New vision for automation

Joe Cowan's recent rise through the invensys hierarchy has been little short of meteoric. Less than 18 months ago he was sales and marketing vice president of Wonderware. Last month he was addressing Wonderware UK distributor Pantek's Smart Manufacturing Conference as president of Invensys Manufacturing and Process Systems (IMAPS), having, in the interim, also been president and CEO of Wonderware.

What is IMAPS? In essence it's the grouping which, it could be argued, should have been put together three or four years ago to rationalise and capitalise on Invensys' spectacular series of acquisitions in the process control and automation sector. Bringing together Foxboro, Wonderware, Triconix and SimSci, it is the key component of Invensys Software Systems and, in a rare piece of corporate logic, the group has entrusted it to someone with a genuine understanding of and background in the software business. Cowan has the easy confidence of a man who believes he has long understood what is wrong with his part of Invensys, has a very clear idea of what is required to put it right and, perhaps because things have got so bad that his superiors don't believe he can make them much worse, has been given virtual carte blanche to put it into action.

So what is the master plan? In essence it is genuinely to integrate Foxboro and Wonderware into a single company which will sell systems across the full spectrum of the process, discrete and hybrid manufacturing markets, based on a single, but customisable hardware and software platform.

The software for the entire group's products, including the successor to the current range of Foxboro I/A series DCSs, will be developed by the old Wonderware, while the hardware will in essence be developed by the old Foxboro. Foxboro will cease to develop its own supervisory level software, although it will continue to apply its sector specific expertise in the development and application of control algorithms.

While the hardware aspects of this strategy remain shrouded in mystery, the software dimension is already clear, based as it is on Wonderware's long awaited component based architecture. To be released as ArchestrA, this will maintain backwards compatibility and also deliver building blocks for a new generation of Wonderware products. Foxboro will add its components for process control, Triconix for safety systems and a host of third parties for specialist applications.

"We had been struggling with this development because we were trying to make it evolutionary," said Cowan. "Instead what we have now done is to define the future and then work out how to get there. ArchestrA is not an application; it's an infrastructure, a new business model for the rapid delivery of products through assembly rather than programming. It provides a common modular application model, a common framework which handles the basic factors in a system which we can use in the process market, the batch market, the discrete market and the hybrid market and can hand over to integrators."

This strategy of integration doesn't just extend to the products themselves however. In essence Foxboro, Wonderware, Triconix and the other components of IMAPS will cease to exist as separate entities although the brands themselves will be retained. At the same time the integrated company will have access to all of the existing sales channels.

As Honeywell seeks to stabilise itself after the GE debacle and Rockwell continues to cut back, Cowan has a window of opportunity to put the new model into practice. Additional investment is being injected into Wonderware to speed up ArchestrA development, with the first fruits due within nine months and the current programme due for completion within two years. Many people, not least Cowan himself, will ask why this integration of Invensys' automation interests has had to wait so long. The big imponderable now, however, is whether Cowan will be given the time and resources to complete it or whether he will soon be having to convince a new German or Swiss owner that it is the correct strategy.

• Industrial Automation INSIDER
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