Your existing HMI/SCADA system continues to run critical operations—but new requirements are emerging. You may need richer reports, edge data collection, third-party connectivity, remote support, or data for enterprise analytics. FactoryTalk® Optix™ can add these capabilities alongside your current system, helping you modernize without replacing what already works.
FactoryTalk® View SE + FactoryTalk Optix
FactoryTalk View SE continues to be a proven foundation for large-scale HMI/SCADA applications, PlantPAx® systems, and integrated Windows-based architectures. For many organizations, it remains the right platform for supervisory visualization, alarming, system-wide control, and operator interaction.
As operations teams look to do more with the data already available in their systems, FactoryTalk Optix can be added alongside FactoryTalk View SE to support new digitalization, reporting, edge, and connectivity use cases. This allows users to extend an existing FactoryTalk View SE deployment without changing the core supervisory system or disrupting established operator workflows.
For example, FactoryTalk Optix can be used to create PDF reports, build dashboards from real-time or historical data, connect to local or remote databases using ODBC, and share information with higher-level systems. It can also help introduce edge capabilities through scalable deployments that use protocols such as MQTT, while supporting data contextualization through OPC UA information modeling.
FactoryTalk Optix can also broaden connectivity options by supporting third-party device communication through built-in drivers for common industrial automation protocols, including Modbus, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Omron, Beckhoff, and CODESYS. When remote support is needed, integration with FactoryTalk® Remote Access™ can help provide a secure way to maintain projects, troubleshoot systems, and support devices remotely.
In this way, FactoryTalk Optix does not replace the value of FactoryTalk View SE. Instead, it gives machine builders, system integrators, and End Users a practical way to add new reporting, edge, connectivity, and remote-access capabilities around an existing HMI/SCADA investment.
Learn more about how FactoryTalk Optix can extend FactoryTalk View SE on the Rockwell Automation Knowledgebase (login and TechConnect℠ access required).
PlantPAx + FactoryTalk Optix
PlantPAx continues to provide a proven, integrated DCS platform for process applications, combining scalable system architecture, controller-based process strategies, and a consistent operator experience. As process systems expand with new skids, equipment, or unit operations, applications can benefit from adding a local operator interface closer to the process while maintaining alignment with the broader PlantPAx system.
Starting with PlantPAx version 5.40, OptixPanel™ or an ASEM™ 6300 IPC with FactoryTalk Optix Runtime can be added as a connected field operator interface within a PlantPAx system. This gives users a purpose-built option for local visualization and equipment-level interaction while preserving the PlantPAx architecture and supervisory operator environment.
FactoryTalk Optix can also leverage enhanced operator faceplates and common process objects from the Rockwell Automation Library of Process Objects, helping create a more consistent experience for operators who need simplified interactions at the skid, equipment, or field level.
In this way, FactoryTalk Optix complements PlantPAx by extending visualization to local field-panel applications without changing the role of PlantPAx as the core process control system.
Learn more about using FactoryTalk Optix with PlantPAx and the Rockwell Automation Library of Process Objects.
PanelView™ Plus + FactoryTalk Optix
PanelView Plus continues to be a trusted, easy to use, and widely deployed operator interface for many machine builders and End Users. In many applications, it remains a reliable, full-featured terminal that can continue serving the operator experience for many years to come. Rockwell Automation is also helping ensure the longevity of this platform with the planned release of the PanelView Pro series as a light touch migration without requiring a conversion utility. As requirements evolve, however, you may need to add capabilities such as storing data locally, and sharing it with higher-level systems, supporting dashboards or reporting, or enabling remote maintenance and troubleshooting.
A cost-effective way to meet these new requirements is to add a headless edge device running FactoryTalk Optix alongside the existing operator terminal. OptixEdge™ is a compact, standalone edge device with an embedded FactoryTalk Optix Runtime entitlement, making it easy to collect, analyze, store, and share machine data while keeping the existing PanelView Plus in place. For Logix-based systems, Embedded Edge Compute offers a chassis-based option that brings similar edge data collection and processing capabilities closer to the control system, also with an embedded FactoryTalk Optix Runtime entitlement. With either approach, machine builders and End Users can add modern edge, connectivity, and data-management capabilities to existing deployments without changing the operator interface or significantly disrupting operator workflows, or taking on a full rip-and-replace.
OptixEdge and Embedded Edge Compute can also support FactoryTalk Remote Access, helping provide a secure option for remote support, maintenance, updates, and troubleshooting when those capabilities are needed.
