Rockwell Automation, Inc. (ROK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

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Thank you, Juliana. Good morning, good afternoon to everyone, our listeners today. Our webinar today is a panel discussion about a new HMI product from Rockwell Automation called FactoryTalk Optix. In our webinar today, we'll cover the features that make it different. We'll demonstrate some of those features. And we'll talk with some technical experts, Mark and Chris, about their experience with the product and their customers' experience trying it out and what they're seeing with this new platform. So some introductions today. My name is Su Burtch. I'm the Commercial Portfolio Manager for visualization software, which includes FactoryTalk Optix. I'll be the moderator today for our webinar.

Hi, everyone. My name is Mark Hobbs. I'm the Product Manager for FactoryTalk Optix. I've been developing both hardware and software HMI solutions here at Rockwell Automation for over 30 years now. And I look forward to sharing some of my experience with you all today.

Hello. Chris Gregory. I am currently a Technical Consultant in our OEM Group here at Rockwell. I've been at Rockwell close to 5 years, with the last 1.5 years specifically focusing on UNICO and Optix. Previous to my time at Rockwell, I was a systems integrator for about 10 years in the water -- wastewater industry. And I'm very excited about the webinar today as well.

So off camera, we also have Paul Haikal. If you want to introduce yourself, Paul?

Thank you, Su. Yes, my name is Paul Haikal. I am the Commercial Portfolio Manager for our visualization software, and I'll be looking forward for some of your questions. Thank you.

All right. So let's take a look at the agenda. First, we'll do an introduction to the product, what is FactoryTalk Optix and what can you generally expect from it. Then we'll get into some of the features. We'll talk about modern graphics, we'll look at design and operation collaboration and how remote operations works with Optix. And then we'll take a look at some of the open extensibility and connectivity options.

So to start out, for those webinar attendees who haven't heard much about Optix, let's dive in with an introduction. So Mark, would you like to give us an introduction to Optix?

Yes Su, I would. So FactoryTalk Optix is a new HMI offering that we just added to our visualization portfolio late last year. We've released the product in December. It is a new addition to our portfolio. It doesn't replace any of our existing products, but it offers many new capabilities that we're excited about and we'll be highlighting for you today. The development itself has been a collaboration between Rockwell Automation and ASEM. ASEM is an incredible company, Italian-based company that we acquired a couple of years ago, and we've been working with them ever since. That's important to know because I can give you a little bit of history. FactoryTalk Optix is based on a product called the UNICO, as Chris referenced in his introduction. UNICO was developed and released by ASEM. It's now FactoryTalk Optix. And the goal for UNICO was to develop a new revolutionary software platform that can be used not only for traditional HMI, but also has the capabilities to address newer IoT and Industry 4.0 applications. So while FactoryTalk Optix might be a brand-new product to Rockwell, it is based off of UNICO. So you'll see today that it is already a full-featured product, and it's been deployed and successfully used by many customers as part of the UNICO product and now today with FactoryTalk Optix. So what makes FactoryTalk Optix unique as it is an open, scalable and very flexible visualization platform. It can be easily extended at both design time and runtime. And it has a lot of different options available to connect to devices, whether that's controllers, smart devices, machines or even business systems. And we'll be talking a little bit more about that as we proceed here today. You can also see from the graphic on the screen that FactoryTalk Optix is our first cloud-based HMI offering within our portfolio. So that means that FactoryTalk Optix is available on demand whenever you need it by simply going to our FactoryTalk hub and logging in. You'll find FactoryTalk Optix in the design hub along with some of our other design packages such as Design Studio and Twin Studio. But from there, it's very easy to start up Optix. You can run it in the cloud using nothing more than a web browser. So in this scenario, there's no software needed to install or maintain.

So I guess I'll point out here. You can get to FactoryTalk hub by just going to your browser and typing in factorytalkhub.com, log in, and you'll be able to see all these different products?

