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by Stephanie Neil, MA Editorial Staff
Posted on Monday, June 05, 2006 12:06:00 PM Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox    The unveiling of InFusion, Invensys plc's new enterprise control system, signifies a major shift in automation systems that industry observers say is the first real sign that the sensor-to-boardroom dream is becoming a reality. The U.K.-based company's combination of architecture, applications, and object modeling technology may take enterprise integration in the process industry a step further than it has gone so far, analysts say. Automation vendors such as ABB, Emerson, GE Fanuc, and Honeywell have all adopted industry-wide standards like ISA-95 and OPC, and have worked to build out their product footprints beyond control by adding SCADA, MES, asset management, and manufacturing intelligence to their product suites. But Invensys appears to have developed a broader integration framework. While also supporting ISA-95, OPC, and other standards, Invensys has spent the last several years building an application Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on Microsoft .NET object technology and a service-oriented architecture that allows manufacturers to build up application functionality independent of automation hardware platforms already in place. [Click to continue] |
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