UNS: Unified Namespace

Digital Transformation is all about data, and companies will only achieve this goal if they manage their data differently than in the past. A Unified Namespace (UNS) is the architectural foundation of successful Digital Transformation initiatives because it enables you to make data accessible from your entire enterprise to a single database.

What Is MES?

Simply put, a MES system is used to monitor and manage work-in-process on the factory floor, covering resource scheduling, production workflows, recipe management, traceability, inventory, quality assurance, document control, and more. A successful implementation of MES software will not only improve efficiency, but make manufacturers into better businesses.

NERC CIP Best Practices with Inductive Automation and Ignition

This guide addresses best practices for using Ignition and working with software vendors in a CIP-compliant way, with recommendations based on specific CIP standards.

Using Keycloak with Ignition

Keycloak is an open-source Identity and Access Management solution for adding authentication to applications or services. With Ignition, Keycloak functions as an Identity Provider to authenticate users and define roles to access client/session views.

What Is a Panel PC?

Most people are familiar with PCs (Personal Computers), but far fewer understand the difference between a retail PC and a panel PC. Whereas PCs are typically found in offices, panel PCs are specialized units designed to be used on or near machines in industrial environments like plant floors or remote sites. Panel PCs are built specifically to run HMI/SCADA software that allows operators to monitor and control processes in virtually every industry, including food & beverage, oil & gas, automotive, water & wastewater, and many more.

21 CFR Part 11 and Pharmaceutical Best Practices with Ignition

This guide addresses Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 21 CFR Part 11, Data Integrity and Good Automated Manufacturing Practices (GAMP). It provides best practices and guidelines supporting regulated Ignition applications in the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries.

Digital Transformation: Your Guide to Business Success

Digital Transformation is not just a buzzword or a passing fad businesses can afford to ignore. It’s the evolution of business.

What SCADA Systems Need in the Modern Era

Learn about the features you need to guarantee that a SCADA system is powerful and flexible enough to excel in the modern era.

Ignition Server Sizing and Architecture Guide

This guide is intended to provide some tips to help you determine the correct architecture depending on your requirements. It is important to note that any architecture that you come up with needs to be fully tested and verified. Throughout that process you can observe the performance characteristics of the server in order to make any necessary adjustments to the architecture. There is no guarantee on performance since it is based on your design choices.

Ignition 8 Deployment Best Practices

Inductive Automation provides this helpful guide for deploying Ignition applications. The guide offers Ignition 8 best practices for setting up development and testing workflow.

PLC: Programmable Logic Controller

Learn Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) basics: what it is, what its functions are, how it operates, and its importance in the world of automation.

3 Major Reasons Why Water Utilities Choose Ignition

Inductive Automation serves 600-plus water/wastewater facilities around the world and the number keeps growing. As more and more water utilities face the need to upgrade their current aging SCADA systems or install brand-new ones, we teamed up with Water & Wastes Digest to take a closer look at three of the biggest reasons why our customers choose Ignition for their projects.

Let's Encrypt Guide for Ignition

Ignition 8.0.3 introduces support for hot-reloading the Gateway’s SSL keystore. This capability enables Ignition to play well with services such as Let’s Encrypt which provide for automatic SSL certificate management. This article walks through one example for integrating Ignition with Let’s Encrypt.

Design Like a Pro: Best Practices for IIoT

The industrial automation industry is benefiting from the incredible opportunities made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT). While the IoT has shown promise within the corporate and consumer environment, there is a great opportunity to unlock the data in the industrial space.

Combining the Best of OT and IT

Two worlds are converging as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) takes the controls industry by storm. This white paper examines how professionals from Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) can find common ground to establish the IIoT. Through IIoT solutions such as MQTT, a lightweight communications protocol, industrial organizations can gain the ability to easily collect data from large remote systems and share it with the enterprise level.

Inductive Automation Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

This document outlines information on Ignition versioning, release schedule, security/vulnerability fixes, and an overview of our Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) including Quality Assurance (QA) processes.

What Is A System Integrator?

Whether you call them “control system integrators,” “systems integrators,” “system integrators,” or just “integrators,” these technology professionals combine different hardware, software, and communication protocols to create an automation system for their customers, and they are becoming increasingly important with the rising adoption of new automation technologies.

