Orlando, FL - Invensys plc (London, U.K.) demonstrated its new ArchestrA automation architecture during its Invensys Showcase 2002 Worldwide User Conference & Expo, Sept. 8-12, at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center. The conference also brought together for the first time 10 leading companies from Invensys' Production Management division: APV, Baan, Avantis, Eurotherm, Foxboro, Pacific Simulation, Simulation Sciences/Esscor, Triconex and Wonderware. The event's approximately 2,000 visitors included top management, manufacturing and plant management, IT professionals, engineers, and others.

Twenty-five application demonstrations incorporated Invensys' new plant automation and information architecture, ArchestrA, which uses software to extend the life of legacy systems, apply business goals, and preserve intellectual property. ArchestrA allows software applications to be rapidly assembled, rather than programmed, which means new applications can be created by reassembling existing ones.

Invensys also launched at Showcase 2002 its new I/A Series A2 system. The company says I/A Series A2 is the next evolution of its automation system, and now the first to run on Microsoft Windows XP and UNIX Solaris 8.0 workstations, as well as offer fault-tolerant, 1-gigabit switched fiber-optic Ethernet for greater control network speed. Its 'A2 ' designation signifies that the product uses elements of 'Architecture by ArchestrA.' Offerings with this designation will reportedly integrate easily with one another and with legacy systems.

Solutions based on Wonderware's (Lake Forest, CA) FactorySuite A2 software and Foxboro's (Foxboro, MA) I/A Series A2 system showed how they integrate the 'Architecture by ArchestrA' concept.

For example, a 35-ft flowing water process, Flow Island, demonstrated how users can link disparate fieldbus protocols-such as HART, FOUNDATION fieldbus, Profibus, Modbus and FoxCom-and safety systems, as well as plant-wide computing systems and applications.

Wonderware also exhibited its SuiteVoyager 2.0 manufacturing information portal, which presents real-time and historical information from InTouch, InSQL, FoxView, I/A Series, and AIM* applications; and presents customized views of the data to different types of users via the SuiteVoyager portal.

Beside its many product and solutions demos, Showcase 2002 featured more than 300 technical education sessions. Topics included field instrumentation, control and I/O, supervisory controls and manufacturing information systems, asset management solutions, dynamic simulation and operator training, APC, optimization and performance monitoring, simulation and modeling, and collaborative manufacturing and the supply chain.

In one seminar, Peter Martin, Invensys' performance managment vp, explained that, to retain jobs in increasingly competitive environments, plant-floor engineers need to relate the value of automation, controls and instrumentation to the bottom line in accounting, rather than engineering, terms. One reason that engineers and accountants speak different languages, he says, is because plant-floor benchmarks tend to use units irrelevant to the bottom line. However, key performance measures (KPMs) tend to look forward, and are expressed in units that management and accountants understand.