ICONICS Blog

Welcome to the ICONICS blog! We are so excited to have this new platform to share a variety of content from ICONICS team members with all different specialties. During this time of limited social interaction, we have realized how important it is to stay connected with all of you and that was a big part of why we decided to start this blog. In addition, we know that digital transformation solutions are becoming so critical in this new normal and we just happen to know a lot about that topic and want to share that knowledge with you! Check out or blog post on our virtual event, Connect 2020, to learn more.

Hosting events is not new for the ICONICS team. After years of hosting our bi-annual Worldwide Customer Summit, which brings in hundreds of people from all over the globe, and coordinating countless regional seminars with our trusted partners in cities around the world, we are no strangers to the planning and preparation needed to pull off a successful event. However, with the pandemic putting a halt to in-person events, we made the responsible decision to postpone our live summit. With so much information to share, we knew we could not wait until May 4-7, 2021, our new Transform 360 dates, to bring everyone together. We knew we needed to go virtual and Connect 2020, our first virtual conference, became a reality.

In case you have not seen it yet, ICONICS Institute is our new free online learning platform designed to help you build your skills across the full spectrum of ICONICS software. With plans to continuously expand our library with additional units on different topics and areas, this project encompasses contributions from a team of people drawn from our Training, Solution Sales, and Applications Engineering groups around the world.

A Customer with Advanced Applications for Aliasing in GraphWorX64 - We had this question come in recently and I wanted to highlight it, as it makes for an interesting solution that demonstrates some key functionality in GraphWorX64, ICONICS’ rich HMI and SCADA data visualization tool. Specifically, the question is this...

Have you ever been in a meeting with a customer and they start mentioning how they want to implement analytics or apply machine learning algorithms to their industrial automation application? Does being in the same room as someone saying “algorithms” make you feel like you work at Google? Great. Glad to know we are in the same boat...

In a recently published E-Book co-developed with Microsoft, we walk readers through the power of ICONICS IoTWorX, and how it takes the guesswork out of implementing IoT applications. IoTWorX is a simple, cost-effective solution for any organization looking to combine ICONICS’ proven SCADA, analytics, and mobile products with the power and scalability of Microsoft’s Azure cloud services. Users can leverage standard ICONICS apps in the cloud such as GENESIS64, Hyper Historian, AnalytiX, and more.

Mitsubishi Electric, ICONICS, CLPA, and the e-F@ctory Alliance are proactively building the foundation to provide our end users with a total integrated solution for digital transformation. I’ve encountered so many different types of automation requirements from end users over the years, and it has led me to ask, “What do end users really want automation to do for them?”

In our industry, two of the most used acronyms are HMI and SCADA. In this post, we define Human Machine Interface and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition and explain how the two components not only fit into our industrial automation projects but also improve our business and reduce our operating costs. 

The recently released ICONICS Suite is packed with major enhancements across our entire portfolio, including our GENESIS64™ visualization and SCADA system, Hyper Historian™ rapid data historian, AnalytiX® data analysis, MobileHMI™ apps, and IoTWorX™ edge to cloud connectivity solutions. 

Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District came to ICONICS in search of a new SCADA system that could not only translate their old system into the new system, but also be flexible and scalable to meet their growing needs. 

Every business has been forced to rethink how it conducts its operations, and office workers all over the world traded their cubicles for tables or desks in spare rooms and invested in home office upgrades to mirror their in-office setup. ICONICS solutions ensure that the safety needs of both building management and occupants are  being met. 

In our hybrid event, ICONICS Connect 2021: Inspiring Innovation for a New Era, we wanted you and your company to be the first to know what automation software technology is available and to know what’s coming, so you can strategize. As the ICONICS Connect 2021 theme suggests, our event provided valuable insights and resources to revamp your company's sustainability efforts and equip you with all the new advances and emerging technologies in automation software, so you can stay relevant, competitive, and profitable.  

Although the Smart Production Solutions (SPS) Trade Show 2021 has officially been cancelled due to a surge in COVID-19 cases in Germany, ICONICS remains resilient and adaptive in the face of this pandemic adversity. The team is ready to have those conversations with customers and help them by providing the solutions and stories they were anticipating from our in-person attendance. If you are interested in such a conversation, just reach out to us!

Our ICONICS Connect 2021 hybrid event took place on Thursday, September 30th in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Our event included dynamic, interesting, and highly informative presentations providing in-depth insight into today’s automation software technology and digital transformation topics. A few key words from Connect 2021 included digitizing, digital transformation, agility, resilience, streamlined operations, sustainability, digital twins, edge computing, connected workforce, and cyber security. Besides these, the overarching theme throughout the day was: “If you can imagine it, you can build it with ICONICS.” And I truly believe this.

