As with anything, you can’t control and optimise what you can’t measure, and it’s this need that’s driving developments in control technology and management information systems.
The information from the plant floor and from discreet operations, as well as from the supply chain and utilities, is being channelled through to management in order for decisions to be made to improve the overall productivity of the plant and ensure that it runs smoothly in the short-, medium- and long-term. And it’s in the interface areas between specific day-to-day operational data collection and the information required by management that’s seeing the most change.
“Companies need to know whether their plants are running smoothly and so need to collect information from all over the plant and then have the right aggregation of that data,” says Georgio Tori, director of information solutions, Rockwell Automation, which has been talking about what it calls ‘management convergence’ for several years. Management convergence according to Rockwell is the merging of traditionally separate functions and systems to create unique new capabilities within the business.
“Manufacturers used to install different kinds of systems according to the control requirements of each area of the plant,” says Jaime E Forero, EMEA process business development manager, Rockwell Automation. “The raw material area, for example, which involves moving materials from one place to another, has different control needs to the process area. Subsequently, companies traditionally use PLC’s that report into a supervisory system for raw materials, while a dedicated DCS (distributed control systems) system is used for the process area, and dedicated motion controllers are used for the packaging area.
“Historically, it hasn’t been easy to exchange information between these different systems, so the raw material area, for example, wouldn’t know when the processing area was ready for material and conversely the production area wouldn’t know when raw material was available, and subsequently wouldn’t know when to run or stop the process.
“It’s the efficient ‘interlocking’ of these different systems – called ‘horizontal integration’ – that’s vital to today’s plant efficiency.”
Forero points out that horizontal integration isn’t the only critical area of development for ensuring the line runs smoothly. The exchange of information between the plant floor and the management/enterprise level is also needed.
“Area operators, production managers and other plant managers also need data,” he says. “They need information on product destination, equipment utilisation and machine availability in order to prepare and schedule production, plan, or track and trace materials supply and use. Vertical integration (the seamless communication between the plant floor control systems and the enterprise level systems – often called MES or manufacturing execution systems) is therefore vital for the complete integration and smooth running of today’s manufacturing plants.”
Oliver Marz, head of business development at CSB-System International, confirmed that getting data from all parts of production is the biggest challenge that manufacturers have to deal with, and is instrumental in successful production planning.
“Just look at stock management, production and supply and you have three separate and important parts of the company that you need information from,” says Marz, who explains that business intelligence tools can pool information from the different areas but are often too slow and cannot supply the necessary data in real time.
“Essentially, you need to take it back to one software system for all the basic parts of the company,” he adds. “Then you can start looking at short-, mid- or long-term planning. It’s easier to go from short- to long-term planning than the other way around, because short-term planning looks at events in real time.”
Marz points out how short-term planning can be affected by one piece of equipment being out of action at the same time as an operator takes sick leave, for example. Companies subsequently need software solutions that can respond to these unscheduled difficulties.
CSB-System International has completely redesigned its visualisation of production planning integrated software platform during the past couple of years to provide combined short-, mid- and long-term planning presentation capabilities. Data is presented to operators according to their predetermined requirements (ie stock managers see different information to that seen by the production manager).
“They see whatever they need to see, but without any interfaces or databases, which separates us from other suppliers in the food and beverage industry,” says Marz. “There’s no sense in having different systems for different operating requirements when the data is essentially the same.”
Rockwell Automation has also risen to the challenges of exchanging data from throughout the plant and has brought together its process expertise under the banner of PlantPAx Process Automation System (the new name for Rockwell Automation’s unified portfolio of process systems and solutions), which links together individual automation, batching, packaging and business-level systems.
The solutions are based on the company’s open integrated architecture that allows the different systems throughout the plant to speak to one another freely, and enables manufacturers to have information flowing seamlessly across the entire organisation.
“Built on Integrated Architecture, PlantPAx systems have Logix and FactoryTalk at the core, but may also include integrated solutions and technologies provided by partners such as Endress+Hauser and OSISoft, and acquisitions such Incuity, ICS Triplex, and Pavilion,” says Forero.
It was the acquisition of Incuity (the supplier of ‘Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence’ software) in 2008 that gave Rockwell the intelligent software solution it needed to be able to drill down into each dedicated software system to extract the relevant data required, independent of the existing system or database.
“Vantage Point is a connecting software that extracts the information from the data housed in each control system in the plant in order to produce reports in real time,” says Forero, who explains that Vantage Point can be configured to manage the data to meet the specific needs of the business. “We now have a powerful tool to collect information from all sources using the same architecture for all areas of the plant.”
In this way, it’s possible for companies to identify shortages of raw materials in real time, to spot bottlenecks occurring (among other information), and this knowledge can be managed in real time and provide complete Horizontal and Vertical integration of data flow and plant operation.
