Inductive Automation Previews Upcoming Ignition 8.3, Announces 2024 Ignition Firebrand Award Winners

Abstract

FOLSOM, CA – September 17, 2024 – During the 2024 Ignition Community Conference, Inductive Automation showcased new features in the upcoming Ignition 8.3 software release and announced the winners and finalists of this year’s Ignition Firebrand Awards.

The Ignition Community Conference (ICC), now in its 12th year, brings together industrial professionals from around the world to connect, collaborate, and learn more about Ignition—the industrial automation software platform for SCADA, HMI, IIoT, MES, and more—and the ecosystem of technology solutions that support it.

Ignition 8.3 discussed in the technical presentation

During the Technical Keynote at ICC, Inductive Automation CEO Colby Clegg and CTO Carl Gould discussed several features that will be included in Ignition 8.3, the next major version of Ignition software, scheduled for release in January 2025.

Clegg and Gould said Ignition 8.3 features a completely redesigned Ignition Gateway user interface that will be faster, more intuitive, and easier to navigate. The two leaders also discussed improvements to the Ignition Perspective module, including integrated drawing tools, a flexible form generation component, and the ability to design applications for offline use.

Another upcoming feature called Event Streams will allow users to map event data from sources to handlers, giving them new ways to transfer, transform, filter, and batch process data. Ignition 8.3 will also include a new public historian API and a new Power Historian embedded in the Ignition platform, along with many other new features, and will be actively supported for five years after release.

Following Clegg and Gould’s keynotes, Chief Technology Evangelist Travis Cox and Chief Technology Architect Kevin McClusky discussed other new features, such as secrets management, Git compatibility for improved version control, and integration with WhatsApp and Twilio, as well as potential use cases for the new release.

Ignition Firebrand Award 2024 Winners Announced

Each year at ICC, Inductive Automation presents the Ignition Firebrand Awards to system integrators and industrial organizations that leverage the Ignition software platform to create exceptionally innovative and successful projects. Inductive Automation received a record number of project entries this year, which the jury narrowed down to six Ignition Firebrand Award winners and 12 finalists.

This year’s six Ignition Firebrand Awards were presented to:

• NeoMatrix Inc., which helped Lucid Motors implement a real-time factory information system that provides production performance data to enable data-driven decisions, optimize processes and improve overall operational efficiency. NeoMatrix is ​​pictured above.
• Deloitte, which implemented a modern SCADA/MES system, implemented the Goodman Fielder initiative to increase production efficiency and replace manual processes in three of the largest bakeries.
• IDOM, which implemented a real-time automation tool for the entire manufacturing process at pharmaceutical company Cinfa, including a unified namespace that allows applications to exchange information in a decoupled architecture.
• Saint-Gobain CertainTeed, a Vision-based FaCTory+ MES implementation, pulls production orders from SAP, tracks 24-hour performance, compares current and past production runs, and more.
• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which created a library of standardized objects, making extensive use of user-defined types (UDTs), which allowed easy monitoring and control of a large-scale experiment analyzing the properties of neutrinos.
• Madkour Group, a company that has developed a system that provides real-time data from remote locations, as well as reporting and analysis tools for the National Development Project of the New Valley in Toshka, which aims to reclaim vast areas of desert as part of Egypt’s overall plan to cultivate a total of three million acres of land.

All projects submitted by winners and finalists, including videos and written case studies, can be viewed in the ICC Discovery Gallery online.

About inductive automation

Inductive Automation creates industrial software that enables organizations to quickly transform great ideas into reality by removing all technological and economic obstacles. By cross-pollinating IT with SCADA technologies, Inductive Automation created Ignition software, the first universal industrial application platform with unlimited potential. Ignition empowers industrial organizations around the world and in virtually every industry with a unique software platform and world-class support.

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