Industrial Automation – It Doesn’t Have To…
Join us as we explore all things Industrial Automation. Brandon Ellis, owner & president of elliTek, has seen the good, the bad, and the great when it comes to automation. We'll delve into the challenges that manufacturers face, find out what it doesn't have to..., and have some fun!
Industrial Automation – It Doesn’t Have To…
Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To... Be a Mystery
🎙️ Welcome to the latest episode of "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To..."! In this riveting conversation, join host Brandon Ellis and co-host Beth Elliott alongside special guest Bob Meads as they dive deep into the world of industrial automation solutions from Siemens.
🤖 Get ready to explore the WinCC product line, where Bob provides a comprehensive overview of WinCC SCADA, WinCC Unified, WinCC Professional, and WinCC Open Architecture. Each product comes with its unique features and use cases, and Bob sheds light on what sets them apart.
🔍 Uncover the power of WinCC SCADA, a mature and open SCADA system offering an innovative, scalable process-visualization system with numerous high-performance functions for monitoring automated processes. Bob walks us through its extensive customization options, scripting capabilities, and seamless database integration, showcasing how it tackles complex industrial challenges with ease.
🌟 Discover how WinCC SCADA brings predictive maintenance, robust data analysis, and insightful reporting to the forefront, empowering businesses to optimize operations like never before. Bob's insights paint a vivid picture of the transformative potential of Siemens' automation solutions.
🔧 But the innovation doesn't stop there! Bob also delves into the groundbreaking Siemens' Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal framework, highlighting how it fosters seamless harmony between hardware and software components for unparalleled efficiency.
🎧 Tune in to this enlightening episode as we unravel the technology shaping the future of industrial automation, one WinCC product at a time. Whether you're a seasoned professional or a curious enthusiast, there's something for everyone in this captivating discussion!
đź”— Connect with Bob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-m-2aba842/
đź”— Learn SCADA programming with Bob's Siemens WinCC SCADA & UNIFIED Tutorials! This channel is for integrators & end users of Siemens SIMATIC WinCC SCADA and WinCC UNIFIED, or anyone who wants to learn SCADA programming. https://www.youtube.com/@WinCCGURU
đź”— Explore iQuest, Inc.: https://iquestcorp.com/
đź”— What is iQagent and Why? https://iqagent.com/
Reach out with any questions or comments. We'd love to hear from you!🤝
Website: www.ellitek.com/contact-us
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Twitter: www.twitter.com/elliTek_Inc/media
YouTube: https://youtu.be/VhFRpzgPhnA
#elliTek #WinCCGURU #iQuest #iQagent #WinCC #SCADA #EfficientEngineering
Brandon 00:00
Hello everyone and welcome to "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To..." I'm Brandon Ellis, your host and I'm here of course, with my co-host, I guess we should say, is it always co-host? I guess our producer, our woman that does everything and makes all this happen while I just jibber jabber for 35 minutes or so miss Beth Elliott.
Beth 00:21
Hey Brandon, I think I'm something different every time.
Brandon 00:24
Yeah, that's a heck of an introduction, I'm trying to cover it all. So it's been, it's been a little bit of a minute since we were together with everyone last. And so we've got a really interesting topic today. This is one that actually relates to me so much as we have, enjoyably so, learned the Siemens, some of the Siemens ways, and some of their marketing. And so go ahead and take us, introduce our, our guest, give us our topic and do your thing.
Beth 00:52
Alright, so today's title is "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To... Be a Mystery."
Brandon 00:59
Yes, indeed.
Beth 01:00
So we have a special guest today to demystify some stuff for us. So Bob Meads, he is leveraging his background as an Electronics Technician in the Navy, a Production Engineer at NEC Technologies and a Software Engineer on the WinCC Team at Siemens Energy and Automation, founded and leads multiple successful companies today. iQuest, Inc., established in 1998, specializes in SCADA and HMI development with Bob serving as President and Chief Software Architect. In 2003, he co-founded Process Software Solutions, PSS, with Pat Meere, focusing on WinCC Audit, an FDA Validation software for Siemens SIMATIC WinCC SCADA. I can't believe you. Oh my goodness. That's not all.
Brandon 01:57
But wait. There's more.
Beth 01:59
That's right. In 2014, Bob partnered with Pat Meere again to establish iQagent, Inc., renowned for its practical augmented reality app and awarded two U.S. patents for its technology. We're not done yet.
Brandon 02:16
Only two. Only two patents.
Beth 02:19
Bob also runs the successful WinCCGURU YouTube channel dedicated to WinCC SCADA and WinCC Unified Videos and Tutorials. Bob's expertise extends to globally recognized companies, making him a respected figure in the automation community. Welcome, Bob.
Bob 02:42
Thank you, Beth. Thank you, Brandon. I've really been trying to get up here and see you guys for a little while. We've had a lot of fun conversations, so it's been great to meet you, Brandon, meet you. Beth, really impressed with the elliTek University that I got to see this morning. So I appreciate that. It's kind of a nice thing. It looks like you're going to a movie, and so it looks like a great place. I appreciate you guys having me.
Brandon 03:07
Well, I'm tickled to have you here, so let me ask you a question. So iQuest was established in 1998, and the whole planet knows the significance of 1998 was the last time that the University of Tennessee Volunteers won a National championship. So did that influence you in starting a company that year?
Bob 03:28
Well, you know, I mean, I didn't realize they had a football team.
Brandon 03:38
So Bob is, Bob is would you would you relate more to as a War Eagle?
Bob 03:44
Well, it's complicated, because I grew up in rural Alabama. Everybody I know, whether they went to college or not, is an Alabama fan, married an Auburn girl. And so my wife graduated from Auburn. And then my son graduated from Alabama.
Brandon 04:00
Oh, wow.
Bob 04:00
So when we go home for family reunions over the Iron Bowl, they exchange gunfire.
