Shop Floor Automation/Production Monitoring

["Michael Naughton" <mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We're looking into doing some type of shop floor automation or production
monitoring. The basic idea is that we'll have sensors on our machines that
are connected to software that will provide some sort of graphical display
of what's happening on the floor. We'd also like the ability to set
alarms, so if something goes out of bounds there would ba visual (and/or
audible) cues, and of course we'd like to have everything connected to our
database on the AS/400 -- both to get information about how to set the
alarms in the first place (based on the product being manufactured, etc.)
and to store history about the  job's running conditions.

Several names have been mentioned: WonderWare, Intellution, and Patrick
Townsend Associates. Does anyone have any experience with any of these?
Any others we should look into?

Thanks very much in advance for any info  you can pass along.

Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx