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on all things Vertech

Amazing technology is at our fingertips today with HTML5 and CSS3 and native apps for phones and tablets. The adoption of mobile devices have taken over desktops as the preferred computing medium. Think of all the incredible applications leveraged daily; what if these were possible with a human-machine interface/supervisory control and data acquisition (HMI/SCADA) application? Well, they are.

Can you integrate our ERP system with SCADA/MES application? This is the most frequent question we get asked when starting any new SCADA or MES project, and it’s frequent for a reason.

There are several benefits to integrating your ERP into SCADA/MES including real-time production adjustments, more efficient scheduling, change order efficiency and accurate demand forecasts. Often, we’re also asked if we can build an application to directly tie-in to all the functionality of their ERP system.

In the immortalized words of Bob the Builder, “Can we build it? Yes, we can!” This post will introduce you to the top four ways that Vertech approaches ERP integration.

Error handling is critical in any software development. When done correctly and with the user in mind, error handling makes it easier to operate a system correctly, lets users know when something has gone wrong (and ideally how to fix it), and makes your code easier to debug and maintain. In this blog, I’ll discuss the common error handling techniques for Ignition SCADA applications and key considerations to keep in mind to provide the best possible user experience.

ICC 2019 is in full swing in Folsom, CA. The Ignition Community Conference brings together the entire Inductive Automation ecosystem of integrators, third-party suppliers, and the entire Inductive staff including executives, developers, sales, marketing, support and more. Ten Vertech team members representing all three of our offices are attending. Here are a few impressions and comments from the team.

Have you ever looked at your SCADA screen(s) and thought this screen could look a lot better? Or why isn’t there organization or functionality to this screen design? Maybe you haven’t, but we guarantee your operators have. The problem with some SCADA designs is programmers don’t take the time to think about the daily usage. The goal for any screen design should be to help the operator receive important information efficiently in order to make decisions.

In my last post, I gave tips on the various tools available for finding and logging issues both within your application and with Inductive Automation’s Ignition SCADA software. In this post, we’ll dive into three additional debugging and diagnostics tools in Ignition: Execution, Threads, and Gateway scripts.

Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform is a powerful, flexible, and highly customizable SCADA platform enabling data-driven decision making for industrial enterprises. Before the final product hits the plant floor, however, developers must configure and program the platform. This post provides a few tips on the different tools available for troubleshooting issues both within your application and with the Ignition software.

For 30 years, Weber Metals has been a major supplier of aluminum and titanium forgings within the aerospace industry. Having such a large operation makes collecting real-time, accurate data imperative to operations. To help Weber Metals achieve this, Vertech integrated all existing PLCs to a supervisory PLC and SCADA software that provided central trending and the ability to report actionable data for the entire site.

Now is the time for water utilities and municipalities to get serious about their network security. Cyber attacks are the top threat to critical infrastructure in the United States. In an effort to secure our nation’s critical infrastructure, the United States government passed the Water Infrastructure Act of 2018. This act mandates every community water system serving 3,300+ people to assess their network for risk and prove the resilience of their system in protecting against cyber threats and the deadlines are approaching.

In the oil and gas industry, data collection occurs across many devices which can be miles apart. With such a large geographical area, receiving real time data and alerts is imperative. Collecting data from geographically distributed assets is challenging, but well fields that have been built out over years pose additional challenges to data collection with control systems from different manufacturers and eras. This case study looks at the development of an enterprise SCADA system using Ignition 8.0 and the Perspective module to centralize data from well-field assets.