EXPAND THE LEVEL OF AUTOMATION

    IN THE DIRECTION OF AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS

    It is important to have two thoughts in mind when choosing your solution for control and monitoring:

    • Satisfy current specifications
    • Be able to meet the expectations of the future development

    Our choise of using standardized, open and pure web technologies and standards across our portifolio, secures both of these considerations.

    Establishment of Global control center

    Our collection of standardized and open source technologies (OPC UA, atvise® and HTML5) combined with our library of function blocks built up through over a decade of experience, allows you to have real time control over your world wide activity without having to make a significant investment. The internet make you present without your presence!

    From this global control center the operator can, conditional on sufficient quality of the internet connection, control and monitor a process that takes place anywhere in the world. It also provides the opportunity to collect and compare real time process data from several machineries with different locations.

    Expand the level of automation to achieve robotics

    We have already expanded the existing Remote control system with automated sequences – collected all commands belonging to a full process and added conditions and algorithms, in a sequence that starts with a simple command and ends automatically when the selected task is completed.
    In our cases, the number of keystrokes required is reduced from about 60 to this one which activates the sequence.

    There are two significant benefits to be gained from this:

    • Improved quality; each time will identical tasks / sequences be performed identically with the same degree of quality – completely without human influence and the risk it may entail
    • Improved security; in case of long-distance control via the internet, scheduled task will be completed even if the internet connection is broken as logic is stored locally by the machery

    We test such automated processes thoroughly in a simulator before they are used in a real process.

    Such automation of processes – also expressed Robotization, is a necessary step in the direction of autonomous systems.
    That`s what`s the long-term goal!

    Act when needed and not by schedule

    There is no shortage of data, but it’s significance maybe hidden (can`t see the wood for the trees). Insignificant data must be removed allowing relevant data to form the foundation for meaningful information about status here and now:

    • Read multiple data sources in real time via the OPC UA interface
    • Simplify by adding KPIs an context
    • Visualize & personalize to make it obvious
    • Alerts tell you when to look: Is it good, bad, high, low, my responsibility, changing, getting worse or critical

    Monitoring Real Time data of all the parameters in a performance, analyzing, creating KPIs and visualizing will will bring significant gains:

    • Improved operations
    • Reduced downtime
    • Less delays
    • Improved risk management
    • Reduced waste
    • Better decisions

    Boundless interaction between control systems and enterprise

    The Industrial Internet of Things merges Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT), which means that data is exchanged between process floor and the higher-level IT infrastructure. To connect different types of machines, facilities and networks with different types of advanced sensors, controls and software applications, a standard for such interaction is required.

    OPC UA is THIS standard!

    It standardizes communication within machines, between machines, and from machines to smart systems, securely networked with IoT architectures:

    • All participants speak the same language
    • The communicatiom is trusted
    • Data is converted into knowledge

    Beyond the mere communication, it defines a data model to shape unified server address spaces and to ensure a Plug & Play capability of the participating devices and sensors. Only the created data model must be maintained.

    With this, the prerequisites for the concept of Industry 4.o and ISA-95 standard are available.

    Industry 4.0 describes how businesses can use technology to transform into full digital operation. These technologies include the industrial IoT, automation and robotics, simulation, additive manufacturing, and analytics. Industry 4.0 is driven by a need to boost efficiency, become more agile to respond to market unpredictability, improve quality, and to enable new business models.

    The ISA-95 standard define a model for data exchange between all levels of an enterprise; from field level to control and operation level and up to company level.

    Big data is available - THE CHALLANGE IS TO EXTRACT VALUES

    Via our control systems, a huge amount of process data is made available though our standardized function blocks. These have no value without storage, structuring and analysis. The benefits of using data as input for continuous improvements, are obvious. Today many unwanted incidents related to the operation of process facilities, ends up with an unknown cause and no lessons learned. This implies; mistakes will be repeated! Utilization of available data can help explain what actually happened. Thus, measures can be taken to prevent the incident from recurring. However, utilization of these available process data requires active participation from the operator in terms of storage, structuring and presentation.

     

    Data will also be readily available for analysis by third parties as eg Cognite and Prediktor. Their data processing will be significantly simplified by the fact that transferred data from our system is standardized through the use of OPC UA.

    Big data requires storage capacity. Infact; huge capacity. As a contribution to limiting the requirement for such capacity, our automation technology provider Beckhoff, has developed solutions to filter the significant from the insignificant. The insignificant is discarded immediately, while the significant is delivered for storage and further processing. 

    AGAIN; AT THE END OF THE DAY IT’S ALL ABOUT RESOURCES CONSUMED!

     

    Within operation technology, silos are still allowed to remain

    Much attention has been given to data organized in silos and how this makes the information inaccessible and almost worthless. But for some reason, similar attention is virtually absent when it comes to operational processes and associated silos. The cost of this absence is massive!
    It is accepted that each operation must have its own crew – no sharing of resources. But as we move forward, and the degree of automation increases, it is obvious that someone needs to start tearing down these barriers.

    Established routines need to be reassessed.