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Control, Instrumentation and Automation in the Process and Manufacturing Industries March 2021

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The New Single Pair Ethernet Standard for condition monitoring is examined by Analog Devices

Making edge to cloud integration pay

Future-proofing process control solutions

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CONTENTS We will meet again – hopefully in the not-too-distant future!

Editor Suzanne Gill suzanne.gill@imlgroup.co.uk Sales Manager Adam Yates adam.yates@imlgroup.co.uk Group Publisher Iain McLean iain.mclean@imlgroup.co.uk

For many of us it has now been over a year since we have had an opportunity to discuss and see new technology developments ‘in the flesh’ at live events and exhibitions, and I for one am certainly missing this. Some commentators seem to think that, with vaccination programmes now in full swing and faster turnarounds for Covid-19 tests, mass gatherings may soon become possible again.

But, even if exhibitions can go ahead at some point this year, would you be happy to attend? I would jump at the chance to get out and about again, but I wonder whether I am in the minority? Would you be comfortable attending events this year? Or is your organisation likely to remain risk-averse? To get a better idea I’m conducting a very unscientific survey, so please do email me with ‘YES’ in the subject line, if you would be happy to attend an event this year or ‘NO’ if not.

Production Holly Reed holly.reed@imlgroup.co.uk Dan Jago David May G and C Media

Group Publisher Production Manager Studio Design

Suzanne Gill Editor – Control Engineering Europe suzanne.gill@imlgroup.co.uk

EDITOR’S CHOICE

ROBOTICS

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24 Robots help cut waste and speed throughput in food production

Single-beam safety switch; Embedded software solution aids automation of multiphase flow measurement

25 Is it time to create a robot payroll?

INDUSTRY REPORT 6

Amazon turns up the heat on predictive maintenance; User conference to focus on enabling smarter, safer and more sustainable operations

PROJECT PLANNING SOFTWARE 26 Getting product data at the push of a button

ALARM MANAGEMENT 11 Exploring the benefits of a simple alarm management philosophy

EDGE TO CLOUD INTEGRATION 12 Suzanne Gill looks at the importance of implementing plant connectivity from the edge to the cloud to make the best use of data

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PG 18

PROCESS CONTROL 16 Future-proofing your process control solution 18 DCS: moving with the times

MANUFACTURING EXECUTION SYSTEMS 20 Choosing an MES solution that will evolve with your needs Control Engineering Europe is a controlled circulation journal published eight times per year by IML Group plc under license from CFE Media LLC. Copyright in the contents of Control Engineering Europe is the property of the publisher.

ISSN 1741-4237 IML Group plc Blair House, High Street, Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1BQ UK Tel: +44 (0) 1732 359990 Fax: +44 (0) 1732 770049

Control Engineering Europe

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Paid subscriptions for non-qualifying applicants are available for £113 (U.K.), £145 (Europe), £204 (rest of world); single copies £19.

March 2021

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EDITOR’S CHOICE

Single-beam safety switch SICK has unveiled its next-generation L25 and L26 family of single-beam photoelectric safety switches, equipped with BluePilot alignment and IO-Link for smart, real-time communication, ensuring maximum machine uptime while protecting personnel from hazardous machinery.

With a scanning range up to 50m, the SICK L25 and L26 are Type 2 devices available in visible red light and infrared (IR) versions to meet a wide range of safety applications up to PL c (SIL 1).

The IR and red-light versions could also

be used together to avoid the potential for signal interference and introduce redundancy for applications requiring a higher level of safety.

The rugged and robust single-beam safety sensors are suited to use for collision- or access protection of barriers, gates, doors or racking systems, including multiple access points at longer scanning distances. With the ability to cascade up to four pairs of sensors, they can also be combined to achieve effective perimeter guarding of machines, or access protection to robot cells or machine-

tending areas, including the option of replacing a light curtain in space-limited machine designs.

The L25 has a scanning range up to 20m, and the L26 up to 50m.

Temperature transmitter for hazardous areas Vaisala has launched a new humidity and temperature transmitter series – HMT370EX – for applications in hazardous and explosive environments.

The entire transmitter can be installed directly in explosive areas, up to zone 0 and zone 20.

A rugged display allows the unit to withstand continuous exposure to potentially explosive areas that contain flammable gases or dust.

Typical applications might include paint booths in the automotive industry, hydrogen cooled generators in electricity generation, chemical

plants and processes, baking industry, pharmaceuticals manufacturing, oil and gas drilling platforms, and fuel tanks and storage.

The range consists of the transmitter and a selection of probes. The transmitter is equipped with an intuitive graphical display for ease of use. Hand-detachable measurement probes and easy product configuration and calibration with Vaisala Insight

PC software is said to enable smooth maintenance, minimising any measurement downtimes.

In addition to measuring relative humidity and temperature, the transmitter also outputs dew point temperature, wetbulb temperature, absolute humidity, mixing ratio, water concentration, water mass fraction, water vapour pressure, and enthalpy.

Embedded software solution aids automation of multiphase flow measurement Emerson has introduced a new software solution to boost process automation and the application of its Roxar 2600 multiphase flow meter (MPFM) for the oil and gas industry.

The Rapid Adaptive Measurement software architecture is said to enable the Roxar 2600 MPFM to do parallel computations at 10 Hz and autonomously select the optimal configuration for a particular time period. This leads to more automation in operational processes, reducing the need for what previously were manual configuration changes.

As oil and gas operators adjust

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March 2021

production methodologies to develop more complex reservoirs, the flow profile of wells is becoming more varied.

Producers therefore need multiphase flow metering technology to be robust and reliable in very demanding conditions.

The Roxar Rapid Adaptive Measurement software supports operators with meter performance, increased robustness and confidence while enabling cost-efficient operations.

The modularity of Rapid Adaptive Measurement allows for individual calculation modules to be improved and tested independently, and new modules

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can easily be plugged into the framework.

This enables the embedded calculation software and, by extension, the Roxar 2600 MPFM performance to evolve with new modules as they become available, providing continuously updated support for the life of an oilfield.

Control Engineering Europe

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INDUSTRY REPORTS

Amazon turns up the heat on predictive maintenance Blake Griffin discusses the recent move by Amazon into the industrial predictive maintenance arena.

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t the end of 2020, Amazon announced a suite of new Amazon Web Services (AWS) machine learning services. To many, this appeared to be Amazon’s launching point towards becoming a major supplier of predictive maintenance solutions. However, the announcement follows a long history of Amazon carving out its capabilities in industrial digitalisation. Since the e-commerce behemoth’s 2018 release of AWS IoT Sitewise – a service which enables users to gather and organise asset health related data housed in repositories such as a historian – Amazon has been adding to its industrial digitalisation offering.

In some ways the announcement represents a rounding out of a predictive maintenance offering rather than a jumping off point. When manufacturers are looking at implementing predictive maintenance into their facilities, they are asking fundamental questions such as: Which assets do I have visibility into already and how can I leverage this data?

Which assets do I not have visibility into and what can I do to change that?

The announcement of AWS IoT Sitewise was Amazon’s answer to the first question. Industry generates large amounts of data from the devices controlling its machines. This data is often stored in a historian and without the tooling necessary to effectively manage and analyse such data, much of its value can be lost. AWS IoT Sitewise was developed so this data could be more effectively utilised for condition monitoring/predictive maintenance purposes. The solution is deployed through software housed in a gateway which then communicates the collected data to the AWS cloud. This marked Amazon’s true entry into the predictive

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maintenance market.

Fast forward to Amazon’s most recent announcement and we see the company moving to provide a solution to question two. Assets that are often cited as being ‘offline’ from a condition data perspective are the mechanical portions of a motor driven system. These components are numerous throughout factory floors and their failure can represent significant loss of production if they are part of an application critical process. The industry responded to this need by offering smart sensors – wireless enabled sensors which can be connected to the side of a motor to gather data on vibration and temperature behaviour.

One of the Amazon services announced in late 2020 has been coined Amazon Monitron. The solution utilises smart sensors and gateways produced by Amazon to offer up data on the health of motor system equipment; effectively solving the problem of gathering data on assets not being monitored via historian data. This solution is in direct competition with predictive maintenance providers such as ABB, Siemens and SKF. Amazon’s utilisation of data housed in a historian, combined with its smart sensor offering and vast analytics capability offered through AWS, have one distinct advantage over the competition as Amazon is also a provider of cloud storage.