In the face of the continued pandemic health concerns, ICONICS has decided to make the responsible choice to “transform” our 2022 Worldwide Customer Summit, Transform 360. No longer an in-person conference in March, our event will now be in the form of informative webcasts and more intimate, regional workshops focusing on specific industries and their most pressing digital transformation needs. We will focus our efforts on virtual events, webcasts, sales trainings, and workshops to continue to help and guide you by presenting a wealth of customer stories, best practices, case studies, and tips and tricks. We look forward to these future conversations.

Keeping up with and understanding the technology and related terminology of digital transformation and Industry 4.0 (the fourth Industrial Revolution) might be daunting. However, if you're in industrial manufacturing or industrial processing, it’s important to know the basics and benefits of these. What follows is an explanation about the technical innovations that enable digital transformation in the context of Industry 4.0 and how all of these relate to industrial manufacturing and industrial processes.

Industrial organizations can achieve a connectivity solution that gives them the ability for all their disparate devices, for all their disparate hardware from all the different vendors to talk, thus establishing interoperability and reliable communication. This connectivity is achievable with one leading solution, the Takebishi DeviceXPlorer OPC Server. This software is a OPC server software suite that provides connectivity with control devices in discrete manufacturing, process building automation, and control and operations environments and provides both the import of tag definitions and the related expressions in an ISA-95 hierarchical format and also combines this technology with another breakthrough in the market, the standardization of industrial names for data, thus making it a futureproofed technology. The Takebishi DeviceXPlorer OPC Server is integrated into the ICONICS GENESIS64 software suite and IoTWorX environment and is also available separately. Additionally, it allows direct communication between ICONICS software, and other applications, with the actual physical equipment and machinery on your production floor, providing you with the ability to monitor and control your facilities, factories, and processes.

Having recently given his 10-year-old son an iPhone, Kyle noticed that the games his son downloaded are slight variations of the same game that are built with the same code base. And it struck Kyle that the industrial software market seems to be evolving like that of this particular game app market. Game creators are delivering super specific apps in addition to maintaining platform level, more immersive games that are opening their available market to gamers that wouldn’t have engaged in an immersive platform game. How? These ‘micro game’ apps are opening their available market to gamers that wouldn’t have engaged in an immersive platform game by making micro games that are more approachable and pointed. Kyle is seeing this happen in the industrial software market as well with a wave of new companies focused on providing cloud apps that are specific to single use cases. It’s an interesting trend that, in his opinion, is opening value to new customers that haven’t had the ability, funding, or commitment to dive into full-fledged ‘solve many problems’ industrial software platforms. He explains how ICONICS understands this trend and is planning on providing the market with some cloud apps that are focused on the small to mid-sized customers where time-to-value and out-of-the-box experience are foundational pillars. ICOCNICS knows that cloud apps can be great for specific use cases and plans on providing paths for adopters to do more, so that over the long term, our customers can continue to impact their operations with a platform when they are ready to do so. As a result, this will allow for a digital future for all companies, no matter the size.   

ICONICS releases version 10.97.1 of its ICONICS Suite. As technology continues to evolve, ICONICS strives to ensure it leads the pack with advances in automation software and digital transformation technology to continue to deliver value to our customers and partners. As a global automation software provider of advanced web-enabled OPC UA and BACnet certified visualization, analytics, and mobile software solutions for manufacturing, industrial, and smart building applications, it’s what we do, and it’s what we actually love to do. Our 10.97.1 release includes advancements such as Hyper Alarm, MQTT Sparkplug Connectivity, BACnet with Secure Connect Technical Preview, and HTML5 3D Technical Preview. Here is an overview. 

In one of ICONICS Transform 360 webcast series, “Hardening Your System Against Cyber Attacks”, experts in cybersecurity and remote connectivity explained how the threat of cybercrime is growing with increasing breaches that are resulting in substantial security-related and financial impacts. Additionally, the presenters discussed the ineffective outdated methods many companies are still using for their cybersecurity. Cybersecurity expert Ben Burke, Dispel Chief Operating Officer, explained Moving Target Defense cyber security and that companies should currently be using Moving Target Defense to defend their organizations against cyber threat and for securing their remote connectivity operations. Additionally, the measures that ICONICS is taking to provide secure remote connectivity was also discussed.  

