The current dilemma for industrial IT is facing up to elaborate business needs for real-time production and process information, by connecting to a plethora of disparate IT applications, plant systems and devices.
Integrating these disparate systems to consolidate manufacturing data is either extremely expensive, or nearly impossible. Imagine if these disparate systems could be replaced with something simple, yet advanced enough to provide all the functionality you imagined, and more.
This is the question posed by Daniel Coetzee, GE Infrastructure's GE Fanuc Automation division Business Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa.
"We ask the question, 'How many automation software solutions does it take to change a business?'. The answer is surprising, and almost unbelievable - with Proficy the answer is one," points out Coetzee.
"GE understands that businesses today are under continuous pressure to increase productivity and improve profitability. The Proficy intelligent production solution integrates a full range of easy-to-use applications and services to continuously improve your level of productivity. It has been developed to build intelligence into your processes - gathering, analyzing, and transforming data into information and enabling you to act in real-time to optimize results," Coetzee continues.
"Proficy connects the equipment on your floor, the business systems and the decision-makers in a closed-loop experience that ensures that production runs smoothly, efficiently and with greater profitability," he says.
"The demand for speed, agility and responsiveness in production operations has never been greater," Coetzee maintains.
"As a result, real-time performance management -- which offers the most significant opportunity for revolutionizing manufacturing -- must be the cornerstone for every profitable company. GE understands this critical need and can deliver the seamless, knowledge-based infrastructure that brings together business and manufacturing for improved performance across an entire enterprise."
Featuring a wide range of unified modules to meet individual requirements, Proficy allows information to be shared freely between business and plant floor applications, helping organizations to better plan, execute, and deliver to meet customer needs and improve their competitiveness.
Modules are focused on specific production requirements and can be implemented individually or as part of an overall solution. The Proficy open architecture allows companies to start with a single point solution and expand as needed -- from a single machine to a production line to a plant to an enterprise, from a single machine operator to thousands of global users.
"By embracing and extending a company's existing equipment and technologies, Proficy also helps users leverage an installed base of automation assets for faster implementation and return," Coetzee advises.
He furthermore points out that, according to AMR Research analysts Bill Swanton and Alison Smith in the Alert, Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence Helps Global Manufacturers Raise Performance and Responsiveness, November 26, 2003, "GE Fanuc is aggressively positioning itself as a plant intelligence provider. GE Fanuc has a well-articulated manufacturing intelligence vision and the most cohesive offering of all the automation vendors."
In addition, Coetzee refers to the comment made by Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group Research Director, who reports, "GE's Proficy provides a common basis for using manufacturing information from the plant floor to enterprise systems and business partners, delivering manufacturing visualization and information to people, processes, and applications. This results in new performance capabilities for users at the plant-level and throughout the distributed manufacturing enterprise and supply network."
According to Coetzee, the Proficy solution has several industry-leading fetaures.
"Especially noteworthy is the Single Integrated Infrastructure that is based on a Common Component Framework (CCF). Although other solution providers highlight an integrated infrastructure, Proficy solutions are integrated with a common data model. This enables customers to leverage one data model across all products to more effectively manage their operations and reduce their TCO. While other infrastructures, are focused much more on the distribution of data and control level functionality, Proficy is focused more on the single configuration of data into a common plant reference and data model," Coetzee explains.
Available now, the Proficy Intelligent Production Solutions provide the following capabilities:
Real-Time Information Portal - This exciting new web-based tool for accessing, analyzing and visualizing production information enables companies to collect, aggregate, and disseminate data from multiple disparate backend sources and securely deliver a personalized view with a web browser. This timely view of trends, reports, graphics and KPI's on one screen allows users to act on real-time information, resulting in better and faster decision-making. The solution delivers data to ERP, supply chain and CRM, extending the investment in these systems.
Plant Performance and Execution - Proficy offers automated production scheduling, tracking, broadcast, and routing control. These newly expanded systems enable flexibility in executing manufacturing schedules from ERP systems, monitoring production flow through the manufacturing facility, making automated routing decisions, and synchronizing subsystem delivery including external suppliers.
