ANAHEIM, CA--At ISA TECH/ 97, held at the Anaheim Convention Center in October, more than 600 manufacturers of measurement, control, and automation systems, equipment, and components displayed their wares and presented technical sessions.
This year marked the inauguration of the Instrument Society of America's (ISA, Research Triangle Park, NC) new structure for the show. Specifically, the event featured an exposition format, with 15 plenary sessions and 133 technical sessions that ran in the mornings. The exhibits, which were smaller and more focused on themes of critical interest to measurement and control professionals, were open in the afternoons. The themes around which displays and sessions were grouped include automation and control issues and solutions; productivity enhancement; networking, industrial communications, and buses; safety systems, plant protection, and environmental concerns; and future technology for measurement and control.
Next year's ISA EXPO/98, scheduled for October 1998 in Houston, TX, will feature an exhibition-driven format.
Solutions for networking the plant floor leveraged many architectures -- fieldbus, Ethernet, and the Internet, among them. The Fieldbus Foundation (Austin, TX) offered a "how-to" exhibit, in which booth visitors learned how to construct a fieldbus segment, where to obtain fieldbus training for plant personnel, and how to become involved in end-user advisory activities; they were also apprised of Fieldbus Foundation's conformance and interoperability testing program.
At a press conference, the Fieldbus Foundation stated that acceptance of H1 Foundation Fieldbus as an industry standard is imminent, and that H2 (high speed) Foundation Fieldbus development is accelerating. Laboratory alpha tests of H2 are scheduled to be ready by the end of this year. Fieldbus Foundation president John Pittman stressed, "The technology is complete and fully proven, and many products are becoming available."
The Profibus Trade Organization (Scottsdale, AZ) had a press conference of its own. "All we have are products," said Michael Bryant, the organization's executive director. "We have a solution for the fieldbus marketplace." At the conference, which announced new products from various vendors that support Profibus, William Moore, president of Moore Products Co. (Springhouse, PA), stated, "We don't expect one fieldbus standard, we expect [several]. Profibus PA is not the first -- HART was the first de facto fieldbus standard. But, Profibus is the original digital fieldbus." Moore Products took part in the press conference to announce Profibus compatibility in its APACS process-control system.
S-S Technologies (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) announced what is the 1,000th Profibus product, the Direct-Link Profibus Scanner Module for Allen-Bradley's SLC 500 family of PLCs. The new module is also the first product to pass the Profibus-DP Master Certification Testing, a voluntary conformance test performed at the Profibus Interface Center in Johnson City, TN.
Many industrial automation vendors support both fieldbus camps. Moore Products, Endress+Hauser, Integrated Control Technology, Krohne, Pepperl+Fuchs, Smar, and Siemens are just a few of the more than 100 Fieldbus Foundation members and more than 600 Profibus members.
Think & Do Software, a PLCDirect (Cumming, GA) federation member, announced multiple network drivers for its standard software package, sold through PLCDirect. The most recent driver additions were developed for Seriplex and Profibus I/O, and save significant network setup time, as their graphical network displays require no programming and easy-to-use point-and-click methods quickly associate logical tag names with physical I/O points.
Fieldbus and Profibus were not the only networks seen on the show floor. Ethernet also had a strong presence.
One of the more interesting new concepts showcased was the Modicon Momentum System from Schneider Automation Inc. (North Andover, MA). The Modicon Momentum System consists of distributed-I/O and intelligent-control modules that connect directly to a variety of open, standard networks rather than proprietary, remote I/O networks, such as the various bus configurations -- Modbus Plus, Interbus, Profibus DP, FIPIO, DeviceNet, and more -- that seem to be in a constant state of battle for the control market.
"We are positioning the Momentum System as an interim answer to the fieldbus confusion," explained Andrew G. Swales, system architect for Modicon's Distributed Control Products, Automation Business. "Like everyone else, we are waiting to see which bus solution, if any, will eventually dominate the market."
In the meantime, Momentum allows users to build their field wiring while leaving communications decisions to the last moment. This means that machines can be designed independent of network and bus -- the I/Os are purchased separately from the snap-on communications modules.
"We can provide whatever the customer needs and put it right into that user's legacy system," added Swales. "At the show, we demonstrated that we can run Modbus over an intranet -- we call Modbus over Ethernet TCP/IP the 'transparent factory.' Our display illustrates that users can work with our HMI using a browser over the intranet and drill right down to the level of sensors and actuators."