As part of its Transform 360 series, ICONICS hosted the “Learn from the SCADA Experts & Become a Power User” webcast. This practical and informative event covered pertinent background and areas: Scott Kiser, ICONICS Director of Global Partner Channel Development, provided an overview of ICONICS, the company and the software, and also went over some of the challenges our system integrators (SI) and power users encounter thus setting the stage for the heart of the webinar covered by the other presenters. Phil Kolkto, ICONICS Senior Applications Engineer, explained ICONICS High Performance HMI design and rules of thumb on how to use this; John Doto, ICONICS Director of Professional Services for the Americas, discussed responsive design and ICONICS GraphWorX, and Russ Ropken, owner of RSI, put all this information into perspective with a demo for a large water application.

Conversations about efficiency gains with customers typically center around the customer hoping for manufacturing gains/efficiency. They're not quite sure what it is they need, but they do know they need to improve efficiency, quality, performance, and uptime. These gains can be realized through Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to provide a clear understanding of the difference between the quantity of sellable product an asset could make versus the actual amount of product that asset made. OEE is a top-level measurement of efficiency, and it breaks down into three separate buckets: availability, performance, and quality. An additional bucket to be considered in determining OEE is loss deployment. At the end the right team and approach can provide the manufacturing gains companies are looking for. 

Sponsored by the Zero Day Initiative, Pwn2Own Miami 2022 ethical hacking competition took place last week. Ethical hackers, or “security researchers” from around the world were invited to find software vulnerabilities from several vendors, with ICONICS being one of them. The organizers awarded $400,000 for 26 unique 0-days (new security breaches) and a few bug collisions (already reported software bugs). ICONICS software was tested, and vulnerabilities were found. Kyle Reissner, ICONICS Director, Product Management explains what the event's findings mean and provides a detailed explanation to reassure GENESIS64 end users and ICONICS partner system integrators.

Manufacturing companies approach ICONICS and our system integrator partners looking for improvements in their OEE and for some sort of predictive awareness. And an additional part of a manufacturing efficiency project is not just to find insights into current operational challenges to improve efficiency but to go beyond this for predictive awareness of that efficiency. This blog covers this along with a refresher on Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), an explanation of the Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom (DIKW) concept and its importance related to OEE, and the points to consider when embarking on a manufacturing efficiency project.  

Hannover Messe, the top global industry trade fair, will be held in Hannover, Germany from May 30 to June 2. Dedicated to sustainable industry transformation and development, the event will gather leading thinkers and forerunners in “science, business, and politics”. As ICONICS is at the forefront of automation software technology and because of its contribution to sustainable smart manufacturing production, processes, and buildings, we will participate and will also be one of the co-exhibitors with Microsoft. We will explain and present the interaction of automation technology and IT platforms as a driver of the digital transformation of industry. Come by the Microsoft booth in Hall 4, Stand E34, so our team can hear about your company and its challenges and discuss how we can help you build a sustainable operation and business. 

Digitalizing your smart building with ICONICS software and Azure Digital Twins is in line with Industry 4.0 smart processes and operations. And this digitalization most definitely represents the future of industry. Being able to implement the core technologies that are fundamental to Industry 4.0 digitalization such as ICONICS GENESIS64 and Azure Digital Twins is essential for you and your company to make better decisions about your operations and equipment. And are also crucial for the operation outcomes you’re aiming for like increased efficiency and reduced energy consumption, costs, and downtime, and for better problem solving and maintenance planning, i.e., operational optimization. As a result, you and your organizations will to be able to compete and most importantly to thrive and succeed in your respective industrial markets. 

ICONICS and Mitsubishi Electric Automation, two companies at the forefront of automation technology, will exhibit at Automate 2022 - “the largest and most inspiring showcase of automation in North America”. The event is set for June 6 – 9 at the Huntington Place Convention Center in Detroit, Michigan. Attendees can learn from and connect with the greatest minds across industries for knowledge sharing and advancement and crucial networking for the benefit of tapping into technology’s potential. They’ll also learn how ICONICS and Mitsubishi Electric are a perfect fit for Automate 2022 with ICONICS being a global software developer of visualization, HMI, SCADA, and energy solutions used for automating, monitoring, and optimizing critical assets for various business sectors such as manufacturing, industrial processes, and building automation. And Mitsubishi Electric being a global leader that enables innovation for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and end users alike in smart manufacturing, engineering efficiency, predictive maintenance, and integrated robotics.  

Today, more than ever, the water industry faces serious challenges with an extremely outdated infrastructure and a lack of emergency preparedness and future resiliency. To know about the current prevalent challenges the water industry is facing and how automation technology can help solve these, I interviewed our very own Andy Gribbin, ICONICS Business Development Manager to learn what he had to say. Andy talks to customers and partners in the water industry every day and knows firsthand what operational challenges they deal with and what they talk to him about. And as it’s always helpful and insightful to see how others do it, I briefly cover three water facilities that used automation technology to upgrade their systems to address their own challenges. The results: improved operational efficiency, improved workflows, and improved resilience to cyber security attacks. 

