Any users of Factory Talk Asset Center out there?

Within the last week we have had two unauthorized changes to PLC programs that had catastrophic consequences. In one case the responsible party has fessed up. In the other case the responsible party remains unknown. As for me, I don't care who, I just want to know why and get at the underlying issue that prompted someone to go online in the first place.

The incidents have management hot and bothered about it so we are now looking at Asset Center. I have concerns however that this isn't going to stop unauthorized changes from being made.

Who uses Asset Center and what do you think about it?

One of my biggest customers recently started using the Asset Center. It pretty much does what it's supposed to. If you limit access to the original documents then it will give you a better level of protection. If the culprit has access to the original files, however, it is fairly easy to get around the level of protection the Asset Center provides by simply bypassing the Asset Center.

Good Luck,

(8{)} .)
(Yosi)

We started using AssetCentre about 9 months ago. It has its plusses and minuses. AssetCentre is a tool for saving and filing anything you want. It has security and revision history. We also have purchased the add-on for the disaster recovery. This allows us to automatically compare what is in the processor with what is stored in AssetCentre and either email the results or even back-up the PLC/HMI if it has changed. In the PLCs, it will even tell you exactly what changed. As far as keeping others out of the processor, it will not do that. There are logs and if someone is on the network and changing a PLC, every action they do is recorded and can be looked at. But if they are not on the network, then AssetCentre does not know that the PLC has changed. For us AssetCentre install is time consuming and we've had a lot of problems each time our IT department pushes a Windows update. To me AssetCentre's biggest problem is that it doesn't seem very stable. We have a to do some major removing and re-installing on many computers. If AssetCentre was more stable, we would be thrilled with it. There is another software that looks and acts just like AssetCentre that I will be investigaing to see if it is more stable, I just can't remember the name.

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I used it a bit at a customers site. It worked alright for single file archiving, but for something like a PanelView Plus application, it's kind of a pain (not that anyone mentioned it, I just thought I'd mention it in case you will be archiving them as well).

The advantage that I saw for the short time that I used it was to prevent more than one person from using the file at a time. One problem that I noticed is that when you check in/out a file it has an option to use/leave a local copy. This means that people can just go into the directory that it stores the local copy and grab the file without ever using asset manager to get it.

Someone dug up a really old thread for a sales lead, even sent me a PM on it. Kinda late though.

TConnolly said:

Someone dug up a really old thread for a sales lead, even sent me a PM on it. Kinda late though.

Click to expand...

Doh!

where I work

we use it with disaster recovery for 190 assets. It works well, but like someone mentioned, it can be bypassed easily. The good thing is that asset centre will notify you that there has been a change made, but it won't prevent changes. I really think they need to add software level protection from asset centre to the processor, but it doesn't have it at this time. Overall I think it's good software.

I'm looking for some more detailed info about what Asset Centre does, exactly. The sales brochure, user guide, install guide, etc. are not real informative about who and how a technician goes online with a processor.

Where does the software reside? From the literature, there is client software that needs installed on HMIs, but whatg stops me from hooking up my laptop to the processor and going online?

Specifically, our IT folks are installing AssetCentre on our network (will be in another state) for security reasons and they can't yet answer questions about whether the local PLC guy (me) can connect to and get online with the PLC5, ControlLogic, and Compactlogix processors locally. Do I need a license to do that?

Assetcentre seems like a pain to set up but once it's working, there aren't too many problems. At least not for us.

As far as access goes, it really depends on how you set it all up. For a short time (before I was given access) I could still get online with processors by uploading from them. We use source protection so even getting online would only allow me so much access.

AFTER being granted access, I can "get" a file and go online with any PLC that I've been allowed to see but I can't make any changes without "checking out" a file. Access to "checking out" can be managed as well as who can "get" a file, so people working in different departments will have different access. So far, it has been a handy tool for us.

As for backing up other types of files, we have electronic copies of our prints (as PDFs) and HMI backups as well as all our PLC stuff backed up on assetcentre.

A353322 said:

Assetcentre seems like a pain to set up but once it's working, there aren't too many problems. At least not for us.

As far as access goes, it really depends on how you set it all up. For a short time (before I was given access) I could still get online with processors by uploading from them. We use source protection so even getting online would only allow me so much access.

AFTER being granted access, I can "get" a file and go online with any PLC that I've been allowed to see but I can't make any changes without "checking out" a file. Access to "checking out" can be managed as well as who can "get" a file, so people working in different departments will have different access. So far, it has been a handy tool for us.

As for backing up other types of files, we have electronic copies of our prints (as PDFs) and HMI backups as well as all our PLC stuff backed up on assetcentre.

Click to expand...

That all depends on how smart your people are. When you "GET" a file without checking it out then it is read only but just like any other file in a windows system all you have to do is change the file attribute from read only to read/write then they can do as they please.

Also there is no way to turn off the "GET" function or I would so you are forced to check in / out. I asked about this at RS Tech ED last week but the product manager did not seem to understand why I wanted that.