailored to meet the needs of end users, OEMs and machine and system builders while giving them scalability and tight integration with Wonderware Historian and Wonderware System Platform. Because it can directly connect to industrial data sources, the new software enables users to access the information they need to improve plant operations and lower total cost of ownership in real time.
“Schneider Electric has always invested in new technology and product development, and Wonderware InTouch Machine Edition software continues that approach,” said Ravi Gopinath, executive vice president, software, Global Solutions Business, Schneider Electric. “The Wonderware brand has long been associated with easy-to-use software solutions that can be integrated with any controller and run on any computer. The new Machine Edition HMI software maintains that tradition and represents ongoing investment and commitment to one of our core offerings. At Schneider Electric we look forward to developing and delivering innovative software solutions that bring greater value to our customers more quickly.”
InTouch Machine Edition software has comprehensive features that make it easier for customers to integrate their information and automation systems. For example, it can directly replace a traditional panel-computer HMI while providing the functionality normally found in larger PC-based HMI systems; it offers more than 240 native communication drivers with connectivity to almost any control hardware; and its rich visualization, scripting, security, alarming, trending and recipe management functionality empowers plant operators to make better business decisions using real-time data. Additionally, customers in regulated industries will benefit from features that are powerful enough to be used as part of a 21 CFR part-11 compliant solution.
“Many machines are delivered from the machine builder with a minimally functional HMI or an HMI that is tightly tied to a single PLC brand,” said Craig Resnick, vice president, consulting, ARC Advisory Group. “The problem with this approach is that, due to cost restrictions, these embedded HMIs do not always have the features operators need to leverage and maximize the full potential of the machine as an integral part of the whole production system.
“Wonderware InTouch Machine Edition software reverses this trend, first because users do not have to standardize on a single hardware offering. And secondly, by enabling users to quickly create intuitive and highly maintainable HMI applications, it makes machine information more accessible to operators and managers. Furthermore, the software can feed information to a larger supervisory system and provide a common control room environment for high-level operations management. Providing this level of information in a compact footprint gives users greater control, faster response times, higher operating efficiencies and lower total cost of ownership, as well as a broader understanding of the health of the entire business.”
Wonderware InTouch Machine Edition strengthens and broadens Schneider Electric’s software solutions portfolio for a broad range of end users and OEM customers in the embedded HMI segment. The solution provides integration with Wonderware Historian software so that data can be securely and reliably saved, retrieved, analyzed and interpreted for greater insight into the business. This includes store-and-forward capabilities that will save the information locally if the connection to the historian is interrupted and then subsequently forward that data to the historian when the connection is reestablished. Live data can be communicated to desktop versions of Wonderware InTouch, Wonderware System Platform and Wonderware InBatch software. Data can be used in scripts, alarms, history, recipes and graphics to enable monitoring of machine status and performance information such as OMAC PackML data and overall equipment effectiveness. This level of integration with the Wonderware software portfolio makes it easier than ever before to integrate machine-level information in production-line and plant-level solutions.
