by Gary Mintchell | Nov 28, 2016 | Automation, Technology
Rockwell Automation was all about Connected Enterprise at Automation Fair 2016. Festo joined in the fun showcasing seamless connectivity with Rockwell Automation’s factory automation and process automation architectures in such areas as:
- IO-Link Premier Integration
- Ethernet/IP
- Integrated Architecture Builder (IAB)
- Studio 5000 Software with L5K export
- World class training
Ethernet/IP is the primary interface node for Festo pneumatic solutions, which now extends to the sensor level with process data, service data, and events information because of IO-Link Premier Integration. The IO-Link section of the Festo Flexible and Modular Automation exhibit features products that facilitate top down/bottom up integration.
Encompass products on display include the Festo CTEU bus node for easily adding Fieldbus connectivity to pneumatic valve terminals. Fieldbus connectivity to valve terminals also significantly reduces installation and engineering costs. The CTEU bus node inexpensively integrates Rockwell PLCs with multiple Festo valve terminal models, including MPA-L and the VTUG. Since a single CTEU node serves two valve terminals, it contributes to lower inventory requirements and simplifies logistics.
The MPA-L is a modular valve terminal suitable for most pneumatic applications for discrete and process automation. The high flow rate to size ratio makes for universal applications from food and beverage packaging to semiconductor fabrication. MPA-L can run pressure and vacuum, with multiple zones. The VTUG is an electrical terminal for solenoid valves. It provides diagnostics via fieldbus and has up to 24 valve positions. Festo valve terminals offer two functions on a single valve positon for greater functionality in a small footprint terminal.
Also on display are the IO-Link integrated SDAT analog sensor for reporting the piston position of a pneumatic cylinder and the VPPM proportional pressure regulator with IO-Link for greater data transfer and diagnostic information availability. IO-Link Premier Integration provides the data foundations to Industry 4.0 concepts and Industrial Internet of Things IIoT functionality.
The highest level of safety
Festo features the Encompass product MS6-SV-E soft start and quick exhaust valve which can be used with GuardLogix Integrated Safety applications. MS6-SV-E reduces pressure quickly and reliably and builds up pressure gradually in industrial pneumatic systems. The pneumatic system safety device is a self-testing, redundant system conforming to the requirements of EN ISO 13849-1. Thanks to the 2-channel design and its monitoring, the device fulfills category 3 and 4 requirements, which enables a performance level “e” to be attained – the highest safety level.
21st Century mechatronic training
Festo Didactic, one of the world’s leading providers of mechatronic training, showcases in the Festo Flexible and Modular Automation exhibit its curriculum supporting Rockwell PLCs. The Festo Didactic product and service portfolio offers customers holistic education solutions for all areas of manufacturing technology and process automation, such as pneumatics, hydraulics, electrical engineering, production technology, mechanical engineering, mechatronics, CNC, HVAC, and telecommunications.
by Gary Mintchell | Nov 16, 2016 | Automation, Safety
This is another of a series of posts from the Rockwell Automation show Automation Fair last week. This stop on the tour concerned Safe Machines. The safety team has been active for many years now developing new products and initiatives. Not everything they do is expressly pointed at selling a product. Often they are out in public teaching safe machine practices, risk assessment, and safe machine design.
They showed a BevCorp machine that had been designed with the latest safety advances in mind. The idea involved removing incentives to defeating safeties. One feature is an ultra-wide door that allows access to more of the machine.
The safety system has a “request to enter” function. This is a high inertia filler machine. Activating the function begins with guiding the machine to a slow stop at a repeatable location. Therefore the controls always know status without requiring a reboot. Of course, there is a safe reduced speed mode to allow maintenance without a shutdown.
Integral with the Connected Enterprise philosophy of Rockwell Automation, the HMI and software collects data on who/what stopped the machine, which safety devices were triggered, and the like. From this data, employee behavior can be ascertained.
This leads to the real value of Connected Enterprise–production, engineering and EH&S can come together to evaluate the entire system from all points of view. The goal is to maintain productivity through use of a safe machine.
I’ve followed Rockwell Automation safety for years. In fact, I can remember classes in the 90s before becoming an editor on risk assessment and the launch of safety products. There have been two popular podcast interviews at Automation Minutes one on Safety Automation Builder and the other on the Safety Maturity Index.