“Vantage Point allows you to see what’s happening in real time in a way that’s interpreted,” says Tori, who points out that key performance indicators (KPIs) can be set and monitored in real time to give a true picture of a plant’s performance. “Among a multitude of tools and benefits, Vantage Point can help manufacturers identify capacity they didn’t know they had.”
Over the past 10 years, Siemens has developed its family of management information systems (MIS) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) under its Simatic IT and Simatic HMI brands, in order to deliver plant floor information to operators and managers. These solutions are web-based tools that deliver information from back-end historian databases through to manufacturing execution systems (MES) with production planning, execution and reporting functions.
The company focuses on what it calls scalable solutions to suit individual companies’ operating philosophies, know-how levels, installed bases or available budgets. These solutions start with ‘Scada’ systems that directly link to the various automation systems that provide line-level data processing and populate this information back to the operators on the plant floor as well as to production managers at the office PC and service personnel with handheld devices.
Such systems can be extended by adding software modules for overall equipment efficiency (OEE)-calculations, statistical process control, track & trace, production planning and so forth, as the need at the customer arises and budgets allow, according to Siemens.
However, the information attained is only as good as the data originally generated.
“For bottling lines, you often find installations with 30+ machines running in sequence, with many of the machines being supplied by different machine manufacturers and subsequently using the ‘control philosophy’ of that specific supplier,” says Roland Heymann, business development manager, food and beverage, Siemens. “This makes it very difficult to capture the necessary production data from the individual machine controllers in order to populate the upper level production systems. It isn’t only the compatibility of the physical connections that’s a hurdle, but also the interpretations of the data.”
In order to link production systems, vertically and horizontally, involves the standardisation of machine architectures, which is what Siemens has now tackled with the introduction of its optimised packaging line concept.
Focused particularly on the filling and packaging processes, the optimised packaging line is designed to reduce the variance in components, interfaces and architectures used on the packaging line. It standardises the hardware and software from beginning to end of the process line and takes this standardisation right down into the machines from the sensors and networks, through the human-machine-interfaces (HMI) and drives, all the way to the head plc or motion controllers.
Essentially, Siemens’ optimised packaging line concept integrates the entire packaging line with a common automation and communications standard.
“Our optimised packaging line concept reduces complexity, eases the way to generate diagnostics in the machines and reduces the costs of training as well as the cost of the dead capital usually tied-up in spare parts,” says Heymann. “Standardisation is also provided at the software level, where Siemens offers technological libraries for controllers (eg, commonly used functions required for product handling, bagging, cartoning, singulating, KPI generation, line diagnostics etc).”
In addition, Siemens’ optimised packaging line concept has been developed to help optimise the energy consumption of an entire line. It not only monitors energy consumption and automatically switches off specific modules in the event of energy thresholds being exceeded, but also selects specific energy-saving components.
It suggests the correct assembly of these energy saving components within particular machine and line configurations and helps to avoid the costs associated with using harmonics/cosines phi corrections systems or large transformers. According to Siemens, using active and intelligent SINAMICS infeed modules, kinetic energy not required during times of deceleration of a line can be fed back to the power network without losses, for example.
To achieve complete standardisation of communication throughout the line from machine to machine and/or to the manufacturing execution systems (MES), Siemens applies the internationally recognised standards of Omac and Profinet. These underpin the communication throughout the plant and allow visibility of data according to each operator’s requirements.
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms has extended its capability in the area of improved interfaces with the use of its Proficy Historian gateway that’s designed to link the data from the plant floor to the management information systems in real time.
In addition, at the plant level, the company has significantly reduced the cost of its programmable automation controllers (PAC); and, in order to mitigate against the loss of any equipment or process control in the event of a power failure, the company now supplies its controllers with a ‘high availability function’ as standard for its PACSystems RX3i controller.
The ‘high availability’ technology is designed to keep essential operations running efficiently and reliably even when one of the PACs is stopped. The technology connects two independent controllers so that in the event of one controller stopping, its control functionality is automatically transferred to the other controller thereby avoiding downtime and subsequent bottlenecks, and keeping the production line running smoothly.
All the necessary data is synchronised automatically to the new controller using GE Fanuc’s RMX (reflective memory exchange) technology, which transfers large amounts of data at speeds up to 20 times faster than ethernet.
“The PACSystems’ RX3i High Availability really maximises return on investment,” says Bill Black, product manager for controllers at GE Fanuc. “With minimised downtime in process, increased productivity with fast powerful synchronisation, reduced engineering costs, and increased data integrity, all in the smaller footprint of the RX3i, customers really derive significant benefit from the system.”
These and other systems will continue to evolve to bring further benefits that meet the needs of both the plant floor and strategic planning as the pressures on manufacturers continues.
Claire Rowan is editor of Food & Beverage International.
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