Month: September 2020

FTMaintenance Select Launch Announcement

Posted: 9/24/2020

Computer displaying the all-new FTMaintenance Select computerized maintenance management system interface.

Today, FasTrak SoftWorks, Inc. has officially released FTMaintenance Select – an all-new computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) solution – designed for modern industrial maintenance professionals who require real-time access to their maintenance data. FTMaintenance Select delivers a powerful suite of features for managing work orders, equipment and facility assets, MRO inventory, preventive maintenance, and other maintenance resources.

Cloud-based FTMaintenance Select will allow teams to access their maintenance data from any internet-connected device. Speaking about the benefits FTMaintenance Select will provide to customers, FTMaintenance Product Expert Dave Dulak said, “The FTMaintenance Select platform has been designed to be future-proof for our clients.”

Market Opportunity

Industrial automation is essential to meeting the challenges, and leveraging the opportunities, of global urbanization. For over 30 years, FasTrak has been helping organizations across the world better serve their communities and markets with software products for PLC programming, file change management, and maintenance management.

The introduction of FTMaintenance Select demonstrates a deep commitment to helping organizations improve maintenance operations, reduce asset and facility downtime, and continuously improve products, services, and processes. “FTMaintenance Select is going to address the needs of industrial companies, organizations involved with facility management, companies that manage distributed assets, and third-party maintenance providers,” says Dulak. Industries served by FTMaintenance Select include manufacturing, facility and property management, food and beverage, government, healthcare, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, power and energy, water, and many others.

This new product launch is driven by the following market factors:

  • A commitment to customers: FasTrak is dedicated to providing high-quality maintenance management software to a global user base.
  • Technological convergence: The line between CMMS and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software is becoming more and more blurred. While EAM and other enterprise solutions often lack satisfactory maintenance management functionality, the gap is quickly closing.
  • Competitive landscape: The need for “one stop shops” for maintenance and asset management solutions is growing rapidly. Historically, this has added cost and complexity to product offerings. Maintenance teams in all organizations desire simple, easy-to-use, integrated software solutions.

FasTrak believes FTMaintenance Select is well-positioned to meet the needs of an evolving maintenance management market. “FTMaintenance Select is uniquely built to easily change and adapt to the ever-changing requirements of customers, which protects their investment into the future,” says Enterprise Architecture Manager Mohamed Elbendary.

FTMaintenance Select Platform

FTMaintenance Select is more than just a powerful CMMS product – it’s an entire software platform that will allow organizations to easily scale their maintenance operations as their business grows. This platform enables FTMaintenance Select to expand through connections to other business and productivity applications. “FTMaintenance Select integration connectors enable customers to automate workflows and share data with other departments and organizations, such as customers or business partners,” says Elbendary.

FTMaintenance Select CMMS will be expanded with companion mobile applications, making it a perfect fit for today’s highly-mobile maintenance teams. Organizations with advanced maintenance operations will be able to extend FTMaintenance Select with an Application Programming Interface (API), enabling the flow of critical information between FTMaintenance Select and other applications including:

  • Business intelligence applications
  • Custom and on-premise applications
  • Field devices and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)
  • Document and file management applications
  • Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software
  • Other third-party applications

Learn More About FTMaintenance Select

FTMaintenance Select is a feature-rich, easy-to-use maintenance management solution delivered on a flexible, web-based platform. FTMaintenance Select is designed to rapidly evolve, adding new features and functionality, performance enhancements, and other improvements. Users automatically receive all product updates. Contact us to learn more about FTMaintenance Select.

FTMaintenance Select v1.0.0.0 Release Notes

Posted: 9/24/2020

Initial release of FTMaintenance Select, web-based computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software

Features

  • Asset Management
    • Manage multiple asset types including Buildings, Equipment, Facilities, Parts, Properties, and Tools
    • Store comprehensive information about maintenance assets
    • Track and store information about asset manufacturers and vendors

 

  • Inventory Management
    • Control MRO inventory across a single or multiple locations
    • Track inventory items in a single or multiple stockrooms and storage locations
    • Easily access vendor and supplier information
    • Instantly identify where inventory items are stored

 

  • Location Management
    • Manage and track the locations of assets, inventory items, and where work is required
    • Track locations including indoor location, storage location, street address, and GPS coordinates
    • Define the internal structure of facility-based assets
    • Visualize the relationship between locations

 

  • Preventive Maintenance
    • Easily set up recurring work order schedules
    • Service Request Management
    • Create, view, and manage service requests
    • Generate work orders from service requests
    • Unlimited number of service requesters
    • Attach images and other files to requests to provide additional detail

 

  • Work Order Management
    • Create fully detailed work orders, including attachments
    • Generate multi-asset work orders
    • Generate full customer work orders
    • Generate full location work orders
    • Create customer work order types
    • Track multiple types of maintenance activities including corrective and preventive maintenance
    • Automatically send work order event-based email, text, or push notifications

 

  • User and User Group Management
    • Assign and manage user group permissions and user specific permissions

FTSolution for APT v2.3.0 Release Notes

Posted: 9/14/2020

Features

  • The Step and Transition label numbers in Sequential Function Charts can be renumbered to more closely match the graphical order that determines their actual order of execution.
  • Groups of PCS Tag attributes can be selected at the same time.
  • Help articles have been added for Cyclic Function Blocks.
  • Help buttons that display Help articles for each selected CFB type have been added in the CFB editor.

