ARC 2014 Industry Forum: New product announcement round up

At the ARC 2014 Orlando Forum, suppliers and organizations, such as AT&T Mobility, FDI Cooperation, GE Intelligent Platforms, Genpact, Inductive Automation, Invensys, and Yokogawa Corporation of America, made new product announcements.

February 12, 2014

At the ARC 2014 Orlando Forum, the following suppliers or organizations were expected to make announcements on Feb. 10: AT&T Mobility, FDI Cooperation, GE Intelligent Platforms, Genpact, Inductive Automation, Invensys, Siemens, and Yokogawa Corporation of America. In order of appearance, the announcements follow.

Siemens/FDI Cooperation, FDI style guide

FDI Cooperation LLC announced the first public release of the FDI Usability Style Guide and a preview release of the Field Device Integration (FDI) developer toolkit, which together, will make it possible for automation suppliers to prepare for developing FDI-compatible products and host systems.

Genpact asset optimization

Genpact executives discussed the company’s comprehensive portfolio of engineering and asset optimization solutions.

Inductive Automation: disruptive MES

Don Pearson, chief strategy officer, and Tom Hechtman, MES product manager, discussed and demonstrated Inductive Automation’s soon-to-be-released Track and Trace Modules, the latest addition to what the company says is a “potentially disruptive HMI/SCADA/MES platform.”

Yokogawa process control advances

Mr. Masatoshi Nakahara, senior vice president, head of industrial automation platform business HQ, and Chet Mroz, president and CEO, Yokogawa Corporation of America, introduced Yokogawa’a new Centum VP system offering and explained how it will advance the company’s vision for Yokogawa’s VigilantPlant as the ideal facility for industrial automation.

GE Intelligent Platforms manufacturing software

Bob Gates, market director of manufacturing, announced significant updates to GE Intelligent Platforms’ suite of Proficy manufacturing software and explained how these apply to the new realities of business potential enabled by the industrial Internet. 

AT&T Mobility, GE: industrial Internet

Meredith Powers, M2M, manufacturing and healthcare, advanced mobility solutions marketing; and Mike Waitley, M2M Center of Excellence, explained how AT&T and GE are working together to advance the Industrial Internet.

Invensys: advanced process control

Tom Kinney, Invensys vice president, optimization, introduced the company’s new advanced process control (APC) offering, SimSci APC 2014, which is said to greatly extend the capabilities of traditional APC tools with Director, a powerful calculation language that allows the control engineer to add and build custom controller support functions. See related video. Schneider Electric recently acquired Invensys.

Digital manufacturing

The 18th Annual ARC Industry Forum, “Industry in Transition: The Information Driven Enterprise,” is held Feb. 10-13, 2014, in Orlando, Fla. According to ARC Advisory Group, forum organizer, “Information driven digital enterprises leverage newer technologies to achieve agility and sustain a competitive edge. Information driven companies take a holistic view of the production plant’s position within an extended value network. With this perspective, they apply information technology broadly to improve or replace business processes. Information technology has matured to the point where a host of new possibilities can be considered. The latest set of disruptive technologies only amplifies that trend.” 

Speakers at the forum are expected to discuss the strategies that industrial enterprises can adopt to help take advantage of the latest round of technology changes and prioritize investments wisely. The Forum is being held at the Renaissance Marriott SeaWorld Orlando Hotel in Orlando.  

Related articles with more information are linked at the bottom of this file. 

www.arcweb.com 

– Mark T. Hoske and Jordan M. Schultz, content managers CFE Media, Control Engineering, and Plant Engineering, mhoske@cfemedia.com, jschultz@cfemedia.com.