Rockwell Automation launches the FactoryTalk Design Hub.

October 27, 2022 3:01 pm

The new offering combines improved collaboration and productivity for design teams by leveraging five core solutions.

Rockwell Automation, Inc.,the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, announces the launch of FactoryTalk® Design Hub™. Industrial organizations can now transform their automation design capabilities with a more simplified, productive way to work powered by the cloud. Teams of all sizes, skillsets, and locations can work smarter through enhanced collaboration, improved lifecycle management, and on-demand access to cloud-based software. The result is increased design productivity, faster time to market, and systems that cost less to build and maintain.

“In this new age of ‘work from anywhere,’ having centralized, on-demand design tools is critical for businesses to scale production and easily adapt to evolving customer needs,” said Brian Shepherd, senior vice president, Software & Control at Rockwell. “FactoryTalk Design Hub gives manufacturing engineers access to the full breadth of Rockwell Automation tools and capabilities in a centralized nexus for successful design and collaboration across their team and the greater enterprise.”

FactoryTalk Design Hub improves development and deployment of automation projects for industrial organizations, while adhering to the latest security standards and information technology (IT) best practices. It enables teams to access designs on demand from any web browser with software that is always up to date and flexibly scales users and compute capacity to meet project workload demands.

“The digital transformation of automation design capabilities requires both the cloud to maximize control system developers’ productivity, and it also requires that all software tools are connected to each other by a digital thread to maximize collaboration, scalability, and productivity,” according to Craig Resnick, vice president, ARC Advisory Group. “Rockwell Automation’s FactoryTalk Design Hub enables seamless digital thread connectivity between its design, visualization, digital twin, storage, and remote access software tools that provide control system developers with immediate on-demand access to all automation designs as needed regardless of their location, helping these companies to accelerate their initiatives ranging from digital transformation to IT/OT convergence.”

Companies are looking for better ways to solve their most pressing problems. Traditional software design approaches limit collaboration, scalability, and productivity. FactoryTalk Design Hub addresses these three primary concerns for all automation workflow design needs.

“I’m really excited that Rockwell Automation is putting the resources behind this type of development on behalf of control system developers everywhere,” said Doug Hoffer, senior automation engineer at Samuel Engineering. “This could become a really significant way to tie cloud functionality and analytics to the control system development process.”

FactoryTalk Design Hub includes five core solutions:

FactoryTalk Design Studio

FactoryTalk® Design Studio™ is a new cloud-native software product built from the ground up to improve system design efficiency. Available anytime, anywhere using only a web browser, there are no downloads or installs required and no software maintenance responsibility. Beginning with controller design, FactoryTalk Design Studio reduces development time by leveraging modern software development practices and an integrated version control system. Teams can collaborate more easily than ever with automated tools to share and merge changes, and project sizes can scale dynamically with support for multiple controllers in a single project. FactoryTalk Design Studio is ready to change the way industrial automation systems are created.

FactoryTalk Optix Software

FactoryTalk® Optix™ is a new product addition to the Rockwell Automation visualization portfolio. Known as “visualization for visionaries,” FactoryTalk Optix is the first cloud-enabled HMI product to be launched within FactoryTalk Design Hub. With FactoryTalk Optix Studio, users can design, test and deploy applications directly from a web browser. Optional cloud-based connectivity enables new collaborative workflows that allow modifications to be made from anywhere, anytime. FactoryTalk Optix is designed to improve processes, efficiency, and deliverables using a scalable, modern platform.

FactoryTalk Twin Studio

FactoryTalk® Twin Studio™ is an end-to-end automation design solution where users can design, program, simulate, emulate, and virtually commission in one cloud environment. The cloud-hosted ecosystem employs Rockwell’s best-of-breed software products and is accessible from anywhere using a web browser. FactoryTalk Twin Studio allows users to develop their next project better and faster by moving seamlessly across Rockwell design solutions, collaborating with teammates in real time.

FactoryTalk Vault

FactoryTalk® Vault™ provides secure, cloud-native centralized storage for manufacturing design teams. With its modern version and access control, FactoryTalk Vault with advanced Design Tools allows for greater insights into designs through in-depth analysis of controller projects. Teams can now spend more time working on projects and less time searching for files or working from outdated versions.

FactoryTalk Remote Access Solution

FactoryTalk® Remote Access™ enables secure connections to equipment, allowing teams to respond to needs faster and rapidly resolve production issues from anywhere. FactoryTalk Remote Access quickly connects domain experts to critical issues, no matter the physical location of either, increasing support response time and reducing the costs associated with travel and asset downtime.

FactoryTalk Design Hub and its core components will all be generally available by the beginning of 2023.