Brandon 04:07
Yeah, I imagine.
Bob 04:07
You know, it's so the way I say it is if Auburn's playing, I'm for Auburn. But if Auburn's not playing, it's Alabama. It's SEC. It's SEC all the way.
Brandon 04:19
Yeah, yeah.
Bob 04:20
So I'll root for Alabama under those circumstances.
Brandon 04:22
The important... The important common thing that we have is not Georgia and not Florida, right?
Bob 04:28
That's correct.
Brandon 04:29
Yeah.
Bob 04:29
That's correct.
Brandon 04:30
Two fantastic programs as well. And the reason we say that is because here in Tennessee, those two have their way with us many, many times. And so, well, I can talk SEC football all day long, but let's cut to the chase. So let's go into a bit more about your background and what we're talking about. So today the topic is, it doesn't have to be a mystery. And so I specifically reached out to Bob because I know that you have a ton of experience in we're gonna say WinCC. But in the Siemens world, WinCC is, can we say a common term?
Bob 05:19
Oh yeah.
Brandon 05:19
As far as titles of products.
Bob 05:21
That's correct. It's associated with quite a few products.
Brandon 05:23
Yeah, yeah, and those products aren't necessarily, you know, sometimes we have products that have common names, commonality, because it means, you know, one's maybe more legacy and then it moves on and it progresses through. That's not necessarily the case.
Bob 05:36
That's correct.
Brandon 05:37
Yeah. So, so WinCC, what does the CC stand for?
Bob 05:42
Control Center, so WinCC stands for Windows Control Center. Where that comes from is the code base for WinCC was laid down in 1994. Came out late '95 version 1.2, which is when I started working with the product. And Windows NT was a new thing back then. And before that was Windows 95, of course. And Wonderware was actually the first HMI on Windows. And so Siemens came up with the concept of the Windows Control Center, because they were trying to move the Windows operating system to the plant floor. Windows NT was the first so-called stable Windows that was industrial strength. And so that's why they call it WinCC.
Brandon 06:27
Yeah.
Beth 06:28
I knew I'd learn a lot today. I knew it. I've already learned something new.
Brandon 06:31
Well, Bob's been at this for a while. So he knows the history and a lot of times history helps us kind of piece together and make logical decisions.
Bob 06:39
It really does. And when I came on board, I was part of the team that brought WinCC to the United States. And I like to joke. I have to make sure there's not too many Siemens people sitting in seats. And I tell them that when we rolled out version 1.2, I made a point to visit everyone using 1.2 in the United States. And they both said it was pretty good.
Brandon 07:02
They both said.
Bob 07:04
We were very small. And then 3.1 came out. But the concept of TIA, which we're going to be talking about, Totally Integrated Automation, it started coming out at that point. You had STEP 7, which was the programming software for the S7s and S5s. And they had the concept of, okay, you know, you always have some type of visualization with a PLC. And so with STEP 7, it would automatically create the tags in WinCC, generate the WinCC projects, set up your connections and your tags so that that was an engineering effort that you did not have to do. And that's where TIA Portal, that's the legacy of that philosophy TIA. And it started back in about 1996 or 1997.
Brandon 07:53
So let's, let's delve into quickly just, just some little sub-discussion. So, with Siemens, you have, of course, Siemens PLCs have been around for a number of years, Siemens is the largest, most used PLC on the planet, one out of every three PLCs on the planet earth is a Siemens PLC.
Bob 08:14
Wow.
Brandon 08:15
Is it three out of five?
Beth 08:16
I thought it was one out of five, or three out of five.
Brandon 08:18
Three out of five? I can't remember.
Beth 08:19
We'll have to figure it out.
Brandon 08:20
Well, anyway. It's number one globally with PLCs. And so there have been, of course, over the years, there's been various models of PLCs and various software. So STEP 7 is one of the original, no. What do we call that? We call that STEP 7 Classic. I think it's what some of the, that's not, it's not in any literature. That's what the sales guys call it. Uh, but it precedes still, still supported, but it preceded what we call TIA Portal, STEP 7 TIA Portal. And STEP 7 TIA Portal, of course, it is a part of the TIA Portal framework, Totally Integrated Automation framework. And so I had a hard time getting my head around that at the beginning when I was getting to know Siemens, you know, three or four years ago, that TIA, the TIA Portal was not the PLC software. It is a framework that houses multiple softwares. And one of those we refer to as WinCC. And that's the HMI software. And so, so WinCC, even before TIA Portal, though, there was WinCC for STEP 7. Yes?
Bob 09:34
Right.
Brandon 09:35
And those two are different.
Bob 09:39
Yes, they are. And the concept of TIA, like I was describing, started out with just STEP 7 and WinCC talking. And that, you know, the philosophy has always been with Siemens is they want one solution. And when you put out an automation, when you're designing automation, you've always got to get your network going, then you get your PLCs and your communication processors on, then you get your visualization and your databases and things like that. And so their concept for the last 20 or 30 years has to put that into one house because you've got panels which have different capabilities than PCs. And so you almost have kind of a parallel path where when they started to realize the TIA concept and actually formally building that, which started with a product called ProTool and then ended up in a product called WinCC Flexible. And so it was one piece of software. You could program the smallest TP panel all the way up to an industrial computer and build your visualization, build your screens, create your PLC programs and, you know, drag a tag from the PLC, throw it on a screen, it became a tag in the HMI. And once they hit that, then you have a parallel path where you've got the TIA path where they had their own visualization with, say, WinCC Flexible at the time and then later WinCC Advance, WinCC Pro. But WinCC SCADA has always stood alone. So the difference is WinCC SCADA is a standalone SCADA product, and it's got a lot of capabilities, a very mature product. And then you have the TIA path where everything is integrated, your visualization, your PLC programming, your tags, your network.
Brandon 11:32
In with the framework.
