Premier Integration Reduces Engineering Time and Costs

As automated production systems continue to grow in complexity, productivity is becoming increasingly important in all aspects of manufacturing operations – including the machine design and configuration stages. Plant managers are continually challenged by all of the work required to configure and connect controllers and smart devices. An effective level of integration requires several software tools and extensive programming.

As such, the traditional approach of manually integrating and configuring devices is time consuming, costly and counter-intuitive to the needs of today’s manufacturers. Thankfully there is a better way.

Premier integration helps to make programming less cumbersome, time consuming and costly. It is the result of a combination of two things: smart motor control devices and a logical plant control system. These two things offer significant value independently. Combining them enables data to be accessed across the enterprise and streamlines multiple levels of user activity.

The exclusive Premier Integration experience from Rockwell Automation consolidates controller programming, device configuration and machine operation/maintenance – all into user-friendly software environments. The end result for operators is easier and faster access to critical machine diagnostics for improved maintenance, machine uptime and productivity details throughout the enterprise.

Experience Premier Integration

Premier integration is the experience of integrating Allen-Bradley smart devices into the Logix control system. It combines the functionality of an automated control system with the resources in the field device communications infrastructure. It is unique to specific control-system elements from Rockwell Automation, including; controllers, drives, network switches, motor control centres, overload relays, and soft starters. With Premier Integration, engineers only need one development environment – the FactoryTalk Studio 5000 design environment.

It is the only software needed when designing, integrating and configuring different Allen-Bradley devices in your Logix control system. Premier Integration offers a business-enhancing alternative to the traditional integration approach. It can help ease integration by reducing development time. In addition, you can achieve improved visibility and productivity analytics important for your manufacturing operations.  

Seamless communication

Reducing design, commissioning and maintenance times has often been a target in industrial automation projects. As industrial automation devices are more dependent on digital communication, the success of a project will greatly depend on how easily devices are configured to exchange data across digital networks.

Simultaneously, improved data integration between controllers, drives and smart devices will result in systems that can be more productive, and deliver more information and diagnostics. Organizations using devices from multiple vendors often experience difficulties in communication and compatibility when using multiple software tools.

This can result in extended engineering time and increased costs. Also, an array of devices in the control system can create future maintenance challenges. A simpler, more holistic integration approach helps industrial engineers get their applications configured, and running much faster and reduce complexity. Development becomes more streamlined and better integration is achieved, all leading to more manageable maintenance and troubleshooting activities.

Simplify your operations

Beyond reducing integration complexity, Premier Integration can help industrial manufacturers reduce engineering time and cost through features including:

Device Mapping and Configuration

Using the Studio 5000 software environment can help reduce costly development errors when redundant programming is used in multiple software tools. Similarly, the ability to configure the controller and drive network connections from one location can help reduce I/O mismatch errors.

When mapping devices, the Logix-based controller can recognize specific Allen-Bradley components and automatically import their device profiles. For example, when integrating an Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 755 AC drive, the engineer can select the specific module and the Studio 5000 design environment automatically pulls in all drive parameters. This means that you no longer need to manually associate parameter numbers with descriptions or enter the drive details such as power and voltage.

Premier integration also automatically populates descriptive tag names and tag types. This eliminates the inefficient process of manually entering this information for each tag. This could save hours or even days of configuration time depending on system complexity. 

Copy and Paste

Once a device is configured, the simple copy-and-paste capabilities within the Studio 5000 design environment can help reduce the time needed to integrate additional, similar devices. For example, if duplicate devices are needed for the same project, the engineer could copy the original to create additional device nodes. The FactoryTalk Studio 5000 design environment automatically transfers the descriptive tag names and configuration settings used in the original drive to the new drives through the copy-and-paste process.

Tag-Aliasing

Early development significantly speeds the time for product designs to get to market. Within a Logix-based architecture, an engineer can write an entire program with meaningful tag names before the physical hardware is ready, and then assign the physical module and terminal information later. This capability, or tag-aliasing, is commonly used to develop programs before wiring diagrams are available, which improves your final configuration and start up times.

Library Management

Library management is a key element of Premier Integration. Engineers can efficiently store, manage and reuse application code from their programs. This saves development time when producing similar projects.

Using Application Code Manager can extend Studio 5000 design environment to focus on efficient project development practices. In this tool, logical models are created in objects and can be applied to any physical equipment. These libraries can establish company standards, code reuse for similar applications, or assistance in building logical models by dragging and dropping code sections. Then within the Premier Integration experience, the software carries over all logic and tags with the code when imported into Studio 5000.