by Gary Mintchell | Feb 27, 2013 | Software
Received this notice from my old friend Charlie Gifford. I have not seen it yet, but I know the people and bet it’ll be a good read.
The ISA95 Best Practices Working Group, chartered by the International Society of Automation (ISA), has released its its third collection of Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) methodology white papers as “The MOM Chronicles: ISA-95 Best Practices Book 3.0″. This collection focuses on MOM system engineering methods to organize the complex 21st-century manufacturing plant and to optimize its role in a global supply chain.
He’ll also be discussing the book with a Launch Webinar, “Transform Manufacturing Operations – A Discussion with the Chairman of the ISA-95 Best Practices Group.” This webinar is hosted by Northwest Analytics on March 7, 2013 from 11:00AM-12:00PM PST USA. Click to register.
Dedicated to Ray Bradbury
The paper collection in Book 3.0 is titled “The MOM Chronicles”, which is derived from the legendary work of The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Our working group has dedicated the Book 3.0 collection to Ray Bradbury, who passed away on June 5, 2012. Ray Bradbury’s futuristic works were (are) a major influence in lives of many of today’s technologist and scientists who look for positive directions and ways to influence the world for the better.
The Book 3.0 collection addresses the need for true manufacturing system engineering methods to organize the complexities of the manufacturing operations.
The following are the white papers as book chapters:
Chapter 1: Applying Global MOM Systems in a Manufacturing 2.0 Approach
Chapter 2: The Role of Semantic Models in Smarter Industrial Operations
Chapter 3: Applying Manufacturing Operations Models in a Discrete Hybrid Manufacturing Environment
Chapter 4: Defining an Operations Systems Architecture
Chapter 5: A Workflow-driven Approach to MOM
Chapter 6: Scheduling Integration Using an ISA-95 Application in a Steel Plant
Chapter 7: Intelligent Integration Interface: I3, A Real-world Application of ISA-95
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 25, 2013 | Operations Management
OK, I’m so old I remember programming before the IDEs (that’s Integrated Development Environment people, not the Ides of March for all you Shakespearian scholars). I thought that those interfaces were almost “cheating” by greatly improving the programming and engineering environment when I first ran across them.
Now, IDEs are everywhere–even PLC (or other industrial) programming. Last week I saw a re-enactment of the Siemens TIA Portal, and recently I’ve seen the advances at Beckhoff Automation and Rockwell Automation. It just keeps getting better.
If you program in Java, maybe you’ve run across the open-source project called Eclipse. When I worked for Control Engineering and covered the embedded space, I saw the kick off of the project. I had downloaded the original Java JDK as soon as it was available in the mid-90s, so I downloaded the Eclipse IDE and really liked it. I had heard that they ported it to C/C++, but by then I wasn’t covering it any longer.
The Foundation has come a long way in the past 10 years. Now, the Eclipse Foundation has launched a new initiative to enable the infrastructure and ecosystem for the support of Eclipse in industries that require Eclipse releases maintained over a very long time. Industries such as aerospace, automotive, and enterprise software are expected to support their software stack for 10 to 50 years. The new Eclipse Long Term Support (LTS) initiative will allow these companies to release bug fixes and maintenance releases of previous versions of Eclipse technologies.
The Eclipse Long Term Support initiative is led by CA Technologies, IBM, EclipseSource and SAP AG. The Eclipse Foundation, through Eclipse LTS, will provide the IT infrastructure to fix, build, sign and deploy updates for older versions of Eclipse. LTS will also enable an ecosystem of service providers, technology providers and large enterprise consumers of Eclipse to share fixes and releases. The initiative is open to any organization with an interest in long-term support and maintenance for Eclipse technology.
“This is an important next step for the Eclipse Foundation to enable the adoption of Eclipse and open source software in important industries,” said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation. “LTS is going to solve some very important challenges for organizations that rely upon open source for critical applications. This is a great example of how the Eclipse Foundation is extending the services we offer to make it possible for companies to adopt Eclipse and open source software.”
LTS has been established as an Eclipse Industry Working Group and will operate under the governance of the Eclipse Foundation.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 20, 2013 | Marketing
“I am about to start testing these products, and here is my conclusion.”
I was product development manager of a consumer products company and a member of an ASHRAE technical committee when this journalist/tester/writer for Consumer Reports visited a committee meeting and made that statement. That was 30 years ago. I have not read the magazine since.
What brought these memories back is the recent kerfluffle between Elon Musk, CEO of electric car manufacturing company Tesla, and The New York Times.
Seems that a Times reporter took a test drive in a Tesla Model S electric car. His report was less than enthusiastic. Musk took the reporter to task. Soon the Web was full of commentary.
One thing you should know–the Tesla car reported back to the company the details of the trip. Therefore, Musk had facts to rebut some of the report–but not all, it seems. The thing for us all to think about is how this Internet of Things, or Connected Devices, stands to benefit others such as manufacturers and not us, the users.
All arguments aside, what is the constraining factor for the overwhelming adoption of electric cars? Range. Even if range is improving, that is still the worrying thought nagging at the consciousness of all of us who need to go for distances between charging.
The other thing, be wary of some of these “actual use” reports. Read carefully.
