Challenges in Process Today

Today's process-based enterprises face a range of challenges, including:

• Increased competition. With new process facilities opening at an astounding pace around the world, there's more pressure than ever to cut business expenses, reduce waste, trim or eliminate downtime and boost efficiency. But there's one caveat — increased competition also means you can't sacrifice quality. In fact, in many industries, the pressure is to actually improve product quality while boosting efficiency.
• Aging technology. Many process plants and operations are sitting on aging distributed control systems that are difficult and expensive to service, and aren't flexible enough to accommodate the rapid changes required by the new economy. Other process plants and operations with PLC solutions in place are also facing diminishing returns. But what's next? How do you make sure you take advantage of contemporary technology to give you a step up on your competitors, and how do you make sure you'll be able to stay current as technology changes?
• Lack of Visibility. Access to accurate, timely data is no longer optional. In this new economy, each decision-maker in the manufacturing chain needs real-time access to the information appropriate to them in their role, from the maintenance and operations teams to plant management to the VP of supply chain. The problem is that many of the control and data solutions in place can't provide that visibility. Whether it's because there are unintegrated control systems running in different areas of the plant, or because there's less-than-perfect integration between the plant-level control systems and enterprise-level information systems, key people don't have the information they need to optimize efficiency.
• Increased regulatory oversight. New regulations and enhanced quality standards are requiring improved data collection and transparency at the plant and enterprise level. Whether it's new constraints for pharmacological industries from the FDA or increased data storage as a result of the Bioterrorism Act, you need to be able to access more information about your processes and products than ever before. And it makes good business sense, too. After all, being in full control of your process, being able to double-check quality and achieving total transparency are all valuable business objectives. Being safe means being smart.
• Increasingly varied consumer demand. Once upon a time, there was only one flavor of corn chip. Now, whether you're in food and beverage, pharmaceutical, life sciences, personal care or even pulp and paper, consumer demand and increased competition mean that you have to offer more products from the same facilities. To meet that demand, you need the flexibility and agility to add products and change formulas easily and quickly, without a lot of downtime.

How GE Fanuc Process Solutions Can Help

GE Fanuc's Process Solutions with our qualified systems integrators and professional services teams has the domain expertise to help solve the most challenging process needs. These solutions leverage our process automation and control system, Proficy Process Systems that provides complete process control for continuous, batch and hybrid production systems. It provides the power and depth traditionally associated with distributed control systems with the openness, flexibility and price affordabiliity associated with PLC-based solutions. Architected into our control system, proficy allows us to close the information and automation gap, simply layering on production management, analytic, and optimization.

For process enterprises, Proficy Process Systems can offer significant help overcoming the challenges of today — and tomorrow.

• Integration. Proficy Process Systems can handle all parts of your hybrid system, from continuous to batch to discrete, guaranteeing complete integration across all areas of your plant.
• Visibility. Because Proficy Process Systems closes the gap that has long existed between information and automation layers,  you'll benefit from total integration between control systems and enterprise-level information systems. That translates into real-time visibility and control of production, inventory and materials. And because it provides a meaningful role-based context for information, it means the right people have the right tools to optimize their processes at every level.
• Accountability. Proficy Process Systems provide for the collection, storage and retrieval of complete and accurate production data to meet both existing and new regulations. Traceability, genealogy, security and quality reporting standards — they're all part of the package if you need them. And it also provides for user-based security, e-signature, and other key capabilities for regulated markets.
• Flexibility. Forget proprietary, custom-coded systems — Proficy Process Systems is developed with a commitment to openness, flexibility and modularity. That means you can invest in an individual application or a fully integrated suite of solutions, depending on your needs. It means you can add new skus to your line, or change the formulas as business requirements dictate. With Proficy Process Systems, you're in control.