General Electricals: GE Digital’s New Generation iFIX and CIMPLICITY HMI/SCADAs Increase Efficiency by Enabling Connected Workers and Centralized Deployment

GE Digital, a leading industrial software company, today announced new generation iFIX® and CIMPLICITY® software, its flagship HMI/SCADA applications used by more than 20,000 companies globally. Part of the Proficy® software portfolio, iFIX 2023 and CIMPLICITY 2023 can help to increase efficiency and accelerate development through native HTML5 HMI, MQTT, centralized deployment, and common portfolio configuration.

Designed to enable today’s connected worker with more than traditional HMI, new generation iFIX and CIMPLICITY can decrease installation and maintenance efforts using native HTML5 HMI with Proficy Operations Hub. This no-code/low-code environment also is engineered to support easier mobility, responsive design, added value with modern web functionality, security by design, and rich information where and when users need it, on the devices of their choice.

GE Digital’s new native HTML5 graphics designer and lightweight, scalable runtime are designed to offer a better, faster way to develop HMI. Companies can increase transparency and productivity with a unified operator experience that can easily combine iFIX or CIMPLICITY with other OT and IT systems, adding information such as PDFs, videos, SQL tables, work orders, and more.

“The industrial workforce today can be located both on-site and remote, requires secure connectivity and collaboration tools, is often using mobile handheld and wearable devices with operating systems ranging from Windows® to iOS® to Android®, and wants to be able to configure solutions without requiring extensive programming skills,” according to Craig Resnick, Vice President, ARC Advisory Group. “iFIX 2023 and CIMPLICITY 2023 address each of these requirements ranging from its use of native HTML5 and web-based design to its use of no-code/low-code technology, as well as providing users with low-bandwidth connectivity to an ever-growing number of IIoT sensors often being used for asset monitoring and management via its native use of MQTT technology.”

iFIX 2023 and CIMPLICITY 2023 provide a new MQTT5 client that can help to simplify communication and support operations optimization. The new client brings data from smart IoT sensors and devices into the SCADA application and subscribes to MQTT message bus data. Other new features for both iFIX and CIMPLICITY include screen-building accelerators such as auto-binding data and common configuration across the Proficy portfolio.

“Our customer-driven innovation provides a modern, web-based HMI that can improve operations visualization and context,” said Richard Kenedi, General Manager of GE Digital’s Manufacturing and Digital Plant business. “Not only are customers benefiting from our dedicated continued development, but also from the reliability and stability of these proven applications, which are responsible for monitoring, control, and visualization in thousands of diverse operations around the world.”

Based on decades of research and development in cooperation with GE’s renowned Research Center and the International Society of Automation (ISA), GE Digital’s HMI/SCADA serves in nearly every industrial segment ranging from automotive manufacturing and food processing to power generation and water treatment. As an example, Berlin-based ORmatiC GmbH uses GE Digital’s HMI/SCADA to automate biogas plants in Europe and North America, helping to ensure cost-effective, efficient operation. Working with GE Digital partner VIDEC Data Engineering GmbH, ORmatiC has achieved results that include improved visualization clarity with ISA-standards based HMI screens, increased operator awareness and faster response, 20% faster configuration, 30% higher reliability for biogas operations, and 25% increased biogas operations uptime with remote diagnosis.

In addition to new features available in both applications, iFIX 2023 brings innovation that can further speed development and increase reliability. These new features include centralized project deployment; a common model across iFIX and GE Digital’s Proficy Historian and Proficy Operations Hub; and TCP/IP-enabled failover that enables failover across networks/sites, supports architectural flexibility, and can ease disaster recovery.

Additional new features in CIMPLICITY 2023 are designed to simplify configuration and decrease risk. Features include GE Digital’s Configuration Hub, which allows users to define projects and leverage OPC UA discovery; a common model to which users can publish CIMPLICITY classes/objects for HMI development; and security and high availability enhancements.