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 20, 2013 | Events, Operations Management
Shuzo Kaihori, President and CEO of Yokogawa, led the press conference at the ARC Forum on Feb. 11. Stirring memories of his predecessor’s stated goal of making the company the market leader in automationk, Kaihori noted that it is the global number two supplier of safety integrated systems. He did state that it is still the company’s goal to be the leading automation supplier. It’s just that the target date has slipped. Macro economic trends and internal reorganizations have delayed the plans, I believe.
Technology suppliers continue to develop energy management solutions. Yokogawa joins that trend by partnering with Soteica and its Visual MESA energy management and optimization solution services adding it to its portfolio of plantwide energy management solutions (EMS). Yokogawa has also acquired 44.3% ownership of Soteica Visual MESA to accelerate the joint development of EMS.
Visual MESA is capable of reducing annual energy costs by approximately 2% to 5%. There are approximately 3,400 plants worldwide with $40 million or more in utility costs each year.
“We are very excited about entering into this comprehensive partnership with Yokogawa as it will enable us to dramatically increase the exposure of Visual MESA, our industry leading solution for utilities optimization”, said Oscar Santollani, Soteica Visual MESA’s CEO. He added, “We have found in Yokogawa a partner with whom we share the same work ethics and engineering rigor. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship.”
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 19, 2013 | Automation, Events, Safety
Invensys Operations Management packed its press conference time with safety news. In many ways, this is refreshing as well as a validation of bringing in Mike Caliel to take the reins. To be fair, the developments were probably in the pipeline for a while. But Caliel’s main challenge was to bring stability and focus to a fractured assemblage of divisions. That seems to be going well.
Software Tools
The Triconex Safety View solution is the said to be the world’s first software for effective alarm and bypass management certified by TÜV Rheinland to IEC61508 Systematic Capability 3 for use in applications up to Safety Integrity Level 3. Additionally, the company’s Triconex Trident and Triconex General Purpose safety instrumented systems now support OPC Universal Architecture for greater communications connectivity.
“Changing market dynamics and emerging technologies require a fundamental rethinking of how companies will manage their operations today and in the future,” said Gary Freburger, president of the company’s Systems business. “To address these new and ever-more complicated challenges, companies need to become more agile without jeopardizing plant safety. Our new Triconex products provide this agility by reducing risks when bypassing safety systems during startup and shutdown, as well as the risks associated with integrating safety systems across different vendor platforms. In addition, they provide a pathway for modernizing existing plant operations, one that links business processes with production processes; removes traditional barriers to collaboration; and empowers our customers’ most valuable resource – their people.”
Safety View improves situational awareness and broadens visibility into the risks that come with system startups, shutdowns and other critical process transitions that must be managed by plant personnel. It draws attention to changes in process conditions that require immediate attention, giving operators, maintenance engineers and shift personnel better visibility into the process so they can take actions that reduce risk, optimize total cost of ownership and increase overall asset performance. It is built on the company’s ArchestrA System Platform and Wonderware InTouch HMI software, which have been adapted specifically for use in safety applications.
OPC UA
Invensys has also embedded OPC UA communications in its Triconex Trident and Triconex General Purpose safety instrumented systems. OPC UA maximizes interoperability between systems and streamlines connectivity through open platform architecture and future-proof design. The new communications interface module contains an embedded OPC UA server that supports up to 10 concurrent clients, delivering high performance and secure, reliable communication of real-time data, alarms and historical events.
“The addition of OPC UA communications reinforces our commitment to providing secure, reliable and future-proof communications that seamlessly integrate our market-leading safety systems with various distributed control systems, programmable logic controllers, HMIs and other plant assets,” said Steve Elliott, director of Triconex product management for Invensys. “This freedom of choice allows clients to select the best of the best for their control and safety needs without compromising performance.”
OPC UA provides a single communications solution from the device level to the enterprise level, maintaining platform independence without sacrificing performance. It provides better interoperability (complete with certification); reliability by design; access via firewalls and across the internet; and reduced configuration time with built-in information and security models.
Controller
The Triconex General Purpose system is a SIL2-certified high availability, fail-safe and fault-tolerant controller. Redundancy, diagnostics, error checking and failure modes are all built into the system as standard. No knowledge or understanding of redundancy is required to make the system work. Users simply just wire up the inputs and outputs and then write the logic for the piece of equipment they need to control or protect. The Trident General Purpose system does the rest. And there is no single point of failure and very high mean time between failure rates.
The latest version also features OPC Universal Architecture communications connectivity, which maximizes interoperability between systems and streamlines connectivity through open platform architecture and future-proof design. The new communications interface module contains an embedded OPC UA server to provide a cohesive, secure and reliable cross-platform framework for real-time data, alarms and events. It also implements X.509 certificates for additional, enhanced security protection.
Key Capabilities:
• Control and safety in one package;
• Simple and easy to use, requiring less engineering than PLC’s;
• No need to program redundancy and fail-over functions;
• No need to program diagnostics or failure modes;
• No need for external diagnostics, such as watchdog timers;
• No need for calibration of analogue inputs;
• No need for testing of failover redundancy;
• Simple to maintain and fault find;
• Transparent Fault Tolerant Operation (triplication is seamless to users);
• Standard design delivers repeatable, maintainable and supportable solutions;
• Lowest overall lifecycle costs.
