January 2012
Michelin Tire uses an automated system for HMI, trending, data logging, alarm logging, and recipe management in their manufacturing facilities all over the world. They utilize the advantage of 100% management components to deploy their applications as Smart Clients. To provide global communications to each facility, they use the Internet for communications.
Michelin Tire in Sandy Springs, South Carolina is just one of their production facilities that manufacture rubber compounds for use in its tire manufacturing plants throughout North America. This facility maintains the highest quality of standards and is listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a Performance Track member.
Michelin Tire has implemented this automated system throughout their manufacturing plant to provide real-time and historical information for operators and production management. They chose OPC Systems.NET because it is easy to do networking without the need for DCOM, and provides reliable performance to log process and alarm data with no data loss.
Michelin Tire uses the process automation system on the rubber compound mixing system to monitor and log process and production data. Each mixing machine's cycle and efficiency data is monitored for analysis along with process data such as temperature and energy usage.
Stephen Smith, an automation engineer for Michelin Tire, has implemented OPC Database.NET for data logging, OPC Trend.NET for real-time and historical trending, OPC Controls.NET for real-time display, and OPC Route.NET for data verification back to PLCs through an OPC Server. Smith describes their application, "we log to 36 different tables in a remote SQL Server node from our rubber compound production. This data is then displayed through our company's web application for production analysis. We use the OPC Systems HMI container with OPC Trend.NET to display data on 10 to 12 remote systems for real-time charting and historical data." The same central OPC Systems.NET system also logs data to CSV files for easy history files. Smith has also implemented a second OPC Systems.NET Windows Service to log data to CSV files containing process temperature and energy consumption data.
The system communicates to 13 Allen Bradley PLC-5s through Kepware's KEPServerEX OPC Server. This data is then made available through .NET communications to the client applications to log and view the data. The configuration can be modified locally or remotely. Smith utilizes the CSV import feature to setup the tags and data logging configurations.
The system offers a database where data is logged via a remote SQL Server system. Data will be buffered if there is a network failure or if the SQL Server database engine is stopped, so there is no loss in data as long as the local OPC Server can communicate with the PLCs. "The automatic database management makes the setup and support of the SQL Server database easy," Smith notes. "The historical query feature in OPC Trend.NET is nice for bringing up archived data. We really like the ability to centralize all data in the OPC Systems Service to provide data to our remote terminals,” Smith added.
Another critical process utilized within the system is in Michelin's product bagging system that closely monitors the weight of rubber materials that are used in the production of tires. Michelin Tire's automation technician Travis Jenkins has implemented OPC Alarm.NET to monitor and log alarm conditions for this process from multiple PLCs. Jenkins describes the process, "the system weighs each bag for the proper product amount. Weight tolerances are very critical, so operators are notified immediately of any conditions that are outside of the product specification. Real-time and historical alarms can be viewed from 15 different alarm windows located throughout the production facility. Each alarm condition that occurs is logged to a SQL Server database, which can then be viewed from any OPC Alarm.NET window and from Michelin's web based production software."
The process automation system communicates to 4 Allen Bradley PLC 5 controllers, 1 Allen Bradley ControlLogix controller, and 2 GE Series PLCs via OPC Data Access through Kepware's KEPServerEX OPC Server. As the data arrives from the KEPServerEX OPC Server through an asynchronous data subscription, the real-time data is then processed by event to determine the alarm state. When alarm conditions occur, the information is both logged to SQL Server for historical analysis and sent to all real-time alarm windows to be acknowledged. Currently there are between 15 to 20 remote alarm windows that are used for monitoring all of the current alarm conditions in the process. From the way that the system is designed there is no limit to the number of remote alarm windows that can be added for both real-time and historical alarms. The system is also fully scalable as other OPC Systems Services can be added to the system with each remote alarm window subscribing to multiple system services.
Real-time alarm communications implements watchdogs with event-driven communications to provide only new alarm information, reducing the overall network traffic. If any remote alarm window loses communications due to a network failure, the operator is notified within 5 seconds. Alarms are also queued if a failure to SQL Server occurs, so no historical alarms are lost during temporary network failures or if the SQL Server engine is stopped temporarily. DCOM is only used in the OPC Systems Windows Service to communicate with the KEPServerEX OPC Server. All other communications are performed with .NET communications making networking extremely simple, even through network firewalls. Tag and alarm logging configurations can be updated with new signals and alarm conditions while the system is running from local or remote configuration applications through .NET communications.
"The remote alarm networking is very easy to implement by just specifying which OPC Systems Service you want to view alarms from. We use the OPC Systems HMI container for remote alarm windows throughout our production line. We are now starting to use OPC Web Controls.NET, and OPC Web Alarm.NET for real-time web applications," stated Jenkins.
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