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Every platform offered by the major providers of predictive maintenance are built on cloud storage technology offered largely by either AWS or Microsoft Azure. So, the development of Amazon’s industrial digitalisation offering represents the first time a supplier has the ability to provide both the cloud storage and analytic capabilities under one entity.

It is difficult to foresee what impact this will have on the partnerships AWS has in place with industrial digitalisation providers. What is easy to see, however, are the numerous advantages Amazon will have in potentially winning the business of those investing in industrial digitalisation for the first time. If customers are looking to utilise the cloud for their industrial digitalisation initiatives, Amazon would represent the fewest number of touchpoints between customer and supplier during the sales process. Additionally, many manufacturers may already be using AWS for cloud storage but have yet to invest into further industrial digitalisation technology. In these scenarios, Amazon would already have a ‘foot in the door’ which may give them an advantage when the time comes for users to begin evaluating providers of digitalisation. plus-circle Blake Griffin is a senior analyst at Interact Analysis Control Engineering Europe

INDUSTRY REPORTS

Manufacturing business leaders resist digital progress The Connected Enterprise report, produced by Sigma Dynamics, in partnership with applied futurist, Tom Cheesewright, reveals that nearly half of manufacturing industry C-suite executives, directors and senior managers are sceptical about the benefits of implementing new business technology.

The research shows that 49% are doubtful that it improves efficiency, 40% cynical about its ability to improve productivity, and 66% question its positive impact on customer relationships.

Over two-fifths think technology can cause problems if not implemented carefully, while one-quarter believe that the cost often outweighs the benefits, 1-in-10 worry that it can create an unnecessary burden on employees.

Commenting on the report, Colin Crow, managing director of Sigma Dynamics, said: “From these statistics

we can infer that there are many manufacturing leaders that have been burned by previous digital transformation efforts. It is unfortunately quite common for businesses to choose the wrong technologies, or roll them out without enough support for employees, which can lead to costly mistakes. Some of these misconceptions are therefore understandable, but as the twin threats of Brexit and the Covid-19 have shown us over the past year, the business landscape can change with incredible speed.

“The manufacturing sector must be agile and open-minded in order to cope with the impact of these, and other, national and global challenges that we will all inevitably face, and it will soon become almost impossible for businesses in the industry to thrive without the help of strategically planned and implemented technological innovations. However, from our research

it is frustratingly clear that these events still have not served as a wake-up call for complacent business leaders.”

Just 34% think that they will have to implement more technology in order to remain competitive in the future, while 15% said that they believe that the technology they currently use will remain sufficient for the foreseeable future.

Applied futurist, Tom Cheesewright, added: “Covid-19 undoubtedly catalysed investment in technology in the manufacturing sector, but that investment was often overdue. If we are to avoid playing catch-up when the next challenge hits – or the next opportunity appears – then we should be thinking now about what changes to our technology, processes, culture and models can best prepare us for the future. Making the right investments in technology and skills is a critical part of future-proofing any business, adding resilience and agility.”

User conference to focus on enabling smarter, safer and more sustainable operations Emerson Users Exchange Live 2021 EMEA online conference will offer new in-sights and innovations that are driving performance improvements for manufacturers.

The event will highlight practical innovations and solutions to help industrial manufacturers achieve performance improvements by running their operations smarter, safer and more sustainably.

With the 2021 event being held virtually, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of delegates will be able to attend more than 120 online presentations taking place live over three days, from March 29 to 31.

The conference will feature over 70 case studies presented by end users to demonstrate how they have achieved measurable business value, increased safety and enhanced their environmental sustainability through the adoption of scalable innovations such as remote collaboration, predictive maintenance and personnel safety-focused monitoring.

In addition, there will also be deep-dive perspectives and the latest insights from automation and software experts and manufacturing leaders on how to rethink processes, identify new efficiencies, reduce costs and reach higher levels of performance.

“Our goal is to drive innovation that makes the world healthier, safer, smarter and more sustainable, and this objective will be reflected across the content of Emerson Control Engineering Europe

Users Exchange Live,” said Roel van Doren, president, Emerson Process Management, Europe. “The global health crisis has accelerated the need for digital transformation strategies and technologies to keep the process and manufacturing industries running safely, and Emerson Users Exchange will focus on how these strategies and technologies can be leveraged to optimise operational performance.”

Free to Emerson customers, Emerson Users Exchange Live offers both live and on-demand product technology roadmaps, meet the expert sessions, subject matter expert office hours, user case studies, industry forums and product demonstrations. For more information go to: EmersonExchange.org/EMEA.

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March 2021

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COVER STORY

sponsored article

NEW SINGLE PAIR ETHERNET FOR CONDITION MONITORING APPLICATIONS Maurice O’Brien explains how it is now possible to quickly develop and deploy an end-to-end-monitoring and predictive maintenance service-based solution and to benefit from high quality asset health insights and power on two wires.

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eal-time, continuous, condition monitoring and predictive maintenance solutions continue to grow in importance as manufacturers and plant operators look to increase throughput while reducing maintenance costs and asset downtime. Condition monitoring can extend equipment lifespans, improve manufacturing quality, and increase safety in manufacturing plants.

Given that unscheduled downtime can amount to nearly a quarter of total manufacturing costs, predictive maintenance has the potential to unlock significant savings and productivity. (ref 1) Industry market reports focused on condition monitoring and predictive maintenance project compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of 25% to 40%, as driven by two growth areas. The first is the increased deployment of smart sensors to monitor asset health. The second growth area is the increased use of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to transform asset health data into actionable insights for predictive maintenance and create new servicebased, predictive maintenance business model opportunities. Growth in new condition monitoring deployments will range across multiple industries, including: • Waste and wastewater treatment • Manufacturing • Paper and pulp • Food and beverage • Pharmaceutical • Metal and mining • Energy • Oil and gas installations

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March 2021

Figure 1: Condition monitoring applications.

Within these industries, condition monitoring applications are expanding beyond the traditional rotating equipment applications (pumps, compressors, and fans) to new applications in CNC machines, machine tools, encoders, conveyor belts, robotics, and instruments (see Figure 1).

Communication challenges Connectivity from smart sensors to higher level management systems has been one of the key challenges for condition monitoring applications. To date, condition monitoring applications have used wired or wireless connectivity solutions depending on the end application requirements. Wireless connectivity solutions have advantages in terms of ease of deployment but are often limited in terms of bandwidth and/or battery life. Wired connectivity solutions are sometimes limited in data bandwidth, and long distances in harsh

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industrial environments are not always supported and often require a separate cable for power.

Existing Industrial Ethernet solutions based on 100BASE-TX/10BASE-T provide high data bandwidth up to 100Mb and power over a Cat-5 or Cat-6e cable with PoE but are limited to 100m distance and don’t support hazardous area use cases as they are high power solutions.

Condition monitoring applications require support for potentially remote sensors that require robust communication over a long distance where the sensor node is in a space and power constrained IP66/IP67 enclosure due to the harsh industrial environment it is deployed in. These constrained sensor node applications need a low power, high data bandwidth communications solution that delivers both power and data on a low cost, easy to install cable with a small cable connector to the sensor node.

Control Engineering Europe

COVER STORY

sponsored article

Figure 2: Asset health insights on a converged IT/OT network.

New connectivity solutions New single pair Ethernet (SPE) physical layer standards developed by the IEEE are offering new connectivity solutions for communicating asset health insights for condition monitoring applications.

10BASE-T1L is a new Ethernet physical layer standard (IEEE 802.3cg-2019) that was approved by the IEEE on November 7, 2019. It will dramatically change the automation industry by significantly improving operational efficiency through seamless Ethernet connectivity to field-level assets. 10BASE-T1L solves the challenges that, to date, have limited the use of Ethernet to the field assets. These challenges include power, bandwidth, cabling, distance, data islands, and Intrinsically Safe Zone 0 (hazardous areas) applications. By solving these challenges for both brownfield upgrades and new greenfield installations, 10BASE-T1L will enable new asset health insights that were previously unavailable and seamlessly communicate them to the control layer and to the cloud/private server. These new insights will awaken new possibilities for data analysis, operational insights, and productivity improvements through a converged Ethernet network from the field assets to the cloud or private server (see Figure 2).

Advantages of 10BASE-T1L Ethernet Connectivity 10BASE-T1L removes the need for complex, power hungry gateways required by legacy communications to connect to the control and management Control Engineering Europe

network and enables a converged Ethernet network across the information technology (IT) and operating technology (OT) networks. This converged network delivers a simplified installation, easy device replacement, and faster network commissioning and configuration.

