Infrastructure Management With Wonderware A Vision For The Future Author: Cristian Marfà, EURA HMI & Supervisory Business Development Manager Facilities Management Power Transportation Waste Water & Wastewater 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Introduction Imagine a better future Integration is the key Powerful Connectivity Capabilities Scalability
1. Introduction The need for infrastructure development and efficiency is one of the global challenges for our communties. The challenges are common across the new economies that need to build new and better infrastructure, as well as Europe and the USA, where the infrastructure is aging and deteriorating. Accordingly, investments and efficient management of our infrastructure are crucial for the long term sustainability of our communities. To address this critical objective, several elements need to come together. Organizations need to know the current state of their infrastructure, requiring improved access to more timely and accurate information. Armed with this real-time information, best practices and a comprehensive asset management approach can be implemented, with full collaboration across departments. But in today s environment, critical company and community information is stored in multiple disparate systems, making it difficult for various departments to efficiently manage operations, coordinate and react properly or avoid abnormal situations.
2. The Vision; IMAGINE a better future The users of social infrastructure like water, transportation, power and public utilities have high expectations in terms of the quality of service. There are also guidelines and legislation that require improved sustainability of the assets. There are multiple initiatives at the European and worldwide level, including: Eurocities Green Digital Charter inititative: has an initiative to exploiting information and technologies to contribute to a greener digital world and better infrastructure management Covenant of Mayors: Committed to urban sustainable energy, that is helping to accomplish the reduction of CO2 emissions by 20% at 2020. In alignment with these initiatives there are expectations on the reliability of service, in facilitating interaction across departments.. In summary there is a need to start making decisions in real time and being able to respond to changing conditions. But today, the systems supporting our infrastructure that were created over multiple decades were designed and built to run independently, creating what is called Islands of isolation. and running to use as they are. This non-collaborative scenario of different systems, working only to solve a particular issue, greatly impedes our ability to get comprehensive information in real time. Ultimately, we lack the agility to accommodate the unpredicted. We have to learn from past experience and avoid making further investments that continue to create these Islands of isolation. Given the current situation, what are next steps we need to take to accomplish the goals of the systems users, our citizens, and to align all the critical infrastructure initiatives? We have two options, invest a significant amount of time and money to eliminate and rebuild all of the systems, or find a way to effectively integrate what is there and leverage past investments in technology. The correct choice is clear.
Let s IMAGINE a citizen, John. He is waking up at 5:00 AM today, he is travelling to London and the flight takes off at 7:30 AM. He checks the information in the mobile device and gets the following integrated information: Traffic information (roads and public transport) of the way to the airport and of the different destination points of the day. Suggested alternatively routes with: Summary of energy costs of each route Cost summary of each route Duration and timing Local and Weather information Flight information in real-time Parking information + costs associated to your trip. Services at each point including buildings Information of Meetings at London With this information John can easily take intelligent decisions for his day. This will be possible if we IMAGINE: Giving better information to citizens Energy saving with intelligent lighting control Easy traffic in the city Provide intelligence to the buildings A unique central room for all transportation A sustainable environment with no pollution Efficient resources management Effective water & gas systems If we start working to achieve those goals, we will be able to take better decisions based on real time information. This journey is possible if we start the integration of all infrastructures like energy, utilities, waste, mobility, water information etc. to achieve a sustainable balance between consumer s needs with available resources at every moment. Thanks to a real time integrated platform, you will be able to securely view the information in real time from anywhere, at any time to different type of users. This will enable people to react and escalate properly in case of emergency situations, control operations across different departments and share critical information when it s needed. Users will have the tools to manage the information effectively including: Decision Support Tools Tools for analytics Tools to easily crate and monitor operational KPI s Sharing information across departments in real time Supervision and control of all operations including different subsystems
3. Integration is the key What are the key factors to accomplish an effective integration of systems in a real time integrated platform? With an effective integration of systems we are doing a long-term protection of the investment, we are starting a journey to integrate actual and future systems. Though technology lifecycles may precipitate change, it is extremely important to be able to evolve soltions over time, expand them into previously unforeseen areas, and integrate them with other systems which may or may not already be in place. In many cases, it is also important to consider the ramifications of potential merger or acquisition activity and how systems may be affected by that eventuality. These requirements match system characteristics along dimensions of scalability and connectivty, from small to large, one to many, current to future, simple to complex, single piece of equipment to entire enterprise. Scalability and connectivity are two of the most important characteristics of a real time supervisory software solution in order to acomplish effective integration of systems. Combined, it is these characteristics which provide real investment protection for the future and the necessary tools to start integration of existing systems and assets. Wonderware software s scalable design and connectivity tools uniquely embody these characteristics specifically, the powerful ArchestrA System Platform and InTouch visualization tools. With the broadest range of integration options, workflow and mobile solutions, Wonderware have set a new benchmark for combining integration and connectivity with unparalleled scalability and ease of use.
