Houston — This year’s ISA Expo sought to solve some of manufacturing’s most pressing problems in security, safety, wireless networking, process automation, integration, and energy management.
The show, which wraps up today, hosted several co-located events, including the Microsoft Worldwide Manufacturing Operations Forum, the OpenO&M Executive Summit, and ARC Advisory Group’s Asset Lifecycle Management Knowledge Exchange and Technology Showcase, which spotlighted a number of vendors’ product announcements.
At an ARC press conference, analysts outlined future automation business trends that will spur new technology initiatives around smart grid systems, proactive plant asset management, including a focus on the transmission of power, mobile device management, and cyber-security. But it was the vendors with booths in the ARC pavilion that offered up new products to solve real-world problems today.
Among those announcements was a connectivity appliance from ILS Technology, LLC. The deviceWISE Device Gateway is an extension of ILS’ deviceWISE product, which focuses on securely and directly connecting factory floor devices, such as a PLC, to enterprise applications. The deviceWISE gateway appliance offers direct device-to-device interconnectivity, such as between heterogeneous PLCs, or other devices, including RFID readers and vision systems, the company said. It is protocol-agnostic, and no programming is required, said Jim Wert, ILS’ product line manager during a press conference. He described the appliance as providing “drop-in connectivity” on the factory floor. It is an alternative to an OPC-based communication server, Wert confirmed. ILS also supports the OPC-UA communication protocol.