Software standardization design
The project integration process involves a continuous acquisition of know-how regarding the client's industry. Increasing evidence tells us that software is replacing hardware as the more valuable component of the future, and mastering software that meets the specific needs of a client's industry is key to winning them over. This aligns with the significance of software in the information age—software gives hardware higher added value and competitiveness.
At B&R, an ongoing project is bringing significant benefits to the company by introducing a new concept for future project integration: standardized controller programming. This allows for the pre-design of flexible changes, enabling software to be assembled quickly during project integration without compromising its flexibility.
Over the past two years, B&R's "Engineer Camp," also known as B&R's "Concentration Camp" EC training program, has proven incredibly effective. Many people know about this training program and are simply impressed by B&R's massive investment in engineer training. However, its true significance goes beyond simply training engineers to use B&R's controllers and servo drives. Its significance lies in its rigorous software engineering standards, demanding that each engineer approach system design and control systems with a holistic, future-oriented, and change-driven perspective. This includes ensuring clearer system architecture design, greater flexibility and portability, and efficient use of existing software functionalities. Furthermore, it must consider future software modifications provided to clients by different engineers, or when clients modify the software themselves, enabling them to quickly read and understand the original system programming logic, thus simplifying software upgrades and adjustments.
Cost savings
The cost savings brought about by standardized software design are enormous. Imagine the contradiction between meeting changing customer needs and reducing costs through standardization: either designing a control system according to one's own wishes fails to meet personalized customer requirements, or personalized design is undertaken but comes with exorbitant unit procurement costs. Everyone understands that standardization and mass production can significantly reduce component procurement costs. In the context of international procurement, relying on significant cost reductions through hardware alone seems increasingly unlikely. However, software can achieve all of this—this is the charm of software. It can encapsulate application functional blocks with similar characteristics without being tied to hardware changes, using standardized components and modeling, and then constructing control system applications in a modular fashion. Regardless of changes in technology, some common principles remain unchanged, and the software model can obtain the required output from input parameters and the software algorithm model's flow—this is the fundamental principle. In this process, many tasks that were previously repetitive, such as software development, code debugging, and system diagnosis, are greatly simplified, resulting in substantial cost savings.
You get not only visible cost reductions, but also invisible cost savings, and the infinite possibilities of software amplify those invisible cost savings.
Ready to use
You no longer need to spend huge amounts of time programming or pay exorbitant development fees to implement a system. Instead, you can download standardized programs to the controller and set parameters according to the actual process conditions—a very important concept: "parameterization," not programming—to obtain the required system. This will save a lot of time, and even inventory may be greatly reduced. What do you give up? A more economical controller.
Standardization embodies engineers' deep understanding of the process.
Standardization is not a simple matter; it's not just talk. It may seem to make everything simple, but just like the life we pursue, we have to pay a huge price for a simple life, endure tremendous hardship and patience, handle intricate details, and work through countless nights of arduous and demanding work. What kind of team does this require? A team with an iron will.
Idle time—this is crucial. You need to think before you code, not code and then go back to find errors and start over. The team members have extensive experience in developing industry applications. They have brainstormed and discussed their experience over the years to build a framework. The factors they consider are no longer just the software itself, but more about customer performance, operating habits, ease of maintenance, ease of diagnosis, and other soft power factors beyond the software itself. Only in this way can such a system be built.
This is not merely an automation product, like a PLC, HMI, drive, and I/O component; it is a system that integrates these controller hardware components, customer application expectations, past failures and shortcomings, future development needs, software programming and debugging, and functional block design. It embodies an understanding of the evolution of process systems over the past decade or even longer, and a convergence of future reflections and insights. This system will be a work of art—perfectly crafted, cost-effective, and easy to use. The charm of simplifying complexity is embodied here, and the value of engineers is realized here.
Why is B&R good?
For over 30 years, B&R has focused on the research, design, and manufacturing of industrial automation products, accumulating rich industry experience in the control field. Every B&R product and technology originates from customer needs; it is not merely a product of industrialization. It stems from B&R's profound understanding of customer needs over decades, its deep comprehension of the integration of control and process, and its grasp of the pulse of past and future technologies. All of these factors have shaped B&R's ability to design systems from the perspective of customer needs.
Automation Studio provides this possibility. Why does B&R have such an "All-in-One" development platform? Actually, the reason is not as complicated as it seems. Because B&R is an independently developing company, it can focus on its own product development. Unlike many companies in the automation industry, its product line is entirely designed by B&R. There is no so-called hodgepodge of various acquired brands and products. This allows it to maintain its lineage and independent focus. This "All-in-One" platform allows hardware facing different application changes to find common design in a core software platform - which is the foundation for standardization.
The PCC was designed as a hardware platform with enhanced software implementation capabilities. In 1992, B&R launched the PCC—a controller integrating multiple control methods and complex algorithm designs, based on a Real-time operating system. The controller's kernel—the Automation Runtime operating system—was embedded in almost all control units, such as the PCC, the ACOPOS driver system, and the Power Panel human-machine interface. This controller, with its extremely strong software implementation capabilities, also provided a basic hardware platform for standardized software.
Hardware platform + software platform + engineers' understanding of the process = standardized controller. All of this is possible at B&R. Therefore, today, we can look to the future and realize the future today.