Bob 11:33
In with the framework, yeah.
Brandon 11:33
And so, all right. So let's, let's add a little context to that. So, WinCC, so we're already hearing WinCC across multiple products, but the WinCC Flexible and the WinCC, which gave way to WinCC...
Bob 11:50
Well, it gave way to your, what they call the TIA Portal, and you had WinCC Advanced, which was an HMI. It was a panel line with a PLC.
Brandon 12:02
Hardware.
Bob 12:02
Hardware and software. And then you had WinCC Professional, which was, you know, basically the next evolution of WinCC Flexible. And that fits within your TIA Portal framework where you do your screens, your alarms...
Brandon 12:19
And when we say TIA Portal framework, we're talking about is actual, you know, as far as the hardware is concerned, of course, the PLC, but as far as the visualization that you're talking about, you're talking about a touch screen HMI, not a PC, but an HMI that you would find on the machine, something like that. The TP panel you mentioned, those kind of things. That's the kind of hardware that you would program with that tool, the WinCC for TIA Portal.
Bob 12:48
Well, with the TI with, excuse me, with the WinCC Advanced and WinCC Professional, depending on the capability, WinCC Advanced is always panels. But once you get above WinCC Professional, WinCC Unified, then you can also introduce a what we call a runtime, which requires a full Windows computer, what we call a WinCC RT. So Advanced, and I'm not an expert at Advanced, but you don't have really what we call an RT that's going to run on a server, it's running on a panel. So it depends on what you plug in. If you're dealing with WinCC Professional, if you're dealing with WinCC Unified, you can deploy that to a computer.
Brandon 13:29
WinCC Professional would be used for panels such as Comfort?
Bob 13:34
I believe so.
Brandon 13:35
Yeah, I think that's right. And then there's WinCC Unified, which is for the, they are newer. We can say they're newer, but that doesn't mean they're taking the place of Comfort, necessarily. Comfort still is supported.
Bob 13:46
It's a different class.
Brandon 13:48
It's a different class.
Bob 13:49
And it depends on what you need.
Brandon 13:50
It's their edge-based product.
Bob 13:52
Right, right. And Unified is also a SCADA, but it's in an integrated environment. And so the difference is with, let's call what I normally work with, WinCC SCADA. I've also even heard people with Siemens call it WinCC Classic. The difference between that product and WinCC Unified is they're both SCADA systems. But Unified within the TIA Portal Framework is a totally integrated solution. So you do your hardware, you do your networking, you do your PLCs, and you treat us completely integrated project. And there's the whole idea is efficient engineering. Okay, so you don't wanna do the same thing. You don't wanna create tags in your PLC program and then create the same tags in your SCADA. You wanna do it once and then it works all the way through the system.
Brandon 14:48
Well, so traditionally when we were putting systems together, we might buy a PLC from one manufacturer and an HMI from another, and that's what, Bob's talking about. And so if you do that, to be able to communicate, make that HMI communicate or read the variables, the program memory areas, those kinds of things in the PLC, we call them tags nowadays pretty much. But not everybody refers to them as tags, some call them memory areas or variables. To be able to do that though, you had to sit, do a lot of setup on the HMI to tell it first of all, what brand of PLC am I talking to, and then how do I get to those certain memory areas or tags? And if they're, well, memory areas usually were built into the driver. So, those were PLC memory areas and that's for older platforms of PLCs for the most part, but you still do that if you were doing a Modbus TCP connection or something like that today. But essentially, if you're doing variables or tags, same thing, then you have to find a way to get those PLC tags or variables into the HMI. And so it was for years, it was always a challenge to figure out how can, you know, does this HMI manufacturer touch panel, you know, machine HMI, do they make a driver and how can they get to the tags? Do they support tags and variables versus the old style, you know, PLC memory areas. And so all this is to say this figuring out how to do those imports, import tags, and that means you got to have a means of exporting from the, from the other manufacturer's PLC, was a challenge. People ask me all the time, why, why go with, why should I switch to a complete Siemens solution?
Bob 16:39
Right. Right.
Brandon 16:40
And you touched on this earlier from the Totally Integrated Automation, the TIA Portal perspective, you create tags in your PLC and most people are using tags nowadays, you create tags in your Siemens PLC and then you just drag and drop them to your HMI within TIA Portal really what you're purchasing when you are saying I'm buying the HMI software, because traditionally two different manufacturers, two different software packages and TIA Portal houses all of that for you in that network, that infrastructure, if you will, framework. So what you're really buying is a license to be able to download to the hardware which is going to be, like you mentioned, the Unified, and we talked about the Comfort, the TP panels, those kinds of things. And so they require licenses. And so that's how it all works. So just because you buy the PLC software and it installs TIA Portal does not mean that you are able to program slash download to a WinCC hardware device. And when I say WinCC, I'm talking about WinCC for TIA Portal. Am I saying that right? Do you agree with what I'm saying? And I'm trying to make the distinction between WinCC for TIA Portal versus WinCC SCADA.
Bob 18:03
Okay.
Brandon 18:03
And WinCC SCADA uses a runtime.
Bob 18:08
That's correct.
Brandon 18:09
And that's the big difference, but you said something that confused me a little bit. You said that WinCC Unified which I've used personally with Siemens Unified Comfort panels was a SCADA. So explain that to me.