This results in faster software updates with simplified root cause analysis and maintenance of field-level assets. The 10BASE-T1L physical layer combined with messaging transport protocol (MQTT) provides a messaging protocol for field assets with a low memory footprint for lower power smart sensors. MQTT provides direct connectivity of asset health insights to the cloud or a private server for advanced data analytics for predictive maintenance techniques.

To communicate with a 10BASE-T1L enabled field asset, a host processor with integrated medium access control (MAC), a passive media converter, or a switch with 10BASE-T1L ports is required. Additional software, special drivers, or customised TCP/IP stacks are not required (see Figure 3). This results in clear advantages for 10BASE-T1L devices: • 10BASE-T1L is a very low power physical layer technology that can enable very low power smart sensor deployments with a high data bandwidth connectivity solution.

• A smart sensor connected with 10BASE-T1L is accessible over the network and can be remotely updated anywhere, at any time. As sensors

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become more complex, the probability of software updates increases. Updates are now possible within realistic periods of time via a fast Ethernet connection.

• Access to advanced Ethernet network diagnostic tools to simplify root cause analysis.

• Increased smart sensor installation flexibility via a single twisted pair cable up to 1km and beyond, with power and data on a single twisted pair cable.

• Asset health insights are now available remotely, via a web server running on the field asset, reducing the need for a maintenance technician to walk the floor to monitor an asset’s health – a significant cost saver.

Power and data on two wires The ADIN1100, ADI’s 10BASE-T1L PHY, enables lower power Ethernet connectivity on a single twisted pair cable that’s over 1000m with only 39mW of power consumption. Single-pair Power over Ethernet (SPoE) or engineered power solutions combined with a 10BASE-T1L PHY provide both power and data over a single twisted pair cable. A 10Mb data bandwidth communication link with significant power capability over the same cable enables smart sensors with the power and connectivity bandwidth to support new condition monitoring applications. With 10BASET1L connectivity, asset health insights are now more accessible as the insights are available across a converged IT/OT Ethernet network. 10BASE-T1L supports March 2021

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COVER STORY

sponsored article

Figure 3: Field asset, smart sensor connectivity with a 10BASE-T1L PHY.

hazardous area use case applications (Intrinsically Safe Zone 0) for process automation deployments and is sometimes referred to as Ethernet-APL. 10BASE-T1L/Ethernet-APL will enable new lower power solutions to connect asset health monitoring smart sensors to the higher level data management systems. This will enable AI and advanced analytic systems to transform asset health data into actionable insights and deploy new predictive maintenance services.

System-level solutions Complete, system-level solutions for condition monitoring applications will be key to enabling higher quality data and insights, thereby significantly improving manufacturing processes.

Advances in 10BASE-T1L/Ethernet-APL, coupled with a real-time, AI-driven sensing technology such as ADI OtoSense, can enable AI integration at all levels of customer systems. The ADI OtoSense platform senses and interprets any sound, vibration, pressure, current, or temperature to provide continuous, condition-based monitoring and ondemand diagnostics. It operates on the field asset at the edge, in real time, both online and offline. The ADI OtoSense system detects anomalies and learns from interaction with condition monitoring domain experts while creating a digital

fingerprint to help identify faults in a machine so it can predict breakdowns before they cause costly downtime, damage, or catastrophic failure.

Advancements in sensing, signal processing, connectivity, mechanical packaging techniques, and artificial intelligence at the edge are enabling new condition monitoring solutions and predictive maintenance services that will unlock significant savings and productivity improvements.

New system-level solutions for condition monitoring applications will include MEMS sensors for vibration and shock detection, precision converter technologies for data acquisition, and edge processing to create high quality asset health data. Low power, robust wired and wireless communication solutions provide access to the asset health data from the asset. Wireless communication solutions include SmartMesh or Wireless HART. Wired communications solutions include RS485 or 10BASE-T1L single pair Ethernet that provides power and data on two wires. These technologies along with high performance power management are combined in asset monitoring solutions (such as OtoSense technology), which are complete hardware and AI monitoring solutions that can be mounted on equipment for predictive

maintenance (see Figure 4).

Higher quality asset health insights and faster connectivity will extend equipment lifespans, reduce maintenance costs, and eliminate unscheduled downtime while maintaining the highest levels of manufacturing quality and safety in smart factories.

To learn more about complete, systemlevel solutions and artificial intelligence offerings for condition monitoring applications and how ADI can help customers and partners quickly develop and deploy an end-to-end monitoring and predictive maintenance service-based solution, please visit

analog.com/cbm Maurice O’Brien is the strategic marketing manager for industrial automation at Analog Devices.

Reference: 1 The Costs and Benefits of Advanced Maintenance in Manufacturing. U.S. Department of Commerce, April 2018.

Figure 4: Analog Devices’ condition monitoring capabilities.

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Control Engineering Europe

ALARM MANAGEMENT

BENEFITS OF AN ALARM MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY

Giving operators on the manufacturing floor a simple and clear-cut philosophy for alarm management with a simple and clear-cut system can help reduce downtime and improve overall automation and efficiency, says Martyn Hilbers.

A

larm acknowledgement is a widely accepted industry practice, but the reason why we apply it is a question that is not often asked. During a recent meeting for a project, with the purpose of developing an alarm management philosophy and implementing an alarm rationalisation, the question “why do we need alarm acknowledgement?” finally arose.

The essence of an alarm is to notify operators about whether a process is going out of bounds, or whether it is out of bounds and requires intervention, because the automation system is incapable of changing the situation.

Alarm acknowledgement is used to help the operator manage the active alarms. It allows the operator to distinguish which alarms have been addressed and which have not, providing a clear to-do list.

From an alarm acknowledgement standpoint, this leads to an assumption it has been accepted that the control system can generate multiple concurrent alarms that affect the process. It also assumes that the automation is not able to deal with many situations and/or the automation is generating too many alarms.

Fewer alarms are more effective Can we avoid too many alarms?

Consider the following: a valve limit switch has malfunctioned and opening the valve results in a ‘failed to open’ alarm. The valve is part of an equipment module and this too needs to provide an alarm of this event. The equipment module is part of a phase and the phase might be part of an operation and part of a procedure.

Control Engineering Europe

In order to put the phase on hold and possibly the operation and perhaps even a procedure, an alarm condition must be propagated from the valve up through the hierarchy. It is important to provide the operator with a notification that explains the reason for the hold of the phase (and possibly the operation and procedure), but it is important that the operator is not overwhelmed with alarms.

management are not immediately noticeable nor impactful. The effects compound over time and this can lead to significant production inefficiencies.

Circling back to why we need alarm acknowledgement, the answer to that question says something about the alarm efficiency and the level of automated operation, versus manual operation of the automation.

Alarm rationalisation

When sitting down to discuss and design a new automation system, ask whether the question ‘Should alarm acknowledgement be in the top 10 of our requirement list when selecting and/ or developing an automation system?’ If this question is at the top of the list and the answer is ‘No,’ the implication is that the system will be expected to perform at a higher automated level, that it will be applying alarm rationalisation and it will require less operator interaction. plus-circle

This makes it necessary to identify possible situations involving multiple pieces of equipment and implementing alarm masking schemes for these situations to give the operator one message conveying the reason for the hold. For large processes, this is where an alarm management philosophy and the implementation of an alarm rationalisation becomes important.

It will require an ongoing effort to keep the alarm rationalisation and alarm-masking schemes up to date in order to provide the operator with effective alarms. However, for many organisations this often falls by the wayside. The effects of neglecting alarm

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Raising the bar

Martyn Hilbers is principal engineer at PLC-Easy.

This article originally appeared on www.controleng.com March 2021

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EDGE TO CLOUD INTEGRATION

MAKING EDGE TO CLOUD INTEGRATION PAY Suzanne Gill finds out why it is important to implement plant connectivity from the edge to the cloud to make the best use of data made available thanks to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

I

nvestment in Industry 4.0 technologies – with standardsbased platforms supporting edge infrastructure – will enable critical machine and plant data to be monitored and analysed on site, offering better latency for decision making. Meanwhile, the cloud is able to use data provided by the IIoT to support higher analytical performance, especially where multiple plants are uploading data.

Industrial enterprises should really be looking to achieve connectivity from the edge to the cloud to allow for fast decision making based on real-time edge data, while also benefitting from higher resilience and secure remote access to mass storage data, reports, updates and notifications, offered by the cloud.

