Emerson to sell Intellution SCADA to GE Fanuc

Intellution, one of the few remaining powerhouses of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and so-called MES (manufacturing execution systems) software, is being sold by parent company Emerson in the US to GE Fanuc Automation North America, part of General Electric Company. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed and it is subject to government approvals, but it marks a somewhat surprising twist in the consolidation saga for a company that had been a fairly serious innovator in its field, and had more than 185,000 installations around the world. Intellution, bought in the late ‘90s by Emerson at much the same time as arch-rival Wonderware was bought by Invensys, had been an engine of Emerson’s Fisher-Rosemount process management systems development, mirroring Wonderware’s link in the Invensys Foxboro distributed process control system chain. Also like Wonderware, it has been developing its own solutions well beyond its SCADA roots. Charismatic CEO Steve Rubin had been instrumental in pulling the company into developing everything from plant historians to open scaleable ‘soft logic’ systems and on to batch visualisation systems, downtime monitoring systems and ERP integration modules primarily for the process industries. Indeed, so intent had the company been on its ERP links that there was speculation about 18 months ago that it, or more likely its parent would buy one of the major ERP software vendors, and do the shop floor to top floor coverage bit. Now, however, Intellution joins the GE Fanuc fold, already with its own extensive Cimplicity SCADA/MES suites, although mostly facing general engineering industry and PLC controls. “The addition of Intellution to the GE Fanuc family brings strong growth opportunities in process-related segments as well as a complementary presence world-wide,” says Charlene Begley, president and CEO of GE Fanuc. “Intellution enhances our software functionality with key batch, historian and plant-intelligence technologies, which further GE’s abilities to deliver automation solutions that improve quality, reduce cycle times, increase productivity, and facilitate collaboration in the supply chain.”