Bob 18:30
Okay. Well, basically SCADA is an acronym, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. It just means that I have an industrial visualization application that I can spread out on multiple computers and I can do control and monitoring from any of those. So it's instead of having one computer where there's everything, I can spread it out. So it's kind of like a DCS without the hardwired capability. And so when I say that, with WinCC SCADA, it's a standalone SCADA product and the benefit is it's very mature. It's got three different scripting languages. You can load in various drivers for different third-party PLCs that supports OPC, REST, you know, all this stuff. Whereas WinCC Unified, which fits into the TIA Portal framework, you can do a lot of that. You can visualize. And one of the great things about Unified is its built-in runtime is what you call WebRT. So you deploy over a browser. It makes it really easy. You don't have to do the old client server thing. WinCC has that, but you set it up. It's called Web UX. But with WinCC Unified, you can build that distributed application with screens on many different computers. And depending on how your production line is set up, you've got different operators, different stations. So it is a SCADA system. The difference is it is integrated with other Siemens components. You can have the benefit of the more efficient engineering where if I, once I create my memory areas in my processor, 1200, 1500, then those can immediately be used over in the SCADA. You're building everything in the same framework. And the beauty of it is it's all the same software, all the same interface. So your PLC programmer is not looking at a different interface than your HMI operator. You know, it's all the same. So once you learn it, you've become familiar with one, then you're automatically at some comfort level with the other. So, you know, they are both SCADA class. It's just that Unified is in the framework of TIA Portal and WinCC SCADA is a standalone product like your Wonderware or Ignition or some of these other products. Yeah.
Brandon 20:52
So WinCC SCADA would be a competitor to a Wonderware or Ignition or something like that?
Bob 20:52
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Wonderware was, it's, you know, back when I got into automation, you know, when the world was young, Wonderware, Cytek, iFix and Illusion Factory Link were the players and they were all kind of coming up, you know, during that time and, you know, the software market was really emerging and Windows was becoming a thing out on the plant floor. And so they all kind of went that path. Wonderware's still around, Ignition's kind of a new player, Groov's a new player, but they, you know, they're all standalone. You know, WonderWare is not a hardware company, you know, it doesn't build panels. So everything is third party, you know, once you get out to that. So yes, definitely, you know, that's the competition pool. The competition pool for TIA Portal is a lot more narrow because, you know, you've got GE, you've got Rockwell, you've got ABB and these other, and they have these all inclusive software packages where you do your programming, you do your visualization. And those are the competition for Unified.
Brandon 22:04
Yeah, from my experience with those, now I haven't used so much of the GE stuff, but definitely the others that you mentioned. They make good ways to share tags, but we're still doing the sharing, the imports and the exports and all that kind of stuff. So back to the comment, someone asked me, why would you go with, on the automation side, which is the TIA Portal side, why would you use, what would you recommend a total Siemens? What do I get for my efforts? And my vantage point is, it's the fact that it falls into that infrastructure, that TIA Portal framework and allows tags to easily be transferred between them. And like you said, that's one of the things inside of the TIA Portal, I can have one window, I' gotta to have a big screen for this, but I can have one window that's my HMI window and one window that's on my PLC, my ladder, and I can literally drag and drop a contact from my ladder onto the screen and make it good.
Bob 23:10
Right. And yeah, and the reverse is true as well, you know, there's like WinCC SCADA's got pro diag where you can go from the link back to the HMI or from the HMI back to the link.
Brandon 23:20
Oh really?
Bob 23:21
Yeah, and you can do that in the TIA Portal framework. So, but your, I think your question is why would somebody go with TIA Portal or why would somebody go with the WinCC SCADA?
Brandon 23:36
No, no, no, why would someone go with Siemens and TIA Portal versus a competitor with their software?
Bob 23:42
I gotcha.
Brandon 23:42
And so that's number one. Now we're getting ready to go to number two.
Bob 23:46
Yeah, understood.
Brandon 23:46
So that is one of the reasons why it's because of the shared tags, because of the potential pain that comes from trying to get vendor, you know, manufacturer A to talk to PLC manufacturer B. And how do we get those tags between us? That goes away. That just goes away when you're in a TIA Portal.
Bob 24:06
Well, there's actually a lot more, you know, tags are the things that come to the forefront because that's, you know, when I teach my classes when we talk about a human machine interface, and I always say well the HMI only has to do two things It's got to talk to the human; it's got to talk to the machine. So we talk to the machine through tags and talk to the human through visualization.
Brandon 24:26
Yeah,
Bob 24:27
So but with TIA Portal you've got integrated security, you know now Cybersecurity is a big thing in the plant. We've got communications over OPC UA. We've got other industrial communications and so it handles SSL certificates. The S7 1200s and 1500s have their own in built security, transport level security with certificates username and password. So even if somebody taps in unless they have the password, they can't get to the logic on the PLC. You've got your distributed clients your web clients part of the visualization. They have to have your SSL certificates. I mean they almost force you, you know to use that security and make it harder to not use the security. So you've got your integrated security. You also have your integrated user management for people accessing the application and rights based and things like that. And also sharing data where both Unified and WinCC SCADA utilize SQL Server so that data goes into SQL Server. Makes it available for reporting, you know, things like SSRS or process historian. So there's you know engineering efficiency is all encompassing of that where you know, it is a lot easier to pull out a project, you know to do the different components. Once you learn one part of those components, then it's easier to learn the other. Training people. And plus it takes away, I mean sure it's easy for, you know, hardware vendor, software vendor like Siemens say hey use our products everything will go better. Well, GE says the same thing and Rockwell says the same thing or everyone out there does. But you know, there is a lot of engineering efficiency and a lot of benefits from having that solution. But not everybody can use it because if you're talking about a greenfield project where they haven't bought anything yet, then it's a much easier sell then Well, I've got all these brand X PLCs and brand Y drives. You can't really plug that into TIA Portal unless they're all on OPC UA or something like that. And so, you have to look at what the customer is, what they're doing, where they're at in the project and you know, sometimes you just kind of have to start with a little piece.
Brandon 26:49
Mm -hmm.
Bob 26:49
And so if they already have different PLCs and things like that then WinCC SCADA is a great way to get them into the Siemens family to the visualization and the beauty is WinCC Unified and WinCC SCADA can share screens, share visualization. So if you have...
Brandon 27:09
Really.
