News

Emerson Expands Its Plantweb Solution to Include Data Management

July 23, 2021 by Alessandro Mascellino

Manufacturing giant Emerson has recently released a new enterprise-level data management software solution.

Dubbed Plantweb Optics Data Lake, the new software is designed to help manufacturers reduce data complexity throughout their daily operations.

 

 

Emerson aims to achieve industrial data connectivity, consolidation, and contextualization. Video used courtesy of Emerson

 

Using the platform should now enable companies to fully leverage operations data across a production site or from multiple sites to improve profitability enterprise-wide.


 

Emerson Plantweb

The data management solution is designed to securely identify, collect, and contextualize disparate data at scale. Working either on-premises or via the cloud, Plantweb comprises various tools and now includes Emerson’s Data Lake software.

The platform is compatible with advanced analytics applications powered by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as with other providers’ analytics and dashboard toolkits.

 

Emerson Plantweb dashboard

The dashboard of the Plantweb Optics Data Lake platform. Image used courtesy of Emerson

 

In addition, the software reduces the need for data science specialists, as it was designed to serve as a centralized information technology (IT) solution based on Emerson’s broad operational technology (OT) expertise.

By bridging the gap between OT and IT domains, Plantweb effectively consolidates manufacturing data from various systems, protocols, and data architectures (including legacy systems) across a plant and multiple facilities if used via the cloud.

 

Data Lake and Historian: Key Features

In terms of compatibility, Plantweb Optics Data Lake can read data from agnostic interfaces to a variety of OT platforms, as well as OPC Classic, OPC UA, ODBC, web access, structured files, and many Emerson sources. The platform also offers various interfaces, including PowerBI, Tableau, and Graphana, among others.

Thanks to its NoSQL database infrastructure, the solution is considered scalable and installed either on-premise or on the cloud.

 

An overview of the Plantweb Optics Data Lake platform’s features. Image used courtesy of Emerson

 

When used remotely, Plantweb Optics Data Lake offers real-time and historical data contextualization with key performance indicators (KPIs), geolocations, trends, alerts, and group information-based ISA/95 based models. Moreover, the software comes with several security features, including role-based user access, virtual namespaces, and OPC compliance.

All the above features aim to help companies unify their data source network by removing data silos and preventing the isolation of system components typically used by a limited number of specialists.

 

Enhancing Industrial Data Management

Generally speaking, manufacturing data is often registered in different formats and held in various locations across a plant, potentially limiting companies’ digital transformation efforts. According to Emerson, many industrial sites that have not undergone digital transformation yet have decades-old legacy systems that may be isolated from one another, which can affect data accessing, monitoring, and analysis. 

By unifying this data, the Data Lake platform enables companies to establish a solid data foundation that various digital solutions can later exploit. Emerson designed Data Lake to be user-friendly and decrease data complexity by allowing users to centralize data operations and insights.

Do you have decades-old legacy equipment? If so, why haven’t you started the digitization process yet?