New distributorship

SolutionsPT has extended its product range to include a solution to the perennial problem of version control and change tracking in Automation control and HMI/SCADA applications. Versiondog is the leading application that addresses this requirement and its developer, AUVESY GmbH & Co KG of Landau (D), has appointed SolutionsPT as its Britain and Ireland distributor.

Versiondog is software for backing up, managing and controlling plant PLC, SCADA and robot control software. It provides a form of data management and versioning control which includes change history, and back-up and restore capabilities. Versiondog can be used with all leading vendor’s control products and also has binary and ASCII file comparison, usefully this extends to versioning Microsoft Word and Excel as well as PDF documents.

At the heart of this is the need to automate a very onerous and frequently overlooked task of documenting all the changes throughout the lifetime of an application; from the early stages of development through to adjustments that are precipitated through continuous improvement programmes and production changes –not forgetting the pragmatic maintenance changes that are made simply to compensate wear and raw material variance.

It records all changes automatically and (optionally) provides backup and restore. Changes can be both authorised and commented, and later may become the new ‘master’ version. This overcomes the accumulation of slight changes that lead to the automation scheme being increasingly undocumented with consequential support problems leading to extended downtime.

Potential customer benefits are; improved quality management and data integrity, disaster planning and recovery, project efficiency, reduced time to completion and overall cost reduction.

Versiondog is applicable to all of SolutionPT’s customers across many industrial sectors; in particular to manufacturing & industrial facilities in highly regulated or high risk environments, pharmaceutical, and other validated environments, food & beverage and to System Integrators within their application development and support services. Versiondog is functionally packaged according to intended use; such as facilities appropriate to manufacturers, process plant operators, machine builders and system builders.

Commenting, Paul Edwards, Consultant SolutionsPT, said, “Versiondog is very effective in providing an automated solution to version management, this will lead to multiple user benefits by removing a difficult and often overlooked ongoing task.”

Sue Roche, Manager, SolutionsPT, added, “Versiondog further enhances our portfolio of valuable and effective solutions that we provide to the Automation market.”