Bob 27:09
If you have WinCC SCADA in a plant and you've got Unified running in another part of the plant, they can share screens.
Brandon 27:17
Wow, I didn't know that.
Bob 27:18
Yeah, and it's insanely easy to do. There's a just a... because and the beauty is it's because Unified is the runtime is all web-based. So you just need a browser. You need a browser and a way to talk. So, back in the old days a client server where, you know, you had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the client server communications working. Decom, if you've ever had to deal with Decomm. Okay, you don't have to do any of that. So because they have gone to web base it makes it easier to visualize between the components. Because, you know, once WinCC is in the plant and they then you know If they're using other, you know, other Siemens products to visualize, it makes all that stuff talk. You're not gonna do that with third-party vendors.
Brandon 28:03
Yeah, and that's, and so that's what I was getting at is, is a lot of folks feel like that, Hey, if it's got a Siemens logo on it, it should talk. And the answer is, is it does. Of course Unified also brings out edge apps and things that we can do, Docker containers, that kind of stuff. But let's hop as we're rolling to the end. Let's hop. So we've talked about WinCC. So all the different, going back to the, going back to my outline here.
Bob 28:28
Right.
Brandon 28:29
So all of the different products, what we've talked about, so far we've mentioned the WinCC Unified. We mentioned WinCC Pro, professional. We've mentioned WinCC SCADA, and have we talked about WinCC Open Architecture?
Bob 28:46
Not really and you know it's kind of a short discussion. WinCC Open Architecture is a product that's unlike any of these others and it's not really predominant that much in the United States. It is something really completely different and the point of it is you know with WinCC Unified, WinCC SCADA we can go in and say hey we're going to have 128 clients or 64 clients. WinCC OA talks to thousands because it's all, you know, it can be Unix-based, Linux-based and stuff and you know it's whole model is built for applications that just have literally thousands of users, access points. So it's used a lot in transportation like the train system. You know the big tunnel systems like in New York I think is using it and you know the experience of building is completely different. It's you know it's a lot more technically inclined. There's a lot more scripting, there's object models and stuff but in order to do the kinds of things you're doing you know that you know you can either have drag and drop or you can have really, really, really fast performance but it's really difficult to have both. So WinCC OA is not so predominant here in the United States but it meets a very small set like if the customer is using Unix or Linux then OA is what they're going to have to go to. Another feature of OA is you know have they have this recording feature and if you think about a train system going through a mountain tunnel you know if there's you know an unfortunate accident or something goes wrong they are able to not only recreate the entire sequence of events before and after that event but they can replay them exactly what the operator saw you know what they touch, what the tags were.
Brandon 30:41
Wow so kind of an audit trail.
Bob 30:42
Yeah and if you think about when you're dealing with public transportation you know you want to do that. I've never actually used that option but I've talked about that option a lot and I haven't actually implemented OA I've talked I've kind of wanted to and I've had a couple of opportunities to jump on one but you know that one is is not one you're going to see a whole lot you know here it's just kind of a it fits a very small.
Brandon 31:10
You're not going to see it on a machine.
Bob 31:11
No you're really not yeah and it's got to be you know you're not going to just do an HMI on a small plant with that.
Brandon 31:19
So, all right, so let's start kind of boiling this down for the plant manager or the engineering manager in the manufacturing plant, trying to decide what he or she needs to get them where they want to go. So we mentioned two things. We mentioned WinCC Unified, WinCC Professional, but both of those reside within TIA Portal.
Bob 31:42
Right.
Brandon 31:43
So I would classify those kind of together, but those are going to be more of your machine level, HMI touchscreen type softwares. But then we go, and we talked about Windows OA, open architecture. That's not one you're probably going to see on a factory floor. So I'm just trying to boil this down because all of these say WinCC.
Bob 32:09
Right.
Brandon 32:10
And the number one thing that I do want to get across to the American public out there is software with Siemens is non-returnable. So we want to make sure that we get the right thing for a number of reasons. We want to make sure you get what you need, that it does and gives you, delivers the solutions that you want. We certainly don't want, and certainly our solutions partners know this stuff up and down, as do you. But then there comes down to WinCC SCADA. And WinCC SCADA, while I've learned today, thank you, has compatibility with WinCC Unified. It is not WinCC Unified, nor is it WinCC Professional.
Bob 32:54
That's correct.
Brandon 32:55
Yep. So let's jump in. That's really your world. That's what you do the most with iQuest, is WinCC SCADA. Is that correct?
Bob 33:01
That's correct.
Brandon 33:02
And judging by your YouTube, which is fantastic by the way, I've used it quite a lot and learned quite a lot from you. So if you get a chance, certainly check out, what's the name of the YouTube?
Bob 33:13
It's WinCCGURU, one word.
Brandon 33:14
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, WinCCGURU. Yeah, clever, clever, clever title. So certainly check that out. But let's delve us into, if you're talking to me, the engineering manager, the plant manager, what benefits, how could going with a WinCC SCADA system in our plant make me money?
Bob 33:35
Right. Well, it's a great question. Usually I end up asking a few questions back, you know, what are you trying to do? You know, what are your goals? And the beauty of WinCC SCADA from day one was built on the idea of open architecture and...
Brandon 33:53
Not to be confused with Windows, WinCC Open Architecture.
