IEN: How can/will this sector meet industry''s higher benchmarks for automation and flexibility?
Koch: HMI products will continue to evolve to add features to meet the expanding needs of automation. With increasing demands on functionality and flexibility in automation and reduced engineering staffs, one of the keys to success will be keeping the simple things simple, while allowing for customization to meet application needs. InteractX was designed with this concept in mind. It includes a complete set of panel tools and graphics that allow for drag and drop, quick and easy HMI screen development without the need for scripting. An application can be customized to meet almost any need using product features such as the tightly integrated Visual Basic for Applications (VBA); ActiveX tool hosting; ActiveX Automation; and OPC Client/Server interfaces.
IEN: How much progress has been made in debugging?
Koch: The industrial automation market is pushing for better, faster, and more efficient solutions with fewer and fewer controls engineers to implement them. The ability for a product to reduce design time, debugging, and startup time has become critical. Unfortunately, most of the current HMI products were originally designed with principles based on the Windows 3.11 school of design. While they have added some improvements in how you might manage a full plant implementation, they do little to speed application design and debug time. CTC recently introduced a breakthrough Windows HMI product. InteractX was designed with new ideas and a user interface designed to speed application development and debugging. Some features that have been included are interactive appearance properties for tools and graphics, automatic tag validation and more.
While InteractX includes advanced graphic capacities based on technology introduced with Windows XP, it allows designers to interactively create the look and feel they present in their applications. InteractX includes unique features for automatic design and runtime error checking and tag validation. For easy maintenance, InteractX includes "Where Used" functionality to display an interactive list of all the tags in an application, giving the HMI designer the ability to navigate to the object using the tag with a click of a button. Errors and incomplete configurations are automatically listed in an Error Window, allowing quick navigation to the area of the product that needs to be configured.
IEN: What''s the status of plant floor connectivity? Open standards? Data sharing?
Koch: The ability to provide real-time plant data to all levels of an organization, and access central storage of process values, has become a crucial requirement in building automation systems. Data has to move through an organization from the shop floor to the top floor. Meeting this requirement means additional integration and development cost when installing an OEM machine. OPC Client/Server technology has become "the" standard for sharing real-time data between different systems. CTC''s InteractX incorporates OPC connectivity in the core of its HMI product. InteractX HMI has built-in OPC Client and Server capabilities with a unique twist.
The challenges to access data via an OPC connection have been centered on tag management in the automation system. The data tags required by the information systems have had to be created and managed on the factory floor runtime systems. InteractX provides the ability for information systems to read and write any valid data point in the control systems it is attached to, without having predefining special tags in the HMI. With InteractX, access to control data can be configured and maintained without impacting the factory floor.
IEN: What''s the place of the Internet/intranet in HMI/MMI? How can security issues be addressed?
Koch: The Internet or an intranet can be used as an effective vehicle for sharing training materials, maintenance manuals, and repair data on the factory floor. HMIs like InteractX with embedded or "locked down" web browser tools allow for operator and maintenance personnel to access the information they need, when they need it. By using an embedded browser the operator is permitted to access only the web page he/she has been provided access to. This eliminates the need to implement complicated user access schemes.