This is the last stand where I had a deep dive. Following will be a review of partners who also exhibited at the Fair. Then it will be on to the next conference–which I couldn’t visit in person, but I have some interviews.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 31, 2016 | Automation, News, Safety, Software, Technology
I have a little batch of process automation and industry news involving predictive technologies—two acquisitions and a new safety product. Congratulations to Mike Brooks and the team at Mtell for a good exit. Also congratulations to the MaxEAM folks. Finally, an important new take on process automation safety from PAS.
MTell Acquired by Aspen Technology
Aspen Technology Inc., a provider of software and services to the process industries, announced it has acquired Mtelligence Corp. (known as Mtell), a San Diego, California-based pioneer in the field of predictive and prescriptive maintenance for asset performance optimization.
Mtell products enable companies to increase asset utilization and avoid unplanned downtime by accurately predicting when equipment failures will occur, understanding why they will occur, and prescribing what to do to avoid the failure.
The products provide a low-touch, rapidly deployable, end-to-end solution that combines a deep understanding of operations and maintenance processes, real-time and historical equipment data and cutting-edge machine learning technologies. As a result, customers can:
- Monitor the health of equipment, detect early failure symptoms, diagnose their root-cause and recommend the best responses to avoid the failure
- Continually learn and automatically adapt to changing equipment and process behaviors
- Automatically share findings across a network of similar equipment to improve the overall process performance.
Some of the world’s largest process manufacturing companies use Mtell. Customer results have shown significant benefits including improved industrial safety, removal of risk, reduced failures, enhanced productivity and increased profitability.
Mtell products include:
- Previse – Mtell’s flagship end-to-end machine learning solution that monitors equipment health 24/7, detects early indicators of degradation or failures, diagnoses the root cause and prescribes responses that prevent breakdowns and unplanned downtime.
- Basis – A connected condition monitoring application that facilitates collaboration between operations and maintenance organizations to determine the best course of action for equipment alert conditions.
- Reservoir – A high performance, scalable, big data repository that captures, manages and synchronizes large volumes of time series, event and asset data from multiple sources.
- Summit – A remote monitoring center application for monitoring, analyzing and benchmarking asset performance.
The purchase price of the transaction was $37M. Additional terms are disclosed in AspenTech’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the first quarter of Fiscal 2017 filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Schneider Electric Adds to Asset Management Portfolio
Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, announced the acquisition of MaxEAM, a software company with complementary applications that extend Avantis.PRO Enterprise Asset Management. The acquisition further solidifies the portfolio and adds valuable domain expertise to Schneider Electric’s existing team.
Schneider Electric and MaxEAM have a long standing business relationship working together to deliver successful customer projects on a global scale. The acquisition gives customers a single point of contact for support and delivery services, and more closely aligns future product development.
“The strength of our asset management portfolio continues to grow, both organically and through acquisition. MaxEAM enhances the functionality of our Avantis.PRO offering, securing the investment our customers have made in our products,” said Rob McGreevy, Global Vice President, Software at Schneider Electric. “The addition of MaxEAM subject matter expertise and technology will allow us continued expansion of our industry-leading Enterprise APM platform.”
“Our advanced technology linked to mobile work execution streamlines processes, adding tremendous capabilities for mobile workers,” said Eric Stern, President of MaxEAM. “Schneider Electric’s Enterprise APM platform is the broadest in the market today. I’m excited that our people and technology will be an integral component to the overall offering.”
Two years ago Schneider Electric acquired InStep Software, adding advanced predictive analytics. That acquisition furthered its delivery of Enterprise APM solutions leveraging the Industrial IoT, helping to close the gap between IT and OT.
PAS Launches Process Safety Analytics Software
PAS Inc., the solution provider of process safety, cybersecurity, and asset reliability for the energy, power, and process industries announces the general availability of its newest product, PAS IPL Assurance. The software provides real-time predictive analytics on the health and availability of the safety instrumented systems (SIS), Alarm Management Systems, and other Independent Protection Layers (IPL). In addition to managing operational risk, IPL Assurance reduces compliance costs by automatically reporting on the SIS performance during a demand on the safety system.
PAS IPL Assurance delivers actionable information on safety instrumented systems, alarm systems, control loops, and operational boundaries to streamline compliance activities and expose operational risk. As a result, plant personnel can mitigate abnormal situations before they impact plant safety, reliability, and profitability.
IPL Assurance provides the following analytics, alert, and visualization features:
• Safety instrumented function (SIF) performance management,
• Testing and maintenance management,
• Demand on safety system rate tracking,
• Status of safety related alarms,
• Safety system bypass management, and
• Safety and operational risk dashboard.
