In our manufacturing facility we have several different production lines running all S7-300 PLC's with Simatic Manager v5.5 software and TP-270 or MP277 touchscreen with either WinCC Flexible 2008 SP2 or SP3 software.

My question is what is the easiest way to remotely view these touchscreen for monitoring purposes?

I have already ran Ethernet between the individual production lines connecting them all together to a central location. I can already remote start the run time in WInCC to view the screens on my computer but I can also make changes ETC. which I do not want the production manager to be able to do. 

I have thought about putting a PLC on my desk that will receive information via Ethernet from each line of certain parameters like Running or Stopped and line speed but this seems cumbersome and would warrant more upkeep in future due to the addition of more components and communication.

I also see this option on the touchscreen of a Smart View Client but i am not familiar with the Smart View system and I cannot find good literature on how I would tie this all together without spending a small fortune on license more software etc.

Someone please suggest an easy route to be able to view all this information from the 4 different production lines the best solution would most likely be a "View Only" mode of the existing HMI's.

Also how do i go about updating to TIA portal from the old Siemens Step 7 5.5?

Hello,

Have you seen this link:

Remote Access to SIMATIC HMI Operator Panels

Best regards,

Wizard