Blogs

Volumes have been written about the proper use of tools within a software application and how to create projects for maximum efficiency in both development and execution.  Senior programmers and leaders of development teams strive to write and deploy robust solutions that are simple, efficient, easy to debug, and easy to adapt in the future.

Ignition is a multi-faceted tool that continues to revolutionize industrial applications.  The package includes a powerful scripting tool that has undergone significant upgrades from versions 7 and before and has existed in its current form since version 8.  When combined with the software’s other capabilities and using a disciplined approach to the application of all the tools, Ignition can give you efficient and optimized solutions that can solve most SCADA and business integration challenges.

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Human-machine interface (HMI) vendors have been promising a utopia based around web-based technologies for over two decades.  The prospect of simply providing a web address to anyone within an organization that leads to a fast-loading, full-power supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system has been on most factories’ wish list for a long time.  After all, internet page tools and functionality have far outpaced advancements in SCADA software over the same time.  The advancements seem to leap forward every time someone reloads a page, with new widgets and tools available almost daily.  When coupled with hardware developments like high contrast screens; enhanced touchscreen operations; and capabilities like Bluetooth, accelerometers, geolocation, and more; a flexible, web-based option has been coveted.

What many casual users fail to understand about HMI solutions is exactly how tightly the software is connected to the factory floor controllers.  This connection via high-security networks, VPNs, and masks, can be tricky to navigate, particularly when the architecture is intentionally complex to provide security for the systems.  Further, most people don’t realize the architectural complexity of software that link to sometimes multiple databases and remote data sources, where gigabits of proprietary information streams into and out of the SCADA application.  It has been the responsibility of the integrators of these solutions to protect would-be users from themselves in a lot of applications.  Poorly developed programs could create vulnerabilities to the operation of equipment, expose floor workers to potential risk, and possibly allow trade secrets to escape into cyberspace.

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Read More | Posted In: Bakery Industry, Beverage Industry, Blogs, Chemical Industry, Distilleries, Food Industry, Inductive Automation, Metals Industry, SCADA

One of the most exciting things about Sepasoft’s Batch and Procedure module is that it enables tight integration between the process cell (as it is functionally defined) and the graphical interface (how it is presented to the user). By using the various tools in the Ignition toolbox (creative scripting, querying, and binding), it is possible to create dynamic views that represent the ISA-88 objects of a process cell. As the process cell definition changes (new units, new phases, etc) these dynamic objects automatically update as needed. This allows for less development time, a consistent user experience, and a lower maintenance control system. (more…)

Read More | Posted In: Bakery Industry, Beverage Industry, Blogs, Chemical Industry, Food Industry, Inductive Automation, Life Science Industry, Metals Industry, News

Congratulations to Noah Smith for being selected as the 2022 ECS Scholarship Winner!

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A rapidly decreasing number of technical personnel are available who can install and maintain the higher-end equipment used in manufacturing today.  “The great resignation and/or retirement” movement, along with changes associated with the recent pandemic landscape, has sent many highly qualified workers to the exits in search of new and often altogether different opportunities.  The stage has been set for decades with the wave of baby boomer retirements churning towards manufacturers.  Parallel to this has been the increased reliance on high-tech manufacturing machines and processes.  These two situations pair well with the idea of future-proofing low-to-mid complexity manufacturing but, in an interesting juxtaposition, amplify the core problem. (more…)

Read More | Posted In: Bakery Industry, Beverage Industry, Blogs, Chemical Industry, Food Industry, Life Science Industry, Metals Industry

Imagine a situation where your plant floor employees require less training to become fully functional for operations.  Also imagine a situation where your employees can be flexibly interchanged on different equipment and operations instead of relegated to a single machine, cell, or role.  Now imagine this is done in a way that employees feel engaged and that they are achieving results easily and accurately.  Sound impossible?  We don’t think so at ECS Solutions, Inc. (ECS).

Every sector of employment has been hit by the employee shortage of the last few years.  Covid 19 has certainly exacerbated this situation and ensured that all types of employers have felt it, from the most unskilled labor positions up through the highest level of professional employees.  Manufacturing has been hit from all sides and many companies struggle to fill technical and non-technical plant floor, logistics, office, and professional openings.

