Give engineers a tool, they can solve one problem. Give engineers a toolkit, and they can solve all problems.
That philosophy drove the development of automation products for the past 30 years. PLCs developed multiple languages so engineers could have the best tools for the application. HMI/SCADA products developed scripting and programming. Reporting solutions leveraged Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Microsoft Excel with Plug-Ins. Surely leveraging a tool that has 347 programming functions would meet everyone’s’ requirements…
There’s just one problem…
In the 21st century, there isn’t room for programming, scripting or significant system integration.
Engineer’s want one tool, the right tool, for fixing their problems.
This was highlighted during a recent demonstration of Dream Report, where the customer asked a simple question about result formatting. Our answer was just as simple. You do it like this – click- click – no programming and no scripting. Her reaction? “I’ve been doing my reports in Excel, and it is so frustrating. I know Excel can do most anything, but it takes me so long to find what I need. You’ve made it so easy.” She had her State of Florida EPA Report done the next day.
That’s when it dawned on me. Of course, we’re not just delivering an incrementally better tool, we’re delivering the right tool. The tool for industrial data management. It is straight forward and obvious, because it isn’t encumbered with hundreds of needless functions that don’t apply to our industrial world. It knows what you are trying to do, because it’s purpose built to solve these problems. It delivers the exact feature set needed for compliance and performance calculations over the equipment and processes in our world of automation. More important, it integrates with, looks like and works like most other automation products. That makes it easy to learn and logical to apply.
If you’re leveraging business tools for industrial applications, you’re needing to ignore far more functionality than you will be using. That gets in the way, complicates your life and slows you down. Microsoft Excel is a great example, with its 347 functions, or the programming, scripting or technology integration you need to do with other products to get them to generate results that are unique to industrial automation.
With Dream Report, You can create an EPA Report for Water and Wastewater, customized to your plant in hours and minutes, not days or weeks. In Life Sciences, you can generate batch quality reports and validation reports, with 21 CFR Part 11 compliance, without any custom development. In heat treat applications, you can generate Thermal Uniformity Reports, quickly and easily, because Dream Report understands your world. And so it goes, for every industry.
The bottom line? If you’re building reports or dashboards to generate compliance and/or performance information, then Dream Report is the right tool.