Obviously, Schneider Automation believes that Ethernet is the future. The company claims that Ethernet can make fieldbuses obsolete. With Ethernet, it is not necessary to have a separate network for factory communications -- manufacturing execution systems (MES) can talk to I/Os and PLCs without an intermediate network or a specialized data collector.
"Fieldbuses represent a way of doing control, but they don't manage data, while Ethernet can move data enterprise-wide," said Jerry Herman, the company's new-technology manager. "With Modicon Momentum, we just took one layer out of the control model."
Also supporting Ethernet on the factory floor is Intelligent Instrumentation (Tucson, AZ), a Burr-Brown Co., with the EDAS VI (Virtual Instrument) Library for its EDAS family of Ethernet data-acquisition systems. The library provides developers using National Instruments (Austin, TX) LabVIEW 4.0 or higher with all the tools necessary to graphically create any EDAS Ethernet data acquisition or control application under Windows 95 or NT.
The EDAS VI library is derived from Intelligent Instrumentation's Net Link Library for Windows NT/95, which is a set of 32-bit DLLs to facilitate Windows programmers in developing Ethernet data-acquisition applications.
Microsoft compatibility was a big issue among the control vendors at ISA. AIMAX for Enterprise from TA Engineering Co. Inc. (Moraga, CA) is a human-machine interface (HMI) designed to provide a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) while making maximum use of Microsoft?s Zero Administration for Windows (ZAW) initiative. AIMAX for Enterprise now uses a Windows-style user interface that requires less training time. AIMAX for Enterprise offers a secure environment based on a multilevel plan, which uses a combination of Windows NT and AIMAX Domain Network security.
TA Engineering's TCO strategy is based on the Win32 API and Windows NT Server BackOffice so that the ZAW functions can be integrated into the process-control environment. According to T.A. Lu, Ph.D., president and CEO of TA Engineering, AIMAX for Enterprise allows the process-control environment to use one software package for network management, process control, data acquisition, and software maintenance. With regard to integration with soft-logic and batch-management software, Lu says that AIMAX for Enterprise can act as a high-performance transaction layer. The soft-logic application can take advantage of the ZAW features as well as SCADA options including AIMAX's Historical Data Logger, Excel Add-In, and fast device drivers.
The goal of AIMAX for Enterprise is to achieve a lower TCO in owning an enterprise system. It contains a number of features designed to make this goal a reality, including:- A centralized database server- A management control console for remote plant control- Remote "push" transfer of the entire AIMAX project- Event-driven networking for transferring process data in real time- Remote start, stop, and file update- Remote update and reinstall from a single desktop- Workgroup computing for project configuration by multiple users- Domain project architecture for enterprise network security.
Microsoft's presence was also felt in the Rockwell Software (Milwaukee, WI) booth. Rockwell released RSView32 VBA Scripting, an HMI package that utilizes Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications. It is an extension of RSView32, a 32-bit integrated component-based HMI package.
Rockwell Software also announced that the functionality of RSView32 has been extended through its new RSView32 Active Display System, a client/server software application that allows users to securely control and monitor plant-floor applications from local and remote locations. Users can interact with, change, and view automation-system data using either the RSView32 Active Display Station or a Web browser. The RSView32 Active Display System architecture is based on Microsoft ActiveX and Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) technologies. Its client/server capabilities help increase overall plant performance by allowing users to manage multiple clients from one location and share application tags, graphics, alarms, and trends among Rockwell Software or third-party applications.
DCOM technology allows remote components to appear local and offers an underlying architecture for distributed control systems. RSView32 is the product of a joint-development arrangement between Rockwell Software and Dynapro Systems Inc. (Vancouver, BC, Canada), which is partially owned by Rockwell Automation.
Object-oriented technology was also featured at ISA and no one made more of a buzz than ObjectAutomation (Santa Ana, CA). Unveiled at the show was the OAenterprise software suite. Based on a truly open, distributed-object framework, OAenterprise is the first universal control system designed to serve discrete, process, batch, motion-control, numerical-control, and building-automation applications.
Included in the suite are: OA2control, a control engine/editor combination that integrates fully into the OAobjectmodel, facilitating rapid development and deployment of sophisticated control systems; OA2view, an enhanced HMI that can build and view HMI screens, is integrated into the OAworkbench shell, supports display objects that represent process-data values, and supports third-party visual components; OA2history, a distributed historian; and OA2alarm, a server-based alarm manager and client-side display agent.
