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• Manufacturing

Manufacturing

CSWorks provides manufacturing companies with a powerful tool to minimize downtime, reduce costs of operation, minimize applications development and bridge the gap between corporate IT and the production floor. System integrators combine CSWorks with existing solutions to provide superior monitoring, control, reporting, alarming and trending features. CSWorks aggregates real-time and historical plant data gathered from many disparate sources and makes it available to anyone authorized - everyone from the plant floor to the top floor - to make immediate business decisions.

Open architecture

Open architecture HMI/SCADA framework enables users to mix-and-match products from different vendors to develop solutions that suit customer needs better than those restricted to a single vendor's product offering. Open standards such as OPC (OLE for Process Control), SQL, WCF (Windows Communication Foundation), SOAP, HTTP protect your automation investment from manufacturers' proprietary technology obsolescence that can come with changes in the company structure, ownership or finances. Read more about CSWorks architecture in the Architecture Basics section.

Big variety of supported data sources

Connect directly to dozens of popular existing PLCs, RTUs, DCSs and other automation equipment for fast communications using open-standard OPC servers. Any data available with proper security through your IT network may be displayed or modified within the CSWorks software suite via OPC or SQL open database connectivity. System administrators can configure redundant CSWorks servers for non-stop mission critical HMI, SCADA and control applications.

Web-enabled distributed SCADA operations

CSWorks-powered solutions enable monitoring and control of multiple facilities at different locations with one software system. Not only can you monitor and access individual facilities, but you can also control entire plant operations across intranets via wireless devices. Make operators and managers more efficient with flexible access to data wherever they may be without compromising security. Read more about CSWorks distributed architecture in the Distributed Architecture section.

Powerful development environment

CSWorks integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio design environment. Take advantage of the development tool with a proven track record to create user applications with eye-catching contemporary graphics, complex animations and extremely rich functionality. No need to learn yet another scripting language or proprietary object model, just use C# or VB.NET to create CSWorks applications running on Microsoft Silverlight platform. See educational video about creating your first CSWorks application on YouTube.

Cross-platform and cross-browser thin client

CSWorks-powered client applications run on Windows and Mac platforms using Microsoft Silverlight as runtime engine. CSWorks client can also run on any platform that supports HTM5 browsing. Increase ROI, reduce client software maintenance cost by using zero-administration web client. With CSWorks web client, users no longer need to install proprietary HMI software, licenses and individual HMI screens on each operator station. Files and licensing are server-based for trouble-free maintenance and deployment.

Highly customizable Alarming subsystem

CSWorks alarming can be configured to scale out and to provide redundancy. Alarm history can be saved in the database of your choice, giving you a notable degree of flexibility to incorporate analysis tools of your choice. Operators work with Alarm Summary panels that can be configured individually according to user preference. When acknowledging an alarm, operators can enter a comment explaining the alarm for inclusion as part of the permanent record.

Scalable data archiving to secure standard databases

CSWorks saves historical data to industry standard databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, mySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL. Using such standard corporate databases provides long-term maintenance, reporting and retrieval throughout the retention period.

Live and historical data trends

Production data collected from any data source on the plant floor can be quickly and easily visualized in CSWorks Trend panel. Information from different data sources can be merged and viewed on a single chart. Operators can easily export chart data to a spreadsheet file (watch the educational video).

Language support

System integrators and hosted solution providers needing to deploy their products around the world can define multiple languages and engineering unit conversions for their applications. Advanced user components included in the CSWorks setup package like Alarm Summary and Trend Control support various popular languages (see screenshots of our Alarm Summary and Trend Control). Language switching can be implemented in several ways and can be performed during runtime, users just need to refresh their browsers.

General usability

CSWorks provides hassle-free server installation, small memory footprint on the server and on the client side, and transparent server configuration that can be easily replicated for use on different server sites. System administrators use performance counters to track solution performance.