Technical Overview
 

As a leading developer of industrial automation software, Incuity Software has extensive experience with the needs of manufacturing users for collecting, viewing, analyzing and reporting factory and process data and turning it into meaningful information for process optimization. Over the past five years, the company noticed a growing desire — on the part of its more than 45,000 users in 40 countries around the world — for a new decision support system that would let people access data from different sources — on the plant floor and throughout the enterprise.

Incuity launched a project about five years ago to create a new product that would meet this newly-stated set of needs for business decision support. The result is todays Incuity™ enterprise
manufacturing intelligence (EMI) product, which represents a new approach to open architecture in such an enterprise solution.

IncuityEMI Design Goals

The design goals for this project included:

• The use of the latest technology platforms to implement an open architecture.
• The ability to access and integrate with all of an organizations data — not just control systems and historians. This includes accessing data from the manufacturing execution system (MES), enterprise asset management (EAM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) layers of companies.
• The ability to dynamically stream synchronized data and events for real-time access by any users throughout the enterprise.
• The ability to use Incuity from within Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.) and a web browser to create and view content.
• The ability to access Incuity using a broad range of technologies including Transact SQL, Analysis Services (OLAP) and Web Services.

Truly open Architecture

As seen in Figure 2, the IncuityEMI product is built upon open standards and platform technologies that make it capable of interfacing and interacting with virtually any data source and client application in an enterprise. Its built on multiple Microsoft technologies, including .NET services, MS SQL Server, Analysis Services — OLAP (On Line Application Processing), security services and Web Services. Incuity functionality can be divided into four areas:

• Connector Services;
• Common Data Model;
• Data Services; and
• Presentation Services

Intelligent Connectors

Incuity connectors are intelligent components. Aspects of their design are based on plug-and-play technology. Each connector has intelligence that allows it to understand what the data definitions are for each source and will automatically create these in the Incuity server. The appropriate configuration data is mapped into the Incuity model allowing the original source of the data to remain the master.

Each connector allows Incuity to both fetch data from sources to which its connected as well as to push data into those sources, all while using the sources own protocols. This facilitates simple transactions, such as changing a value in a client and downloading that change into a PLC, or a more complex transaction such as writing changed data back into SAP.
 

Figure 3 shows typical examples of the broad array of data sources to which Incuity can connect. Incuity has connectivity to OPC DA, OPC HDA, Oracle and MS SQL Server. There is also a toolkit so that purpose-built connectors can be created for applications such as maintenance systems, quality systems, scheduling systems, etc.

An Incuity system is typically connected the following types of data sources:

• Real-time, operations-centric data sources, such as traditional automation control systems used in manufacturing operations (human machine interface (HMI) and distributed control systems (DCS) applications through an application specific connector or OPC DA);
• Plant historians through an historian specific connector or OPC HDA;
• Manufacturing management applications, such as maintenance management systems, quality and reliability applications, scheduling systems, safety systems and laboratory information systems (LIMS) in the plant via application specific connectors;
• A broad range of custom database applications built using Oracle or SQL Server via the generic database connectors; and
• ERP systems via application specific connectors. No other product offers this level of connectivity to data sources in a production enterprise.

Common Data Model
 

The foundation of the Incuity server is the common data model. It marries the best of relational technology – the core of databases and data warehouses – with the best of object oriented code, the essence of client applications. The data model provides object orientation allowing users to easily interact with and understand objects that represent equipment and processes. The model allows relationships to be defined between the disparate systems and applications that Incuity is configured to access data from. The Incuity model is very extensible so that users can add new types of objects without having to write code.

The data services include:

• A time-series engine for gathering production data
• as a process is run;
• Caching services for managing data flow efficiently;
• An events engine to respond to changes in the data;
• A logical model to expose the data to client applications;
• A calculation engine for manipulating data on-the-fly; and
• Common security services.
   

Presentation Services

The Incuity user interface is contained in the Presentation Services portion of the server. It exposes the Incuity model through SQL Server (Transact-SQL), Analysis Services (OLAP) and Web Services. Incuity includes several applications that use these services so that users have out of the box access to the data configured in their server.

Incuity includes a portal application built upon a rich collection of web parts, a trend application, an X-Y plotting application and a Microsoft Office Add-in for Excel. All of these components are built using the current version of Microsoft .NET and access the Incuity server through web services.

A rich collection of user interface objects that can be accessed from the Incuity portal, including dashboards that provide gauges, charts, etc. to display key performance indicators (KPIs) within their proper context. Users can click on an object and drill down into the information in that area to monitor and respond to real-time process data or configure the Event Service with an automated response to alarms and events in real time.

Incuity provides users with the ability to do a deeper analysis of data by providing controls for trending, plotting and analysis of data. It offers human-centric components that allow users to move information feeds from the plant into displays that allow people to collaborate with others about whats happening in a process at that moment. The Incuity add-in to Microsoft Excel allows people to create rich content that becomes part of the portal. Clients and customers can then browse to the Incuity portal even if they dont have Office installed on their PCs and view the content.

The use of Web Services provides a high degree of enterprise-wide interoperability to allow people to get at all of this data from anywhere in the world, via corporate networks, intranets and the Internet. The various Incuity web parts can be used within thirdparty portals and other servers. Depending on the user's configuration of the IncuityEMI product, it can be managed as a fully self-contained portal or viewed as a single component within an enterprise-wide portal. These are critical elements for Information Technology and Plant Management to consider when linking the plant floor to the world of enterprise applications.

Architecture

The following figure details the Incuity architecture. Incuity has been built to leverage the latest technology standards. It provides a very flexible interface into your manufacturing systems through web services or SQL Server or Analysis Services. Incuity has been designed so that custom applications can easily interface to Incuity through the .NET Façade.

In creating the Incuity architecture, a broad range of technologies and industry standards were considered. Some of the most relevant to IncuityEMI include Microsoft .NET, ISA S95, and OPC. Additional information on these technologies follows.