Yes. And you log in with your Rockwell Automation ID. So that's also very, very easy. So this slide has a little bit more detail on it. It's a slide that I can use today to kind of introduce you to the main system components that make up FactoryTalk Optix as well as the general workflow for designing, deploying and running your applications. It starts with Item #1 on the screen and that's FactoryTalk Optix Studio. It's our integrated design environment. It's what's used to create FactoryTalk Optix projects and applications. Now what we're showing on the screen currently is, what we call, Factory Optix Studio Standard. And the nice thing about Optix Studio Standard is that there is nothing to purchase. You simply go to our website, download the software to your local computer which is free, install it and go. So that will allow you to use Optix in, what we call, our design editor and it gives you access to all of the Optix features so that you can create your projects using the desktop editor. Once you've created your project, the next component is turning that into or creating a FactoryTalk Optix application. That's nothing more than a compiled version of the project that can easily be deployed and run on a device. Now that FactoryTalk Optix application includes not only the project data, but the runtime modules necessary to run the application and one of the unique capabilities of Optix is that we only include the runtime modules that are required to run what was configured in the project and that allows us to optimize the application to its smallest footprint possible, so it can run on a wide variety of devices that we'll be covering a little bit later. But once you have that Optix application developed, then it's just a matter of deploying it from the desktop editor over your local network to any Optix device and then running it on the device. Now we do have another version of Optix available or another license, if you will. It's the Optix Studio Pro version. So this is something that you need to purchase and it enables some additional Optix capabilities. As you can see here with the Pro license, that's the license that's required to run Optix in the cloud through the FactoryTalk Hub, as I described earlier. It allows you to deploy -- to remote devices from cloud to the device. That's done through our FactoryTalk remote access product by -- through a VPN connection. And the Pro license also enables other design features such as version control, multiuser collaboration and other future capabilities. So then lastly, with the introduction, FactoryTalk Optix is a very feature-rich project -- product, I'm sorry. There's lots of options available for you to design, deploy, create your graphics and extend Optix. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on these right now as we'll be covering them as we move forward.

Thanks, Mark. I think that's a great introduction of all the pieces and parts of Optix, kind of what it is and what it's about. Chris, I'd like to ask you a question. You talk with customers every day. And I know the term modern HMI comes up. What do you think, what are your customers telling you that they're looking for in a modern HMI today?

Yes. Su, you're right. Working with customers, I am getting a lot of feedback. For the modern HMI, the #1 thing I'm hearing right off the bat is scalable graphics. Everybody wants to have some sort of vector-based graphics for their application. They want something that's fully extensible as well. We think we handle that pretty well in Optix with the C-Sharp and the NetLogics. They also talk about device in OS-agnostic. So they want something that's going to run on anything, right? Linux, Windows, anything, any kind of hardware they can find, they wanted to run on it. Compatibility with third-party devices, so OPC UA compatibility, which Optix is built on that OPC UA companion spec. And then lastly, collaboration. They want to be able to collaborate with users all across the world and/or their customers.

Great. I mean, that pretty much sums up, I think, what Optix is all about. So let's go a little deeper on some of the features that Chris mentioned and some of the things that are in Optix. Mark, one of the things that Chris first mentioned was scalable modern graphics in an HMI. So I think that's a key requirement. Can you tell us a little bit about the graphic options in FactoryTalk Optix?

Yes. And first of all, Optix is an HMI or a visualization product at heart. So I absolutely agree with the comments from both Chris and you, Su. And I think with Optix, we address that very well because Optix supports both modern graphics and responsive displays. The idea behind Optix is that you can create a project or you can create a display once and maintain it in one place, but run it anywhere where it needs to run. And in order to achieve that, as Chris mentioned, all of the graphics within Optix are scalable vector graphics, so they'll size themselves automatically, either larger or smaller depending on the client that they're running on and they'll look good at any size. And then we're going to be sharing with you today different mechanisms or tools that are available in the Optix to create responsive objects and responsive displays. And what we mean by that is that you can create a screen or a display that automatically adapts to the form factor and resolution of the -- again, the client device that it's running on. And in fact, as you develop screens in Optix, there's basically 2 clients that they can run in, a local or a native client that's typically used on the box. Those screens can also be rendered in an HTML5 client, and that's very useful for mobile devices, remote users who are connecting to the system, remotely using their web browser or maybe a tablet type of device. And then Chris, also, in addition to having the modern graphics, I think it's important that we make it easy for our users to create screens with these graphics. So in order to accomplish that, we have an extensive library built right in Optix. It has literally hundreds and hundreds of predefined graphical objects, widgets, face plates, things that can be pulled right out of the library, all scalable, dropped into a container and used within the project without having to do a lot of development work. And then as users start to use these objects and compile them into their own graphics and their own reusable objects, we also support user-defined libraries where you can create your own library and store your own graphics in that library.

