Schneider Electric’s Announcements at Hannover Messe

Schneider Electric Releases EcoStruxure for Industry
Schneider Electric introduced EcoStruxure for Industry, an IIoT-enabled, open and interoperable system architecture for plants and machines that leverages the company’s next-generation System Platform 2017.

EcoStruxure for Industry is aimed to help its customers better leverage digitization and IIoT to help accelerate open, standards-based development, and offer industrial customers a more flexible alternative to models where multiple and disparate systems within a process require complex engineering to leverage IIoT.

With a technology stack that includes connected products, edge control and applications, analytics, and services, EcoStruxure for Industry is the application of the company’s EcoStruxure architecture for industrial customers, bringing together a portfolio of energy, automation and software offers into packaged solutions for customers.  It helps to enable industry customers to better leverage new opportunities created by digitization, and provides an integrated framework for industrial customers to help solve the increasing complexity of industrial operations, to further optimize assets, and to increase the speed of adapting to changing business conditions.

At the core of EcoStruxure for Industry is its System Platform 2017, powered by Wonderware, a scalable and open software stack for developers of industrial applications.  It enables operators to build new and/or customize applications to help better optimize industrial processes and assets, and to leverage applications developed by third party software partners and developers as well as the applications developed by Schneider Electric.  With an open development environment and an interoperable interface, users can gain wider visibility into industrial operations to deliver more enhanced business value around safety, reliability, efficiency, sustainability and connectivity.

Operational Efficiency in Hybrid and Continuous Process
Customers in process and hybrid processes seek end-to-end operational efficiency with IIoT-enabled, future-proof solutions that foster open innovation and enable more dynamic control for better business results.  As a full line automation company covering machinery, discrete, hybrid and process with offerings bringing together automation and power, Schneider Electric sees a specific opportunity to address the challenges unique to hybrid and continuous customers.  In the past, data from continuous processes was often difficult to extract, integrate and analyze.  With EcoStruxure for Industry, Schneider Electric can connect edge and cloud computing to allow data analytics to drive smarter processes in continuous assets and facilities.  The company has leveraged its experience in this space to work more closely with hybrid process operators. 

Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group, commented, “Despite all the new technology and capabilities available, many industrial operations are still performing sub-optimally when it comes to the potential business value they can generate.  Optimizing business value in industrial operations requires scalable, open solutions that help users leverage every industrial asset.  An open approach could ultimately enable industry to move from monitoring business value to actually enhancing and controlling it.”

Schneider Electric Teams with Microsoft to Help Accelerate Development of Open IoT Applications
Schneider Electric announced an advancement in its strategic partnership with Microsoft Corp. that helps to enhance the value the companies can offer businesses and organizations across multiple industries.  Customers can gain access to multiple cloud-based applications from Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture that utilizes the capabilities of the Azure cloud, as well as capabilities, such as Augmented Reality, to bring higher levels of decision making capabilities, productivity and efficiency.

The two companies will accelerate the delivery of cloud-based, IoT solutions for all of Schneider Electric’s end user segments, matching Microsoft’s experience in the cloud with Schneider Electric’s domain experience in power management, plants, machines, buildings, data centers, and grids to help empower companies to use IoT as a competitive differentiator.  This includes several cloud-based applications available today for driving plant, building, people and asset optimization, with others being developed for delivery later this year and beyond.

Alliance Helps Seminole County to Ensure Safe Drinking Water
The combination of Schneider Electric’s industrial software and Azure is helping to enable customers, such as Seminole Country Florida, to better mobilize big data solutions for use in the field.  Seminole County has helped to improve its ability to ensure safe drinking water for its 440,000+ residents by allowing plant managers and operators to view plant data on mobile, handheld, and tablet devices and receive critical operational data in near real-time.

Schneider Electric Releases System Platform 2017 to Help Enhance Operational Excellence
Schneider Electric unveiled its System Platform 2017, powered by Wonderware, which is designed to help enhance operational excellence for industrial organizations.  This next generation offering includes an interface with enhanced visualization and smarter navigation, integrated with the Schneider Electric Industrial Software portfolio, which can help extend new and existing solutions with capabilities that digitally link the Engineering, Operations and Asset Performance aspects of the industrial value chain.  System Platform 2017 offers new capabilities for developers and users of the company’s system platform.

Industrial companies are challenged to leverage the volume of data being collected by IIoT to help improve closed loop decision support. At the same time, Operational Technology (OT) systems running industrial applications must be improved upon to better visualize performance while integrating and converging with Information Technology (IT) applications.

System Platform 2017 is designed to help offer new software consumption models along with greater usage simplicity and ease-of-use.  It offers a more accelerated time-to-value and more flexible deployment models to help industrial companies scale faster and accelerate adoption of new IIoT, cloud, and mobility technologies.  This launch also delivers the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure vision to provide software applications and analytics capabilities to execute digital transformation strategies.

Schneider Electric Releases EcoStruxure Power to Help Enhance Power Distribution with Efficiency and Reliability Gains
Schneider Electric announced the introduction of EcoStruxure Power, a digital architecture for energy management in buildings for the power industry, including contractors, consulting engineers, panel builders, and their end customers.  With open integration, real-time operations and analytics, and increased levels of cyber security, the latest generation architecture helps to enable users to better leverage opportunities created by intelligent devices and digitization to help to deliver improved reliability, safety, efficiency, sustainability and connectivity for customers across multiple industries.

EcoStruxure Power is part of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture, an open and interoperable system architecture for building, grid, industry, and data center customers.  It brings together the company’s industry connected products, edge control, apps, analytics, and services into a connected and integrated framework for multiple areas of the power distribution and management chains.

EcoStruxure Power provides a portfolio of interoperable and cloud-connected and/or on-premise technologies organized around its three core layers of technology:

• At the base level are connected products that collect and distribute information, including MasterPact MTZ low-voltage breakers with embedded Class 1 metering for Smart Panel integration; and SM6 IoT-smart switchgear with embedded connected devices, both for enhanced connectivity and efficiency.
• The second level, known as edge control, enables real-time control of operations, either on-site or through the cloud.  For example, EcoStruxure Power Monitoring Expert, an open, interoperable and scalable power management software package, allows tracking of real-time power conditions to help improve efficiency and reliability; and EcoStruxure Power SCADA Operation helps to provide faster data-acquisition monitoring while helping to improve the power availability of electrical distribution networks.
• At the third level are apps, analytics, and services that allow customers to make more informed and timely decisions to help ensure higher reliability, reduce costs and boost efficiency.  For example, EcoStruxure Asset Advisor services deliver predictive analytics to help ensure a company’s critical operations are operating more safely and securely through continuous monitoring of critical connected products.

   

Keywords:  Edge Control, Analytics, Industrial Processes, Industrial Operations, Azure Cloud, Augmented Reality, ARC Advisory Group.