Wonderware Contributes to the Digital Transformation for Industry 4.0 (Part 2)

How does Wonderware Spain help industrial and infrastructure organizations address their digital transformation process?

In the first article on Industry 4.0, we presented the competitive advantages of Wonderware technology compared to other providers for addressing digital transformation processes. In this second article, we present our proposal on how we can address this transformation with a complete solution.

In this regard, we reaffirm that Wonderware provides the reference technology for the digital transformation of the industry of the future. In these digital transformation processes, it is very common to use the concept of Reference Architecture to help conceptualize the scope of projects and determine the most appropriate technologies, functionalities, and standards that apply to a given paradigm.

From Wonderware Spain, we propose the following Reference Architecture:

Figure 1. Reference architecture of Wonderware Spain (click to enlarge).

This Reference Architecture is based on existing standards and models and allows for the classification by layers of the functionalities that must be covered in a comprehensive digital transformation program for industrial and infrastructure environments.

As can be observed, the Reference Architecture is composed of six horizontal layers and one transversal layer to all of them called “Cybersecurity and high availability”. Layers 1 to 3 would form part of what has been defined as “Real Time Closed Loop”, while layers 4 to 6 would form part of what has been defined as “Near Real Time”. This layer definition can be applied to companies in the industrial sector as well as to the field of infrastructure management. The different Wonderware solutions have been mapped in each layer, taking into account the functionality they cover and considering that they can be deployed using different business models (SaaS, IaaS or On Premise). All layers can communicate with each other using different protocols and means (traditional and/or aligned with the new technological paradigms) that are also defined as a transversal layer.

Do not miss the next article where we will present in detail the components and functionalities of the 6 layers of our reference architecture.