So Chris, I think you had commented to me that these libraries are real important for your customers. How do you see them using the libraries? Or how are you using the libraries?

Yes. Sue, we're actually both really internally here at Rockwell and my team and my extended team, we use these libraries all the time, not only for changes locally, but for the multiuser collaboration. You can actually share these libraries just as you would share the project on the GitHub repository. So customers are using it the same way. They have users all over the country. They're creating these custom graphics, custom widgets that they want to reuse and nobody wants to send files anymore, right? We want one place where the files are at and updated, and it just really helps with this library management to accomplish that.

Awesome. Tell us about the multi-language features, Mark?

Yes. So again, in today's global role, it's very important that your Optix screens and graphics and interface overall can really be styled to the audience that's using Optix. And with Optix, each individual user of the system has their own locale associated with them. And when that user logs on to the system, there's a lot of things that you can do in Optix. For starters, all of the user-defined text in the application can be in multiple languages. And when a user logs in, you can switch all of the text using a different language for that user based on their language of choice. But in addition to just the text on the screen, there's a lot of other international settings that will automatically change for the user. We do automatic unit conversions for things like measurements, temperatures and the format of certain graphic objects like the date and time format and even the format of numeric objects. That translation of the user define text can be done either within Optix itself, the Optix Studio environment using a built-in translation editor. Of course, in many cases, you would like to do that translation outside of Optix. So there's an import export mechanism also available to do that translation of the text.

Great. And so what you're saying basically is it's not just the text translation, it's also going from Fahrenheit to Celsius, for example, that is automatically done by Optix.

Yes, gallons to liters as well. And as I mentioned, any format for things like date and time and numeric formats can also change and convert automatically.

Very nice. Tell us about style sheets and some of the things you can do with those?

Yes. So style sheets are an Optix feature that can be used both at design time and runtime. So at design time, we have a default style sheet, but you can create and add your own as well. And what's nice about the style sheets is that as you place graphics into your Optix application, they'll adhere to the style sheet automatically. So if you have default properties that you want set on all of your geographics, for example, that can be done once in the style sheet and used everywhere. So it's a very effective mechanism to enforce standards within your projects. And then, of course, here, as you can see the graphic on the screen, it's another thing that you can do for the user. These style sheets are available at runtime. So here, we're just showing an example of how you can have a light style sheet or a dark style sheet based on user preference.

And Chris, it's not just light and dark. How well are customers able to use style sheets?

Yes, Su, I've got a couple of examples. The first one would probably be for my OEM customers. They're able now to create one application for their end users and then really just create a special style sheet for that end user. So same application, different color scheme, different logo, maybe different shading, all of those different things that are built in the style sheet makes it much easier for an OEM-type customer to really differentiate the project with really not doing much more development. The second thing to kind of tie back into Mark with the login is -- a good example I had was a customer that based on the log in, the first shift operator, maybe they like the dark style sheet, whereas the second shift operator comes in and they prefer the light style sheet, that all can be changed in runtime via the login.

Great. So really, the look and feel of the same application can change based on customer requirements or just the environment that someone's in, if it's nighttime, dark out or light out...

Very flexible.

Very nice feature. And then I know we have a lot of built-in navigation options. Do you want to tell us about that, Mark?

Yes. These are just some examples. Optix is very flexible in how you set up your user interface. And what we're showing on this screen is just some examples of the navigation styles that we have created where you either have your navigation across the top or perhaps on the sides and/or bottom of the interface.

Speaking of navigation, Mark has a demo he's going to share with us today about responsive graphics and screens. So you want to go ahead and share your screen, Mark?

I do. And I am, if you can let me know when you see my screen.

Yes, we can see it now.