Greg Hookings, head of business development – digitalisation at Stratus Technologies, agrees with this need, pointing out that while focusing just on edge computing will give valuable real-time insight into operations on the plant-floor, without linking edge computing to the cloud the benefits of consolidating and processing larger amounts of contextualised data are lost. He said: “Without edge to cloud connectivity, artificial intelligence (AI) and broader digital transformation approaches, that require data from cross-business functions, are lost.

“At the other end of the spectrum, a cloud-only approach can reduce efficient management at a local level,” continued Hookings. “While the enterprise would be able to process large amounts of data with information from the entire supply chain, operators at the machine

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level would be reliant on bandwidth and availability to have access to information. Even in areas with high bandwidth, the data collected by machines needs to be sent to the cloud for analysis and so latency becomes a factor – reducing real-time reactivity. In some manufacturing processes such a delay might be enough to lose an entire batch, or bring production to a halt.”

Bringing these two disciplines together in a combined solution means that, at the machine level, operators have all the information they need as soon as they need it and large amounts of non-time critical data can be sent to the cloud for analysis. “What this creates is an enterprise with a global, contextualised understanding of its processes and an enabled, flexible, agile workforce, equipped to overcome challenges in real-time,” said Hookings.

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Taking steps Slawomir Dziedziula, technical systems engineer at Panduit EMEA, believes that there are a number of steps that will ensure successful data flow from the edge to the cloud. These include: • Plan and implement a robust and high-quality physical infrastructure that is suitable for the harsh environmental conditions of the plant.

• Design for standardised and normalised data and protocols to ensure data extraction is simplified and consistent.

• Support this with stable and redundant network connectivity between edge and the cloud.

• Decide what information and tasks will be analysed locally using real time computing.

• •Select a suitable analytical platform and deploy policies to decide which data is sent to the cloud.

• Create a central point of control and Control Engineering Europe

EDGE TO CLOUD INTEGRATION decide who can access data and from where it can be accessed.

“With a robust development process an edge structure and cloud solution can maximise an organisations’ capability operationally at a physical site level and corporately in planning, implementation and analytics,” said Dziedziula. “More data analysed faster will benefit the business”.

Steve Pavlosky, director, digital product management at GE Digital, advises that any edge to cloud integration strategy should start with the end in mind. “Consider whether the data will be used for plant level decision making or just in aggregated form from across the enterprise or fleet of assets,” he said. “If the data will be used locally, a solution to aggregate it, such as a historian, can provide the basis for storage, normalisation, and access for local use. In addition, a historian can enable the right subset

of data at the right frequency and the right aggregation level to be sent on for cloud-level analytics. Applications that derive value from the aggregation of distributed data only in a centralised way require a different IIoT approach.”

Pavlosky advises that companies embarking on an edge to cloud strategy should also consider the following points: How big a team will be needed to build, and later maintain, this solution and how much time will it take to build and test the solution?

What type of skills will be needed on the team and what are the scale requirements? In addition, security should always be top of mind.

“Once these questions have been answered, companies can reduce risk by using supported software that leverages the latest secure-by-design technologies to minimise the threat of cyberattacks,” said Pavlosky.

Generally, he advises that an integration strategy should reside on

three main pillars: Security: While the cloud is largely secure and the OT network should be secure by this point, the only area of vulnerability is the edge gateway device and the pipe to the cloud.

Ensuring high levels of security at the edge becomes the foremost consideration.

Scalability: The edge platform should scale with a company’s growth plan and most importantly, it should be priced appropriately.

Flexibility: An edge platform should be flexible enough to work with both legacy and new systems. The edge platform should allow the flexibility to port existing apps onto the platform regardless of the language they were originally written in.

A suitable strategy Offering his thoughts on how to identify a suitable integration strategy to ensure data flows from the edge to

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EDGE TO CLOUD INTEGRATION the cloud, Hookings says that this will be unique to each enterprise and will depend on the existing connectivity, the legacy systems, the software languages in use and most importantly, the desired outcome. “The best way to approach data connectivity is to consider it in terms of a broader digital transformation journey that involves every function of the business,” he said. In this way, he believes that the approaches adopted will underpin future development and enable the continuous, exponential development that new technologies offer. “This needn’t be overly complex,” he said. “From a data point of view, simple principles, such as using edge computing platforms that offer virtualisation, simplicity, autonomy and an intrinsically secure deployment, can offer the versatility required to link to existing or planned business software in the data centre, and/or in the cloud.

The right place to start is where ROI can most readily be achieved – the low hanging fruit. If you know the cost of IT-related downtime, for example, eliminating – or drastically reducing

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it – can have an immediate impact on the bottom line.”

Barriers to data flow Marco Zampolli, Industrial IoT solution architect & senior PSM at Advantech Europe, highlights the fact that the physical location of plant items may make certain technologies impractical or cost prohibitive when it comes to ensuring edge to cloud data flow. He said: “Fundamentally, the communication path must be reliable and must offer enough bandwidth to transfer all the generated data in a timely manner. But, this will mean different things in different situations, and so the value of the data must also be considered.” Offering an example, Zampolli points that it is likely that engineers would want to monitor the temperature of a critical process much more closely, and would therefore accept a higher cost of data collection, than say for the level of fuel supply to a back-up generator, which changes at a much slower rate.

“Processing can be added to filter and transform data as it passes

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towards the cloud, and this means it is relatively easy to morph the data into any desired data model and protocol as it progresses up the chain,” continued Zampolli. “However, what is possible is ultimately constrained by the characteristics of the plant itself, so the architecture needs to be optimised to maximise connectivity at the plant level, and then edge processing can be applied to transform this data into a unified model as early as possible.” Operating in this way gives the flexibility to optimise the balance between speed, reliability and coverage of the data and the cost of the processing and communication systems needed to recover and process it.

It is an unfortunate fact that, with so many legacy systems in place in plants, there will always be barriers to achieving edge to cloud integration.

“Hoping to find a factory without legacy systems is unrealistic,” said Zampolli. “They conspire against the implementation of IIoT architectures simply because they were created to execute a specific task – often without any consideration about exchanging

Control Engineering Europe

EDGE TO CLOUD INTEGRATION information. Even when information exchange is supported in legacy equipment, it could take place using a plethora of different proprietary protocol standards, often designed to only be used for local physical connections.”

How can this problem be overcome?

Zampolli advises the introduction of a layer of intelligence at the edge, close enough to the plant to have physical connectivity to it, which can then translate bidirectionally between any disparate and mutually incompatible protocols into a unified model for onward transmission, adding the necessary error detection and security characteristics. “This edge layer needs two main features,” he said. “Flexibility for easy adaptation to different legacy systems, wherever possible by configuration rather than programming; and a small and industrial footprint to be close to the data generation without interfering with the process.”

Hookings highlighted a legacy equipment issue that can be overcome with edge computing – security.

“There is widespread concern that adding previously un-networked operational technology to the enterprise level network can increase security risks by adding more points of vulnerability. However, by deploying the right edge computing hardware to previously unconnected operational technologies, it is possible to protect both the physical asset through restricted access and the cybersecurity with in-built protection. A network is only as secure as its weakest node and this is often legacy equipment.

Deploying edge computing can help to bring ageing hardware up to modern standards of protection without huge expense.”

What’s in it for the engineer?

So, how might cloud to edge integration benefit the role of the control engineer? “Edge and cloud computing both have their places in industrial operations, I believe Control Engineering Europe

that edge to cloud connectivity will result in the emergence of a hybrid professional,” continued Hookings.

“The gap between IT and OT has continued to diminish and this has had an effect on the role of the control engineer. The challenges that once only faced programmers in the IT world now affect control engineers as more businesses enable digital transformation. A control engineer no longer just focuses on configuring SCADA, for example. They have to configure the entire process all the way to real-time asset control.”

Zampolli believes that the seamless integration of edge and cloud, and the corresponding analysis tools which can be brought to bear on the resulting consolidated data lake, can significantly benefit the control engineer. “Big data analysis will show in an automated way the correlation of the different variables in a production environment – irrespective of the complexity,” he said. “The control engineer will be able to consider optimisation not just of each individual machine, but instead of the entire process, adjusting the performance of the individual elements to benefit the whole.

Comparison of performance across production lines or across different factories, shift patterns or raw material variations, will lead to more subtle insight into what is really important to improve output and yields. Best of all, this can occur in real time – changes can be implemented and tested, their effects judged and, if positive, can be rolled out across multiple lines in minutes rather than weeks or months taken by traditional, paper based, data collection and reporting.

