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Invensys introduce InFusion ‘enterprise control system’

Global automation, controls and process solutions group Invensys have combined their industrial-strength automation technology with advanced information technology to create InFusion, claimed to be the world’s first unified real-time control, information and application environment designed for use across virtually all plant and enterprise systems.

The InFusion enterprise control system combines industry-leading capabilities from across Invensys with advanced enterprise information and integration technologies from both Microsoft and SAP to significantly reduce integration costs. Using this technology, most existing plant floor and enterprise systems can be cost-effectively integrated into a common system. In conjunction with a suite of new performance services, InFusion has been designed to help industrial enterprises more effectively align plant operations and maintenance departments with the business as a whole to optimize overall asset performance management.

With more than 60 issued and pending patents/patent applications, the InFusion enterprise control system is said to deliver a set of capabilities not previously available from any single automation or information system. These include:
  • high levels of integration across virtually all existing plant floor systems (DCS, PLC etc), sub-systems and intelligent field devices, regardless of vendor or protocol
  • low-cost standards-based information interoperability between plant floor, MES (manufacturing execution system), and enterprise systems
  • a unified engineering and support environment across both plant floor and MES systems, together with a powerful application object model that simplifies the creation and re-use of innovative new equipment-, unit- and plant-level strategies while dramatically improving engineering productivity
  • real-time visibility into both the plant and the business with a unified view across operations and maintenance domains to help align overall plant performance with business objectives.
InFusion unifies Foxboro’s industry-leading process control capabilities with Wonderware’s industry-leading human-machine interface (HMI), plant intelligence and device-integration capabilities into a new ArchestrA-based system (ArchestrA is Invensys’ fully industrialized software architecture built on .NET and other Microsoft technologies). The system also incorporates additional Invensys and third-party capabilities as required, including:
  • Triconex triple modular redundant (TMR) safety and critical control
  • Foxboro remote terminal units (RTUs) and?intelligent SCADA applications
  • SimSci-Esscor advanced control, simulation and process optimization
  • Avantis real-time condition monitoring and enterprise asset management
  • Foxboro intelligent pressure, level, flow and electrochemical transmitters, valve positioners and advanced field device tool (FDT)-compliant diagnostics
  • a comprehensive managed approach to wireless technology, making it practical and cost-effective to incorporate new wireless measurements into the system.
InFusion reduces the cost and effort required to integrate intelligent plant floor devices and systems via standards such as OPC (open connectivity) and a broad portfolio of device drivers. Process control, MES and even ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications can be brought together into a common data model and a common best-in-class HMI to deliver timely, in-context information to all plant personnel. The InFusion Collaboration Wall, a new concept in human interface, can also be used to provide plant operators, maintenance technicians, engineers and managers with a shared view of process control, maintenance, performance and business application displays to encourage and facilitate creative collaboration.

Invensys have worked closely with technology partners such as Microsoft and SAP to be able to significantly reduce the time and effort previously required to integrate real-time plant systems with transactional enterprise systems. This is accomplished using a modern, platform-independent, web-services-based enterprise architecture approach.

Utilizing key technologies and standards, such as Microsoft .NET and BizTalk Server 2004, SAP NetWeaver, ISA S95 (for manufacturing-to-enterprise integration), MIMOSA (for maintenance-to-enterprise integration) and OPC (for real-time connectivity), InFusion also represents the first major implementation of Open O&M (Operations & Maintenance), the industry-standard convergence of OPC, ISA S95 and MIMOSA. This approach eliminates the need to use conventional point-to-point solutions that can be costly to implement, costly to maintain and inherently inflexible in nature, and helps to ensure that the right information is delivered to the right people, at the right time, and in a meaningful context.

The InFusion engineering environment significantly reduces the time and effort required to configure and support intelligent devices and systems and implement innovative control and information strategies. This environment includes both a unified system-wide Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and powerful object-based equipment, unit and plant application object models. These ‘nested’ application objects can be configured, instantiated, cloned, and reused with minimum time and effort. Objects can also be bundled and reused within and across multiple plant sites, allowing for the capture of knowledge and consistent use of best practices.

The InFusion Field Device Manager utilizes the latest FDT and Enhanced EDDL (electronic device description language) technologies to allow device vendors to program graphically rich applications that can be easily plugged into the InFusion environment.?Plant maintenance staff can call up these applications when they want to analyze the health and performance of a specific model of field device, or need to run comprehensive diagnostic tests and archive the test results.

By reducing the cost and effort required to integrate existing plant and enterprise systems into a unified enterprise control system, and by providing an object-based environment for application development, deployment and reuse, the new InFusion enterprise control system is said to represent a major leap forward for the automation industry.

To help process manufacturers obtain maximum business advantage from this advanced platform, Invensys offer a number of different asset performance management consulting services. These include pre-packaged base asset-level services, such as loop monitoring, alarm management and equipment condition monitoring; unit-level process optimization solutions; and plant-level business optimization consulting services. All are designed to help industrial enterprises optimize the performance of their existing automation, information, production and human assets.

For more information tel: +1 508 549 2424

 
 

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