Bob 33:58
That's right. That's right. But open architecture, you know, as opposed to, what's the word? I just lost the word. Well, you've got custom-built stuff, proprietary. So here's the idea where with WinCC SCADA, it's got three scripting languages, two runtime scripting languages; one is ANSI C and the other is Visual Basic Scripting. And then there's an engineering scripting language, which is VBA. And so that's not for the runtime component. That's for the engineers. And so from VBA, you can generate screens, generate reports, you can populate stuff and that's for OEMs that are, you know, that are building things. So I usually ask, you know, what type of visualization are they doing? What type of reporting? Do they have any database interfaces that they need to connect to and just kind of get a general lay of the land. And the beauty of WinCC SCADA is that it's got so many interfaces as, you know, a very, well-respected Siemens AE who has retired now, Murray McKay liked to say it's time and money. You can do anything you want with the software and there's always a way. So there's programming interfaces, there's APIs, there's a visual basic automation interface that you can do it. So, you know, I used to say when I was doing a ton of WinCC work is I always got the, jobs nobody else wanted. You know, I'm doing, you're doing a lot of heavy scripting. I'm interfacing with databases. I'm, you know, pulling in drivers nobody ever used before. So WinCC SCADA can solve those problems and, you know, but it, it requires, obviously requires knowledge. That doesn't mean that WinCC SCADA is hard to use which there, you know, for a long time, that was kind of the philosophy people would put out or that was kind of the impression that people got. But it's just, you know, you have to know how to use the product and you know, there's, there's a lot to it. But WinCC SCADA gives you options to solve the problems that you need to on the plant floor. So I always ask about what systems are you integrating with? What are you communicating with? What do you want your output to be? And, you know, one of the big things that nobody talks about is reporting. I do a lot of reporting on SQL reporting services. And with WinCC, I can pull out information right out of SQL server and do the reports that they want. Yeah. WinCC SCADA. Yeah. WinCC SCADA. So it just gives you so many interfaces to be able to adapt to what, you know, the customer needs. And that's really the biggest thing because, you know, there's some things like, some of the other third party applications, there's one big gaping error here or there where you don't have an interface. You can't go in and, you know, interface with a tag database or you can't get into the runtime interface and things like that. So, you know, WinCC SCADA is always a way to get to that.
Brandon 37:05
Well, and you said it's a mature product. So it's been around for a while.
Bob 37:09
It really has and that, you know, and it's funny because, you know, all along this path that I've been with WinCC, when Flex came out, you know, they said, okay, you know, 2006, 2007, this is the future, SCADA is going to go away and it didn't, you know, and then when Pro came out, you know, and you know, then it was, oh, well, okay, we're, we're going down this TA Portal path. SCADA is going away. Well, the customers didn't want TIA, or excuse me, the customers didn't want SCADA to go away. It's one of the most used SCADA in the world.
Brandon 37:42
Yeah.
Bob 37:42
And so people loved it. And so now they're on this parallel path, you know, with a product that I'm very happy about, they're on a parallel path. So, and I think it's a great story. If you are greenfield, you want to go with Siemens, you want this engineering efficiency, you're going to use our hardware, you want interoperability, TIA Portal, boom, you know, however, you know, if you're, you know, if you've got a lot of equipment that's non Siemens and you want the capability, you can put WinCC SCADA in there. And then for your other greenfield projects, you can go with TIA Portal and Unified and the systems can still talk to each other.
Brandon 38:18
They're compatible.
Bob 38:19
Yeah, that's right. And the other thing too is, you know, the historian that they have can pull information from, you know, both TIA Portal as well as WinCC SCADA. And when you, you're pulling in your process data, having it sit in the same database in the same format, it really, really great. So...
Beth 38:35
Efficient.
Bob 38:36
Yeah.
Brandon 38:37
And there's a lot of. But there's a lot of HMIs out there that claim to have database interaction, and I've not found them to be ... and I'm not ... I haven't used every HMI platform out there, so don't hit me with hate mail. But in my experience, I haven't found them to be ... it's kind of like the Hertz commercial. It's kind of not exactly. You know, not quite. Either I can publish up to a database, but I can't really pull from a database. Or if I can pull, it's very, very rudimentary as far as the command structures. Whereas WinCC SCADA ... and I guess SCADA's in general, but you would expect that database interaction is just as easy ... I won't say easy, it's not necessarily easy with all SCADA's. But it's just as much a capability as being able to talk to PLC and pull information from PLC.
Bob 39:36
It really is because I always talk about database, matter of fact, I'm teaching a class on interacting with databases from SCADA and I call it an empowering technology. You think about the concept of trends. Every SCADA has got trends. Well, what is trends other than looking at how values change over time and then getting an idea of how your process is doing. You can't do that without a database. I've seen SCADA, that's doing it in CSV files or tab delimited files, but you can't ask questions of that. I can use a database to ask questions. How many times am I pressure kicking off? Is this one above the average of that one? Is this pump running more or less? And so the beauty of it is they've integrated very tightly with SQL Server.
Brandon 40:19
Mm -hmm.
Bob 40:20
And so it logs all of its data to SQL Server. They give you tools, connectivity pack, to get that data out and do reports. I do a lot of that with my wastewater customers, where you've got 900 lift stations. They wanna know which ones may be having trouble by looking at the data and comparing the two pumps. Is one running more than the other? That's the problem. Well, if you've got your data in SQL Server, you can ask those kinds of questions. You can't do that in a CSV file.
Brandon 40:49
See, that's the important thing. So being able to get the data into the SQL Server, that's what I think more, and I don't want to just say HMIs, but there's more and more, we're seeing more and more HMIs in PLC be able to publish data into a database, inserts. But being able to do more than a select, to be able to ask more questions and do more complex queries inside SQL queries, to really ask it questions and figure out things like the trending and things of that nature. That's where I feel like that, I mean, certainly SCADA versus HMI programming softwares, there's a differential.
Bob 41:32
Well, yeah, there is.
Brandon 41:33
But with WinCC SCADA specifically, it's got those tools. They've been around for a minute.
