From 100 Flavors of Soda to 4th Generation HMI/SCADA

Recently, my family visited Atlanta for my older son’s birthday. It was a big treat to visit the World of Coke and try more than 100 flavors of soda from around the globe. And, wow! There are beverages from every part of the world—Bibo Candy Pine-Nut from Africa, the non-alcoholic aperitif Beverly from Italy, Fanta Melon Frosty from Thailand, Inca Kola from Peru, and much more. Yes, we really did try every single soda in the tasting room!

Improve business outcomes

In addition to the tastings, we enjoyed the Bottling Works—which includes GE hardware and HMI/SCADA software. Visitors at the center can easily see how an automation screen relates to bottling. That’s the beauty of traditional HMI/SCADA screens–they look like what they represent.

But what if those screens could have even more impact? On the operators who have to utilize them, and on the business overall. As an HMI/SCADA leader, GE Digital has released its fourth generation HMI/SCADA software with designs that look different, and studies show that they can improve business outcomes.

According to GE’s research tracking eye movements and operator response, the fourth generation, high performance HMI/SCADA technology can provide the following results:

•        less time spent navigating
•        faster finding critical data
•        improvement in alarm resolution success
•        faster to identify relevant screen for an alarm
•        increase in usability
•        faster build/deployment

The new look may not make as much sense to a visitor who doesn’t know the process, but it has obvious advantages for operators and technicians to support decisions and speed the right response.

As Sergio Chavez, Automation Engineer with the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, observed. “With high performance HMI/SCADA, operators are able to quickly determine an abnormal situation and get to the root causes of many issues. We help operators visualize a process and make alarms very visible. We’re shaving the time it takes for operators to act on a situation.”

High performance visualization: It’s the real thing

Instead of HMI/SCADA screens with many objects and lots of color, high performance or efficient HMI screens are simple, with less color. This helps operators quickly identify problems and causes for fastest resolution.

In earlier generation HMI/SCADA systems, users took advantage of object libraries and extensive color palettes. Those are still important today, but we also know that well-designed visualization and intelligent warnings are critical.

This fourth generation version is still the much-loved iFIX and CIMPLICITY that has been automating and improving operations for decades – but it has a new look and other powerful features available too.