Data federation with industrial control systems

• US 20070078862A1
• Filed: 09/30/2005
• Published: 04/05/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Allen-Bradley Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated (Allen-Bradley Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: Chand, Sujeet, Kalan, Michael, Hall, Kenwood, Baier, John, Hood, Gavan, Briant, Stephen
• Granted Patent: US 8,484,250 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/4188 characterised by CIM planning or realisation
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31393 Object oriented engineering data management
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/31395 Process management, specification, process and production data, middle level
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/282 Hierarchical databases, e.g. IMS, LDAP data stores or Lotus Notes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/02 Total factory control, e.g. smart factories, flexible manufacturing systems [FMS] or integrated manufacturing systems [IMS]

Abstract

An organizational model of a hierarchical system can be distributed across various elements of an enterprise. Such elements include representations of the system that are maintained on higher-level business servers and other representations that serve control elements of the system such as programmable logic controllers and/or other industrial control components. In one aspect, an industrial automation system is provided. The system includes at least one controller to instantiate a portion of an organizational hierarchy. A communications component in the controller interacts with at least one other portion of the organizational hierarchy to facilitate data exchange and control between various components of an enterprise.

Claims

1. An industrial automation system, comprising:

at least one controller to instantiate a portion of an organizational hierarchy; and

a communications component in the controller to interact with at least one other portion of the organizational hierarchy.

2. The system of claim 1, the organizational hierarchy is associated with a user-defined hierarchy.

3. The system of claim 1, the controller is associated with a programmable logic controller, a communications module, an input module, an output module or a server component.

4. The system of claim 1, the organizational hierarchy having one or more data nodes and branches that are managed as a singular or collective entity while being viewed, managed or distributed across substantially all or portions of an enterprise.

5. The system of claim 4, further comprising one or more organizational units.

6. The system of claim 5, the organizational units are included within at least one other organizational unit.

7. The system of claim 5, the organizational units include physical locations or logical groupings of nodes.

8. The system of claim 7, the nodes are associated with at least one data item.

9. The system of claim 8, the data item includes a plant'"'"'s production and control equipment, tags, backing tags, objects, programs, equipment phases, or I/O devices.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising a graphical user interface (GUI) that forms an application view of a system.

11. The system of claim 10, the GUI integrates control system data with an information technology (IT) application.

12. The system of claim 1, the organizational model is distributed across a local network, a factory network, or a remote network that includes the Internet.

13. The system of claim 1, the organizational model is associated with at least one of an S88 model or an S95 model.

14. The system of claim 13, the line layer further comprises at least one of an equipment layer, a control layer, a production layer, a segment layer, and a miscellaneous layer.

15. The system of claim 1, further comprising a controller component that converts flat data structures to hierarchical data structures or hierarchical data structures to flat data structures.

17. The system of claim 1, further comprising a component to define at least one mount point in an organizational hierarchy.

18. The system of claim 17, the mount point is defined via a configuration component that defines which data objects are assigned.

19. The system of claim 1, further comprising at least one data object to communicate data from at least one node in the organizational hierarchy.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising at least one instruction to enable communications of the data object.

21. The system of claim 19, further comprising a component to tag a data structure as public or private.

16. The system of claim 16, further comprising controller scoped tags, programs with associated program scoped tags, add-on instructions, control routines, operator interfaces, or user defined information.

22. A computer readable medium having a data structure stored thereon to control an organizational data model, comprising:

a first data field to specify controller data structures;

a second data field to specify enterprise data structures; and

a third data field to aggregate the controller data structures and the enterprise data structures in a hierarchical manner.

23. The computer readable medium of claim 22, further comprising at least one of an enterprise field, a site field, an area field, a work field, an equipment field, a batch field, a continuous field, a discrete field, and an inventory field.

24. The computer readable medium of claim 23, further comprising at least one of a process cell field, a production unit field, a production line field, and a storage location field.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 23, further comprising at least one of an equipment procedure, a unit procedure, an equipment operation, an equipment phase, a unit, an equipment module, a control module, and a process cell.

26. A control data object communications method, comprising:

defining a data structure in a control module;

assigning the data structure to a network address; and

associating the data structure to a hierarchical data model via the network address.

27. The method of claim 26, further comprising assigning a public or a private data property to the data structure.

28. The method of claim 26, further comprising defining at least one node at an enterprise layer that interacts with the data structure in the control module.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising aggregating the data structure and the node via at least one network address.

30. The method of claim 26, further comprising defining at least one mount point for a controller.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising combining names of organizational units having similar names from different controllers.

32. The method of claim 26, generating at least one data structure to communicate hierarchical information of an enterprise or a controller.

33. The method of claim 26, further comprising defining at least one enterprise layer and a control layer in a network hierarchy.

34. A hierarchical object and control communications systems, comprising:

means for defining data structures in a control system;

means for communicating the data structures across a network;

means for aggregating the data structures with one or more enterprise nodes across the network; and

means for viewing the data structures and the enterprise nodes at a network location.