Bob 41:40
Well, the user archive option that WinCC has, which is one of the best options out there, they call it a recipe system, but it's a lot more. And basically, it allows two-way PLC to database interaction. So, you know, one way they, you know, there's two ways to use it, one is recipes, where if I have my process and I'm parameterizing it to build different products, I always like to use cookies. Okay, so, you know, if I'm making oatmeal cookies, then I got this much sugar, this much flour, this much eggs, I want to download that to the, you know, to the PLC, and then if I'm doing peanut butter cookies, I change it. All right, so that's recipes. But Siemens has built in the functionality where they use control tags, and this works in Unified as well as SCADA, where the PLC can actually insert records, delete records, look up records, and based on PLC logic, download its own without user interaction. The other use case, which people don't really normally associate with that, is production records. So if you think about, okay, I'm building this widget, and I need to keep a record when this goes out to a customer, what did it make on these tests, you know, your high pot test, or your frequency test, or whatever. And so we need to be able to take the results of all those tests, all the operators who did the test, so that two years in the field, something goes wrong, they can go back and look at it. Well, with user archives, you have the PLC has the ability to say, okay, we'll create a record when the widgets created and put on the line, it gets to the first station does frequency test, then it updates that record. Okay, here's the frequency test. Here's this, you know, here's the high pot test, here's the power up test. And then it associates the serial number of that unit and the ship date and the customer. So it's just created in real time, a complete production record. I've seen people have to script that I've seen people try to do it with tag logging, where they're trying to synchronize all these things, and it doesn't work. So, you know, they've taken the whole database interaction, and just made it drag and drop. And user archives is one of the best options out there that I've seen. And I've seen recipe packages and some other third party that's, you know, basically a CSV file writer. And it's just you can't ask questions of that, you know, you can't get that data.
Brandon 43:54
So I mean, you've mentioned a few things about the process industry and of course the discreet manufacturing and, you know, I'm definitely coming more from a discreet manufacturing background and we've been doing, getting involved with more people with process automation, of course, your process automation is going to be anything that's, that's, I mean, certainly we talked about water, wastewater, utilities type things, but also food and beverage, making the cookies and batching and things of that nature. So anything where it's not just a matter of firing a couple of pneumatic cylinders or, you know, telling a robot to move to this position or, you know, run this program, something like that's very discreet, very sequential, in the process world. But, and so SCADA certainly is used more. WinCC SCADA, I see it more in the process world than I see in discreet, but the thing that I'm going to say out there to the plant managers and the engineering managers within the manufacturing plants, discreet manufacturing, you know, more discreet automation is, and I think that's the point that you, you inadvertently made anyway, is that with the Siemens solution, you can have the Siemens hardware, everything on the machine doing the, the discreet manufacturing. So the Siemens PLCs, the Siemens Unified HMIs, things of that nature. But then for your plant more and more, we're doing things in the discreet world where we're shooting for you ask, what's the goal? I would say the most common goal or one of the most common goals is we want to do predictive maintenance. And so predictive maintenance starts with a trend, a trend line establishing a trend line and there's wonderful, wonderful little who I call an EKG method sensors that you can stick vibration. They can give you humidity. Balluff makes a fantastic one that we, that we utilize. There's other companies that make these things. And so different sensors that you're just kind of like an EKG on a human. You're not cutting them open to see what their heart's doing. You're sticking all these probes on them and then putting together that data to create a trend to figure out, you know, if things are going well or not. We do the same thing. More and more people are doing that with condition monitoring and stuff like that on machines.
Bob 46:04
Right.
Brandon 46:05
And these manufacturers bless their hearts. So they have these little sensors and they say, yes, we can do the predictive analysis, but the fact is there's not enough memory in that little sensor to do establish an effective trend and a trend line and, and a database makes that possible.
Bob 46:22
That's right.
Brandon 46:23
So, that's what I would say. If you're gonna, if you're looking to do that across the plant, to have a centralized system that will pull these things, certainly if you have Siemens throughout the plant with Unified panels, you're great, but Unified panels have only been around for what, four or five years. And so chances are you probably got some other panels in there, some other PLCs, that kind of stuff. WinCC SCADA gives you an opportunity to connect all those, to also connect that with databases, because we're doing, we're hopefully getting away from CSV files and things of that nature and flat files. And we're putting our data into databases as we, as we cross the gap, as we bridge the gap between IT and OT and, and in that we can create these trend line plots to where we can actually with WinCC SCADA and the tools that are in there and experts like Bob Meads from iQuest coming in and making it happen to where you can get it to tell the story and, and monitor a trend line plot that may take months to develop, may take years to develop, to say this, this bearing, this motor, this heater, this fan, this pump, or just, you know, whatever a robot, you know, on the robot, people are sticking stuff on the robots to see if they've got a joint going bad or something like that. So at the end of the day, to use those, that data to put together a trend, but you have to have the memory to do it.
Bob 47:54
Well, not only that, but having it into a database allows you to compare and synchronize and look for patterns. And that's really, you know, you talk about machine learning where machine learning is really just finding and identifying patterns. And so, you know, for predictive maintenance is actually a really interesting topic because you've got, you know, anything that the vendor has where they've done studies on, you know, how long it takes something to wear, what the characteristics are of the equipment, as it wears, it might indicate gasket going bad, loss of pressure, heating up, you know, things like that. And, you know, taking all of that into account, pulling it all together and then being able to ask the questions, spot patterns, spot trends. And, you know, that use case, excuse me, that use case is it's almost like a data aggregator where you're pulling things in so that you can do comparative analysis and you're right. You can't do that if your sensors are an island, you know, if they're out just kind of a one off and then you have to manually pull them together.
Brandon 48:59
Right. The important thing is to be able to get that data into something, SCADA gets us there. Because certainly there's a lot that are out there still that are OPC compliant, they're Modbus compliant, whatever. My experience with WinCC SCADA is it gives me the most communications options to the largest variety of stuff. The easiest communications, of course, is to Siemens hardware, but we don't stop there. And as you said, we've got the tools, you've got the tools to the communications tools, but also the programming tools, the scripting tools, all the things that there's not... If your ox gets in the ditch, there's a way that we can get it out.
