I would suggest hiring a company to make some suggestions on this. There are a lot of different software packages out there that can turn your raw data into usefule informtation, not just in the forms of reports, but also trending, data filtering, intranat data access, customizeable alerts (to email/pager/celphone), and on and on.
You will probably want to look into several differant information storage products than look for a company that has experience with both those products and Allen Bradley PLC's.
Another option is to find a product you like and try to get the company to send a representative out to talk to you. This way you can collect more information (even if it is from a sales person) on a system before trying to make a decision.
I have replaced a couple Wonderware installations here and there, but have otherwise heard good things about it. OSISoft makes a product called the PI System (Plant Information System) which collects, compacts, and archives the data. This system is not SQL Server based, so you don't get the easy driver tie-ins that you do with a SQL Server based system, but you do get the efficiency and so on of a system designed to store manufacturing data. Another SQL Server system that I have seen in use (though did not actually work with) was Mole. Several Georgia Pacific Sites were using this product and had managed to build a very large group of tools for it, but they have since made/started to make a corporate wide move to another product.
I would supply more specific information if I could, but I'm on theend-uswer software engineering side of things rather than the PLC side, so I try to run away when anyone starts talking about things like Alen Bradleys and data highways and such
-Tarwn
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