Situational Awareness - a Benefit not a Feature

Wonderware InTouch 2014, Wonderware System Platform 2014 and Wonderware Historian 2014 have been released, and they are products, which we hope are going to shake up the industry. For too long, emphasis has been placed on making HMI graphics pretty and vibrant, which is nice but has not advanced the science of efficient and effective HMI design very much. What users of our systems really need, is the ability to more quickly and reliably spot when something is not right or when a problem is about to occur – that’s what we call situational awareness. What we have put in “the box” is a rich set of capabilities and features that help our users employ best practices for HMI design to give them that valuable situational awareness. It’s not just a completely new way of thinking about HMI graphics; it’s a rich set of smart tools for building them, so that non-experts can assemble and maintain best practice HMI displays more quickly, more easily and with greater consistency than ever before.

The 2014 releases provide amazing new features for graphics and alarm management & visualization, which span InTouch, System Platform and Historian. While the rest of the pack of HMI vendors are still trying to make their graphics look shiny, Wonderware is completely redefining what industrial users should expect from an HMI and Supervisory System. With complete focus on Operational Agility, Engineering Efficiency and Real-Time Performance Mastery, the 2014 release is one of the most significant breakthroughs in HMI design in over 20 years: A superior approach to presenting information means less time to orient to the problem, greater focus on awareness and information and more useful informational displays. New advanced alarm aggregation to focus on the real problem, with proper use of color to enhance operator performance and not distract or cause fatigue. Customers enjoy a real “Expert” in a box, benefitting from Best Practices beyond mere clipart, with fully functional and integrated symbols and wizards to help use them. The unique Wonderware standards-based approach to application development ensures consistency across the entire business, significantly reduces time to value for new projects, and simplifies training requirements for new and less experienced employees. Users get real-time performance graphics for operational excellence, not just levels and pressures, but meaningful graphical visualization in real-time. Real-time information displays customized for operators and supervisors provide immediate actionable information on any device, from any location to empower a mobile workforce. Situational awareness is what customers really need, but it’s not a feature or a few symbols or “gray” screens; it’s what they get from using a uniquely integrated set of purpose-built tools; it’s what they get when they use Wonderware.

With InTouch and System Platform 2014, Wonderware is the only industrial software company providing out of the box solutions that go beyond great graphics to deliver solutions to the core operational performance challenges and opportunities for customers in all industries.

Phil Couling – Director of Software Product Marketing