Bob 49:42
That's correct.
Brandon 49:43
Whereas there are some products out there that you just finally get to the point where we just can't...
Bob 49:49
Can't get there from here.
Brandon 49:50
Can't get there from here. And I feel like that you're pretty confident that WinCC SCADA, that's a pretty high ceiling to get to that point.
Bob 49:59
Well, it really is and I've seen that movie you know I've been involved in a lot of projects where you know it comes down to myself professionally is understanding the problem that they're trying to solve and that's might be different than you know I've gone into plants and I say okay can you write a script that talks to a serial port to do this and I don't want to answer that question I want to say okay what are you actually trying to do because they're describing a way they think they can solve the problem there may be a different way to solve that problem and so I usually try to find out and understand what problem are we trying to solve and there's just you know there's been a lot of projects that I've done over the years where it got you know the you know the people working on it the solution got really convoluted or you're starting, you know, starting to write way too much scripting you're trying to you know to patch things together and you know sometimes when you're in an aquarium it's hard to see outside and you get your blinders on and so I have been in a lot of situations where I could solve that problem you know I've I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I couldn't solve a reasonable problem, you know, and it's just a matter time and money
Brandon 51:19
Well, and from an integration standpoint, from an integrator, programmer standpoint, it's nice to know that tools are there and available.
Bob 51:28
That's right. And one thing I'd like to mention to what you were talking about earlier, but recently in 7.5, 8.0, WinCC SCADA, they added a cloud connector and they added a rest connector. And so one of the things I was asked to do is one of my wastewater customers wanted to pull in weather information local to any given pump station. And so I can, you go up on the internet and find these weather services. And so they give you this rest connector where you say, okay, here's a set of internal tags. And I want you to call and get this information about the weather. They tell you, you know, your temperatures or, you know, flood warning, what's the precipitation, what's the humidity. And so they can then use that information to make decisions about, you know, say this pump station. Well, got a lot of, got a lot of rainfall coming. We're going to have to make some adjustments to what we're doing. And it's, I actually did a video on how to set up a weather service within WinCC. And there's so many rest servers out there on the internet that you can just connect up and just get information right into tags, right into WinCC. And the cloud is like, if you know, if you have these larger companies that have these big AWS servers and they've got plants all over the globe, they want dashboards not to, I want to see these three production lines, but I want to see these five plant outputs that are in three different countries. And I want to put it up on this, you know, this board. Well, so you have all those plants just push into one database in the cloud, one way, very secure, and they can have that. And so, you know, they're always thinking about ways to get that information in and out. And that's why I can say with confidence, you know, that's the one that, you know, if I'm going in and there's a hard problem, you know, WinCC SCADA is what I'm going to go with.
Brandon 53:29
Well, so I appreciate the use cases. Let's go ahead and wrap up. We're rolling in on 55 minutes. And so, yeah, it's been a great, a great conversation and I really appreciate you demystifying the WinCC terminology within Siemens, but also telling us about some of the things that you've done. One of the things that I will say is go to YouTube and search on WinCCGURU and find Bob's channel and check it out. Certainly, if you want to hear more about use cases, I'm sure you can get in touch with him through YouTube, but what's another way they can get in touch with you?
Bob 54:06
I'm on LinkedIn just so you can just search for iQuest or my other company iQagent. And you can also visit iQuestCorp, - C-O-R-P.com, which is our company website. We got a lot of information on training and everything there.
Brandon 54:21
Cool, cool.
Beth 54:22
And there will be links in the show notes.
Brandon 54:26
Absolutely. So Beth, what's your take on all this?
Beth 54:28
Oh, I've learned a lot. I'm going to have to, I get, I get to listen to it again. So...
Brandon 54:34
So now her work starts as we're wrapping up here.
Bob 54:35
I don't have to listen to it again, I get to listen to it again.
Brandon 54:38
Listen guys, we want to thank you for taking some time and and sorry we went a little over today. But again, Bob, I really appreciate you taking us down that path. I learned some stuff today.
Bob 54:49
I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure, I'm glad to finally get to come up here and do this with you.
Brandon 54:53
So our next topic, you don't know this yet. Our next topic is going to be, we're going to jump back to robots, collaborative robots, and we're going to be talking a little bit about some of the fun things we can do with that and for a very economical amount of money.
Beth 55:10
Is fire involved?
Brandon 55:11
It can be fire involved. So we will talk about robots and fire and how we can accomplish tasks, but and save money at the same time. So don't know what the title is going to be, but stay tuned. So that that's our next topic in line. So guys, we want to wish you all a fantastic month-ish, till and we'll have a new episode out. Certainly if you have any topics that you would like to hear us talk about or explore or consider, please leave those in the comments. And then of course, always like, and subscribe. That helps us to get out to more and more folks. We have crested 7,500 downloads. And so that's a win for Beth. So way to go. I don't, yeah, I hit it. All right. And so I always miss that one. And so, congratulations Beth on that and your hard work. We appreciate it.
Beth 56:08
We've got great guests, so if that helps a lot, thank you for being here, Bob.
Bob 56:13
My pleasure.
Brandon 56:14
So "Industrialutomation - It Doesn't Have To... Be a Mystery." That one's in the books. We look forward to talking to you all soon. Have a great month or so. We'll see you guys.
Brandon 56:26
Hey guys, thanks for checking out today's episode of "Industrial Automation - It Doesn't Have To..." I hope you enjoyed it. If so, make sure you give us a rating that's pretty doggone high and do that everywhere you listen, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We'd really appreciate it. Also, don't forget about our website. That's www.elliTek.com. That's e -l -l -i -t -e -k .com. If you want to reach out to us there, you can fill out our contact form. We'd appreciate it. Also, you can email us at info@elliTek.com. And certainly, for those of you that still like to dial the phone, give us a call, 865-409-1555. We'd love to hear from you.
