Machine Builder (OEM) Solutions
What Matters
Lifecycle Costs Matter
Life Cycle — Step by Step
No matter how lean your business is, you're always looking for opportunities to save money and resources, as well as for tools or methods that can ultimately make your business more profitable. The first step to trimming expenses is looking at the costs at each stage of a machine's life cycle: from design and start-up to support and sales.
Design
- Efficient programming. Power Programming's pre-made specifications, HMI templates and prewritten basic programs are designed around current, open standards, allowing you to more efficiently build machines that are easy to use and maintain and then easily reuse that same code on other projects. You can download the toolkit free today at www.ab.com/powerprogramming.
- Modular components. Rockwell Automation's integrated motion and control technology and the plug-and-play scalability of Rockwell Automation products allow you to design and build compact, modular machines. This gives you a machine with a small footprint and the flexibility to quickly scale up or down to meet changing customer demands.
- Results. To offload development tasks and focus more time on adding new capabilities to its custom batch sterilizers, Stock America replaced its proprietary Visual Basic scripts with RSView® Supervisory Edition™ HMI software. The ability to reuse code helped Stock America reduce average development time for its sterilizers by 30 percent.
Start-Up
- Machine testing. By using Rockwell Software RSTestStand, you can interactively develop and test control systems directly from your desktop. This streamlines the process by allowing you to correct problems before they impact your customer.
- Pre-assembled components. Rockwell Automation provides IP67 On-Machine™ pre-assembled wiring kits to reduce design and installation time. This also saves money by eliminating potential wiring errors.
- Results. Installing skid-mounted control systems for the printing industry can take weeks, but Eascan Industrial Controls & Automation, Inc. cut installation of a collating machine to three days by minimizing on-site wiring using DeviceNet™ and Allen-Bradley™ quick connect devices.
Support
- Remote diagnostics and predictive maintenance. Performance assessments, condition-monitoring tools and remote diagnostics capabilities can increase efficiency, reduce downtime and cut operating and maintenance costs.
- World-class support. Nearly 300 technical support specialists with in-depth product knowledge and industry experience are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year through Rockwell Automation's Global Customer Support Centers. Each specialist has access to fully-equipped workstations and/or labs to simulate your machine's problem and solve it quickly.
By taking advantage of the products and services available from Rockwell Automation throughout your machine's life cycle, you can significantly reduce expenses for you and your customer — increasing profits and attracting new customers with more cost-efficient machines.
Product Highlights
PanelView Plus™ Operator Interface and VersaView® CE Industrial Computers
PanelView Plus and VersaView CE can lower your total cost of ownership throughout your machine's life cycle. With PanelView Plus component modularity, design and support teams choose platforms that best fit their budgets, space requirements, and environmental conditions. Power configurations meet global requirements. RSView Studio lets you try the application, do testing, and check the designs before actual download.
Finally, with PanelView Plus and VersaView CE, retrofitting older machines is easy — new products fit older cut-outs and the PanelView Standard applications can be imported into RSView Studio. And VersaView CE Industrial Computers are loaded with tools such as Internet Explorer and a .pdf viewer for easy and fast access to manuals, drawings, and AutoCAD files — all to help lower the cost of ownership throughout your machine's life cycle.
ControlLogix Enhanced Web Server Module
Control System Access Information Anywhere, Anytime
The Allen-Bradley 1756-EWEB module supports EtherNet/IP communications and offers a suite of Web capabilities that enable users to view plant-floor data via Web pages, receive e-mail or pager-based alarm notifications, and transmit information to a variety of software applications using Extensible Markup Language (XML) data.
It serves for preformatted and custom Web pages containing control system data. Users who are authorized to access the information can do so on any computer with Internet access and a browser. This feature allows plant managers, engineers or maintenance specialists to gather and analyze control system data at their convenience.
The EWEB module gives OEMs an opportunity to add more value to their machines by providing customized information and support to their customers.
On-Machine™ Block and Modular I/O
Improved MTTR + Productivity + Reliability = Reduced Total Cost
Rockwell Automation was one of the first offering hardened I/O products with originally the Standard ArmorBlock™ then the ArmorBlock MaXum™ product. The new Allen-Bradley 1732 ArmorBlock I/O family offers DeviceNet and PROFIBUS connectivity in a low-cost IP67 I/O line. These products are perfect for Material Handling and Semiconductor applications as well as providing a low-end alternative in those machinery applications where diagnostics and local control are not essentials.
1738 ArmorPoint™ is the modular foundation for the next generation of On-Machine products. Its architecture is based on the POINT I/O system and reuses the circuitry of the adapter and I/O designs. Plus, its configuration also reuses the POINT I/O IP20 methodology making it faster to install for users that are already familiar with POINT I/O.
ArmorBlock and ArmorPoint I/O allow for panel or rail mounting anywhere on the machine, close to the sensors and actuators for shorter cable runs. Both products offer M12 and M8 Quick Disconnect styles, plus M23 for ArmorPoint.
ArmorBlock benefits include:
- Electronic output protection to prevent I/O damage
- Point configuration as either input or output
ArmorPoint benefits include:
- Network flexibility for DeviceNet, ControlNet™, EtherNet/IP™ and PROFIBUS, along with different I/O types at time of release
- IP67 motor starter integration provides direct connection to ArmorStart™ on same network node