China Rail: Integrating 60 third party products

 

The Wonderware System Platform solution implemented by Easyway for the China Ministry of Railways revolves around  what they call the Passenger Information System. It basically is a large scale, multi-site Facilities Management System that takes care of all the high speed line's train stations accross China. This involves a number of highly important  functions:

1. Communications equipment monitoring, including the public address system
2. Passenger and train information screens, displays and signage
3. Automated ticket sales booths
4. Closed circuit television monitors
5. Safety systems.

More than 60 different third-party vendors

 

The Passenger Information System manages software and hardware from different third party vendors and this proved to be one of the main challenges. The complex rail network involved the collaboration of more than 60 different third-party vendors for each station’s facilities management system. To manage the station technology infrastructure, the China Ministry of Railways engaged the services of Easyway Company Limited, an Invensys Ecosystem Partner that specializes in railway solutions.

 

Easyway chose the Wonderware System Platform as the main software to connect all these different products and vendors together to form the Passenger Information System. 

 

System Platform Provides Extensibility

 

System Platform provided a single, extensible platform for all SCADA, supervisory HMI and MES required by railway operators to manage overall facility operations. System Platform also provides a simple upgrade path to easily add new software and hardware to the system.

“We had three or four choices before selecting Invensys. We eventually selected Wonderware System Platform due to two main reasons: first, we believed it had the capability to rapidly meet the requirements of our client, and we thought it could meet the time requirement after evaluation; second, we thought the stability of this system was unique. Experience proves that our choice was correct. From the initial operation in 2008 until today, no problem due to the System Platform has caused any system failure.”

 

Shao Xiaofeng

Vice president, Easyway

 

More information

 

In my next post, I'll talk about the scalability requirements at the China Ministry of Railways. In the meantime, if you want to know more about how Wonderware helps solve Transportation Industry requirements, please visit the following sites:

1. Wonderware Transportation Industry page
2. Wonderware System Platform
3. InTouch HMI as a SCADA system
4. Wonderware Historian
5. The benefits of using InTouch with Historian
6. Wonderware Smart City Software Solutions
7. The Wonderware Smart City video
8. The Wonderware Imagine a better future page