Experience The Updated Ignition Water Treatment Demo App

This demo is a vivid showcase of how Ignition's capabilities, such as real-time control, historical trending, alarming, reporting, and more, can be leveraged to enhance water treatment management and operational efficiency.

What Is Edge Computing?

Edge computing means moving computation and data storage capabilities closer to the source of data. Narrowing the distance between data generation and collection can reduce latency, bandwidth usage, and overall cost for the enterprise.

Enhancing the Student Learning Experience Via Ignition Software

Dr. Saeed Farahani, an Assistant Professor of Smart and Hybrid Manufacturing Systems at Clemson University, provided a dynamic real-world learning experience that reinforces engineering theory for automotive and mechanical engineering students with a semester-long class project utilizing Inductive Automation’s Ignition software platform.

See the New Ignition Data Center Demo App

Made specifically for the Data Center industry, the new demo app is a highly realistic, detailed view of what a real Ignition project for data centers looks like.

Hosted/Multi-tenant Ignition Cloud Edition Guidance

Inductive Automation is proud to permit the licensing use of hosted and multi-tenant applications at no additional cost to the licensee when using Ignition Cloud Edition. Hosting enables flexible resource sharing and “pay as you go” service models. Multi-tenancy can enable the broad delivery of custom Ignition applications as a service. This change enables new service provider roles with the potential to benefit the greater Ignition community. However, these models inherently introduce risk to stakeholders.

What Does ‘Ignition Edge Ready’ Mean?

Ignition Edge is a line of limited, lightweight software solutions designed for the edge of the network. Ignition Edge solutions allow you to easily and affordably expand your system to capture, process, and visualize critical data at the edge.

Choosing the Best SCADA Software: 6 Important Features

Discover how to choose the best Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, with the six features you need and how to choose the right vendor.

New to Ignition? Learn the Lingo With This Glossary.

When you're a newcomer to the world of Ignition, it’s exciting to learn about all of the things you can do with it, but there are also some challenges. One of the challenging things is learning the various terms and acronyms associated with Ignition and with industrial automation in general. To help with that, we've put together this glossary of some of the most common terms that you'll hear. Along with a short definition, each term includes a link to further information. We hope this helps jumpstart your Ignition journey.

Integrating SQL Databases and SCADA to Maximize Efficiency and Reliability

SQL databases have been working in the background of many different systems for decades, but even today there are some who are hesitant to mix SQL with industrial automation software like supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). However, as more SCADA software users feel the pressure of keeping up in today’s connected, data-driven world, SQL has received more well-deserved attention.

How the Integrators at Automation Group Leverage Ignition to Support Culinary Oil Producers

Automation Group used Ignition to help two culinary oil companies solve critical problems and achieve positive results in their Digital Transformations.

Building a Sustainable and Secure SCADA System

This article offers guidelines for designing a SCADA system for water utilities, with five steps for sustainable SCADA and three security recommendations.

Ignition Security Hardening Guide

Included in this document are guidelines specifically for the Ignition software, as well as general suggestions regarding the hardware and network where Ignition is installed. The steps provided are recommendations rather than requirements and should be reviewed for relevance in each implementation.

How 3 Food & Beverage Companies are Tackling Problems with Ignition

When looking for an answer to their security and automation needs, three American companies — Chobani, MadTree Brewing, and SugarCreek — adopted Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform.

4 Water Districts Revitalized With Ignition

Four water districts in the U.S. switched their water district SCADA system to Ignition and reap the benefits of state-of-the-art technology.

Checklist: Avoid Visualization, Alarming & Security Mistakes

No matter how much experience we have, we all make mistakes sometimes. Fortunately, Ignition gives you the tools to not only fix those mistakes, but turn them into strengths when you’re developing projects in the future. Below, we’ve compiled a checklist of common mistakes and corresponding solutions to review before you start building so you can get your projects developed quickly and running as efficiently and securely as possible.

7 SCADA Security ‘Do’s’ & 4 SCADA Training ‘Don’ts’

At Inductive Automation, we’ve always tried to assist integrators and end users by sharing valuable information. As with all things in life and automation, that means spreading awareness about what you should do as well as what you shouldn’t. In that spirit, we’ve collated two recent articles from Water & Wastes Digest that examine best practices to help keep your system safe along with training misconceptions to avoid so that nothing holds your organization back.