Digital transformation has brought about the advent of smart buildings. These high-performance, connected, and sustainable buildings are based on strategically captured data by using building automation software like ICONICS that can be shared to optimize operations and functions. The value of a smart building from the services it provides and from the perspective of its various stakeholders (property owners, facility managers, and occupants) is quite impressive. Two use cases that demonstrate this technology are the Zentrum für Psychiatrie Südwürttemberg (ZfP) or the Center for Psychiatry Südwürttemberg and the Mitsubishi Electric’s award-winning building. And of course, as providers of advanced HMI SCADA and the accompanying software that help organizations transform their buildings into smart buildings, we are most definitely attending Realcomm's IBcon 2022. ICONICS team of experts will be sharing their substantial knowledge and experience in the smart building space to help organizations on their digital transformation journeys toward connected, high-performance, sustainable smart buildings.

These days, SCADA systems are fundamental to industrial processes and manufacturing and building automation, so understanding what SCADA is and how it’s used is essential to those who work in those industries. Additionally, now is the age of industrial digital transformation, and SCADA systems are part of this advanced interconnected world of smart factories, smart buildings, and smart operations. A SCADA system brings significant value to companies in these markets allowing them to increase operational and energy efficiency. 

Even in a market that is over 30 years mature, you might think that most SCADA systems deliver similar functionality, and that one SCADA is as good as the next. This couldn't be further from the truth. This blog highlights the top ten features to look for when choosing a SCADA system and also includes additional aspects of such a system to consider. You'll also learn why transitioining to a new, technologically advanced SCADA system pays dividends and can come with ease and very little downtime. 

A System Integrator or Systems Integrator (SI) is a person or company that specializes in bringing together a variety of hardware and software component subsystems with ICONICS software and hardware (like Mitsubishi Electric’s or another vendor’s) into a whole integrated system and ensuring that those subsystems function harmoniously together. SIs also solve other automation and data management challenges by integrating data from OT and IT sources into a holistic solution. It is therefore understandable why ICONICS as an automation software company has long collaborated with System Integrators. Both are intricately intertwined in producing and bringing about the digital transformation of industrial manufacturing and industrial processes. ICONICS views the relationship with our SIs and distributors as a true and valued partnership where each entity has an integral role in serving our customers and implementing their projects. Automation is a journey. You can start simple and small by completing your automation step by step, then you can build from there scaling out according to your needs. No matter the size of the automation and digital transformation project, you are dually covered by ICONICS and our System Integrator partners. 

Not all SCADAs are created equal. They just aren’t. Some are much more technologically advanced with impressive capabilities that will help you and your team do your jobs easier and better. This blog is a deeper dive into ICONICS SCADA with its high-performance HMI and responsive design and also covers a bit about ICONICS historian reader and aliasing. This way, all this good SCADA information is conveniently in one place.  

 

Microsoft Azure and Intel IoT are enabling intelligent solutions that provide turnkey edge-to-cloud solutions through The Intelligent Edge. ICONICS, a seven-time Microsoft Partner of the Year, is a recognized building automation specialist with solutions in 70 percent of the Global 500 companies. Added to this combined technology expertise is the history and commitment to sustainability by all three partners. Regardless of the age of your buildings, ICONICS can create a building automation system that creates smarter and more sustainable buildings. Learn more about our partnership and see how we’re helping to transform buildings to be smarter and greener

Companies can feasibly and economically monitor their remote assets and use the data captured from these assets to optimize operations by using an edge to cloud IoT solution like ICONICS IoTWorX. IoTWorX delivers substantial benefits from IoT gateway management, data visualization through onsite user defined dashboards, local alarm management, to connection to the local gateway with any type of mobile device or web browser with network access to securely published data through Microsoft IoT Hub. And IoTWorX is for any sized company, not just for the large and established.

The ICONICS Institute is comprised of hundreds of “how to” videos to educate our system integrators, customers, and end users and allows people to know what training/documentation collateral we have. The videos help people to truly grasp our software through interactive learning and helps them by establishing a bridge to fill in the gap for those who don't really know all the powerful things ICONICS software can be used for. 

The partnership between ICONICS and the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) is a beautiful “union” of all the elements of a strong, solid business partnership, and that’s why it works so well. The IUOE needed a building automation software solution to both efficiently operate and manage its ITEC facility and to be utilized as a training tool for its members, and partnered with ICONICS to achieve this purpose. ICONICS’ partners are integral to its business strategy and success, and its partnership with IUOE exemplifies this.

