The rapid emergence of a variety of companies in the IIoT space makes understanding the features that will be part of your solution challenging. The promise of IIoT delivering improvements to your process is not possible with the majority of the marketed platforms without the integrator or end user doing all of the heavy lifting in the form of application development. The integrator is left to write application code that takes the results of the IIoT analysis and make the necessary process changes to realize improvements. The majority of the industry has decided that this wave of IIoT Solutions will be primarily data collectors. IIoT platforms place a minimal set of protocol support on the Edge Device next to the machine and transmit that data to the cloud as a one way data pipe. IIoT platforms are configured and extended with SDKs.
The Solution Family Approach is to provide all the tools necessary to gather data, analyze it, learn something and implement an autonomous process improvement. The key to delivering on this promise is the Solution Family’s tool based experience to the user at all levels. Wizards walk the user through configuring protocols, integrating automation interfaces, creating rules and moving data. All features throughout the solution from your machines to cloud are configured through a single tool. We have developed over 50 protocol adapters and support interfaces to all third party drivers. You can choose on Premises or Cloud storage for your data. They key here is that it is your data. We don’t believe in charging your for your data. The Solution Engine and its ability to define rules, run analytics, read and write data is available through out your solution from the Edge through local workstations and servers to the cloud. Solution Engine® is a full industrial controller always ready to get more data, analyze it and make the changes to improve your process.
Below is a feature comparison chart of Solution Family vs. the majority of the IIoT Market.
At each level of the IIoT Solution from your machines, edge computer, local workstations and the cloud, Solution Family offers advantages over the approach provided by the IIoT Market. Solution Family emerged from the Industrial Controls market and includes all the features you need to provide a full control system. The Tools approach across the entire solution allows Solution Family to be scalable in both your company and the entire market. The freedom of not having tag limits and owning your own data allows you to collect everything you think you might need and not have that decision affected by the cost.
The Tools based approach to Solution Family allows you to leverage a variety of skill levels in creating your automated solution. Domain experts, maintenance staff and engineering managers all have the necessary skills needed to develop their solutions in one tool, Solution Builder®. The IIoT industry is full of platforms that require you to develop your solutions through SDKs by writing code. This SDK approach greatly limits the speed at which you can develop solutions while increasing the cost and skill level of your solution developers. The Solution Family approach has been to deliver all features through tools.
The Solution Family team’s decades of Industrial Integration experience is evident in every component of the platform. Data Collectors know that connections to databases break and that data is automatically stored locally until that connect is resumed. Local rules allow for you to make decisions based on analytics results when available and to have some “rules of thumb” to keep the system running until those results are available. Solution Engine® can be placed anywhere from the Edge to the cloud to allow for intelligent decisions, analytics and data collection.
The Solution Family platform includes all the pieces that you will need to implement a full solution and allows you to grow your system as you need. The Solution Family team is here to provide training, support or full turn key solutions. The choice is yours!
Solution Family 