Cloud computing has become the most popular norm among enterprises. With the evolving business models, utilization of cloud computing technologies has been increased largely. Software as service, No investment on hardware, easy/quick updates on software application, scalability, positive return on investment (ROI) and hosting platform as service are the key take ways. Cloud computing is a best bet, if you want to convert your existing software products as services to your client. Clients will benefit with it, as they have to pay only for what they use.

Even before getting into minute details of benefits, advantage and disadvantage, feasibility of using could computing in industrial automation must be taken under consideration. Industrial automation systems of the future have to be adaptable and agile, cloud computing can be considered as a promising solution for this area.

Looking into the Industrial Automation domain core data is classified into two main categories – Real time control data and historical data.

Real- time data: Data responsible for monitoring and control key operation of automation systems. In this layer data being very critical, we cannot push this data directly on cloud as there might be issues of security and response time. So application developed for control has to be deployed in to local systems for quick reference and response in case of any emergency.

Historical data (with no control access):Comparing to real-time there is a larger scope of cloud computation in Historical data. Normally historical data is a growing data and can be extracted on regular interval from control layer ( PLC, DCS and SCADA). This data can be pushed into cloud for logging and analysis. As this data grows, we could reap the benefits of cloud application – we need not bother on hardware requirements, storage and maintenance can be done from single point. As historical data is located centrally we could integrate different locations data into it. Developing and deploying a historian application on cloud will have larger benefits comparing to distributed historian applications.

From the global enterprise perspective, we could see performance of Automation systems by comparing and analyzing data across the location. For e.g. lets take company XYZ is having mobile phone manufacturing unit across the country or globe. Let us assume that the management is interested in comparison of mobiles and net production from different countries. Locations it could be china ( location 1), Italy( location 2), Germany( location 3) and Korea( location 4)till n locations etc.

Then all the data points of production details could be aggregated in a single cloud application. This helps in indicating and analyzing KPI’s of production cost, manufacturing speed and quality parameters etc. All required data points could be analyzed and improvements could be rolled out on different manufacturing units. This helps in identifying continuous improvements and following the best practices across the different manufacturing units.

 There is no doubt, every new technology trend has something new add and it makes our life bit more simpler but point remains same “Are we bold enough to take this as challenge and ready to take plunge in adopting them ?”. Well time will tell us…

we believe, we should make good use of technology let it be work or in my personal life.  Have observed myself, based on my experience  making use of new technologies can only happen, if I am ready for change and open for new thinking. Unless and until I am ready to take-up this challenge of driving me though this change, there is no way I can learn to adopt new technology & grow out of it.

Skills play a major role in any professional career.  As an individual I personally prefer to have skills both in DOMAIN (e.g Industrial Automation for oil and gas, manufacturing, pharma.. etc) as well as TECHNOLOGY.  While technological skills helps one to achieve the required output in terms of logic, user interface, navigate, design and architecture implementation etc., domain skills would help one to analyze the customer requirements appropriately.

A Low cost failure Notification solution using InTouch and  C# .net

Requirement: Customer Requirement wanted us to collect data from Wonderware InTouch package SCADA package and provide real-time notifications of failure events to plant engineers. The data being very critical for plant operation and plant manger wanted to notify his maintenance department for corrective actions with in less time so that down time of the plant can be controlled.

Today, there are multiple choices everywhere be it right from the various TV channels, brands of mobiles, supermarkets, clothing and many more. Though these choices give same benefits with few variants, human intelligence goes through each and every product before any purchase because of lack of trust. As days progressed, even employment opened many mediums for the eligible. One end it is progressive growth while at the other end individuals are not staying in a particular role for a longer duration.