Asset Centre

I am thinking about adding Asset Centre in my factories. I am getting push back from a PLC Tech at one of the factories, but he has no experience with Asset Centre. What are the pros and cons? What has your experience been like?

Its not much trouble on the user side to actually use. Just an annoyance. have to check out the files, make your changes, check them back in, etc. Changes are recorded between versions, tagged by account who changed them.

He probably does have experience and just doesn't want to be recorded as the one making changes screwing things up.

Nova5 said:

Its not much trouble on the user side to actually use. Just an annoyance. have to check out the files, make your changes, check them back in, etc. Changes are recorded between versions, tagged by account who changed them.

He probably does have experience and just doesn't want to be recorded as the one making changes screwing things up.

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We installed Asset Center but have not implemented much. The system is logging changes for all our PLCs but we are not checking the code in and out. It does not (easily) allow multiple programmers to have the same controllers open.

It's on our backlog to get everything added in, audit the firmware, track what is going obsolete and when, store stratix switch backup configs ... it just takes time and effort

The biggest pro and con are the same. It allows changes to be tracked to a specific user. Depending on who you are and what kind of things you do determines how you feel.

Bubba.

It was corporately rolled out where I work. We have a handful of plants.

At first, I didn't like Asset Center, you might even see a post here with me ranting about it. However... 8 years later, With over 40 PLCs on this site alone I do make good use of it. I use it for all the processor files but not the HMI files. I like to do my own organization of the runtime and application backups that may not be accessed as often.
Its handy for PLCs though in the sense that in a busy production environment we move and change out equipment very often and the ability to simply check out multiple files and quickly close them with changes saved is nice. It saves me from then going and backing up my files in 2 or three hard drives and network locations each time I make a change.

I started back in the day at the LP Hardboard Plant. We would make a change. Then have to make the mile trek up to the supervisors office. Get the 2 floppies. Bring them back to the shop, add the new revision the floppies and take it back the the big case of floppies in the supervisors office. Also keeping the backups all current stored on 2, 30 lb. laptops. We had these cool 3 wheel bikes with tool compartments to ride in the plant though, so it was fun anyway. Those were the days.


I guess Asset Center training would be important for a new user. Just a little bit of familiarization with a competent user. I didn't get that and it took me some time to figure out Asset Center on my own. Once you can quickly add a new project or processor to it you will have no problem.


One other good thing. Maybe... I can check out files and see machines in our sister plants. So I have access to all their code should a machine move from one plant to the next.

Nova5 said:

He probably does have experience and just doesn't want to be recorded as the one making changes screwing things up.

Click to expand...

In my experience with PLC technicians and version control what he doesn't want is to have to do the check in and check out process as well as documenting the change and not so much the tracking to a certain person.

I've only used asset centre with dedicated servers (virtual servers), it's great when its setup but standing them up can be a pain in the ***. (I got nominated to setup a bunch of asset centre configurations across multiple sites).

I'll note this was the configuration I ran with that worked the best.
- Local domain server that syncs with corporate domain so users can login when the network goes down
- SQL virtual server (works better if its independent of asset centre server)
- AssetCentre Server server
- AssetCentre Client server (also has rockwell software so multiple people can just rdp into this server)

If I wanted I could have setup laptops with clients to also connect with the AssetCentre Server but I just didn't.

As far as people complaining about check-in/out, it really isn't that hard even if you don't comment. (I'll note a couple of versions of AssetCentre had a glitch so it wouldn't check stuff back in properly. I think this is why assetcentre server and client were on different servers.)

edit - also virtualizing the servers made setting up the first 1 R&D and the rest copy and paste with a list of changes required. Like, server name, server IP, and relogging into the asset centre and rockwell configurations.