New Scada system - WW of iFix?

tisbris

Member
Join Date
Nov 2009
Location
Greve
Posts
11
Hello all

I really need your help.

I'm in the middle of a process, where we are to point out a new system for our existing BMS system - around 15000 IO's (all new BACnet controller).
The system are going to be split in two sections - a validated BMS system (GMP) and a normal BMS system (Non-GMP).

The two systems has to be seperated due to validation but...
- user interface must be common for the whole system, so user won't see the differens
- alarms and events all are present in one alarmlist
- datalogging has to be bullit proof, no missing data



I like to know which system is the best/fastest regarding engineering?
The system are going to be upgraded with the plant still running, also several engineers will be handling changes constantly...
Which system is the most robust?
Which system do you think will live the longest?
Which system has the best historian?
Any experience with workflow applications, which system is the most flexible?



I like to hear from you guys/girls -which system you would recommend and why?
IFIX 5.5 or Wonderware System Platform 2012

Please don't start advising other systems :eek:)

PS. Do not think about license cost, because this will be a minor cost compared to engineering and implementation.
 
Please don't start advising other systems :eek:)
I have no connection to Inductive Automation or there Ignition Software so that said:
also several engineers will be handling changes constantly...
In theroy several hundred engineers could be working and making changes at the same time.....
datalogging has to be bullit proof, no missing data
another reason to rethink your narrow choice of vendors I.M.H.O
 
I have no connection to Inductive Automation or there Ignition Software so that said:

In theroy several hundred engineers could be working and making changes at the same time.....

another reason to rethink your narrow choice of vendors I.M.H.O

Inductive and Ignition is not very common here in EU so havn't looked at these. The reason that we have ended up with ww and ifix is due to the option of a integrated workflow application that we need.

Please explain why we should rethink our choices - bacnet support trendlog local in the device, so if scada is offline, then device is collecting?
 
I am working with both Wonderware and iFix. Wonderware is a little easier to grasp for new people, and the tag database is pretty easy to work with. Scripting is confined to the Wonderware commands, but is adequate for just about anything you want to do.
If you are a fan of VBA and want to add that kind functionality to your applications, iFix is a good choice. As far as reliability, they are both excellent. iFix has a tag database that is more complex, with a greater variety of I/O and internal blocks, and a nice system for transferring data to an access or sql database. If I had to choose one I would probably go with iFix because of the above but one thing to keep in mind is that if you are adding VB routines to your application it is very important to document the modifications so that they can be understood by others. iFix is at version 5.X and around version 3 they did a change that resulted in some of the VB commands being obsolete. Only good documentation allows for you to upgrade the commands in a reasonable amount of time.
 
Ok,

So i can only state what i know of a system in this case it would be System Platform 2012.

One of the benefits are the object oriented aproach that it has. This gives it massive scalability and easy roll out. The important factor for me is always how long it would take to develop the "Standards" that i roll out. Most systems these days can go to pretty high IO counts and will be reliable if you implement them properly. Another benefit is that System Platform can provide all your requirements from one solution base. ArchestrA

I would reccomend using System Platform with the TOPserver as an IOServer. Lethal Combination and i am yes to see anything it cant do.

My response in Red to your questions.

The two systems has to be seperated due to validation but...
- user interface must be common for the whole system, so user won't see the differens

Not to sure what you mean here maybe explain a little more.If i understand you mean integration of 2 Scada packages. Not sure maybe elaborate here.

- alarms and events all are present in one alarmlist

So in this case you will have a Alarm Database which will be common. System Platform allows this.

- datalogging has to be bullit proof, no missing data

OK So System Platform has what they call storeforward. This means if your link to you Historian from you Object servers is down they Object server will store the Historian Data you specify up to which amount. When the connection is restored it will pass back all the stored data. Important factor here will be your architecture. Hardware locations ect.

The system are going to be upgraded with the plant still running, also several engineers will be handling changes constantly...

I believe any system can be managed in Parralel if you have sufficient hardware and planning.

Which system is the most robust?

Hard to say not knowing the condityions your servers will live under but most systenms these days are robust if you implement them correctly. Hardware and Software.

Which system do you think will live the longest?

Question should rather be how easy you can upgrade to follow on versions. Last couple of versions of system platform have been very smooth. No Issues.
Redundancy is very good and reliable . Quick switchover between object servers.

Which system has the best historian?

Again i can only speak on the WW side but the Wonderware Historian is very good very reliable. There is also the possibility of redundant Historian, no way you will lose data here.

Any experience with workflow applications, which system is the most flexible?

