Emerson Expands Plantweb Digital Ecosystem

As manufacturers accelerate digital transformation and workforce evolution, today Emerson unveiled enhancements to its Plantweb digital ecosystem, its comprehensive Industrial IoT automation platform.
 
“Manufacturing jobs are rapidly becoming data-centric roles, requiring immediately actionable information for experts across the enterprise,” said Peter Zornio, CTO for Emerson Automation Solutions. “Through a deep understanding of customers’ vision for organizational effectiveness and business performance improvement, Emerson is innovating breakthrough products and services to accelerate that organizational transformation.
 
“A clear message from the industry is that a one-size-fits-all, vendor-prescribed IIoT approach won’t work,” Zornio continued. “They want to identify specific business challenges, target technology to improve performance, then scale up their investment based on results achieved. That’s why we have architected Plantweb to enable companies to get started where they can gain the greatest near-term impact.”
 
Plantweb expands on existing automation infrastructure to make the promise of Industrial IoT scalable and achievable, with a broad portfolio of Pervasive Sensing technologies, an extensive suite of analytical software tools, secure data infrastructure devices and expert services.
 
During the 2017 Emerson Global Users Exchange event in Minneapolis, Emerson introduced enhancements to the Plantweb digital ecosystem portfolio, including:
 
• Pervasive Sensing: Emerson’s Pervasive Sensing is the foundation of the Plantweb digital ecosystem, providing enhanced visibility into process performance and asset health. This increasingly robust network of sensing, measuring and monitoring technologies features more than 50 wireless devices for temperature, pressure, corrosion, vibration, acoustic and more, the company reported.
 
• Secure First Mile: Emerson’s Secure First Mile provides secure transfer of actionable data from Operational Technology (OT) systems to authorized internet-based applications, services or mobile users.
 
• Plantweb Insight: Emerson’s Plantweb Insight is a scalable and lightweight, web-based software platform that helps users instantly make sense of plant data by leveraging Pervasive Sensing technologies and pre-built analytics to provide relevant-time monitoring and identification of abnormal situations for specific asset classes. Plantweb Insight now includes applications for air-cooled heat exchangers, corrosion, heat exchangers, network management and pressure relief devices.
 
• Plantweb Advisor: Emerson’s Plantweb Advisor Suite is a scalable set of software applications that utilize deeper analytics to provide reliability and energy specialists with critical information about equipment health and efficiency as well as energy consumption and emissions.
 
• Always Aware: Formerly known as Always Mobile, Emerson’s new Always Aware suite of solutions builds on previous mobility capabilities, expanding them to focus on delivering role-based, relevant-time information and alerts to plant personnel, regardless of locations, enabling more effective collaboration and driving actions to improve asset and process performance. Updates include RFID asset management tags and AMS ARES integration with various interfaces such as AMS Device Manager, AMS Machinery Manager, Plantweb Insight and Plantweb Advisor to streamline workflows, enhance collaboration and enable more effective response.
 
• Services: Emerson is expanding its role as an industry partner with consulting and service offerings that complement its portfolio of automation and IIoT-based technologies.
 
“The industry’s technology evolution over the past 30 years has delivered tremendous improvements in efficiency,” Zornio said. “Now it’s time to fuel the next-generation workforce with the actionable insights they need to become even more strategic assets in their companies.”