Solutions

  • CFC Editor
    • The use of a recipe element in a CFB setting, that prevents compile, is now flagged as an error in the CFC Editor.
    • Removes internal symbols from the drop-down list of options of a CFB setting.
    • Fixes an issue of a CFC edit causing an application lock up or a crash when user responds with a “Yes” to the “This file has been modified outside the editor. Do you want to reload it?” prompt.
    • Boolean literals TRUE and FALSE are no longer allowed for use on symbol settings.
  • Configuration Editor
    • Addresses an issue of compiler errors being shown for the errors in configuration settings that existed before user had changed the controller type and no longer exist in the current configuration.
  • Cross Reference
    • Removes CFC file names from the “Find what:” drop-down list of symbols of Cross Reference window.
  • Demo Mode
    • Fixes an issue of application closing when user opens a project created by fully licensed software in the unlicensed software.
    • Fixes an issue of application closing when user opens a project created by unlicensed software in the fully licensed software.
  • Full Compile
    • Fixes an issue of incorrectly generated code for a Rate Limiter symbol when a Rate Limiter uses:
      • An Analog Output for its Output setting, and
      • A symbol of one of these types for its Input setting: Scaled Integer, Analog Output, Word Input, Word Output, BCD Input, or BCD Output.
    • Loading a program that was compiled and download in software releases prior to 2.3.0 and contained a Rate Limiter symbol that meets these the above criteria will result in project upgrade.
    • Fixes an issue of incorrectly generated code for an Output Limiter symbol when an Output Limiter uses:
      • An Analog Output for its Output setting, and
      • A symbol of one of these types for its Input setting: Scaled Integer, Analog Output, Word Input, Word Output, BCD Input, or BCD Output.
    • Loading a program that was compiled and download in software releases prior to 2.3.0 and contained an Output Limiter symbol that meets these criteria will result in project upgrade.
    • Fixes an issue of incorrectly generated code for an Outswitch Select symbol when an Outswitch Select uses:
      • An Analog Output for any of its Output settings, and
      • A symbol of one of these types for its Input setting: Scaled Integer, Analog Output, Word Input, Word Output, BCD Input, or BCD Output.
    • Loading a program that was compiled and download in software releases prior to 2.3.0 and contained an Outswitch Select symbol that meets these criteria will result in project upgrade.
    • Fixes an issue of incorrectly generated code for an Correlated Lookup Table symbol when an Correlated Lookup Table uses:
      • An Analog Output for its Output setting, and
      • A symbol of one of these types for its Input setting: Scaled Integer, Analog Output, Word Input, Word Output, BCD Input, or BCD Output.
    • Loading a program that was compiled and download in software releases prior to 2.3.0 and contained an Correlated Lookup Table symbol that meets these criteria will result in project upgrade.
    • Fixes an issue of internal NNL extensions of locally-declared variables (.NNL.TRIGGER, .NNL.TIMED, .NNL.ECODE, .NNL.EVENT, .NNL.ERS, .NNL.FIN, .NNL.$NL_SFINT, .NNL.IID, .NNL.SNUM, .NNL. INIT, .NNL.ENABLE.TRIGGER) being permitted in a setting of a symbol.
  • PCS
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for PCS tags of Input and Output settings of a Subtractor CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for a PCS tag of an Output setting of a Derivative CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for a PCS tag of an Output setting of a Divider CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for VALUE PCS tag attribute of PCS Tags of Process Variable and Time Constant settings of a First Order Lag CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for VALUE PCS tag attributes of PCS Tags of Lead and Lag Time Constants settings of a First Order Lead Lag CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for a PCS tag of an Input settings of an Inswitch Select CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for VALUE PCS tag attributes of PCS Tags of Input settings, Output setting, and Enable Flag of Input settings of a Low Select CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for VALUE PCS tag attributes of PCS Tags of Input and Output settings of a Math CFB.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong initial value was generated for VALUE PCS tag attributes of PCS tags of symbol settings that use WX/WY address locations.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a PCS tag UNITS attribute of an Output setting of a Summer CFB was missing.
    • Fixes an issue in Install.tag file, where a wrong value was used for Series 505 S-memory addresses of the PCS tags of Analog Alarm extensions.
    • Adds the name of the symbol and its extension to the PCS Attributes dialog.
    • Removes a header line (Record, GroupNumber,Description) from install.tag file when none of the Process Groups has a non-blank description.
    • Removes a header line (Record, Recipe,Component,Tag,Attribute) from install.tag file when there is no recipe in the program that has been marked for PCS.
  • Project Upgrade
    • Resolves an issue of Download incremental changes only option not available on a project upgraded to the current software version.
      Resolves an issue of incremental object files generated by compiling in the previous software versions being lost due the project upgrade to the current software version.
  •  Report
    • Adds unit descriptions to the Configuration report, Units to Compile section.

FTSolution for APT V2.3.0 Release

Posted: 9/14/2020

FasTrak SoftWorks, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of FTSolution for APT V2.3.0. FTSolution for APT is a Microsoft Windows-based direct replacement for Siemens-obsoleted DOS APT software designed to extend the life of Siemens and CTI 2500 Series PLCs and APT programs.
FTSolution for APT V2.3.0 incorporates:
  • The ability to re-sequence SFC Steps and Transitions
  • The ability to select groups of Cyclic Function Block PCS Tag attributes at the same time
  • Help articles for Cyclic Function Blocks
  • Help buttons in the CFB editor that display Help articles for each selected CFB type
  • Other performance improvements

View release details

Purchase FTSolution for APT to take full advantage of this, and future, enhancements. Purchase includes a warranty offering 12 months of free updates and technical support.