Okay. Perfect. So yes, Chris and I both today want to show you the actual software. Obviously, we don't have a lot of time, but we want to show you some short quick demos. And the first one that I wanted to do here is just to show you some of the graphics capabilities we just talked through and show you some examples of how you can create responsive screens or an interface in Optix. So I'm just running a very quick basic demo that I created here in our emulator. And Optix, again, as I said earlier, is very flexible in how you set up your interface. So in my example here today, I've got 3 containers that make up my user interface for Optix. I have a container for the bar across the top of the screen. Right now, it's just showing the Optix logo, but you could put any content that you want in the container. On the left-hand side, you can see that I have a container that's reserved for my navigation. And then in the main central part of my client, I've got a third container for showing graphics or screen information to the operator. And I've just got some base graphics that I pulled right out of our Optix library. So I've got a pie chart, a trend chart, what we call, our data grid on the screen and a histogram. The data that's being shown here is just static data. It's not important for the demo, so don't pay too much attention to that. But I wanted to size the client here and just show you some of the scalability that we talked about earlier. First of all, as Chris and I talked about, the graphics you can see here are all scalable vector graphics. So as I resize the client, my graphics are scaling up or down as they need to. Also, in terms of responsiveness, when you set up your screens and Optix, you can have graphics in Optix positioned relative to each other and/or relative to the parent container that they live in. And that's why, again, if I resize the client, you can see that the interface is smart enough to first get rid of any unused space that's part of the client before it starts making any of the graphics actually smaller for the operator. So there's a lot you can do there. And in my project here today, I took it one step further. And I actually have 3 layouts defined for my project; a large layout, which we've been using so far. But I also defined a medium layout and a small layout. And Optix gives me all of the capability to know what the current size of the client is. And then if you look in the bottom right-hand corner for this demo, we're just showing the pixel width and height of the client. And Optix gives me the capability when I reach a certain size to automatically change the layout. So the first breakpoint that I built into my application, I call them, breakpoint, occurs when the -- of the client is 1,000 pixels or less. So right now, I'm just above 1,000 pixels. But if I size it to anything below 1,000 pixels, you can see that I automatically changed the layout for my operator. Now I went to 2 containers instead of 3. I repositioned my menu across the top, so I could maximize space for the operator in terms of screen content. And then I created one more breakpoint in my application today that occurs when the width of the client would fall below 600 pixels. And in this case, again, I changed my navigation style to more of a hamburger style menu that I can open and close and it slides out when it's needed. And you can see that I also stacked the elements on my screen vertically with a scroll bar so that they're readable even when the client has a width below 600. Now in this example today, I'm obviously using the client like a control room operator would or an operator on the PC who has a mouse and a keyboard and is manually resizing the client. But I will get the same behavior if I download my project to different sized devices. So if I download my project to a computer with a full HD screen, I'm going to get my large layout as we see here. But if I download it to a smaller terminal device that doesn't have as large a screen, I would automatically get my midsized layout or on a very small device, maybe more of a mobile device or a tablet device that has a very thin but longer screen, I would automatically get the small layout. So just wanted to show you the graphics and show some of the responsive behavior that can be achieved in Optix.

That is a fantastic demo, Mark. Thank you very much. I think the next thing we're going to talk about is collaboration, design collaboration. So I guess there's a couple of features there that you wanted to highlight, Mark. So let's talk about those.

I did. I think over the last few years, we've all seen the need for collaboration really escalate and accelerate. And Optix can really help you improve collaboration within your teams and between your teams when they're either designing or maintaining an HMI system. And we want to share some of that information with you today. So for design collaboration, FactoryTalk Optix supports an integrated version control system or VCS that provides both multiuser collaboration and version control. So that means that multiple users can work on the same projects simultaneously and easily share content with each other. Those users can save and restore versions of their project using a central repository in order to track changes or keep track of who did what and when. Essentially, for our visualization users, everyone on the call here today, we're allowing you to leverage modern VCS concepts. We're using industry standard GitHub functionality on the back end. But we've done our own front end and put our own front end on the capabilities so that you don't have to be a VCS expert or even a software development engineer. And this is just an example of what a typical multiuser collaboration environment would look like with Optix. It starts by creating a central repository that's used to store the project. You can see in this example, we have a cloud-based repository that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. We're using GitHub as the provider of that repository but we'll support other providers as well, we'll support on-premise repositories in addition to cloud-based repositories. But once you have that set up, you can easily then have multiple users collaborating on the project simultaneously. And the general workflow is that if user 1 starts to -- wants to begin collaborating on the project, they simply connect to the repository, do what we refer to as a pull operation and then they'll get a local version of the copy of the project. They can work on the project independently of the other users when they're done with their task, they can push their change up to the repository for other users to pull in. So that's the general workflow for how this works.

So I think you and Chris are going to show us a demo of that multiuser collaboration with GitHub. So Chris, do you want to share your screen and start us off?

Yes. Yes, I'll give Mark a little break here. All right. Just let me know when you can see that.