Why HMIs are everywhere

The near ubiquitous spread of HMIs throughout industry is due to the fact that they help companies make better business decisions by delivering, managing, and presenting information—in real time—in a visually compelling and actionable format. Incorporating HMIs into applications has been proven to increase productivity, lower costs, improve quality, and reduce material waste. HMIs help companies become more profitable by positioning them for change.

Three developments, in particular, have influenced industry’s growing dependence on HMIs, according to Gary Nelson, product marketing manager for InTouch industrial computers, DA servers, and toolkits for Wonderware:

• Improvements in HMI software;

• Ability of HMIs to visualize data more competently and bring information together where it matters most; and

• Increased and improved integration and connectivity technologies.

• “Companies are demanding tools that improve their business process,” said Nelson, “and HMIs help them do that by measuring the effectiveness of their processes and their machines. An HMI doesn’t just present data on a machine. It presents information in different forms to different people at different levels of an organization all the way up to the executive level. The QC manager evaluates statistics while an operator views machine performance. Plant floor data doesn’t stay at the plant floor level anymore, and the HMI is the key to moving that data.”

  Increased capabilities at lower cost are encouraging manufacturers to place HMIs at more locations, and to move into applications they hadn’t considered before.

  Burgeoning use of HMIs is fueled by their transition from pure visualization tools to tools that help manage the manufacturing process. In the eyes of Bruce Fuller, director of product management, control and visualization business for Rockwell Automation, “There has been a huge shift over the past decade in what people expect from HMI interfaces and software.” Fuller sees HMI software functionality being pushed into a wider variety of embedded devices as customers demand more functionality and capability on the machine as well as at the operator interface.

  HMI and PC merge

  The rising importance of HMIs is strongly affected by their growing ties to the PC world. As Prasad Pai, HMI/SCADA — iFix product manager at GE Fanuc, puts it, “HMIs are fast becoming an extension of PCs and of the IT department. They’ve had to become IT-friendly.”

  Greg Philbrook, HMI product manager for AutomationDirect, concurs. “The standard HMI is nothing more than an industrial hardened PC at a lower price. PC features—including trending, logging, Web, and email capabilities—are being incorporated into HMIs.

  Higher processor speeds are enabling animation, and drops in costs are allowing the lower end of the market to move into applications they hadn’t considered before.”

  “HMIs used to be dumb terminals,” said Ted Thayer, Bosch Rexroth’s PLC and HMI product manager. “Now they’ve become industrial PCs running Microsoft Windows. Technological advancements available at lower costs have opened a lot of doors. Improved system integration allows HMI system s to talk to many product lines, encouraging companies to increase the HMIs they use.”

  “But it’s not just more interfaces or more information that underlie recent HMI proliferation,” adds Jay Coughlin, manager of HMI Business USA at Siemens Energy & Automation. “It is more useful information. These systems let you store data, then simplify those data in dashboards.”

  Industry- and application-specific

  HMIs are incorporating more sophisticated software, enhanced graphics, tools such as wizards and informational portals, and capabilities that range from mobile and portable to wireless. Features that give users more reasons to apply an increasing number of HMIs include:

  Specialized software: Industry-specific software—such as application packages for water and wastewater plants and packaging industry operations—provides objects, modules, and sample screens specific to that industry. This allows, for example, easier and more efficient monitoring of fluid flow rates and pressures.

  “Users can overlay industry packs on top of the system platform because they are easy to integrate,” said Nelson, “making available more specialized information.”

  Enhanced graphics and wizards: Striving to help users streamline screen development, some vendors are adding animation and harnessing the power of wizards to make it simpler to build visualization screens by prompting users through the process. For example, “we’ve recently introduced a water productivity solution that uses updated graphics and wizards to help configure some of the more common tools found in water and wastewater management operations,” said Cerrato.

  Kiosks: Information portals or kiosks that typically focus on diagnostics provide an electronic source for manuals, training materials, schematics, and more. “These innovative HMIs make information available quickly at a centralized location,” said Phil Aponte, HMI product marketing manager for Siemens Energy & Automation. “An operator can view what’s happening on a nearby production line, or a maintenance worker can see a portion of a line that is down—all at the same kiosk.”

  Wireless and mobile capabilities: Mobility also adds to the attraction of HMIs. “Mobile panels give operators a way to move around a workstation, either on a tethered cord or on a wireless panel, a real benefit during start ups and when adjustments need to be made,” said Coughlin.

  Although interest in wireless systems has not been as great as some had anticipated, most believe acceptance will come, making HMIs even more valuable. Thayer admits he’s comfortable with wireless, but that the typical customer has not shown a lot of interest in it yet. “But,” he said, “wireless will come, largely because it lowers cost. It eliminates cabling that deteriorates, breaks down, or gets cut.”

  Industry-specific software packages help add detailed precision to specialized applications. this screen shows a backwash filter sequence for a water and wastewater management application built with a wizard designed to simplify visualization-screen development.

  Improved software and integration has led to an increased use of HMIs in manufacturing.

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