“With such a solution, instead of being viewed as an operational role, primarily concerned with keeping the factory running, the control engineers position is elevated into a critical strategic asset, focusing on continuous process improvement based in evidential analysis, and using their knowledge of the process and

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plant to create, test and deploy ever more flexible and efficient working practices,” concludes Zampolli.

Commenting on how edge to cloud integration can benefit the control engineer, Dziedziula believes that the new level of aggregated data analytics is key, especially where multiple sites are contributing data, to provide benefits such as predictive maintenance based on real time and historic data across the organisation.

He said: “Simplified and secure access to site data from anywhere and any authorised device, reduces the need for routine on-site inspection. A major benefit is handing maintenance and support for the IT platform to the cloud provider, allowing engineers to refocus on performing their core activities more effectively.”

The last word goes to Hookings, who believes that, by focusing on real-time asset control, the machine level can utilise the deployed edge computing to improve overall equipment efficiency (OEE). Integration right up to the cloud means that the control engineer can make changes and improvements that apply to the entire enterprise. No longer will changes on the plant floor be driven just by the business requirements of the boardroom – indeed, the opposite will also be true – business changes will be driven by new insight, flexibility, and capability from the plant-floor.

“The digital transformation drives the needs of customers just as it drives capabilities for manufacturers.

Customers expect faster delivery times at lower prices and the planet requires all of this in a more sustainable, energy efficient way. Enabling edge to cloud integration allows enterprises to use the expertise at machine level to make significant gains in all of these areas without massive, costly changes to production processes. Moreover, well planned and executed digital strategies will help form a digital backbone that enables the progressive change of the digital transformation journey to bear fruit at every step.” plus-circle March 2021

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PROCESS CONTROL

FUTURE-PROOFING YOUR PROCESS CONTROL SYSTEMS

Joe Bastone explains how control engineers can ensure that their process control assets are future-proofed and have the flexibility needed to meet ever faster changing customer demands.

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ince the 1980s, most automation projects have followed a very predictable process, with significant engineering effort expended early in the project lifecycle to determine how every device is connected to I/O modules, how I/O modules are associated with process controllers, and how control strategies are assigned to the appropriate process controller.

Subsequently, automation providers have spent several decades finding solutions to help streamline project workflows – a process that has brought about much greater efficiencies.

At the same time, lean execution methodologies have challenged longheld assumptions about how projects should be deployed. Despite these advances, which have simplified many implementation tasks, there was still room for improvement.

More recently, however, a breakthrough technology has been developed that helps process control systems become future-proofed and giving the flexibility to meet changing customer demands. This solution enables automation end users to decouple I/O from control, providing expanded options in control distribution and facilitating modular and parallel project execution; apply control application containers to provide flexibility and standardisation of control hardware platform location and associated engineering; and centralise IT infrastructure to help lower project engineering and lifecycle costs, to better leverage skills and drive consistent physical and cybersecurity management.

The latest approach to project design and implementation employs lean project execution principles, software and networking to unchain control

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applications from physical equipment, and controllers from physical I/O. This enables control systems to be engineered and implemented in less time – at lower cost and risk – with simpler modular builds. The solution also transforms the way control systems are maintained over their lifecycle, shifting day-today management of servers to a centralised data center, where experts and established protocols are able to contribute to reducing cybersecurity risk, and allowing plant engineers to focus more proactively on optimisation of their control systems.

With today’s innovative methodology for automation projects, process control systems can be more easily expanded incrementally, and at the same time, the impact of late design changes is significantly reduced.

Project engineers now have the ability to decompose many of the parts of a control system that have been historically coupled in a tight and inflexible manner. They can configure I/O modules independent of controllers, and no longer have to worry about specific connections between devices, I/O cabinets and controller hardware.

This means that their focus can shift to improving overall plant control strategies and process operations.

For example, as plant personnel execute an expansion or debottlenecking, they might have to bring on additional control capabilities.

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The new project approach enables them to easily reallocate control functionality and still access all of the I/O installed in the field. They don’t have to rebuild control strategies or move I/O modules to different locations. New resources can be added to the existing infrastructure on an as-needed basis without concern for overloading the controllers.

Furthermore, extra I/O modules can be included in the current I/O ‘hive’ without the high cost associated with a more traditional scenario.

Conclusion In summary, a new approach to implementing automation solutions will foster a trend in the industrial landscape and companies will no longer be tied to control system platforms without the freedom to expand and enhance their design. This approach enhances automation performance and eliminates tightly bound relationships between I/O and control functionality – allowing both new and existing systems to adapt to their processes. plus-circle Joe Bastone is director, Experion product marketing at Honeywell Process Solutions.

Control Engineering Europe

HEAT TRANSFER

sponsored article

HIGH-EFFICIENCY AND ECO-FRIENDLY STEAM BOILER INSTALLATION With a requirement for new steam boilers with increased capacity, higher efficiency and more eco-friendly emissions when expanding their operations at a second facility in Romania, Universal Alloy Corporation had no hesitation in turning to heat transfer specialist Fulton, the supplier of steam boiler solutions already installed at its facilities in Romania and Vietnam.

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eat transfer specialist Fulton has supplied, assisted with installation and commissioned two gas-fired, horizontal RBC3000 steam boilers for Universal Alloy Corporation (UAC), a manufacturer and fabricator of high-strength, hard alloy extrusions for aircraft structures or where precision-engineered products are critical.

This is UAC’s second Fulton installation in Romania – at an all-new facility built to cope with increased demand from the airline industry – and third installation across its sites in Europe and Vietnam.

In accordance with strict Romanian regulations on the installation of new plant equipment, including steam boilers, as the OEM Fulton had to be in attendance at the system testing stage, ensuring reliable, maintainable steam could be provided ahead of a planned visit by several prestigious UAC customers.

This meant that Fulton’s engineering services supplied support from the UK and, in line with current Covid-19 guidelines, had to self-isolate for two weeks following the test-fire visit.

Under normal operating conditions, the two RBC steam boilers at the new Romanian facility are setup for N+1, with steam being used to heat water in several large vessels via coils, with the water being used for quenching purposes during component processing. Steam is also being passed through coils for a heater-dryer system at the end of the same processing line.

For the steam boilers supplied to UAC, Fulton partnered with renowned burner manufacturer Weishaupt and supplied the RBCs with two low-NOx, fullyControl Engineering Europe

modulating burners and reconfigured the boiler steam outlet nozzles to run at just 2 bar. The use of a Siemens high integrity digital burner management sytsem means the boilers are capable of achieving at least 7:1 turndown, something not always achievable from large horizontal firetube boilers.

Additionally, unlike typical gas pressures in the UK of approximately 20 mbar or 60 mbar on the continent, the supply at UAC’s site in Romania was 1.6 bar, so Fulton and Weishaupt provided an over-protection rig for the gas components in the gas train.

While the gas supply to the gas train is now regulated to 95 millibar, the overprotection rig ensures that a slam-shut system is enabled should the gas pressure exceeds 180 millibar, completely negating any possible component damage.

In addition to November’s test-firing visit, two of Fulton’s engineers visited Romania in September to service the RBC boiler at UAC’s original facility and commission the two boilers at the new plant. Again, both engineers followed Covid-19 guidelines on self-isolating when returning to the UK.

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Both visits also provided an opportunity for the training of key boiler operators at UAC’s new manufacturing facility which, as well as the usual instruction and guidance, also ensured that operators were educated on the start-up procedures in both low fire hold and auto modulation modes for these particular boilers.

Offering higher capacities than the 2,500kg/hr maximum for its VSRT range of vertical boilers, with outputs to 4,787kg/hr and a maximum working pressure of 10.34 bar, Fulton’s RBC range can be specified with matched multistage oil, modulating gas or dual-fuel burners as standard, with other burners available on request. The boilers are constructed to BS12953 standard, meet current and anticipated legislation and have been engineered to provide a substantial performance margin. plus-circle For further information on Fulton’s horizontal RBC and vertical VSRT steam boilers: Tel: +44 (0)117 972 3322, email sales@fulton.co.uk, or visit www.fulton.co.uk.

March 2021

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PROCESS CONTROL SYSTEMS

DCS MOVES WITH THE TIMES Control Engineering Europe reports on changing DCS technology which is being adapted to meet the need for more agile production.

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n the past making a process control choice might have tied a company into the same distributed control system (DCS) technology solution for decades. The scalability and flexibility of traditional DCS systems meant that customers needed to engage for long periods to ensure proper return on investment (ROI) of an often significant investment and this would tie them into a solution.

Offering an explanation of why some companies had no choice but to do this, Alain Hermans, process control program manager, EMEA at Rockwell Automation, points out that, in the past the use of PLC/SCADA solutions were not recommended for use in heavy industries, so for many a DCS was the only solution.