How Sierra Nevada Brewing Company Uses Ignition to Manage All Aspects of its Business

In evolving from a small regional brewery to become the nation’s third largest craft brewing company, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has worked with Inductive Automation and used Ignition to help itself scale, operate more efficiently, increase visibility, and make more informed, data-driven decisions.

Checklist: Avoid Common Project Mistakes in Data Collection, HMI Design & Scripting

It’s easy to make mistakes. We’ve all done it! Sometimes we complete a task in an inefficient or overly complex way. Other times we only discover a mistake after the fateful copy/paste that breaks an entire screen. Luckily, with Ignition it’s just as easy to fix mistakes and in the process create reusable assets that save development time. Below, we’ve compiled a checklist to help you avoid common mistakes and make your project as efficient as possible.

How Four Roses Bourbon Used Ignition-Based Solutions to Modernize its Production Processes

Four Roses Bourbon, distilled in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, is one of the leading bourbon brands in the world, known for award-winning handcrafted bourbon. But in its production processes, the company was relying on Excel spreadsheets, handwritten notes, and manual processes.

Ignition Historian

Ignition historian functionality is a robust set of features built into Ignition modules, providing data acquisition, storage, retrieval, and visualization. As with everything else in Ignition, its SCADA historian functionality is modular, and this document covers the modules for those features.

How Meister Cheese Uses Ignition to Streamline its Manufacturing Operations

Meister is an award-winning cheesemaker in Muscoda, Wisconsin. The company has been in business since 1916 and is currently in its fourth generation of family ownership and leadership. Over the past 100 years, Meister has grown into one of the top makers of premium cheese and whey products in the world.

Technical Pathways Program Map

The Inductive Automation Technical Pathways Program supports career development for individuals who join the company as Software Technical Analyst and puts them on a path to more advanced positions in the company. Above is the map of who Inductive Automation employees can move through the program.

3 Ways Ignition is Modernizing Water Utilities

At Inductive Automation, we have always championed water and wastewater utilities, so when a recent hacking attempt in Florida caught our attention, it underlined just how vitally important yet underfunded water utilities are. We strive to provide free resources and affordable solutions for organizations with limited budgets, helping them to create cutting-edge systems without exclusionary pricing. Really, there’s nothing more inspiring to us than stories of how utilities are discovering innovative ways to upgrade their processes while saving money with Ignition.

Perspective Planning Checklist

To get the best out of your Perspective project, we developed this project checklist for you to use. While you can easily build your project in Perspective right out of the box, having a plan of attack will enable you to use Perspective in its full capacity. We recommend that you follow this checklist prior to your build to help jumpstart your project.

How Ignition Helps Water Utilities Do More with SCADA

We collected and combined three recent articles from Water & Wastes Digest about integrators and end users who faced very specific challenges and found that Ignition by Inductive Automation provided a perfect solution. Continue reading for stories of quick implementation that cut project deadlines in half, monitoring field operations remotely, and putting real-time data in the hands of an entire team with a server-centric system.

21 CFR Part 11 Compliance with Inductive Automation’s Ignition Platform

The Ignition platform can be configured to be Part 11-compliant, ensuring data integrity through implementation of ALCOA+ concepts. This white paper will discuss the various components of Ignition that allow for Part 11 compliance and implementation of data integrity principles.

SCADA: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition

A quick breakdown of what supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is, who uses it, its history, and an overview of modern SCADA systems.

HMI: Human-Machine Interface

A Human-Machine Interface (HMI) is a user interface or dashboard that connects a person to a machine, system, or device. While the term can technically be applied to any screen that allows a user to interact with a device, HMI is most commonly used in the context of an industrial process.

MQTT: The Leading Messaging Protocol for IIoT

Discover the basics of MQTT (once known as Message Queuing Telemetry Transport): What it does, what its advantages are, why it was created, how it works, and who uses it.

IIOT: Industrial Internet Of Things

IIoT promises to revolutionize manufacturing by enabling the acquisition and accessibility of far greater amounts of data, at far greater speeds.

