Our open, software-defined automation platform for discrete, hybrid and continuous industrial processes where different hardware and software are orchestrated into one cohesive system.
EcoStruxure Automation Expert is changing the game for industrial organizations and freeing your equipment from the closed, proprietary systems of the past.
Up to 70%
Improved engineering efficiency
530+
Active projects
80%
Reduction in recovery time after a system fault
Level up your productivity, efficiency, and agility by connecting industrial hardware and EcoStruxure Automation Expert software to work together seamlessly, even if they’re from different suppliers.
Independent lifecycles let you adapt to changing business requirements quickly.
- Keep your existing industrial hardware while updating to the latest process automation software.
- Make fast and easy system changes by reusing software designs from a shared runtime platform.
Combine your industrial applications and tools for actionable insights with automation system flexibility.
- Optimize your plant operations in real time with the most recent IT advancements.
- Seamlessly integrate Al, digital twin, and machine learning into your control architecture.
Embrace versatility and the software-defined industrial automation era with the help of single-line engineering.
- Automatically adapts and establishes communication between controllers, assets, and visualization devices.
- Enables bi-directional data and recognizes connected objects while preventing false connections.
Design and distribute applications to physical or virtual controllers and assets across your industrial automation system.
- Avoid machine or process overload with simple production unit additions and industrial software reconfigurations.
- Stay updated with event-oriented communications that support a distributed architecture.
Select your EcoStruxure Automation Expert software licenses to fit your specific needs.
Lite | Standard | Professional | |
Basic Features | |||
Topology Manager | |||
Collaborative Engineering SVN Client | |||
Application Online Changes | |||
Object Oriented Engineering Tool | |||
Support and Maintenance Services | |||
Access to private communities on exchange.se | |||
Support desk 9am to 5pm | |||
Advantage Service Plan or Customer First | Optional | Optional | Optional |
Supported Platforms | |||
Soft dPAC | 1 Max | ||
Soft dPAC High Availability | 1 Max | ||
ATV dPAC | |||
M251 dPAC | |||
M262 dPAC | |||
M580 dPAC | 1 Max | ||
Add-ons (per seat) | |||
AssetLink for Bulk Engineering | -- | ||
AssetLink for AVEVA OMI | -- | Optional | |
High Availability Engineering | Optional | Optional |
Real stories of challenge, success, and transformation that empower and showcase the impact of EcoStruxure Automation Expert.
Staying ahead in today's fast-paced business world means embracing change. That's where EcoStruxure Automation Expert comes in.
EcoStruxure is Schneider Electric’s open, IoT-enabled, interoperable architecture platform for plug-and-play innovation at every level, no matter the industry.
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Virtual PLCs: Virtual implementations of standard PLCs, now run in a virtual environment instead of on a dedicated hardware platform. The automation logic is still tied to that specific virtual PLC.
- Software-Defined Automation: A broader concept that touches the whole automation ecosystem, including the management of various types of automation hardware and software. It leverages IT insights to offer IT/OT flexibility not available in traditional industrial software. Control is not tied to specific hardware and users have the flexibility to run control where needed depending on their growing automation needs.
- Dealing with a single automation system hardware provider is challenging for customers, especially at times of supply shortages like during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many customers faced delays in their projects due to limited hardware availability and a lack of flexibility in choosing the right hardware for their industrial automation systems.
- Our plant automation software provides a hardware-agnostic approach allowing you to choose the most suitable hardware to optimize delivery timelines. With Universal Automation, many hardware providers support the shared source IEC 61499 runtime giving customers the flexibility to pick the hardware that best meets the project requirements.
- Control should not be tied to a dedicated PLC that may or may not be available in case of maintenance issues. With the Soft dPAC from EcoStruxure Automation Expert, you get the same functionality and performance as a traditional PLC with the flexibility to run on the edge and utilize a containerized agnostic approach for hardware flexibility.
- EcoStruxure plant automation software offers complete flexibility to move control logic around between your devices. With an asset centric approach, a customer can move the control to another device or spare on the network during a maintenance issue or to raise plant capacity. It gives the flexibility to maintain the running process while modifying hardware configuration.
- Cabinet space is often a limitation when designing the hardware architecture for a plant. Use Soft dPAC-based Edge Controllers to reduce hardware footprint by leveraging devices that offer control, HMI, historical data management, and analytics in the same box.