“More recently, with the globalisation of consumer markets there is a growing need for increased production flexibility, alongside CAPEX/OPEX reductions,” said Hermans, and this has resulted in the creation of more scalable and open control systems solutions.

“We are seeing cycles getting shorter and this is driving customers to manage

their plant/asset lifecycle in a more proactive manner,” continued Hermans.

“To reduce the risk of production losses due to obsolescence, manufacturers and processors are now planning migration budgets as part of their business plans.”

The NAMUR specifications are helping achieve this as they have lessened the need to commit to a single vendor’s control technology, thanks to the MTP (Module Type Package) standards, which demand a vendor neutral and functional description of the process module automation that can be generated by the engineering tool of the module.

So, going forward, how can engineers ensure that their process control assets are future-proofed and have greater flexibility? Hermans believes that the industry is driving towards greater standardisation throughout multiple plants and process skids and there is a need to allow the engineering community to quickly adjust systems and add process equipment or modify the DCS system to meet production changes.

Helping to achieve such production flexibility requires an open system which

comes with process functionality that enables high levels of standardisation, but without limiting the engineers to adopt the system to the application requirements or future integration of new process equipment.

High-end analytics and augmented reality (AR) are also useful tools that can be added into today’s process control offerings to enable process engineers to review plant functionality before it is created physically, and to give valuable insight into production processes to allow changes to be made to ensure productivity is always maximised.

An ideal world In an idea world control engineers simply want their control systems to work and to be available 24/7/365.

They don’t want to build, integrate, troubleshoot and maintain their automation; they want it to just work.

Sean Sims, vice president of DeltaV platform marketing at Emerson, believes that technology alone is not the answer to more flexible and efficient production. He said: “A strong partnership between customer and

Smoothing the upgrade path Yokogawa released its CENTUM distributed control system (DCS) in 1975 and CENTUM VP is now the ninth generation of the series. The latest enhancements to the system – offered with CENTRUM VP R6.08 – are designed to reduce the amount of work needed to upgrade a control system’s CPU module, including a newly developed utility kit and standards certification for individual CPU modules.

This new version also enhances a function that allows for system upgrades without interrupting the process control.

Providing a smooth upgrade process will help users achieve long-term stability in their plant operations and enable the efficient utilisation of assets.

It is now possible to undertake CPU module upgrades without needing to replace the cabinet that houses these components. Yokogawa has developed a utility kit that

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eliminates the need to replace the cabinet when upgrading the CPU module. This can help reduce workloads, prevents waste, and lowers the barriers to the introduction of new technology.

Other enhancements have been made to the online upgrade capability of the system for batch processing operations. CENTUM VP R6.05, which was released in 2017, included the first online upgrade function that eliminated the need to halt a plant to perform such upgrades, and gradual improvements have been made to enable a wider range of applications. With version R6.08, this online upgrade function has been enhanced with the addition of support for SEBOL, the principal programming language for batch processing sequence control.

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Control Engineering Europe

PROCESS CONTROL SYSTEMS automation supplier is required for automation to ‘just work’ and add sustainable value to operations over the long-term. We have seen many facilities that have advanced process control, sophisticated alarm management, and state-of-the-art asset management capabilities, yet the opportunity to use this technology to improve safety, compliance and production, is often under-utilised.

“While new technology makes it possible for companies to change control system technologies more frequently, that doesn’t mean they should take this step,” argues Sims.

“Today, we are seeing a trend for companies to invest fewer resources into maintaining automation and instead to ask suppliers to manage everything – from equipment sensors to full control systems and digital twins. I believe that in the coming decade we will see manufacturers making many changes to ensure their production lines become

more agile, and this will require strong automation technology partnerships.

Very few internal manufacturing organisations have the resources to meet production goals and strategically follow fast-changing technology trends.

Indeed, trying to achieve that can leave plants focused on tactical maintenance instead of business goals.”

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Sims believes that, rather than relying on transactional interactions for automation, a better solution is to leverage partnerships to create a long-term sustainable control system plan. “With a strong plan companies can better navigate the time, effort and costs associated with change,” he concluded. plus-circle

MANUFACTURING EXECUTION SYSTEMS

TAKING YOUR MES WITH YOU When looking for the right MES solution system today, manufacturers need to consider the ability of an MES to evolve with them, argues Francisco Almada.

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ystems controlling plant floor operations are changing rapidly.

The whole premise of Industry 4.0 is to bring physical production and its operations technology (OT) together with information technology (IT) solutions to provide a holistic view of production, supply chain and wider business goals. It aims to break down silos and create an integrated ecosystem where production efficiency, quality, and business agility all thrive. But, how do you know you are picking the right system for the future?

Manufacturing execution systems (MES) have long been the backbone of plant floor operations. Historically, however, they have evolved with narrow requirements – with specific functionality and features to fit specific types of processes – making it difficult to apply them in different industries. More recent MES offerings have instead focussed on flexibility and configurability of systems so they can adapt to a wide variety of different processes. Today’s MES solutions can create more flexible, configurable out-of-the-box solutions, and, when different possibilities of working within the bounds of configuration are exhausted, additional options for extending the core functionality.

manufacturing rules and processes, and collect information. In addition, it also now needs to go beyond the boundaries of manufacturing areas.

Modern manufacturing models require integration business related processes, such as maintenance, quality, and engineering, and the ability to expand into the entire supply chain and integrate areas such as warehouse management, supply chain management and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM).

Another important aspect of a future ready MES is its analytical capability.

Traditionally, an MES would collect data for traceability and for some key performance indicators (KPIs).The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has introduced new solutions, such as stream processing and machine learning (ML), to help derive insights. To enable tight control and execution, data needs to be collected in real time and the benefits of deeper analytics can only be achieved with deep integration between MES and IoT data platform.

Choosing the right MES

In the cloud

An MES needs to allow a company to evolve, grow and innovate. To this end, a system that has highly flexible configuration and allows for extension of core functionality is needed. The option for extreme configuration is preferred because a severely customised system makes upgrades, integration, backwards compatibility, and futureproofing much harder – but areas of both configuration and customisation for the future need to be considered in the design of forwardthinking solutions.

An MES should give guidance, enforce

Another consideration is where should the MES reside? Some manufacturers want it on premises, some on the cloud, some a combination of the two, some want ‘Software-as-a-Service’, some want ‘Platform-as-a-Service’. If on the cloud, should it be a private cloud? An MES needs to allow for all these options and this is possible if MES deployment is based on ‘containers’ to provide an abstraction layer for easy deployment in any environment.

The way users interact with an MES is also changing. Augmented reality (AR)

March 2021

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and virtual reality (VR) solutions are all entering the manufacturing landscape, making interactions with the system as reactive, intelligent, intuitive, adaptive and personalised to real circumstances as possible.

An MES solution requires a long-term commitment. History has shown that these systems can reside in a business for up to 20 or even 30 years. So, it is important to understand the roadmap and future plans for MES systems to ensure you do not get stuck with a solution that will not evolve with the business. To this end, a system should allow extreme customisation and personalisation without compromising the upgrade path for the future and consider development paths of all areas, including execution, automation and analytics.

As plant floor operations evolve, different solutions, such as IoT, MES and automation, begin to occupy the same spaces and the boundaries between them blur. As these ‘systems’ become increasingly integrated, a solution that employs the features of each of these entities, and which allows different types of customisation and expansion by utilising a framework architecture, will be one that a business can thrive on for decades to come. plus-circle Francisco Almada Lobo is CEO at Critical Manufacturing.

Control Engineering Europe

HMIs & VISUALISATION

sponsored article

A NEW PATH TO OPERATIONS VISUALISATION Find out why touch technology won’t eliminate physical controls.

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or nearly all enterprises, the rise of Industry 4.0 and IIoT has transformed automation, leading to a global intelligent manufacturing revolution that shifts the paradigm from ‘automation’ to ‘intelligent automation.’

Industrial human machine interfaces (HMIs) that can handle bulk data exchanges are essential for field data visualisation. Thus, in order to better visualize the equipment status and production workflow, HMIs must evolve to become more intelligent.

With the advantages of a growing computer and electronics industry and the continually declining cost of developing new technologies, HMI design is entering a new stage. Each upgrade enables users to better operate machines and control applications using ever-more simple and accurate methods, thereby improving productivity.

