Industrial Automation may increase productivity and reduce costs for end customers, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to develop large projects when different technologies are required. That's why more and more businesses are working to develop relationships that can deliver a platform approach – thus reducing end customer's interoperability risks.
National Instruments (NI) is a US company and producer of automated test equipment embedded hardware, and graphical design software that transforms the way engineers and scientists around the world design, prototype, and deploy systems for test, control, and embedded design applications. Their "LabVIEW" software is known worldwide and used in many applications that graphically design test,measure, and control systems.
Advantech is a Taiwan based company and a global leader in the automation and embedded industries, delivering hardware and software solutions and services across multiple vertical markets. Industrial Automation is one of their divisions whose portfolio includes: Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), embedded automation computers, industrial touch panels, and video surveillance solutions amongst many others.
As the industrial landscape continues to move toward a more automated smarter environment, engineers implementing monitoring and control applications encounter increasingly complex systems. Such industrial control systems often consist of independent controllers managing specific, individual tasks.
As these distributed systems increase in complexity, control and monitoring tasks must be divided among several controllers networked together and ensuring proper operation of these kind of distributed industrial processes requires the input of system managers and operators. Communication and interoperability for these systems requires a new graphical software approach. The ability to view a system through software, with layers of abstraction and models of computation enables a domain expert to lead the innovation for smarter systems and empower a smarter planet.
The distributed system also requires new approaches for visualization. Devices like Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) offer direct interaction while web services and remote displays offer additional access to the system. LabVIEW supports visualization through multiple Oss including Window and Linux while also offering integrated web services capabilities for communication to embedded displays, smartphones, and tablets.
To provide a more complete platform offering, NI was looking to integrate HMI hardware platforms with their LabVIEW software to enable customers to integrate a complete system and ensure SW interoperability. NI has a Partner Program that works with key product partners to deliver more complete platforms with first class LabVIEW integration,clear technical alignment and strong product support. Robert Jackson, who is a senior Product Manager at NI and manages the NI Product Partner Program said, "Our goal is to deliver hardware and software solutions to our customers that include NI core technology platforms and well integrated complimentary products that are compatible with LabVIEW. What we liked about working with Advantech was their sales team was open and responsive to our needs and worked to communicate these to the Advantech corporate team. They also offered a nice wide breadth of hardware that matched our needs for platform completion."
National Instruments is a worldwide organization with a presence in almost every region of the world. They have direct offices in over 40 countries and regions. Advantech sells its products and services through a sales and marketing network that spans 64 cities in 22 countries. Together, they offer comprehensive total solutions and services backed by global logistics support. This enables Advantech and NI customers to continuously develop innovative technologies that impact millions of people worldwide.
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