Post on 28-Jul-2015
Who should read this white paper?
03Why to read this white paper?
04Do you need customized product
configuring?06
What solution to development
difficulties can we suggest?09What are the benefits of our
solution?10What are our success stories?
11What are common challenges in
configurator development?08How can your business benefit from
our solution?12
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WHO SHOULD READ THIS WHITE PAPER?
The white paper is especially
designed for:
Chief Information Officers
Chief Technology Officers
Software developers
Control engineers
The white paper “Automatic
Generation of Customized
Industrial Control Systems” will
allow you to learn:
Why mass production approach no
longer works?
How the growing trend towards
product customization changed the
manufacturing industry?
How customer-specific configuring
applies to software products?
What challenges exist in the
development of configurators for
complex industrial control systems?
.
How to achieve rapid configuration
and automatic generation of
complex industrial systems?
How software configurators benefit
production processes?
When creating configurators for control
systems, designers face a number of
challenges: (i) it is often impossible to
define a maximal set of variants and (ii)
manual design of interactive UIs takes
much time. The solution described in the
article helps overcome these difficulties.
WHY TO READ THIS WHITE PAPER?
You can order
Ford any color you
want, as long as it
is black.
– Henry Ford
“”
In the 21st century mass production
approach pledged by Henry Ford no
longer meets the customer’s needs.
The trend of the present day is
the customization of products
with a view to suiting individual
customer requirements.
Such a trend has given rise to special
software tools called configurators to
help customers choose the right
products and services at the right
prices.
Configurators are mainly spread as web-services in online shops for selling consumer goods such as cars, furniture, etc. They enable buyers to quickly form an order in several variants, get a quotation for each of them and elicit which one fits them best.
DO YOU NEED CUSTOMIZED PRODUCT CONFIGURING?
The trend of configuring customer-specific
products is also applied to software products.
In particular, configurators can be part of
software for creating computer-aided
industrial control systems.
Such control systems can often be classified as supervisory
control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems or distributed
control systems (DCS).
Applications for configuring products based on SCADA and
DCS platforms are much more sophisticated than those for
consumer goods.
They must not only generate quotations for a configured
control system, but also automatically create a software
model of that control system with all necessary interactive
user interfaces.
Customers’ behavior shifted
towards ordering individually
configured control systems.
They are not willing to buy
standard solutions and ready
to pay more for systems that
fully meet their requirements,
provided that the system they
order will be produced and
delivered fast enough.
DO YOU NEED CUSTOMIZED PRODUCT CONFIGURING?
WHAT ARE COMMON CHALLENGES IN CONFIGURATOR DEVELOPMENT?
Graphical user interfaces are always
specific and usually designed manually
by a team of technical specialists and
designers.
Developing GUIs manually is the most
time-consuming and expensive stage in
the development of complex control
systems.
Challenge: Automation of graphical
user interface design.
Ideally, the user wants to have an
interactive schematic diagram of
equipment under control.
Challenge: Interactive GUIs that are
close to real schematic diagrams and
mirror the structure of controlled
equipment.
There are many complex industrial
products for which the straightforward
approach based on the use of maximal
configurations (selecting a subset from
a large set of options) does not work.
Challenge: creating a software tool
that can be applied in very complex
systems.
GUI
DESIGN
GUI Design GUI Interactivity Complex Industrial Systems
GUI
INTERACTIVITY
COMPLEX
SYSTEMS
A configurator designed by
Applied Systems allows an
employee with no particular
engineering expertise to
automatically generate ready-
to-use configurations with all
necessary interactive GUIs.
Features:
Automatic generation of
customized GUIs.
Interactive UI panels reflecting the
system structure at the level of
schematic diagrams.
Multidimensional software models
that allow rapid configuration of
very complex systems.
Learn more:
To learn more about the solution by
Applied Systems, download the white
paper Automatic Generation of
Customized Industrial Control Systems
http://www.appsys.net/white-
papers/automatic_generation_of_custo
mized_industrial_control_systems.html
WHAT SOLUTION TO DEVELOPMENT DIFFICULTIES CAN WE SUGGEST?
Production process without configurator Production process with configurator
1. The customer and the sales department
collaborate to represent the customer’s requirements
in the form of a quotation or SAP.
1. The customer and the sales department collaborate
to represent the requirements in the form of a
quotation or SAP.
2. The order is submitted to production. 2. The software model of equipment is generated by
the configurator.
3. Mistakes and oversights are detected, at best,
during preacceptance (if any) or, at worst, when the
system has been delivered to the customer.
3. The generated model is tested using a simulator as
if the software was installed on real hardware.
4. Mistakes made at the stage of system ordering are
detected by simulation.
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5. The order is transferred to production and delivered
to the customer.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF OUR SOLUTION?
With such an approach, any mistakes made at the
ordering stage are very costly.
The customer has a possibility to see the ordered system
under simulation prior to its implementation in
hardware and decide what needs to be added/deleted or
how to correct the order.
WHAT ARE OUR SUCCESS STORIES?
Customer: Austria-based provider of
integrated hardware and software
solutions for vehicle emission testing
Challenge: Multi-level HMI for
measurement and control systems
Technologies: .NET, C++, GDI+, C#, WPF
Key results:
Customizable configurable HMI with:
automated UI configuration
automated configuration of large
data flows
procedure editor – a special
instrument which allows controlling
the equipment status in real-time
Case study: Creating Multi-Level HMI for Measurement and Control Systems http://www.appsys.net/case-studies/case_study_creating_multi_level_hmi_for_measurement_and_control_systems.html
How can your business benefit
from our solution?
Contact Applied Systems to learn how
you can enhance production process
with automatic generation of
industrial control systems.
Tel: +375 17 227 10 80
Email: info@appsys.net
www.appsys.net