Incuity Software Inc. yesterday rolled out the first of what it said will be a series of products that enable customers to generate off-the-shelf business intelligence reports from a variety of automation systems.
First up is a product designed for Emerson Process Systems' DeltaV historian. Called Incuity EMI Batch Analysis Reports, the product is aimed at customers seeking to make sense of the disconnected data scattered across their plants.
Incuity EMI (Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence), the company's flagship product and the basis for the Batch Analysis offering, is built around the concept of integration. It uses a common data model that marries relational technology in a database or data warehouse with object-oriented code used to build client applications -- be they on the plant floor or anywhere else in the manufacturing enterprise.
Objects in the EMI system represent equipment and processes, and the model allows a relationship between disparate systems to be defined for further analysis. The software is built on Microsoft's .NET framework, and leverages industry standards such as ISA-95 and OPC. To that end, it can connect to just about any distributed control systems, MES, HMI, historian, or LIMS in the plant, as well as to an ERP application for publishing reports in graphical form that can be printed or displayed on dashboards via the Incuity portal.
Culling report information from the hodge-podge of automation systems that operate on the factory floor has traditionally required a good deal of systems integration work. But the Batch Analysis product for Emerson's DeltaV historian handles the up-front data integration requirements out of the box. All that is needed is to export the DeltaV configuration into the EMI report writer; the built-in data model then walks the user through the rest of the set up, according to Ted Hill, Incuity's vice president of business development.
The company plans to roll out similar modules for batch controllers and historians from an array of automation vendors including Siemens and Rockwell Automation, Hill said. Emerson's DeltaV historian came first because a significant number of Incuity's VARs also carry Emerson products, he explained.
"The problem both we and our VARs saw was that when you put in a DeltaV batch controller, or even one from Siemens or Rockwell, there are multiple pieces," Hill noted in an interview with Managing Automation. "The real-time part of the control system, the historian part and the batch controller, which is based on ISA-88's equipment model and procedural model. The DeltaV information is sitting in a SQL Server, but to do analysis, the customer is left on [his] own."
There is no easy way to tie batch data in the database with information from the historian, Hill said. That's where Incuity has stepped, creating a model that pulls data in a DeltaV batch controller together with the DeltaV process historian.
"When we organize the data, it might be in an industry standard model like ISA-95," Hill said. "So you can attach Incuity to different data sources, but to the end user the ISA-95 model is presenting that information to them. They don't have to have any understanding of the underlying complexity of where the data comes from or how it fits together on technical level," he said.
For example, in Batch Analysis Reports, Incuity offers pre-configured reports that allow users to look at the data in a number of different ways, such as comparing cycle times across batches or viewing events and alarms that occurred within a particular batch. "The key value that we provide on top of the DeltaV batch controller is that the reports are already done," eliminating the need to create custom reports, Hill said.
Incuity did not collaborate with Emerson Process Systems in the creation of the Incuity EMI Batch Analysis Reports product. And, according to Emerson officials contacted by Managing Automation, the company already does some analysis, statistical comparison, and manufacturing intelligence through its partnerships, including the use of OSISoft's PI system.
Emerson's approach is comprehensive, but is it simple? Incuity officials claim the EMI data model takes the complexity out of integrating disparate systems.
The module, which is already available, is licensed separately from Incuity's EMI product. The company didn't disclose pricing details by press time.