In addition to OAenterprise's beta release, ObjectAutomation also had plenty of othernews. In addition to its recent purchase of ICT Software GmbH (Munich, Germany), the company also announced major strategic partnerships with industry leaders who will use the OAframework (part of OAenterprise) to build their next-generation software tools. The partners include Siemens Automation and Drives Groups (Nuremberg/Erlangen, Germany; and Johnson City, TN); Cleveland Motion Controls (Cleveland, OH); Asyst Software (Freemont, CA); Paradigm Imaging (Irvine, CA); Bradley Ward Systems (Atlanta, GA); and Zone Automation (Temecula, CA); over the next several months, additional partners will be added to this list.
"This first group of OApartners indicates the future of automation, in which large and small companies will build their technology on top of an open, object-based software platform," said Dave Smith, co-founder and president of ObjectAutomation. "It is the answer to the questions that industry users have been asking for a long time: an open solution, with elements tightly integrated out of the box, even if they're provided by different software vendors." Technology partners were also announced. These include Microsoft, VenturCom, NewMonics Inc., Host Engineering Inc., and S-S Technologies.
FactorySoft Inc. (Mansfield, MA) introduced its object-oriented tools for rapidly building industrial applications, FactorySoft Foundation Classes (FFC), a complete set of C++ libraries that provide an instant framework for building industrial applications. Its services include drawing and animation tools, graphical configuration languages, tag and data management, OPC interfaces, and real-time extensions. Also introduced was FactorySoft Control, which brings advanced, soft process control to Windows NT. Combining function-block diagrams, flow charts, and Visual Basic-compatible scripting, its object-oriented program-development tools exploit reusable code to save time on large or repetitive projects.
FactorySoft also continued its commitment to OPC-enabled products by donating its engineering talent to the OPC Foundation for design of version 2.0 of the OPC Automation interface specification.
Trihedral Engineering (Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada) announced version 5 of WEB, its software for industrial monitoring and control. Targeted to OEMs and advanced end- users, the update applies the latest object-oriented technology to create easy-to-maintain operator interfaces, with no programming required.
Of course, it wouldn't be an ISA show without a little action in the PC-vs-PLC realm. For years, everyone has known that PLCs are difficult to program, limited in functionality, and are not easy to link into enterprise-wide communications. As a result, many companies have turned to PCs as a replacement for PLCs. But a PLC and a PC are not equal. There are many control operations, especially some that require mission-critical reliability, for which the PLC is far more suitable than the PC. As a result, companies like Allen-Bradley are trying to find ways to bring the PLC into the '90s, eliminating the architectural, programming, and user-interface drawbacks commonly associated with the PLC.
Allen-Bradley/Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, WI) has created Open Controller, a chassis in which a PCI bus has been added to the backplane. In essence, it has a PC in the chassis into which PLC cards can be plugged so the PLC can now communicate from a standard PLC environment through the PC to the rest of the enterprise. This means more opportunity to handle a wider variety of applications using PLCs than ever before, and more opportunity for the information from the PLC to be integrated into the enterprise-computing system.
Enter an I/O maker named SBS GreenSpring Modular I/O (Menlo Park, CA). "People want more sophisticated applications on the factory floor," says Kim Rubin, vice- president of marketing at SBS GreenSpring. "GreenSpring has been selling sophisticated OEM I/O boards for 10 years. Most of the 125 different boards are VME-based, but they talk to everything."
At ISA, SBS GreenSpring introduced the IPOC-1747 Industry Pack carrier board, designed specifically to work with the Allen-Bradley 1747-OC Open Controller. One IPOC-1747 carrier module holds any two single-wide Industry Packs and can deliver up to 100 input/output lines per 1747 PCI slot. Multiple carrier cards can be plugged into the Open Controller to add extensive functionality. The IPOC-1747 communicates with the Open Controller using its specially configured PCI bus providing I/O for applications that include analog, digital, parallel, serial, motion control, video/graphics, temperature control, telecommunications, and fieldbus.
"There are some applications and functionalities in manufacturing that the PC cannot handle and for which a PLC is the best answer," continued Rubin. "Open Controller is a real computer running under a real operating system plus a real PLC, and it can talk to all the I/O and to the enterprise as well. This means that, through Open Controller, users now have access to all of the 125 different I/O functions we offer off-the-shelf."
Through the Allen-Bradley Open Controller and GreenSpring carrier cards and I/O, what was once a very limited PLC environment is now wide open. More than one person in the industry has compared this opening to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall -- which may well prove to be the case as the concept evolves and matures.