The Axeda Configuration application provides asset management tools for defining business rules that convert data into actions. You can define business rules for proactive fault detection, consumable restocking, user notification, usage-based billing, and more. Business rules are comprised of triggers that cause the Axeda® Enterprise Server to evaluate conditions, and then, based on the results, execute one or more associated actions (operations to perform on the related asset or within the Platform).
You can create different types of rules, each based on a type of trigger and performing a different evaluation. For example, rules generated by a trigger message determine that a specified trigger occurred on the asset, evaluate a condition, and execute actions based on the result of the evaluation. Other trigger examples include an asset registering with the Platform, an alarm, or a change in the value of a data item.
Expression rules evaluate data values against complex arithmetic or statistical expressions. You can configure these rules to send data to an asset or to notify users or other systems to take action. For example, a rule could be set to evaluate if a temperature value exceeds a threshold (the condition to evaluate) and, if so, notify service personnel to take corrective action (the action).
Note: While the Platform supports the Axeda® Connector and Axeda® Gateway Agents completely, only some features of the Axeda® IDM Agents are supported; for details, refer to Axeda® IDM Agents.
The Axeda Configuration application provides for fault detection, usage tracking, and notification. You can configure alarm definitions and control the initial disposition of alarms for models and for assets. The business rules engine enables service technicians to detect faults pro-actively, thereby allowing remedial action to take place before a problem becomes serious or an asset actually fails.
Direct, real-time tracking of asset usage enables pay-per-use billing and efficient consumable restocking. Asset usage counts can be sent directly to billing systems. Consumable usage, for example, that of chemical reagents, paper, and disk space, can be tracked with accuracy, enabling automatic replenishment and smoother forecasting for the supply chain.
If a problem is detected, the proper users or systems are automatically notified, based on your configuration of business rules. Service problems can be routed to specified technicians. An asset running out of provisions can trigger notification of an order processing system to ship product directly to the customer.