GE Fanuc Automation Americas, Inc., a unit of GE Industrial, today announced the availability of Proficy Change Management Version 5.50, a powerful tool to manage automation systems and protect software and engineering assets. This release provides significant enhancements with a focus on delivering better integration with GE Fanuc products, support for new programs, devices and functionality.
For companies to stay competitive they must keep their automation systems running securely and efficiently, said Gimmi Filice, Proficy Change Management Product Manager. Proficy Change Management assists in monitoring software and data assets, protecting against device failure or operator error and meeting government regulatory requirements.
Enhanced Integration with GE Fanuc Products
With powerful capabilities including security, version control, audit trails, central storage and automated backup and recovery, Proficy Change Management ensures that automation systems continue to run safely and efficiently.
With the new version, Proficy Change Management now provides enhanced compare capability for identifying differences between versions allowing for improved support for Proficy HMI/SCADA iFIX® and Proficy HMI/SCADA CIMPLICITY®. The compare functionality provides complete reports that identify changes made in the tag database and screens or picture files.
In addition to the existing project management capabilities for managing Proficy Machine Edition controller program projects, Proficy Change Management 5.50 provides the ability to schedule automatic upload and compare operations so users can ensure that the PLC program matches the master version on the server or make sure they have a backup of what is running on the PLC. This functionality is now available for GE Fanuc's Series 90-30, Series 90-70 and VersaMax® Controller projects.
A new email configuration tool allows users to configure what events trigger an email and to whom to send them. Triggers can be set up based on action, user, project name, project type, plant location and more. Individual emails or summary emails can be configured.
The new enhanced history report for viewing change history on a project now provides an HTML based report. The new checked out projects report allows administrators to determine who has what projects checked out where and for how long.
In line with Proficy's open and layered architecture, the new version of Proficy Change Management offers support for the Rockwell® RSLogix 5, 500, and 5000 projects has been enhanced. New functionality includes:
New compare utility allows specification of a data filter for each project so users only compare the data that matters;
HTML format compare reports to drill down to the changes;
New permissions restrict or allow the ability to Go Online, Edit Logic, Edit Data, Forcing; and
Force reports to identify changes to the forcing state and all forces that exist in the PLC.
In addition, the new version permits users to manage and control Wonderware projects. Version control for Wonderware applications allows users to utilize the compare tools to identify changes made to screens and tags. Publish and retrieve functions allow backup and deployment of changes to nodes.
The Electronic Signature capability has also been enhanced to allow external handling of the signature routing. The new Application Programming Interface (API) allows users to control how the signatures are handled for custom applications. And, a new utility allows the archival and documentation of existing Proficy Change Management databases as well as maintenance of a set number of versions or based on a selected date.