I recently went on a course for the integration of workflow into system platform. I know this capablity is part of your object orientated approach although i have not done a proper installation it looks promising.


I like to hear from you guys/girls -which system you would recommend and why?
IFIX 5.5 or Wonderware System Platform 2012

I have never worked with IFIX and dont know what the capablities are. Maybe one of the other members can give some more information.

Hope this helps.

Feel free if you have any other questions. I know the System Platform side pretty well, and will answer what i can.
 
Last edited:
If you are a fan of VBA and want to add that kind functionality to your applications, iFix is a good choice.

The tech. crue that will maintane this system is not very good in VBA and from what I know everything inside iFix is controlled by VBA - from dynamoes to pages, please correct me if i am wrong.
This is my main concern on iFix, and also standadization across a large application.
 
Last edited:
What is the workflow application?

It's an application that can force the user to follow at predefined standard. We intend to use for our alarm handling, where the end user will get into the loop about what impact the specific alarm has on the product.

If you can draw a Visio flow, then it can be implemented into this workflow application and this workflow can use values from inside the scada system.

Overall a very flexible program, that can be used for almost everything...
 
Ok,


The two systems has to be seperated due to validation but...
- user interface must be common for the whole system, so user won't see the differens

Not to sure what you mean here maybe explain a little more.If i understand you mean integration of 2 Scada packages. Not sure maybe elaborate here.

- alarms and events all are present in one alarmlist

So in this case you will have a Alarm Database which will be common. System Platform allows this.


Thank you for you detailed reply.

We are looking for a solution, where each system GMP and Non.GMP is isolated at most (not only on objects).

The upcomming release of system platform is supporting 2 seperate galaxies to communicate with each other.

Please explain your experinece with System platform when it comes to engineering og standardization - we believe that this system will force the engineer to use the standards and also reduce the overall engineering cost?
 
Thank you for you detailed reply.


We are looking for a solution, where each system GMP and Non.GMP is isolated at most (not only on objects).

The upcomming release of system platform is supporting 2 seperate galaxies to communicate with each other.

Please explain your experinece with System platform when it comes to engineering og standardization - we believe that this system will force the engineer to use the standards and also reduce the overall engineering cost?


It is already possible using other methods to have 2 Galaxies transfer data between them,im looking forward to the new release.

The hard part of the engineering is defining building and commissioning your master objects (Standards). From here it is really easy to create instances. The fact is that object based software gives you the power to instantiate very easily. I hardly ever create instances by hand. I use *.csv imports and takes me seconds to create as many objects as i want.

Its all about how you design your objects. With good data structures in your PLC you dont even have to do addressing you can derive addresses and only use device numbers that uses indirect addressing with offsets.

System Platform is a POWERFUL product i will always recommend it..
 
Last edited:
while it is true that almost everything in ifix runs on VBA, the actual amount of custom scripting can be kept to an absolute minimum. There are wizards available for most basic tasks like changing pictures.

alarms in one place is off course possible, but filtering is too.

iFIX has extensive redundancy capabilities. For datalogging there is iHistorian, with its own redundancy and capable of dealing with ifix redundancy as well.

iFIX can be troublesome at times, specially with larger systems with allot of clients (at the moment i have a system running with 12 ifix servers, historian and arround 30 clients, it is challenging at times) if you need to add allot of tags you will need to generate those in excel.
 
Last edited:
if we choose wonderware, we like to seperate this project into two galaxies - GMP and NonGMP.

I believe we need to make two intouch application - one in each galaxy.

My question is how can the user jump from one intouch appliction to another?
 
I dont think there is a easy way to do this. There is tools available like thinmanager that can ghelp you manage multiple applications. We are currectly looking at using ThinManager for a couple of other projects. You can select which applications you want to run on different machines.

There are many benefits using this product.

Link http://www.thinmanager.com
 

Similar Topics

I am utilizing both HMI and SCADA for my project. Both HMI and SCADA have identical tags. When I modify the tag value on HMI, it is reflected in...
Replies
2
Views
113
I am looking to put together a SCADA system using Automation Directs Productivity 2000 line. Figured id go that route versus going Allen Bradley...
Replies
3
Views
151
We are looking at upgrading a very old system and I am looking for ideas on the best SCADA to try and implement. Need to be costly effective and...
Replies
12
Views
3,037
Hello everyone, I have different AB controllers (Around 50) running at different area in Manufacturing plant. I want to create an ethernet...
Replies
20
Views
3,350
I'm working with a client who are in the process of installing a smart waste solution in a new building. This solution will be using s7-1500 PLC...
Replies
10
Views
4,645
Back
Top Bottom