The best sensing, automation devices and software—coupled with the most useful data ever—aren't worth that proverbial plugged nickel if they can't get in front of users and improve their decision-making.
Just as control components rely on high-quality sensors and precise measurements for their calculations, people must have accurate and timely data and analytics to optimize their manufacturing operations and productivity. Not only that, they need the same high-quality input for better maintenance, support services and asset management over the lifecycles of their equipment and operations.
Luckily, there's a growing variety of HMIs, SCADA systems, software, cameras, tablet PCs, smart phones and others devices and collaboration tools that users can employ to acquire and interact with their equipment, data, and coworkers. Plus, they're all becoming more mobile, so users can take them pretty much anywhere, and make better decisions more quickly wherever they happen to be.
However, as with any renaissance, the difficulty rests in sorting through all the newly available interfaces and support solutions to find those best-suited to each user's skills and the individual requirements of their applications. Many potential users could also use a hand with training on these new interfaces, and adapting them to their applications, production routines and facilities.
Luckily again, this year's Rockwell Automation TechED event on June 11-16 at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel in Orlando, Fla., will provide numerous conference sessions, training labs, product demonstrations on all the most useful solutions for empowering control and automation personnel, helping them make better-informed decisions, and freeing those interfaces from their traditional constraints.
A brief review of the TechED 2017 program reveals an abundance of relevant workforce empowerment and mobility sessions. A sampling of session titles:
- Modernizing your HMI
- Designing your HMI for mobility
- Flavor-maker boosts consistency with modern production systems, thin-client HMI
- Gain meaningful insights into production by associating multiple data sources
- Identity, mobility and location-based services in converged plantwide Ethernet (CPwE) architectures
- Improve visibility and diagnostics of your network with network management software
- Build your skills for designing cell/area zones with hands-on e-learning
- FactoryTalk TeamONE application platform: hands-on experience
- ThinManager delivering and managing The Connected Enterprise: introduction
- What’s new and what’s next in visualization at Rockwell Automation
- Introductory lab for machine-level HMI with FactoryTalk View Machine Edition and PanelView Plus
- Architecting a distributed HMI system
- How to improve plant operations through better HMI graphics
Click here for more information about TechED 2017.
