Automation software provider Wonderware yesterday announced an alliance with Mitsubishi Electric through which it will help Mitsubishi create PLC and MES offerings that are pre-integrated with Wonderware software.
The pact between Wonderware, a unit of Invensys plc, and Mitsubishi's automation division will focus on integrating Wonderware's human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software with Mitsubishi's e-F@ctory manufacturing executions systems (MES) and MELSEC PLCs.
The new partners are cooperating on the technical work involved in enabling interoperation among their respective products, said Mark Davidson, Wonderware's vice president of global product marketing. The two companies will also conduct joint marketing efforts to promote the synergies among the products.
Mitsubishi is using Wonderware's software development kits to enable its hardware to work with Wonderware's HMI and SCADA software. The partnership does not involve joint sales efforts, Davidson noted; manufacturers looking to take advantage of the interoperability between the two brands will still need to purchase software from Wonderware and PLCs or other automation hardware from Mitsubishi.
The first products to be released based on the accord will arrive next month, when Mitsubishi unveils its latest MELSEC PLCs. The PLCs will feature "integration such that when you develop the PLC application, it automatically creates a database for usage within the Wonderware [InTouch] application," Davidson told Managing Automation.
Mitsubishi also created what Davidson referred to as pre-packaged "graphical faceplates," visual elements that will work seamlessly in both the PLC and InTouch applications. The integration will also include alarm management, as alarms generated by the MELSEC products will be automatically fed to the InTouch software, Davidson said. InTouch users with version 9.5 or above will be able to take advantage of the interoperability once the new Mitsubishi hardware hits the market.
More product interoperability is in the offing, Davidson said. The two companies are working to build operational bridges between Mitsubishi's e-F@ctory MES offering and Wonderware's Historian software, as well as with other unspecified performance management applications built on Wonderware's ArchestrA framework. The newly interoperable products should be available later this year.
Wonderware software typically sits on top of PLCs, but don't expect many more of these software alliances, Davidson noted. Most of the other major automation vendors that sell PLCs — for example, Rockwell, Siemens, and GE Fanuc — have developed software at the HMI and SCADA level to complement their hardware offerings.
"With Mitsubishi," said ARC Advisory Group analyst Craig Resnick, "you never really had a factory-sponsored [software] offering." The new pact, he said, is a win for Mitsubishi users.
The ability to feed data from PLCs and other shop floor hardware into HMI and SCADA software can be the first step in linking the factory floor to the larger enterprise, a seemingly
never-ending quest for manufacturers and a challenge that Wonderware's ArchestrA framework aims to defuse, at least at the supervisory control level. In many factory settings, the data integration challenge is complicated by the hodgepodge of automation hardware that has built up over time. The partnership between Wonderware and Mitsubishi, Resnick said, helps break down some of those barriers.
"I think the direction of the marketplace is that HMI/SCADA solutions are no longer just stand-alone visualization [tools]," Resnick said. "It's all part of the whole integration of the factory floor with the enterprise, and all part of these production management suites."
HMI or SCADA products serve as a "good junction box" for both viewing plant data on the factory floor and serving up that information to the business side, he said.
ARC Advisory released a study last fall predicting healthy growth in the worldwide PLC market for the next five years. Noting that demand would push sales up more than 6% annually through 2010, ARC's analysis stated: "Manufacturing companies continue to increase investments in capital expenditures for automation equipment as they clearly recognize the role of automation and its contribution to the profitability and success in the fierce global market."
Mitsubishi is among the world leaders in PLC sales, according to Resnick, with a particularly strong hold in the Japanese and Asian markets. In North America, he said, Mitsubishi is more of a second-tier PLC vendor, behind heavyweights like Rockwell, Siemens, GE Fanuc, and Schneider, and in step with companies such as Omron.
ARC expects the global market for HMI software and services to experience even stronger growth. The 9.2% annual growth through the end of the decade will be driven by manufacturers' increasing desire to surface and capitalize on information about their production lines and operations. ARC's December 2006 research note states, "Flexible, multi-functional, interoperable HMI software that provides interfaces with other platforms plays a major role in providing plant-wide information sharing."
Resnick noted that Wonderware is the market share leader in HMI and SCADA products, and said this pact could bolster that position, giving the company a stronger presence in Asian markets and among discrete manufacturers.