Key takeaways for achieving improved power management for data centers include: Match customers’ data storage needs with facility location and connectivity requirements; Use sustainable energy where possible; Upgrade to smaller and better designed equipment.; Look at total power consumption to measure facility efficiency.; and Leverage automation software to monitor and optimize operational efficiency. 

OPC is an extensively used interoperability standard for industrial automation that allows different automation systems to communicate and consequently has become a common denominator across HMI/SCADA solutions. As an influential adopter and major supporter of OPC technology, ICONICS chose the most open technological path and therefore leverages OPC for both external connectivity and data access within its own products and whilch provides the most open and flexible architectures to its customes. To expand upon this advantage, ICONICS partnered with the Takebishi Corporation to deliver their DeviceXPlorer OPC Server to the world. 

Kyle Reissner, ICONICS Director, Product Management Engineering, reassures customers and users that ICONICS has invested and will continue to invest and to be proactive in the security of its automation software and systems. He explains how ICONICS adheres to the latest security protocols by striving for the foremost industrial security development certifications and describes ICONICS' strategy for phasing out unsupported .NET Core elements in its platform which will increase security even further.

Mitsubishi Electric and ICONICS make an impressive collaboration as both companies specialize in providing advanced solutions for industrial automation and control systems. The combined expertise and technologies allow both companies to offer customers a wider range of products and services, enhance their innovation capabilities to solve industry needs, and provide more comprehensive support for their customers' industrial automation challenges. But underneath these remarkable capabilities are their people; people who come from all over the world to deliver diverse communication and perspectives, enhanced problem-solving abilities, and heightened creativity. 

Digital transformation is the process, many call it a journey, of incorporating digital solutions, strategies, and advanced technologies into traditional industrial factories/processes to bring about smart industrial factories/processes with greatly improved operations, productivity and work efficiency. It's a game changer for achieving operational optimization and improving your business model - which is why it’s crucial to assess where you are in this journey and to have the best plan in place.  

“Plug-n-play” no/low code SCADA systems have the necessary functionality and flexibility so that both system integrators and end users can manage and make the most out of these systems. More importantly, no/low code SCADAs benefit end users in many ways including ease of use, rapid development, lower costs, increased agility, and employee empowerment and innovation.

One way to ensure that the EV industry and its suppliers meet the rocketing demand for electric vehicles is to realize predictive maintenance. As a data-driven strategy that uses real-time insights to predict failures, predictive maintenance optimizes maintenance efforts allowing teams to perform maintenance only when necessary. The industry and its suppliers can achieve predictive maintenance with an A-team combination of Mitsubishi Electric’s AI predictive analytics and ICONICS’ automation software. 

 

Given the serious and disturbing effects of climate change, we look to the EV industry and its suppliers as sustainability role models. It is therefore critical for these organizations to lock in sustainability in their manufacturing processes, and they can do this with modern advanced automation software like the ICONICS suite of products. With the real-time operational visualization they get, personnel can take data-driven actions to ensure continuous improvement for energy efficient, sustainable operations.  

The ICONICS suite can be deployed on-premises, in private clouds/datacenters, and in public cloud environments. In addition, and for your convenience, ICONICS provides pre-configured solutions in Azure Marketplace that you can run on a Microsoft Azure virtual machine. Our support for Azure lets you create a development system in the Cloud for evaluating the ICONICS suite which means you don't need to purchase, configure, and maintain your own hardware. And it only takes minutes to configure our software on Azure.

Selecting the right OPC Server is a crucial decision that can significantly impact the performance, reliability, and overall success of your control system. Factors to consider include performance, reliability, redundancy, technical support, northbound and southbound connectivity, flexibility, proven track record, distribution, compatibility, operating system support, pricing, licensing model, ease of use, vendor endorsement, and certifications. By carefully evaluating these criteria and considering the specific needs of your application, you can make an informed decision and choose the OPC Server that best meets your requirements. 

ICONICS is walking the walk and is dedicated to quality and continuous improvement in our products, service, and team. And according to our latest customer survey, our customers agree.  

Selecting the right SCADA is a crucial decision that can significantly impact your manufacturing and infrastructure performance, reliability, and overall success of your IT and OT systems. Factors to consider include performance, reliability, redundancy, technical support, northbound and southbound protocol connectivity, flexibility, proven track record, distribution, compatibility, operating system support, pricing, licensing model, ease of use, vendor endorsement, and certifications. By carefully evaluating these and other criteria and considering the specific needs of your application, you can make an informed decision and choose the SCADA that best meets your requirements.