Process Optimisation
Many systems could be deemed to be for process optimisation, however one system that we installed for a major blue chip client had the sole remit of gathering process data from existing process equipment to allow the examination of salient parameters during process operation. Batch and product data was entered as part of the system, this allowing the users to put context to the information to enable more process understanding. The real time aspects of the data acquisition was in the main based around Siemens S7 hardware with an S7 400 at the system’s heart together with various forms of remote I/O. Most of the remote I/O was Siemens, and the whole system was networked using Profibus and Ethernet. At the mid layer, gathering this real time data was WinCC, this interfacing to many 1000,s of tags. This handled all the real time aspects including alarming and visualisation, however for global dissemination of the data AspenTech’s IP21 and Batch21 was used. Data was passed from WinCC to AspenTech’s suite for long term storage and to enable the provision of process information to authorised web enabled users literally around the world.