The end-to-end solution provides operational insight in milliseconds instead of hours
Elly Yates-Roberts |
Rockwell Automation, the industrial automation company, has integrated the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise operating system with its existing manufacturing equipment and software. It has also connected its on-premises infrastructure to the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite.
As a result, manufacturing customers with machines and software from multiple vendors will be able to pull information together more quickly. “A packaging line could have dozens of variables to monitor for optimal performance,” said Dan DeYoung, market development director at Rockwell Automation. “In the past, you’d rely on the observations of experienced operators, production data manually gathered at the end of a shift, and a few variables visible in a machine interface.”
Now with immediate access to data at the point of operation, customers no longer need to wait until the end of a shift to make changes . “You can evaluate numerous variables at the same time and predict or model outcome,” says DeYoung. “We’ve moved the time it takes to make decisions from hours to milliseconds.”
Based on Microsoft technologies, the manufacturing platform is easy to manage. “Customers don’t need to be IT experts to use Rockwell Automation products with Windows 10 IoT, and it’s a way to reduce the learning curve and still have that rich data directly available on the plant floor,” said Staninger.
With its expanded integrated architecture, Rockwell Automation can quickly address diverse industries and business needs. “Windows 10 IoT with Azure is a flexible, scalable platform,” said DeYoung. “We can reuse applications and tailor them for different outcomes and products in the architecture. I can create a consistent set of applications and target everything from industrial computers and programmable automation controllers to an on- or off-premises Azure instance. That really helps speed our time-to-market and enables us to scale for different purposes.”