If you’ve walked through factories and seen operator or supervisor screens like the one below, you’re actually seeing both the best and worst aspects of technology evolution! Clearly, no data is left hidden within the machine or process, but screen design looks to have been driven by the abililty to visualiase what’s available from the underlying controls, rather than a more nuanced view of how to support different people in their work. you could say that the adoption of modern design approaches to building a “good” HMI or SCADA application has lagged what the underlying tools can support.

In Proficy iFIX, GE Digital has incorporated a mix of development acceleration and design philosophies that can both lead to more effective user experiences with a deployed system, while also making the overall cost of building, maintaining, and adapting a SCADA lower.

Three critical elemetns stand out:

1. Model-centric design

This brings object-oriented developement principles to SCADA and related applications. With a “home” for standrad definitions of common assets, and their related descriptibe and attribute data, OT teams can create reusable application components that are quick to deploy for each physical instance of a type. The model also provides useful application foundations, so things like animations, alarm filters and so on can be defined as appropriate for a class or type – and thereofore easily rolled out into the screens where instances of each type are present. And with developments in the GE site making the model infrastructure available to Historain, analytics and MED solutions, work done once can defray the cost and effort needed in related programs.

Taking advantage of what current-generation iFIX offers will mean a different development approach – considering useful asset and object model structure, then templating the way objects should be deployed is a new starting point for many. But with that groundwork laid, the speed to a final solution is in many (most!) cases, faster than older methodologies – and that’s beofer considering the advantage of resuability across asset types, or across multiple servers for different lines or sites.

Recovered time buys room for other changes

With rich automation data mapped to the model, and faster methods to build and roll out screen, different users can have their views tailored to suit their regualr work. Our earlier screen example reflected a common belief that screen design is time-consuming, so best to put as much data as possible in one place so that operators, technicicans, maintenance and even improvement teams can all get what they need without excessive development effort. But that can mean a confused mashup of items that get in the way of managing the core process, and in turn actually hamper investigations when things are going wrong.

But where development time is less of a constraint, more streamlined views can be deployed to support core work processes, with increasing levels of detail exposed on other screen for more technical investigation or troubleshooting. Even without fully adopting GE Digital’s Efficient HMI design guidelines, firms can expect faster and more effective responses form operators and supervisors who don’t have to sift through complex, overloaded views simplu to maintain steady-state operators.

With significant gains to be had in terms of operator responsiveness, and effective management of expectations, the user experience itself can merit as much consideration as the under-the-bonent changes that benefit developers.

Greenfield vs. Brownfield

It may seem like adopting a model-based approach, and taking first steps with the new development environments would be easier on fresh new project, whereas an upgrade scenario should be addressed by “simply” porting forward old screens, the database, etc. But when you consider all that can be involved in that forward migration, the mix of things that need “just a few tweaks” can mean as much – or more – work than a fresh build of the system, where the old serves as a point of reference for design and user requirements.

The proess database is usually the easiest part of the configuration to migrate forward. Even if changing from legacy drivers to IGS or Kepware, these tend to be pretty quick. Most of the tradeoffs of time/budget for an overall better solution are related to screen (and related scripting) upgrades. From many (many!) upgrades we’ve observed our customers make, we see common areas where a “modernisation” rather than a migration can actully be more cost effective, as well as leaving users with a more satisfying solution.

Questions to consider include:

While there is often concen about whether modernisation can be “too much” change, it’s equally true that operators genuinely want to support their compaines in getting better. So if what they see at the end of an investment looks and feels the same way it always has, the chance to enable improvements may have been lost – and with it a chance to engage and energise employees who want to be a part of making things better.

Old vs. New

iFIX 2023 and the broader Proficy suite incorporating more modern tools, which in turn offer choices about methods and approahces. Beyond the technical enablement, enginerring and IT teams may find that exploring these ideas may offer benefit in areas as straightforward as modernising system to avoid obsolescene risk to making tangile progress on IoT and borader digital initiatives.

It’s this very adaptability that makes version control around the configurations and programs valuable. As configurations and programs change, being sure that the correct version are running is key to sustaining the improvements that have been built into those latest releases. With that in mind, a good technology asset management program, such as octoplant will have version control as a central concern.

Whether deploying solutions in this area for the first time, or refreshing an established set of practices, it’s worthwhile to step back and evaluate what you want version control to do for you – operationally, compliance-wise and so on. And from that, the capabilities needed from any tools deployed will become clearer. With that in mind, we’ve noted some of the key areas to consider, and the decision that can come from them. We hope this helps you set the stage for a successful project!

Reporting and Dashboards – Version Control Data is Not Just for Developers and Engineers.

A robust solution will track actions taken by different users in relation to different asset’s code bases, and in relation to any automated comparisons. This means you can have a rich audit trial that can certainly be used to ensure disciplines are being followed, but it also means that you can easily support any regulatory or customer requirements for data. And with a model of your operation reflecting the different makes models, variants and generation of tech assets, you’ll have a tech inventory at your fingertips that can make reinvestment and replacement planning much more efficient. So, make sure your plan to share dashboards and reports reflects the different people in your organisation who could use their own view of the tech assets, and the programs running in them.

