I have little experience with Wonderware's Active Factory. Does anyone have an opinion as to the effectiveness of using it for reports? Specifically, using it with Excel. Does it fit existing Excel spreadsheets such as water treatment monthly operating report (MOR)? An associate of mine has used it a couple times and seems to think it is not very useful. I get a different message from the local rep.

Thanks,
Steve

 

I have used the original ActiveFactory made by Dataworks and now Incuity. Not sure if you are talking about the current Wonderware ActiveFactory version 9 (or later as I lost track of the Wonderware stuff). Either way, I found the Excel add-ins to be great but did require some work to create a report. The tool is only as good as the data in InSQL, and as good as the user wants. When you come across an installation that only give you a defined web report with no user flexibility, then you realise how tools like ActiveFactory are useful.

 

ActiveFactory has a component which 'plugs' into Excel called Workbook. You can generate Excel based report using the Wizards in this or you can use VBA behind a spreadsheet to query Historian (InSQL).
If you want the report published at regular intervals you will need Information Server which comes with later versions of Historian V9.

Another option is to use HMI Reports which will report from the Historian database and allow web users to view pdf reports. There is a free demo download on the Wonderware website.

Paul Edwards