Despite the recent advancements of industrial HMIs, including expanded displays, accelerated communication speeds, and other powerful features, their designs and interactivity can still be improved to better satisfy consumer demands. So, what types of HMI designs and functionalities do consumers require/ are likely to become mainstream? And what are the reasons they will become mainstream? These issues will be discussed in the downloadable white paper to provide a projection of future market trends.

The history of industrial HMIs HMIs, as an interface that allows users to interact with the system and exchange information, are widely used in today’s society. In fact, HMIs have become indispensable to the development of many industries, such as the automobile, entertainment, electronics, medical equipment, banking, and service industries, which have long been major Control Engineering Europe

markets for HMIs. HMIs typically comprise hardware integrated with software.

Just like other HMI applications, industrial applications of HMIs have matured. Their primary functions are real-time information exchanges between humans and production equipment via programmable logic controllers (PLCs), variable-frequency drives. (VFDs), and meters, displaying data and providing visual feedback, and executing operating commands via an input unit (such as a touchscreen, keyboard, or mouse).

Following the infiltration of IIoT into factory floors, HMI technology has become essential to the fulfilment of intelligent production and the integration of system functions. To better display machine performance parameters and production workflow, over the past three decades computer technology has continually evolved to match ever-changing production requirements. This has also driven improvements in HMI designs to maintain pace with the development of intelligent manufacturing.

As early as three or four decades ago, when PC-based HMIs had not yet emerged, screen-based interfaces played a minor role in automation. At that time, most HMI products were controlled using physical features such as buttons, knobs, and indicators and connected via serial ports or proprietary protocols. However, their control capabilities were rather limited, often only allowing users to start or stop machine operations or implement certain settings or adjustments.

With the introduction of the Microsoft Windows operating system, HMIs

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started to go through drastic changes in visual functions: industrial technology experts combined graphics with data acquisition features and created a new breed of automation software to be implemented on the Windows platform.

Accordingly, more advanced PC-based HMI terminals started to pervade factories.

Compared to earlier solutions, PC-based HMIs deliver greater value as they support additional functions such as data processing and programming at production lines, which optimizes the flexibility of the machines. However, with the ever-increasing machine functions and rapid development of IoT technology, HMIs must be upgraded and enhanced.

In response to trends in the consumer electronics market, most of the industrial sector has begun equipping traditional control equipment with touchscreen technology to better integrate HMIs into the control workflow. And the realisation of intelligence continues to evolve. In a number of high-end industrial sectors, cutting-edge AR and VR technologies have been integrated into the manufacturing process to enable remote monitoring and machine control through virtual operations.

Although emerging technologies like AR and VR have endless potential for industrial applications, to optimize and streamline the processing workflow, most factories still prefer using HMIs with physical control units for human-machine interaction. plus-circle The whitepaper can be downloaded at: https://bit.ly/3qrM7Ma www.advantech.eu March 2021

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PROCESS SYSTEM INTEGRATION

EIGHT TIPS FOR PROCESS AUTOMATION SUCCESS

Process automation projects are complex and can go through many challenges before completion. Remaining open, honest and demanding high expectations from everyone can help ensure the project will succeed, argues Robbie Peoples.

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omplex integration projects can present a level of ambiguity even for seasoned project managers. Keeping a close watch on budget and schedule is critical for success, but is not enough to ensure the project is successful in the eyes of a client. Maintaining client satisfaction can be the most challenging aspect when managing an integration project.

A client’s perception of satisfaction goes through transition cycles just like projects do. The client’s view of the performance of the integration team is a complex element that can be difficult to measure accurately.

Effectively managing perceptions and expectations can be challenging. To succeed, one must understand and relate to the client’s pain points.

As projects progress through their lifecycle, the number of interactions and exchanges of data between stakeholders fluctuates. On a typical project, the time and effort of the definition and planning phases exceed that of the execution phase.

Generally speaking, more interaction is needed with clients on the front- and back-end of project phases. The planning stage also requires accurate and timely delivery of data from the client in order to progress into the execution stages.

These demands put pressure on clients to produce information and can be a bottleneck for the entire project. In many cases, clients do not have the expertise and/or available bandwidth to spend the time to produce the information needed for execution.

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The following eight points are derived from real-world experiences of managing complex automation projects and identify key attributes to help manage the process.

1. Don’t underestimate the demands: To ensure project demands can be met, it is recommended to evaluate the workload requirements for all stakeholders prior to the execution of a large project. If the company does not have large project execution experience, it is highly recommended to talk with knowledgeable professionals to define the requirements. A common misconception is that the current work responsibilities can be maintained while taking on additional project loading activities as well. Another common oversight is underestimating the detailed knowledge required to provide accurate data or review/approvals required. These oversights can be detrimental to success and all work loading should be properly planned and staffed for success.

2. Engage with stakeholders early: It is important to have a solid working relationship between stakeholders. It is recommended that time is dedicated at the front-end of the project to establish a solid foundation based on ethical business practices. Face-to-face meetings always are recommended over video or conference calls. It is important to discuss the interactions between groups and define scope boundaries.

Define the expectations of how requests, submittals, deadlines and out-of-scope requests will be

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handled. Doing business is easy when the project is within schedule and budget. However, when deadlines are looming and stakes are high, so it is always better to understand how to work together to address issues and concerns prior to a high-stress situation. Overcommunicate the expectation from all stakeholders to ensure everyone understands.

3. Request feedback often: Embrace feedback as an important aspect of continuous improvement. That is, stakeholders should check in their ego at the door, humble themselves and ask for direct honest feedback.

Positive feedback is great but the only way to improve is to define the negative aspects. This is a two-way street, however, and both client and contractor should have an open discussion because both have responsibilities to deliver. Depending on the project size, milestone reviews can be performed on a periodic basis. All issues and actions should be published and followedup for each feedback session.

4. Get management involved: Involving upper management on a periodic basis shows a commitment to the responsibilities of the project. This cultivates an open-door policy to help clarify current issues at hand and provide primary decision makers with first-hand information. These meetings should be more strategic than tactical. Identify roadblocks or critical-path items but keep the topics at a level that everyone can follow and do not allow conversations to get into the weeds, Control Engineering Europe

PROCESS SYSTEM INTEGRATION

DTE selected the Siemens Simatic PCS 7 distributed control system (DCS) to modernize its control system using redundant AS400H controllers for the updated project configuration, including the combustion control (blue I/O) and process safety/burner management applications (yellow I/O). The system was integrated into new cabinets by Cross Company. Courtesy: Cross Co. via Siemens

which might make the management team lose interest. Review meetings should not be the standard weekly or bi-weekly meeting attendees.

Identify a separate time to review the key issues to keep management aware of the project status.

5. Hold stakeholders accountable: Stakeholders should be held accountable to deliver the associated data and/or information needed to move the project forward.

Always assign specific deadlines for delivery and do not allow generic time frames to be assigned. If items Control Engineering Europe

are delayed then the successive items will be delayed as well. All deliverables and deadlines should be reviewed at every meeting to ensure everyone fully understands and accepts the responsibilities.

Collective synergy and commitment from all stakeholders will result in project success.

6. Follow the process: Partnering with a professional group with a defined and qualified process of implementation can be the difference between success and failure. Do not allow a custom

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approach or unproven strategies to creep into the project. Cutting a new path or reinventing the wheel only invokes a level of uncertainty to the outcome. The only way to predict the future is to understand the past. When schedules become tight, most people search for ways to cut corners. Be sure to fully evaluate the impact or potential impact of all actions and trust the proven process to lead to success.

7. Do the right thing: Mistakes will happen, but what is important is to be honest and admit the mistake, identify how to correct the situation and provide a solution to prevent that mistake from happening again. Honest, fair and open communications with stakeholders is the best policy. Always act in the best interest of the client and lead by example.

8. Remain persistent and open: Common attributes of successful projects are acceptance and upholding responsibilities from stakeholders. Successful projects have hardships throughout the project lifecycle. However, persistence to work through those issues establishes a level of trust and understanding that builds healthy relationships. An open culture of continuous improvement and dedication to success are critical to forming a close partnership.

Dedication to those relationships means fair practices solutions are identified together and decisions are not one-sided. It is a good idea to keep management involved, solidifying the commitment. Be sure to communicate openly and honestly with realistic expectations while adhering to the most ethical business practices. Doing these things surely will bring success to the project. plus-circle Robbie Peoples is integration manager at Cross Company.

This article originally appeared on www.controleng.com March 2021

23

ROBOTICS

ROBOTS HELP CUT WASTE AND SPEED THROUGHPUT IN FOOD PRODUCTION

Robots are becoming a more familiar sight in food manufacturing plants today, but mostly undertaking end-of-line or packaging functions. In this application, however, robots are being employed to accurately cut blocks of cheese.