“IPL Assurance provides up-to-date IPL lifecycle management so that operations can immediately ascertain the overall risk profile of any facility,” said Mark Carrigan, Senior Vice President of Global Operations at PAS. “This visibility from an automated single source of truth is essential to preventing critical safety incidents and supporting IEC and OSHA compliance requirements.”
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 27, 2016 | Asset Performance Management, Automation, News, Safety, Technology
Emerson Automation’s PlantWeb architecture has grown and morphed into a full blown Industrial Internet of Things platform. The redesigned and reinvigorated integrated architecture forms the foundation of Emerson’s new Operational Certainty initiative. This is the first of a few reports on the latest Emerson Automation news.
Steve Sonnenberg, recently elevated into the role of Chairman of Emerson Automation—the company formerly known as Emerson Process Management, introduced new Executive President Mike Train to the assembled customers and press at the 2016 edition of Emerson Global Users Exchange in Austin, Texas on Oct. 24. Train then introduced Operational Certainty.
The previous initiative was Project Certainty where the company strategists arrayed its existing and new products into a package that was designed to remove automation from the critical path of capital projects. These days capital projects are few and far between. Companies are scrambling to wring more profitability from existing assets. Therefore a new approach from Emerson that is obviously driven by its customers’ needs. Train says that this initiative will help wrest more than $1 trillion from operational losses globally.
Initiatives need benchmarks. Emerson introduced peer benchmarking on best practices to achieve Top Quartile performance in safety, reliability, production, and energy management. Top Quartile is defined as achieving operations and capital performance in the top 25 percent of peer companies.
The company is also launching a new Operational Certainty consulting practice plus expanded project execution methodologies and resources. Additionally, on October 24, the company will announce a new Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) digital ecosystem to provide the technology foundation for companies to securely implement Industrial IoT to achieve measurable business performance improvement.
A few examples of Emerson’s findings:
- In terms of safety, Top Quartile performers had one-third the number of safety incidents as compared to their average industry peers.
- In terms of asset reliability, Emerson found that Top Quartile performers spend half as much on maintenance compared with average performers and operate with an incremental 15 days of available production each year.
- In the domain of production, Top Quartile manufacturers spent 20 percent less on production-related expenses as compared to average producers.
- In the area of energy and emissions, the top 25 percent of producers spent one-third as much as the industry average on energy costs and had 30 percent less CO2 emissions.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 17, 2016 | Automation, Technology
The most exciting thing happening now with industrial robots is the new intimacy of human and machine–collaborative robots.
Since I had other plans and could not attend the Rockwell Automation track at the EHS Conference coming up in Pittsburgh, Rockwell brought a piece of the safety symposium to me. George Schuster, a member of the global safety team at Rockwell and a robotics safety expert, discussed the current state of the art with me.
Schuster told me that Rockwell Automation is working with Fanuc Robots to change the way people and machinery interact.
There is much interest in the work in the user community to create manufacturing processes that leverage the strengths of machines (stability, reliability, strength) and the intelligence and adaptability of humans.
“In the past we engineered to keep them separate or at least arbitrate the shared space. Now we’ve found good benefits to engineer ways for people and machines to work together,” said Schuster.
Three things are enabling this approach. First, there are the standards. ISO 10218 and ANSI/RIA 15.06-2012 give guidance for designers. They also make it clear that thorough risk assessments must be carried out when designing these processes. Next, Rockwell is blending its safety technology with robotics. Then design approaches are looking holistically at what is possible with human and machine working together. Together, this is actually more of an application space rather than just technology.
Increasingly working on removing barriers between robotics and controllers, technology includes connectivity and safety–EtherNet/IP Safe; GuardLogix system; Add-on profiles in software-pre-engineered common data structure; part of the Connected Enterprise, includes connection of devices plus communication to upper levels to collect and analyze information–all working together.
There are four key current applications: ability to stop robot without killing power to allow operator to interact for instance load/unload, can quickly enter/leave area; hand guided operation, person can move/guide robot kind of like ergonomic load assist; speed and separation monitor, sensor system detects presence and position of personnel, modulates robot, can stop if person gets too close, coordinates robot speed and approaching person; power force limiting-this one is a little tricky, it’s hard to know where the robot will come in contact and what force is acceptable to the human, difference between soft flesh and hard place, etc.
This is all cool. It is ushering in a new era of manufacturing.
