The holy grail of automation, whether discrete or process or hybrid, is to be able to begin with simulation, move to design, provide construction drawings, provide control schema, calibrate on site, and feed maintenance and upgrade information directly back to the as-builts.
This goal has moved closer as ABB and Intergraph have announced that Intergraph's SmartPlant design suite has been Industrial IT enabled.
It isn't clear yet how deeply Smart Plant has been embedded into Industrial IT and vice versa, but if you look at the capabilities of SmartPlant and the capabilities of Industrial IT, this is certainly a giant step in the right direction.
More info on this can be found on ControlGlobal.com (or will be, in the next day or two, anyway)
What do YOU think? Who else is this close to the Grail? Honeywell?
Walt
