After undertaking a large facility upgrade and expansion project, the client wanted to ramp up their new production capacity but was being held back by a poorly implemented DCS system. The client engaged DMC to first clean up the existing system and make it immediately more usable and reliable and then to rewrite the system following S88 best practices.
DMC first audited and updated the plant’s interlock. During this process, DMC found several interlocks needed to be bypassed for normal operations and the majority did not serve adequate safety or protection purposes. DMC leveraged the built-in functionality of the PCS7 APL Interlock objects to link devices together so that operators could click on and navigate through the whole interlock matrix to see what was stopping them and why they were interlocked. This added clarity, reliability, safety, and insight into the system, so that the client could now run manually, if needed.
Once the batch rewrite in PCS7 was complete, DMC implemented a historian and batch reporting system in Ignition to provide better visibility into the plant’s processes. We used OPC UA to pull data via the PCS7 WinCC 7 HMI using the PCS7 Connectivity Pack.
After experiencing the capabilities of Ignition, the client decided to add additional features beyond data collection and reporting. One of the client’s goals was to streamline their data and document handling surrounding material shipping and receiving, which was previously managed through multiple manually maintained spreadsheets. DMC developed a custom integration to the client’s LIMS systems to compile batch quality test data from multiple sources into a single database. DMC then developed integrations to PCS7 and the client’s truck loadout system to automatically track and release batches for loadout and generate BOLs incorporating the batch quality data. In the end, the entire loadout process could be carried out on a tablet, including operator interfaces for loadout inspection and signoff signatures.
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