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UK-based cheese producer wanted to find an automated solution to help it more accurately cut cheese to enable it to reduce waste and increase throughput.

Cheese is hard to cut. Cutting it with a knife can result in breakage, and even the drag of a knife can cause damage. Ultrasonic cutting can offer a good solution. This method uses energy from microscopic vibrations of a blade to pass easily through the material.

When paired with automation, ultrasonic technology can deliver a precise and accurate cutting solution.

The cheese producer contacted Elliptical Design, a bespoke machine solution provider for the food industry, to discuss automated cutting solutions. Ellipical Design brought industrial robots into the solution, using equipment from TM Robotics, the EMEA distributor for Shibaura Machine (formerly Toshiba Machine).

For this particular application, robots were installed for three different functions.

The first two are pick-and-place applications, with the addition of vision and conveyor tracking capabilities. One application involves the robot picking up a large, half moon piece of cheese and putting it into plastic packaging, while in the other, the robot picks up three small pieces of cheese at once and puts them into packets. For these applications, TM Robotics supplied IP65-rated SCARA robots, which are able to work at full speed without thermal overload. The robot has a cycle time of 0.3 seconds and is capable of 120 cycles per minute in 24-hour continuous operation. It

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has an arm length of 700mm and a maximum payload of 10kg.

A cutting solution The final robotic application was the ultrasonic cutting system. Within this process, the robot picks up a 10kg piece of cheese and moves it onto a weigh station, and then a cutting station. There, it is cut in half using ultrasonic technology.

For this system, TM Robotics supplied a strong, yet flexible IP65 rated six-axis industrial robot which has a maximum cycle time of up to 0.9 seconds and repeatability of ±0.03mm.

One challenge presented by the application involved the fine-tuning of the robot’s vision system. This was needed to ensure that the robot was picking up cheese in the right place and putting it down as accurately as

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needed – there is a very slim margin for error in plastic tote placing.

When the cheese is placed on the conveyor it is still slightly soft. Rather than a round shape, it has a slightly flat side. The team’s engineers needed to find the right algorithm in the vision programme to ensure the robot could accurately identify non-uniform shapes and pick the cheese accurately.

On the factory floor Prior to the project, the manufacturer’s production process was almost entirely manual, and it took between four and five days to produce the quota of cheese needed each week. Now, with the bespoke ultrasonic cutting system and robots, the same production quotas can be reached in just two days, due to increased throughput and reduced waste. plus-circle Control Engineering Europe

ROBOTICS

IS IT TIME FOR A ROBOT PAYROLL? Mark Gray believes that, to shore up operations and boost productivity, manufacturers should to be looking at robots.

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t has been an incredibly busy 12 months for all businesses supplying supermarkets. For the food industry, in particular, which was already dealing with labour shortages, Brexit and Covid-19 travel restrictions have combined to make staffing more challenging. Throughout a period of unprecedented demand, social distancing requirements and a duty of care to staff on the production line have also made maintaining output levels more difficult.

For many SMEs aiming to keep costs low, these kinds of technologies can seem out of reach. However, there is a way for manufacturers to begin scaling up automated processes, while keeping risk low.

Historically, the requirement for up-front capital investment has seen many SMEs dismiss or postpone decisions around automation. But difficulties recruiting staff and the ability to lease solutions that can immediately benefit the business really has changed the game.

Maybe the time has come to pay for automation on a monthly basis in just the same way that employees are recompensed. In other words, it’s time to introduce a robot payroll.

Overcoming barriers Introducing a robot payroll encourages manufacturers to make better longterm decisions about how to profitably improve productivity. Scaling up with the increased use of automation establishes a base from which a company can be more competitive, whereas simply bringing in more agency workers only addresses the immediate problem.

Comparing the costs of each option on a like-for-like basis helps to focus minds and benefits everyone as it makes the business more resilient.

Control Engineering Europe

Leasing a cobot means there will be less capital outlay involved, and as soon as it has been programmed it can begin paying back the cost of investment, 24-hours a day. This also offers the flexibility to trial smallscale deployments in different areas of production to see where they can benefit the most from automating.

But leasing isn’t just a vehicle for A/B testing and optimising production methods. Used strategically, it can provide a more attainable way of automating operations and, crucially, with much less risk. By the end of the first year, the first cobot could have paid back the cost of investment, at which point you can invest in a second unit. From there, you can repeat the process, scaling up the number of cobots exponentially year-on-year.

Lack of robotics expertise is often cited as another reason to avoid automating. But collaborative robots are much easier to program than their industrial counterparts, and it typically only takes around 30 minutes to input a new task. Ease of set up goes further than this as no expert programmer is required, after a short course staff

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should be able to program new tasks.

There is an array of widely held misconceptions associated with automation and robotics. But perhaps one of the hardest connotations to avoid is the idea that introducing automation will leave many in the industry without a job – this simply isn’t true. Cobots are designed to only take on the most dirty, dull and dangerous tasks and do not have the capabilities to replace their human counterparts. In practice, this means cobots can do the most repetitive and strenuous tasks in production, freeing up human employees to take on more value-driving work.

While automation is not a silver bullet for organisations looking to increase profitability the technology can be a powerful tool to boost productivity and efficiency.

Manufacturers need to prioritise starting their journeys toward more automated operations, or risk being left behind as robotics becomes a fundamental part of manufacturing. plus-circle Mark Gray is UK country manager at Universal Robots.

March 2021

25

PROJECT PLANNING SOFTWARE

PRODUCT DATA AT THE PUSH OF A BUTTON

Up-to-date and complete product data is vital for the selection of suitable components and for all subsequent steps in the life cycle of the plant. The search for, and the compilation of, this information can be very time-consuming.

A new online offer can shorten this process, says Stefanie Westerhaus.

T

he number of components used in process plants can run into the tens of thousands, even for small projects. Even a simple connection terminal will have certain characteristics that qualify it for a particular application.

In addition to electrical rated data according to different standards, there will be connection data, as well as mechanical, geometric or commercial data. More than 50 values are necessary to adequately describe even a simple component. In addition, there will be country-specific approvals, documentation, and corresponding symbols or drawings. Every detail is important – not only for the selection of the suitable component, but also to ensure plant safety.

Attention to detail The Essen subsidiary of Germany’s Actemium Controlmatic GmbH understands the importance of paying attention to these details. In the automation and process Industry business unit, the company plans and builds plants for its customers. The Essen Actemium branch employs Comos planning software from Siemens – every new Comos project is based on the objects from the in-house master data base. The system stores the technical properties of components as well as administrative, process-specific or costrelated properties. “Our master database contains engineering knowledge from many projects,” explains Björn Hohmeyer, project manager at Actemium and head of the Comos Competence Center.

“If a project requires devices that we have not used before, we create them

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as new base objects – with all the associated data.” Only then are these objects available to all system planners and can be used. This procedure is part of Actemium’s standardisation effort for projects and it helps ensure that the customer later receives the complete plant documentation in a legally compliant manner. “We are the gatekeeper, so to speak, and create the basis for standardised projects in which all components will later work together optimally,” said Hohmeyer.

For each component, the team has to retrieve and collect the data from the manufacturer. “The exact typification of the components is one of our challenges.

The acquisition of information can resemble the search for a needle in a haystack!”

Anyone involved in engineering processes will recognise this challenge – a great deal of work is required to describe and document a component as completely as possible. With its Comos Engineering Portal (CEP), Siemens has created a web application that delivers free-of-charge product data to Comos users. The manufacturerindependent catalogue is accessible either as a standalone web application

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or as an embedded interface within the planning software.

Starting with Comos version 10.3, the Product Selector function can be used to select suitable components directly by specifying certain features. The right product can be quickly identified using comparison functions which can then be transferred to Comos projects with just one click. After downloading all specific information, data sheets, design data, etc., these are directly assigned to the component in Comos. The same applies to all accessories.

Reduced time expenditure Actemium Controlmatic in Essen has been using the CEP since 2019. “Our planning projects continue to be developed with our base objects only. With the CEP, we benefit from an efficient way to add new products to these base objects,” said Hohmeyer. “Today, I can search directly from within Comos in the CEP online catalogue for the required component.

With a single mouse click I have all the necessary information at my fingertips, saving huge amounts of time.” plus-circle Stefanie Westerhaus is marketing manager at Siemens Digital Industries.

Control Engineering Europe

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