TOKYO, July 9, 2018—Canon Inc. (Headquarters: Ohta-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Chairman & CEO: Fujio Mitarai) announced today that the company will commence a partnership with AVEVA Group plc (hereafter "AVEVA"; Headquarters: Cambridge, U.K.; CEO: Craig Hayman) with the aim of realizing smart factories through Canon imaging technologies.
Canon aims to realize smart factories—innovative facilities in which production equipment and machinery are connected to a network—with plans to provide a wide range of system solutions that accelerate the automation of factories and improve productivity through the Canon Industrial Imaging Platform. This strategy brings together such technologies as the Company's network camera and industrial camera technologies and image processing technologies to achieve "factory visualization."
Through a technology partnership with AVEVA, Canon will provide a variety of solutions to support factory automation that combine the wide range of AVEVA capabilities, including industrial automation and information management software, with the imaging technology Canon has cultivated over its long history.
AVEVA's InTouch SCADA1 system (powered by Wonderware) will be integrated with such Canon products as network cameras, industrial cameras and software for production centers to create new value based on video and image processing technologies employed on factory floors.
From early September 2018, it will be possible to utilize AVEVA software with Canon network cameras to enable remote monitoring of factory floors from such locations as production control departments and central monitoring rooms. What's more, capabilities will be gradually expanded, enabling users to link information collected from AVEVA software with Canon's Monitoring Edition2 video management software and Vision Edition3 image processing software.
The combination of Canon and AVEVA products enables efficient monitoring of a factory's operational status through such features as video recording and image processing technology. This makes possible the automation of tasks conventionally performed by human workers, including the prevention of problems before they happen or fast recovery of production equipment.
Canon plans to expand the Intelligent Functions of its network cameras, which include Intruder Detection and Abandoned Object Detection. The Company plans to link this information, detectable only by these cameras, to AVEVA software with the aim of further improving production efficiency.
Additionally, going forward, Canon will continue to work together with AVEVA to realize smart factories made possible by imaging technology.
AVEVA is a global leader in engineering and industrial software driving digital transformation across the entire asset and operations life cycle of capital-intensive industries. The company's engineering, planning and operations, asset performance, and monitoring and control solutions deliver proven results to 16,000 customers across the globe. Its customers are supported by the largest industrial software ecosystem, including 4,200 partners and 5,700 certified developers. AVEVA is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with over 4,400 employees at 80 locations in over 40 countries.
