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V. Rishi Kumar

Hyderabad , Nov. 30

THE manufacturing sector has begun to change driven by new technologies that have helped bring in efficiencies in production. The plant floor is leveraging the advantages of human-machine interface (HMI) software as also specialised servers which have changed the way manufacturing process is handled lately.

The Chief Technology Officer of Wonderware, an operating unit of the Production Management Division of Invensys plc, Mr Rashesh Modi, told Business Line that with plant automation and information software it is now possible to integrate data from across the plant.

This gives a perspective of intelligence, thereby improving efficiencies and cutting down interface.

Manufacturing has lately begun to benefit from this HMI software applications making it more efficient while bringing cost savings.

There are just a handful of players operating in this space. Corporations such as Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola, and Reliance within India, and a host of others use such technologies to make them cost competitive.

The challenge for technologists was how to blend these technologies and bring efficiencies on to the manufacturing floor, he said.

Mr Modi stated that as applications grow bigger and more complex, new problems were created for administering networks and managing changes while having to build in the scale up functionality.

Change management has become an increasingly large cost element in re-engineering.

" To address the needs of the manufacturing applications, a new breed of software and applications have been developed. The human-machine interface software provides the plant floor manager a medium to interact with the process under control.

However, the problem was that as engineers built more functionality and sophistication into their applications, they were adding more complications to the system.

"This meant there was need for industrial application server that would help simplify automation applications."

"These servers handle a whole new layer of data acquisition that brings in more efficiencies into the system," he said.

"At Wonderware, we expect to see a push for HMI software in the Asia-Pacific markets as well particularly in the areas of automotive, food processing and hydrocarbons sectors," Mr Modi said.

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