If you’d like to learn more about the work we do with our customers on technology asset management, you can get in touch here; or ring us on +44 113 531 2400

Industrial PCs (IPCs) and displays are routinely used in harsh environments. Even in less extreme industrial environments, IPCs and displays are often subject to heavy handling or accidental damage. So, its important to know what your IPCs and displays can (and can’t) handle.

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Gene Juknevicius. I am a solution architect at Emerson. At Emerson, we know that customers need reliable industrial PCs and displays to run their applications. So let’s see how robust Emerson’s industrial PC and display really is. 

So here we have our RXI2-BP Industrial PC and two RXI monitors. By the way, let me show you an interesting feature of a display port interface that our industrial PCs and monitors do support. It’s called a multi stream transport. It allows us to daisy chain multiple independent monitors to a single display port output on an industrial PC. 

In this case, I’ll be showing video on one display and performance statistics on the other display. 

So, let’s see how robust the industrial PC is. For the test I’m going to drop it on the floor while operating. We’re going to watch the video to make sure that there are no interruptions. So for the test, let’s see how high the table is – it’s about 75 centimetres. We obviously need to make sure that the cables are long enough. 

And, please, don’t do this test at home — it requires a certified IPC dropper. Ready? 

Look at the video. It keeps running. As you can see, the video did not even flicker. This is exactly what we want.  

Okay, so industrial PCs are robust enough. What about our displays? When visiting some of our oil and gas customers, I was told that people in the field tend to use large screwdrivers as a stylus for the touch screen.  In our case I have this large wrench. Let’s try to use that.  

Okay, what about trying to use a display as a cutting board?  

As you can see, neither the large wrench nor a sharp cutter left any scratches on a display.  

Our goal is to deliver solutions that you can deploy anywhere and not worry if they will operate, so that you can focus on your application. 

Industrial PCs are often used in harsh environments, whether in process industries or in outdoor environments exposed to direct sunlight. In these settings, thermal performance is key to ensuring reliable IPC operation. But how accurately do IPC thermal tests reflect real-world performance? Emerson’s Gene Juknevicius explores.

Transcript:

Hi, my name is Gene Juknevicius and I am a solution architect at Emerson. Sometimes, our customers are limited in where they can install their cabinets. Oftentimes, these cabinets are outside, they have no active air flow for cooling, or they’re exposed in the direct sunlight which pre heats them up to 65 and 70 degrees Celsius. 

Emerson designs their industrial PCs and displays to operate in hot temperatures so that you can install them anywhere you need and don’t need to worry about their performance; focus on your application.

Let’s see how well our industrial PCs and displays operate in a hot temperature. Here we have a typical thermal chamber and here you can see a large fan which is used to circulate air inside the chamber. If we were to put our units inside such a chamber and perform a test, we would be testing under significant forced air flow condition. Easy to pass the test and many other suppliers do just that, but this is not what the conditions inside the cabinet are. 

To simulate realistic conditions inside the cabinet, we need to block the air flow inside the chamber. For that, we first place another box here and then we put our our RXi2-BP Industrial PC and our RXi display inside that box. 

Now that there is absolutely no forced air flow around our units, we can perform a thermal test that reflects the realistic usage conditions inside your cabinets. We lower the CPU to 100% by using burn-in test software, set ambient air temperature to 65 degrees and see what happens.

Another important point is that modern CPUs thermally protect themselves. When they get too hot, they slow down in a process called throttling. All these effects and frequency changes happen under the hood and as a user you don’t really notice them until your application becomes sluggish, unresponsive, and perhaps you’re starting to miss your real time performance expectations. 

Many suppliers specify their processors in the operating temperature range in such a way that at the upper range of the operating temperature, the CPU is already throttling down. This is not what you want. What you really want is that Industrial PC, in a field, operates and gives you the same performance as it did in the lab.

Now back to our test results. As you can see the chamber, the air around the units, is at 65 degrees Celsius. The CPU is 100% utilised. The nominal frequency is 1.5 GHz, and actual frequency is jumping close to 2 GHz and above. That’s exactly what you want. Now let’s try to raise the bar. Let’s set the temperature to 70 degrees. Here I must note that the RXi display’s actually specified only up to 65 degrees C, so we going to violate the specification.  But let’s see what happens.

Now you can see that ambient air temperature around the units is 70 degrees C. The processor remains 100% utilised. The nominal frequency remains 1.5 GHz and actual frequency is jumping up to 2 GHz. You get the full performance at 70 degrees Celsius with no active air flow, that’s exactly what you want. Mission accomplished.

In summary, Emerson Industrial PCs and displays are designed to operate in a wide temperature range. No matter how hot or cold, they will deliver the full performance so that you can focus on your application.