RSTechED 2009 well received

Rockwell Automation hosted its 10th annual RSTechED educational forum in Sydney and Melbourne during October, with both three-day events packed with information and insight into today’s business information challenges. Attendees, who hailed from Australian and New Zealand industrial companies, OEMs and system integrators, were treated to a choice of technical presentations focusing on the key themes of manufacturing and IT convergence, sustainability and operational excellence.

“Sustainability in industry is obviously of increasing importance as the world focuses on environmental issues and cost savings,” said Keith McPherson, Rockwell Software director market development. “Harnessing the information - whether energy consumption, waste tracking or logging of raw materials - and making strategic decisions based upon that information, is a powerful means of minimising carbon footprint.”

The principles, said McPherson, are the same when it comes to achieving operational excellence. “Information solutions are about providing visibility throughout an entire process,” he said. “It’s no longer enough just to see into the runtime environment. Key information needs to be shared with other parts of the business, including operations management all the way up to the enterprise environment. We can now provide end-to-end visibility, allowing industries to optimise every aspect of their operations.”

In total, 33 different labs and presentations were delivered at RSTechED to over 250 attendees. The educational sessions were arranged into one stream of technical sessions and demonstrations, accompanied by another two streams of hands-on labs that enabled participants to work through a series of exercises.

Topics of note included FactoryTalk VantagePoint, the recently launched business intelligence and reporting tool for manufacturing. VantagePoint accumulates and channels data from multiple sources to provide real-time information effectively. Participants were also introduced to the soon-to-be-launched FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition - claimed to be the world’s first in-chassis historian, which collects data directly from the backplane of the controller. Historian Machine Edition is part of an overall enterprise historian strategy from Rockwell Automation.

“Although RSTechED started as a distributor and system integrator event, it has grown into one of our most important customer events,” McPherson said. “Even in uncertain economic times, industry recognises the benefit of keeping up to date with the latest technologies as means of maximising profitability.”