Asix in addition to standard visualization and control, it allows effective data logging, reporting and generating of graphical trends, alarms management, creating recipes, process visualization on Internet, multilanguage support, production monitoring and tracking. All this is available through scalable licensing policy to match the size of the project.

More than 13 000 user licenses are an impressive achievement, which confirms the many strengths of Asix when successfully applied in various demanding fields, such as:

• food industry,
• chemical and mechanical industry,
• automotive industry,
• steel industry, power generation and heating, coking plants,
• public utilities, smart buildings and telemetry systems.

Historically developed and offered in the market as a SCADA / HMI visualisation package, Asix has now many features to allow for its employment in applications for monitoring the consumption of energy utilities or the efficiency of machines that are already typical applications which carry out the functionalities of MES-class production management systems:

Recipe Management and Production Tracking & Tracing

The standard Asix package includes AsBase, a specialized tool for database maintenance, which is compatible with Microsoft SQL Server (also in a free Express version). It allows you to easily apply the recipes both in manual and automatic mode. Recipes are supported by the application using standard actions and visualisation objects, which means that the operator does not have to learn new control methods or the
complex database utilities interface.

In addition to recipe support, AsBase offers manual or automatic registration of predefined data records which contain selected technological process parameters associated with a specific product or batch through a unique identifier. This allows production flow tracking and generating production documentation for a single product or product batch. Such product history is often required for formal reasons in order to make the product identifiable and ensure its quality and is often the basis of production management analysis.

Manufacturing Assets Management

Optimum utilization of production resources requires the availability of information about resources and statistics how they are used. Based on data collected from Asix application, the new AsService module can log the operation times and the number of times the devices are switched on-off. This makes possible to alert the user to carry out the necessary maintenance and repair operations and report any missed maintenance and log the related technical data for each monitored device. The AsService module manages asset (equipment and machinery) database which allows you to collect and properly group data pertaining to all devices. All information generated and processed by the AsService module (meter readings, maintenance operations, history of operations, ...) is related to the equipment specified in the database. For each device, it is possible to define a set of electronic documents associated with its operation, such as operation and maintenance manual, operating instructions, test protocols, flow charts, and other documents.

Maintenance Support

Supervisory personnel often work in a tour of duty system and they do not have to be present on site all the time. However, they need to be reliably and promptly notified of any system abnormal operation or failure. AsAlert module offers this functionality in a smart way — the list of alert message recipients and the messaging schedule ensures that appropriate information reaches the relevant personnel at the given time. Messages can reach recipients in a variety of ways:

• standard electronic mail over the Internet using SMTP protocol;
• SMS text messages over GSM network;

Industrial IT / OT Data Bus Between IT and Automation Systems

A wide range of communication protocols available in the Asix package enables the use as an IT / OT data bus, ensuring communication between automation systems (e.g. PLC, HMI, SCADA, DCS) and IT systems (MES / MOM) and cloud solutions.

Raw and pre-processed production data and machine resource data is usually required at higher management levels. Specialized MES/MOM and ERP systems must be fed with the production data. Asix is a natural tool for this purpose – it has all the information, pre-processed data and analysis results. Asix may share such data with the use of standard OPC / OLE Automation /.Net / REST mechanisms or using other selected format. With such a link, the data is coherent at all levels, and its delivery to the higher levels in the management hierarchy is facilitated.