Join the Proficy 2023 Launch series of webinars here.
Ongoing developments emphasise enabling rapid solutions development using the latest methods. This means that operators, supervisors and management can be assured that iFIX can be at the heart of a modern OT architecture that demands increasing connectivity, more effective user interactions, more flexible deployment, and reliable security.
Just a few of the developments in this release include:
- Native HTML5 Graphics Designer and lightweight scalable Runtime.
- Easily combine iFIX, other OT systems plus IT systems with Proficy Operations Hub, adding information such as PDFs, videos, SQL tables, work orders, etc., for a richer operator experience.
- Centralised project deployment.
- Screen-building accelerators including auto-binding data.
- IoT applications enables with MQTTs, OPC-UA connectivity and more.
What does this investent mean for the users of iFIX-based solutions and the teams that build them?
Increased Productivity.
Far beyond simply providing an intuitive, visual window into a complex process, asset or plant, iFIX today is at the heart of modern industrial firms’ pursuit off efficiency, reliability and sustainability. In factories, utility operations and other industrial sites around the UK and Ireland, you can find customers using iFIX to:
- Ensure right-first-time production by delivering product and recipe information to operators and underlying control systems.
- Speed root cause analysis of productivity losses by presenting operational and technical staff with views tailored to the way they investigate process data, alarms, and relevant process metrics.
- Provide easy access to real-time insight for key personnel wherever they are, whatever the device they have handy.
- Incorporate the results of advanced analysis and machine learning for process optimisation or risk mitigation right into their operator’s working environment.
- Provide a bridge for data to flow from legacy assets and devices into cloud-based IoT applications.
If you’ve used older version of iFIX for a traditional oversight and control style of application, you’ll be excited by what you can do for your operators, supervisors and management with the latest design concepts and the tools under the bonnet.
Empowered, Connected Workers.
iFIX’s Efficient HMI tools and related design guidelines provide a new way of thinking about how to give operators an environment that helps them get their job done.
Extensive investment into how people use and react to asset and process data has helped GE develop a set of screen design concepts and visualisation objects that have been shown to improve responsiveness to alarms, allow faster intervention in sensitive processes and reduce the time needed to train new personnel.
If you’re looking to upgrade an older iFIX installation, now could be the right time to take advantage of the Efficient HMI tools. And with the Operations Hub solution to supplement the core SCASA, it’s easier than ever to build cockpits that can being together SCADA, Historian, MES and other external systems data so that one environment delivers what your team need for steady state operations, troubleshooting- even maintenance.
IoT-ready HMI/SCADA.
The lines between different systems are getting blurrier – in the “old” days, devices generated data, SCADA systems provided a pictorial view, and somewhere along the way some data was logged for reporting and analysis. Nowadays, sensors can be smart, SCADAs may need to integrate with enterprise IT systems of different types and every element in a firm’s OT landscape may need to be able to communicate in multiple directions. So ideally, a modern HMI/SCADA would enable:
- Connectivity to a mix of modern (MQTT) and legacy protocols.
- Modern interfaces both for data transfer and application interoperability (REST, OPC-UA).
- A lightweight footprint option for field applications.
- Common application and model infrastructure for related applications such as data platforms, MES solutions, analytics and more.
iFIX 2023 ticks all the right boxes. You don’t have to think about one tool for traditional SCADA and a different one for IoT-style applications.
Faster Development – Shorter Time to Value.
With iFIX 6.5 and iFIX 2022, you’ll have been introduced to Configuration Hub – the common modelling environment for the Proficy suite. iFIX 2023 shifts more of the development capability into this framework – now including a fully web-based graphics designer.
Building on the capability to allow the asset model in configuration hub to server as the basis for defining classes of objects to design and deploy, iFIX 2023 now offers screen building accelerators to further reduce development time and effort. And the work spent defining the attributed for a given asset or process type can be “re-used” by sister applications to make other work leveraging the model and the objects managed there faster as well. So the work you do in iFIX can mean less time needed for Historian configuration and reporting, analytics deployment or other projects.