- By leveraging event-based control and IT connectivity, customers have an opportunity to truly optimize the process with our plant automation software. Native APIs and IT protocol support give customers full access to their plant data with the ability to interface with Schneider Electric-provided or custom-generated AI algorithms.
- Reusability is a key component with EcoStruxture Automation Expert. Each customer has the ability to customize their plant assets in their own personal library. These assets are then available to be reused in future projects and provide a “low code/no code” engineering experience.
- Full integration with AVEVA offer provides significant engineering savings over traditional industrial control options in the market. The plant automation software includes pre-defined library elements housing control logic and AVEVA System Platform templates, facilitating the configuration of the HMI canvas. Bulk engineering and reverse engineering Automation Expert plug-ins let you go directly from a traditional P&ID drawing to instantiating your control logic and HMI screens with a significantly reduced engineering effort.
- Open by supporting as many OT and IT protocols as possible to help the customers manage valuable data and integrate it with machine learning and AI tools for optimization. This also allows for tight integration of IoT smart devices and the ability to manage data from those devices.
- Agile by providing an asset-based methodology where adding a new unit or pump is as easy as dragging and dropping. This provides a low code/no code engineering environment where plant resources can be successful without having traditional OT coding experience.
- Flexible by breaking the bond between industrial software and hardware and allowing customers to move control logic around as they see fit. This breaks the traditional OT model by allowing customers to upgrade their hardware whenever they want with little additional investment in the industrial automation system.
Software Defined Automation and Virtual PLCs focus on a software-centric approach to industrial automation systems but there are some key differences:
Here are a few main examples of why it makes sense to migrate from a legacy control system to our plant automation software:
1. Hardware Supply Flexibility
2. Control Flexibility
3. Process Optimization
4. Engineering Savings
EcoStruxure Automation Expert supports and is tightly integrated with the full AVEVA portfolio, including AVEVA System Platform (ASP), AVEVA OMI, AVEVA Historian, AVEVA Batch Manager, AVEVA Engineering, AVEVA Connect, etc. This tight integration enables significant engineering savings compared to traditional automation offers.
Automation Expert features an asset-focused approach with pre-defined library elements containing control logic and AVEVA System Platform templates for automatic configuration of the HMI canvas, allowing for a streamlined engineering process.
Our plant automation software was built on OPC-UA as its communication foundation which is the preferred communication protocol used by AVEVA. This supports the native integration as Automation Expert library assets already have the OPC-UA communication configured with no additional engineering work.
The Soft dPAC by EcoStruxure Automation Expert is not just a virtual controller. It is a containerized, completely agnostic runtime that allows for not just virtualization hardware abstraction but logical controller abstraction. This is accomplished by using the asset-based approach with EcoStruxure Automation Expert versus the standard controller-based approach available in standard automation offerings.
The following limitations are now a thing of the past when using the Soft dPAC by EcoStruxure Automation Expert:
• No more closed/propriety systems with high CapEx costs forcing long upgrade cycles.
• No more non-customizable black box systems with no IT integration support.
• No more high engineering costs if plant needs to change over time or an upgrade is needed.
• Greater hardware availability and performance customization flexibility.
The Soft dPAC can run on any Linux device that meets various baseline performance requirements. This allows customers to either create custom configurations on their devices depending on their specific needs or use pre-installed Edge Controller offerings that require zero experience with Linux environments.
Industry 4.0 is all about smart manufacturing and digital transformation in the operational technology world. The goal is to leverage data to enhance productivity and create agility and flexibility in a very traditional manufacturing world. Our plant automation software perfectly aligns with Industry 4.0 as our goal is to create an open, agile, and flexible industrial automation offering.
Our plant automation software leverages IEC 61499, a new event-based standard that optimizes real-time control in the manufacturing industry. Event-based control offers quick data access, aligning with IT systems' need for swift data, and enabling easy interface with IT protocols like MQTT sparkplug and OPC-UA. This allows for efficient data management using machine learning and AI technologies.
EcoStruxure Automation Expert's Soft dPAC containerized runtime enables seamless integration with IT tools. Customers can use traditional IT management systems like Kubernetes, Docker, Portainer, Red Hat OpenShift, etc., to manage their containerized controllers.
Staying ahead in today's fast-paced business world means embracing change. That's where EcoStruxure Automation Expert comes in.