Rockwell introduces ‘common visualisation’ for plant control
Rockwell Automation has rolled out a common software platform across its
entire hardware range - from simple handheld devices to plant-wide
servers - that will allow operations to be viewed and configured using
the same development environment. The ‘ViewAnyWare’ strategy provides a
scaleable and unified suite of monitoring and control solutions for
virtually anywhere in the manufacturing enterprise, with products,
platforms and software seamlessly integrated from machine level operator
interfaces to supervisory level HMI. The common development environment
is provided through RSView Studio running under Windows 2000 and a
separate runtime system called RSView ME for Windows CE based systems
such as the new 6182 industrial HMI.
This long term project, designed to reduce cost of ownership and increase
productivity, is backwards compatible with existing products and will
provide a foundation for future product development. Apart from the
operational advantages, it should also offer cost savings on overheads
such as training as there is only one configuration environment to learn.