4. Powerful Connectivity Capabilities If we further look at the automation architecture of an infrastructure, we find a wide variety of automation devices. Every system uses different control equipment, every provider uses different control system this complexity has become a challenge on maintenance, support and education for all companies, and of course this situation count against the efforts companies should do to reduce cost, improve sustainability of the assets and share information across departments. A lot of technological platforms solutions are highly dependent on the equipment or system you choose, some of the functionalities are designed to work with one type of device and the connectivity offer is very limited. This means, that the development effort companies should do to use the platform solution with different devices, are costly. To start creating en effective integration, the real time integrated platform should be flexible to connect with different automation devices and systems. Effective software solutions must be capable of efficient, scalable integration with enterprise-level systems such as ERP, Supply Chain Automation, Enterprise Asset Management and other corporate systems for planning and reconciliation. Invensys strong commitment to standards and continued active involvement in defining industry standards means that integration and scalability are built into all Wonderware solutions. Standards such as XML, OPC and SQL are complemented with Web Services, OLE DB/ ADO ArchestrA System Platform can connect to virtually any automation tool, information system and devices using hundreds of available drivers, OPC servers and the ability to develop your own easily.
5. Scalability It is true that the accomplishment of an effective integration of systems in a real time integrated platform will be a journey for the society and companies. For that reason, it s key that the technology we adopt has been developed and designed to provide scalability, enabling the options to easily grow. The term scalability has been so overused that most users and decision makers are completely desensitized to its use. Those same individuals, however, care deeply about true scalability. Scalability is not merely starting small and growing big. There are many dimensions to consider and most are critical to true investment protection. To accomplish the goal of an effective integration of systems the solution we select must provide ability to start with a small implementation and grow to the size needed, when needed, with modest incremental effort and without increased risk. The architecture must be flexible to adopt the future changes and needs of your infrastructure, and this should be done without destroying the investment you did at the beginning. Wonderware breaks this tradition with a truly scalable software platform, which effectively removes these constraints and enables a smooth evolution of the software solution from small to as large as the business requires, without replacing the underlying technology. At the heart of ArchestrA is a plant model, which supports the gradual evolution of an application by permitting additional attributes and functionality to be added to the solution. But the capability to grow the system is not enough. True scalability demands that a solution can be easily extended in functionality. The independent systems that we use to control our infrastructure can also change, grow or adopt new functionalities. The capabilities I need to centrally manage my different systems can also vary. Therefore the solution to get full integration of my infrastructure must be ready to adopt these changes. We can start with the integration of some automation tools to control my assets, but we should be ready to integrate other functionalities like the connection to maintenance systems to benefit of condition based monitoring, or the integration of ERP to manage the costs of my assets according to real time information and not statistics. Meeting all those requirements demands a level of architectural design of automation and information systems that is purpose fully constructed to support scalability in all dimensions. To meet that challenge, Invensys through its Wonderware business embarked on the development of ArchestrA technology, a software architecture designed to be inherently scalable in all meaningful dimensions. Wonderware software solutions leverage the powerful capabilities of ArchestrA technology, ensuring remarkable connectivity and scalability. WW_WhitePaper_Iinfrastructure_Management_0712 Helsinki tel. +358 9 540 4940 automation@klinkmann.fi St. Petersburg tel. +7 812 327 3752 Moscow tel. +7 495 641 1616 www.wonderware.fi Yekaterinburg tel. +7 343 287 19 19 Samara tel. +7 846 273 95 85 Кiev tel. +38 044 495 33 40 info@wonderware.com.ua Rīga tel. +371 6738 1617 info@wonderware.lv Vilnius tel. +370 5 215 1646 info@wonderware.lt Tallinn tel. +372 668 4500 info@wonderware.ee Мinsk tel. +375 17 200 0876 info@wonderware.by