Times like these force many manufacturers to take a hard look at their operations and streamline however they can.  Some outsource both manufacturing and professional functions and some embrace technology with software for automated Human Resources (HRIS), accounting, payroll, logistics, and ERP interfaces.  Often streamlining the most basic of operations on the factory floor is overlooked.  This is frequently the result of mindsets that simply accept older equipment and processes as “they are what they are” or that newer, highly automated equipment is as automated as it can get.  Are either of those situations true?  World-class companies find ways to get more from their vintage equipment and they tie additional, ancillary steps into their newer automation investments.  The bonus can be that all of this can empower employees as well! (more…)

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There are many tools on the market for historizing process data. These tools typically treat each point of data individually when historizing, which works great for trend screens and instrumentation reporting. However, it is often desirable to log a “set” or “group” of data together, associating many data points with a single event. This use case is particularly common with batching operations, where detailed records must be kept. This can be accomplished in many different ways. One such approach, that of a so-called “data pump,” is described below.

Solution Overview

One of our solutions to this challenge is to create and log a “payload” of data each time an operation is completed on a piece of equipment. For example, consider a bulk material addition into a mix tank. This operation contains several pieces of relevant information that can be historized, such as:

• Start Time
• End Time
• Unit (Ex: Mix Tank 102)
• Batch ID
• Event Description: (Ex: “Sucrose Addition”)
• End Condition (Completed Naturally or Manually Aborted)
• Setpoint Amount (Requested Quantity)
• Actual Amount (Delivered Quantity)
• Error % ( [Actual – Setpoint] / [Setpoint] x 100 )
• Pump Speed

In order to capture this information, PLC logic is built into each operation to collect the pertinent data. At the completion of the operation, this data is then consolidated into a single record object, typically a User Defined Data Type, in the PLC. Then this record is placed into a queue object on a “First In, First Out” basis. Elsewhere in the control system (external to the PLC), this queue is monitored for new records. As new records appear, the control system reads the appropriate data from the front of the queue, logs it to a SQL database table, and handshakes with the PLC to indicate that the record has been successfully processed.

Once the handshake is received at the PLC level, the queue is then indexed to discard the previous record and move the next record forward for processing. No records are removed from the queue until the control system acknowledges successful processing of that record. In this architecture, queued data is essentially guaranteed to be logged. Even if the mechanism processing the queue fails, the PLC (and more importantly, the automated process) can continue to run as normal. In this scenario, the queue may accumulate a backlog of unprocessed records, but once the processing mechanism is brought back online they can be quickly processed. Providing a large enough queue object is important because it gives the data pump a buffer. This allows the control system to weather any interruption of communications that might occur between the PLC and the mechanism that processes the records. (more…)

Read More | Posted In: Blogs, Inductive Automation, PLCs

How ECS Solutions uses dataset tags in Ignition by Inductive Automation, updated periodically by gateway timer scripts, to drive graphics on dashboard displays.

This allows the dashboard to simply display the datasets rather than execute queries. This results in better overall performance of the gateway (queries are only running one time), faster load times for displays (data is already available and just has to be rendered), and transparent updates over time (no application hang for periodic data refresh).

Creating informative dashboards, especially dashboards that provide data analytics, can be challenging. Oftentimes the requirements for the dashboard will evolve as it is developed. Over time, the queries and scripting functions and analyses that drive the data behind the dashboard start to pile up. This drains resources and drags down performance. This can also leave end-users with a (technically) functional but inefficient, slow, or even “clunky” result. If the analyses are being performed on the clients (a common pitfall for an inexperienced Ignition developer), this problem is compounded as more and more users start to access or view the application, each client running its own separate queries and analyses.

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Take advantage of product functionality to coordinate activities between units.

Class-based recipes allow a single recipe to be executed against all Units that meet the required functionalities. Phases required to perform inter-unit coordination can be used to transfer information from any source unit to any destination unit utilizing Phase linking functionality. Based on the equipment arbitration requirements these coordination Phases can be shared among multiple units or can be created so each unit has its own instance of the required Phase.

**THIS IS A REPOSTED BLOG FROM AutomationWorld. Click here to read the full article.

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ECS Solutions was contracted to replace a control system that was becoming obsolete at a brewery in Florida. The Venezuelan-based parent company, for which ECS Solutions employees had already completed multiple projects,  was concerned that the automation hardware could go bad and be difficult to replace, leading to a shutdown of the plant. The customer’s production was at risk since the hardware in the system, which incorporated old Siemens PLC, Siemens I/O (input and output), and Siemen’s software, was no longer supported or available.

ECS Solutions has worked at several of the company’s breweries in South America and had demonstrated the functionality of the ISA88 standard, which allows expansion from producing a few items to many and enables changes to be handled by brewmasters in a modular way without reprogramming the control system. The company wanted the brewmaster to be able to create recipes independent of the code in the PLC, so providing the functionality obtained with the ISA88 standard became an important goal. The company wanted the best practices, now working in the facilities in South America, to be introduced into the Florida plant. (more…)

Read More | Posted In: Beverage Industry, Blogs