Scalable SCADA: Deploying Ignition in Any Architecture

The Internet continues to transform the way business is done, industries are in transition, new markets are opening, and consumer habits are shifting. Even if your architecture is working well now, is it scalable enough to adapt to unpredictable changes?

Design Like a Pro: Optimizing Your HMI

To help you design HMI screens that are optimized to improve performance, we have assembled several design tips. This white paper covers some of the most powerful design principles you can use to optimize your HMI projects: analog displays, trends, emphasis, and navigation.

Four Ways Ignition SCADA Speeds Development

Have you ever been trapped in “development hell”? If you’ve been involved in developing software applications, you can probably relate to the feeling. Modern technologies offer many promising possibilities for your enterprise, but the actual process of development can feel endless and painful, especially for control engineers or other professionals who may not have extensive training in software development. In this white paper, learn about the development platform that goes beyond SCADA and gives enterprises in any industry the freedom to develop practically any type of industrial software application.

5 Reasons Ignition is More Than Just SCADA Software

In a competitive global economy, it’s crucial to make the most of every asset your company has, including your software. Although supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software is widely used for monitoring, gathering and processing data, and controlling automated processes, it has many drawbacks and limitations. To name a few: SCADA software is hard to customize, it doesn’t "play well" with other software and systems, it is very expensive to implement and expand, and it doesn’t let you easily access real-time data. See what sets Ignition apart from other SCADA software. Read the white paper for five reasons why you can do so much more with Ignition.

4 Graphic Design Tips to Improve HMIs

To help you design HMI screens that are optimized to improve performance, this tip sheet covers four ways to use one of the most powerful design principles to optimize your HMI projects – creating emphasis.

The 3 Most Common Design Mistakes

To help you make the trip as painless as possible, this tip sheet will walk you through a list of some of the most common mistakes made when designing an HMI / SCADA project, along with how you can avoid them.

The New SCADA Movement That Is Changing Manufacturing

Inductive Automation has made SCADA technology more future-proof through its modular, web-based, and scalable software called Ignition. Many enterprises have been held back from innovating by SCADA software built on outdated technology and sold under restrictive licensing. Ignition, which is best described as The New SCADA, corrects this problem with modern technologies: it is web-deployed, flexible, database-friendly, performs true real-time analytics, features rapid installation and development, and is platform-independent.

The New SCADA

Technological change may simply be a fact of modern life but the changes have become bigger and faster in the last few years. Currently, a wave of new technologies is driving major disruption in the manufacturing sector. Big Data and analytics, the Cloud, the Internet of Things, and mobile and social technologies are changing our world and will affect how the successful manufacturers of tomorrow operate.

Innovation-Powered Manufacturing

Business innovation stagnates because of outdated ideas about technology. Decouple from the 20th century and adapt to the rapidly changing manufacturing industry.

6 Ways to Sell Ignition Instantly

How can you sell Ignition more effectively? Focus on these compelling features that have been proven to capture customers' interest.

Smarter SCADA Alarming

One afternoon at a waste water treatment facility, an alarm goes off when the water pressure gets too high in one of the tanks. The alarm is set at priority level 4, which means "critical," but it doesn't stand out because almost every other alarm at the facility is set at that level. Besides, the operator can't acknowledge it right away because he's dealing with several other alarms that went off a few minutes earlier - which he doesn't yet realize are just "nuisance alarms."

Design Like a Pro | Part 1: Laying the Foundation for Successful HMI / SCADA Projects

Have you ever gotten to the end of a project and wished it had gone smoother? This white paper will walk you through how to set up your project from the start to reach a better end product.

Design Like a Pro | Part 2: Developing Dynamic HMI / SCADA Projects with Speed and Precision

Designing projects can take a long time and be filled with hours of tedious development tasks. Your workflow can be streamlined by using powerful time-saving tools - and understanding how to most effectively use them.

Design Like a Pro | Part 3: Securely Launching HMI / SCADA Projects

The success or failure of any HMI / SCADA project is judged by the final result. Learn how to put the finishing touches on your design and tailor it to fit your specific needs.

Making Your Old SCADA System New Again

When it comes time to update, it's a prime opportunity to consider switching over to new software that offers improved functionality instead of dumping more money into just keeping your existing software up-to-date.