制造智能软件弥合了许多差距，可以在许多边界上收集和共享信息：工厂地板和控制室，操作和业务管理等。它也可以提出挑战，而最重要的是，哪种软件许可方法可以使用为了成本效益，为每个人提供所需的信息。
Invensys(www.iom.invensys.com)recently announced that its Wonderware Intelligence 2012 software—which collects, aggregates and contextualizes operational metrics from multiple industrial data sources in near real time—is now available with concurrent licensing, in addition to traditional named-user licensing.
“命名用户许可证意味着该人和单独的人可以访问该应用程序，” Invensys高级应用程序营销总监Maryanne Steidinger解释说。“当访问应用程序的访问是间歇性完成的，例如每班一次或两次，使用了同时许可，而多个用户需要访问单个客户端站或应用程序。使用并发客户端与命名用户更容易，有时更具成本效益。”
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Consider this example: You operate a cereal plant in California with three shifts, six days per week. You want to understand the yields of each shift, such as material going in, material coming out, percent good, percent of waste, percent of rework, number of stoppages or unplanned events, by shift. You also have another plant in Iowa producing the same cereal product, so you’d like to understand the same measures, and you’d like to compare plant-to-plant efficiencies to know which plant is doing better. Each plant has six to eight workers per shift who are responsible for the uptime, maintenance, operations, etc. They use enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) software to track progress against key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as other process control software such as human machine interfaces (HMIs), batch management systems, etc.
“Because EMI is a dashboarding tool that shows KPIs, it is different from process-control- or automation-control-centric applications such as an HMI. Instead of controlling processes, it shows relationships between entities, such as energy consumption by shift, by line, by product, etc.,” Steidinger says. “This less-granular approach defines the way a customer would interact with the application, and usage is normally intermittent and ad hoc, often based on queries, much like a business intelligence application.”
样本操作可能会有额外的轮班人员在周末工作。由于用户改变，工厂需要不断使用相同的信息进行操作调整和知识管理。Steidinger说：“在并发许可之前，客户使用了报告产品的报告产品（共享信息）。”“它们会显示出输出，质量或能源消耗，但是您无法像智能/EMI软件那样获得方程式的维度或关系部分。这增加了工厂的报告和分析能力，支持更明智的决定，并帮助人员了解工厂的复杂性。”
Concurrent licensing reduces the administration usually required for such multi-plant, multi-instance intelligence software deployments. It is easier to administer because IT departments do not have to monitor usage as closely. “Concurrent licensing automatically limits the number of users that can access the application at any one point to, for example, five or 10 concurrent named users,” Steidinger explains. “The software uses active directory or some type of security measure to ensure that the person logging in is that user."
>> Renee R. Bassett，rbassett@automationworld.com，is Deputy Editor of Automation World.
