Create real-time dashboards with drag-and-drop ease

Aegis Software iMonitor 2.0 enables manufacturers to create their own real-time dashboards to monitor the enterprise through Web browsers, helping machine operators, production managers, and executives. It's reportedly as easy as making a Microsoft PowerPoint slide.

By Control Engineering Staff July 10, 2008

The Aegis Software materials, utilization, and quality dashboards as easily as one would design a PowerPoint slide.”

iMonitor lets users custom-configure monitoring dashboards by dragging and dropping into a design view “gauges” and “charts” and other active elements, as well as user-generated line pictures or plant drawings. The user activates each element by indicating the Aegis xLink data source for that machine, tester, station, or area of the process, and the dashboard “instantly comes alive in real-time,” according to a spokesperson.

Like in a normal Website, users can link any gauge or chart in one dashboard to another dashboard, creating interactivity. Manufacturers who want real-time dashboards running above their lines on flat panel displays can build “slide shows” of multiple dashboards that rotate at specified intervals without user interaction. Dashboards do not require “refreshing,” as they automatically update their content in real time, and they also can be secured to limit access to particular persons or groups.

Aegis CEO Jason Spera said, “iMonitor 2.0 makes the dream of factory-wide dashboards a reality by empowering the users to build their own dashboards, and connecting them to Aegis’ data acquisition systems within the factory. [We supply] the customer with all the resources they need to be completely self-sufficient from a data visibility standpoint.”

For customers using Aegis’ factory-wide Manufacturing Operations Software (MOS), iMonitor’s Mini Dashboards can be made available within any Aegis shop-floor interface to provide operators with real-time information. For massive deployments, Aegis invented an architectural technology to minimize server load as usage of dashboards increases in the enterprise. As the number of dashboards opened simultaneously increases, the load on Aegis servers increases at a far lower rate than dashboard technologies of the past, said Spera.

Spera said Aegis Software has more than 1,000 customers in the electronics assembly, medical equipment/device, and military/aerospace markets. It also reportedly has 28 manufacturing equipment supplier partnerships, and eight consecutive years of independent customer satisfaction awards for its MES software.

www.aiscorp.com

— Edited by Renee Robbins , senior editor Control Engineering Information Control eNewsletter Register here and scroll down to select your choice of eNewsletters free .