Proficy Plant Applications - provide powerful Efficiency, Quality, Production, and Batch Analysis capabilities to manufacturing operations, enabling production managers to gain clear insight into how products are actually produced. At the core of the Plant Applications is unified, easy-to-configure "plant model" and notification service that enables users to define how their products are manufactured based on their actual plant layout, product specifications and product routing instructions. The Plant Applications automatically generate intelligent KPIs and alarms so that managers can monitor performance and receive notification when exceptions occur.
Proficy Batch Execution - delivers everything you need to develop a powerful yet flexible batch monitoring and control solution - complete with an easy-to-use graphical interface with powerful functionality, and a diverse array of features which have been specifically designed to help you address FDA regulation 21 CFR Part 11.
Proficy Tracker - creates exciting new opportunities for raising productivity and cutting costs by giving you the ability to monitor the progress of each serialized and non-serialized item that moves through your production or packaging process. You get the detailed, continuous flow of information you need to optimize your manufacturing process, while managing inventory levels and locations, scheduling resources, and routing materials much more effectively.
Plant Data Repository - Proficy Historian is a plant-wide data historian that collects, archives and distributes tremendous volumes of real-time, plant floor process information at extremely high speed. Proficy Historian represents a leap in the performance, utility and affordability of plant-wide data historians. Scalable to 250,000 data points per server, Proficy Historian delivers high-volume data collection and retrieval, without sacrificing speed or performance.
Asset Management - Proficy Enterprise Asset Management is a powerful web-based Asset Management solution designed to keep your company and the equipment it relies upon running at optimal efficiency and peak profitability. Proficy EAM enables you to gain true insight into your organization's asset utilization patterns, enabling you to more efficiently leverage maintenance materials, identify and eliminate problem areas within your company's maintenance operations and dramatically reduce the expense and aggravation of unscheduled downtime events, missing equipment and other asset-related concerns. Proactive monitoring of equipment - both on site and remotely - permits early recognition of problems and identification of corrective actions to dramatically increase user productivity and reduce downtime. Enabling users to remotely access information about their production facilities, Proficy Remote Monitoring & Diagnostics makes it possible to instantly ascertain the status of operations, troubleshoot a problem or collaborate between multiple sites anytime, from anywhere in the world.
Proficy Change Management - provides all of the tools necessary for tracking and managing software changes. As a client/server system, it offers version control, audit trails, security, scheduled backups and compares, and reporting capabilities that streamline your operations and help you meet regulatory requirements with ease. As a result, manufacturers can achieve data security and greatly enhanced disaster recovery, enabling them to maintain operations, increase security, improve productivity and meet crucial regulatory requirements.
HMI / SCADA - Proficy HMI/SCADA has powerful Client/Server based HMI/SCADA solutions that provide process visualization, data acquisition, alarm management and supervisory control over manufacturing and production processes. Proficy HMI/SCADA gives Operators and Process Engineers the power and security to precisely monitor and control every aspect of their process, equipment and resources. The result is a faster response to production issues, with improved quality, reduced waste, faster time-to-market and increased profitability.
Integrated Quality - Quality of parts, products and process is critical to predictable production yields that make key business decisions possible and result in sellable goods. The key to quality involves monitoring appropriate parameters, traceability, quick corrective implementation, sustainability of high levels of quality production, and compliance with industry regulations. The Proficy Shop Floor SPC family of data collection software is built from the factory floor up to reflect how you work. The software incorporates extensive capabilities that provide you with the flexibility and control you need for data collection, analysis and reporting.
Control & Operator Interface - Proficy provides a universal development environment for machine-level control, including logic, motion and machine-level visualization. Web-enabled functionality such as a built-in web server delivers real-time data across the enterprise while drag-and-drop editing and industry-standard technologies enable fast, powerful object-oriented programming.
With a strong commitment to the Proficy architecture, GE Fanuc will continuously bring new and innovative modules to users. Future modules include Workflow, allowing users to encapsulate complex business rules for a variety of tasks such as business system data exchanges and supplier non-conformance; enterprise reporting providing powerful business reporting from the Proficy Plant Datamart; and a Plant Wide Alarming and Advanced Notification system integrating alarms throughout the enterprise into a single environment and making use of modern wireless technologies for notification.
To learn more about Proficy, please register at www.proficy.biz and take a tour of what Proficy can do for you.
Francesco Della Rosa