Blogs

Batch Forensics: Class-based Unit Coordination Utilizing Link Groups

Take advantage of product functionality to coordinate activities between units.

Batch Forensics: The Case for Procedural Unit Tags

Simple to implement, unit tags provide instrumental value that can enhance recipe editing capability and execution.

A unit tag is a class-based tag that identifies a characteristic of a unit.

The values of these tags are usually associated with information captured via the control systems analog and digital input cards, signals like temperature, weight, pressure, level, conductivity, pH, level switch, etc. Other unit tags can contain the status, state, material of construction, or any other user-defined attribute that can enhance the recipe editing capability and execution.

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

Batch Forensics: Additional Report Parameters Enhance Process Performance

Understanding your process performance starts with having unambiguous data that is contextualized. This data provides information that quantifies and qualifies the different aspects that provide insight into the overall system performance. This data ends up in a repository and gets analyzed to produce actionable information and these reports may look at different aspects of the activities required to make products or to clean the equipment. By looking at the process from the ISA 88 and ISA95 point of view, we are able to provide additional context to the information for which the basic activities are reporting.

Additional information may be added to provide more insight into the activities related to:

Quality – (amounts, tolerances, durations, temperatures, lethality, etc.)
Cost- (materials, energy, personnel, equipment, etc.)
Material information – (lot ID, material properties, storage locations, etc.)
Personnel – (who is performing tasks, signoffs, etc.)
Energy – (transport, heat/cool, mix, etc.)
Equipment – (raw material source, equipment utilization, portable equipment information.)

– as well as other aspects that can be used to make informed decisions. (more…)

Batch Forensics: The Case of the FactoryTalk Batch Timers

Frequently, we hear new and seasoned engineers say they do not use the Rockwell FactoryTalk Batch (FTBatch) Standard timers ($timer) because they cannot interact with them or can’t tell what the timer’s status is, as they do with controller-based timers. However, our Batch Forensic experts explain that this is not the case.

Standard Recipe timers require no design, implementation, testing, commissioning nor validation as required by timer Phases implemented in the controllers. Standard recipe $timers can be applied at all levels of the procedural model (Procedures, Unit Procedures, and Operations) Standard $timers can be used in as many placed as required, each instance of the timer is given a name defined by the recipe author that can be associated with the activity at hand. Timers are automatically added to the units configured on the area model just like the $Null Phase.

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Batch Forensics by ECS Solutions

The term forensics refers to the application of scientific knowledge to problems, especially scientific analysis, and data analysis of physical evidence. In a plant environment, data and scientific analysis can be the key to discovering opportunities to improve the automation solution that exists, forensic tools can be implemented in all phases of the life cycle of a system, but ideally, they should be considered during the design phase.

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Manufacturing Digitalization That Works

Though digitalization is a process that is often seen as great, the benefits are not the same for everyone. Asking how digitalization is going to benefit your organization may be important to your digital future.

Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), connected enterprise, and smart manufacturing, among others, are all descriptive of applying digital technologies to manufacturing. Often, digitalization is presented as so powerfully good that it just needs to be done, but most are generally skeptical, asking, “Exactly how is this going to help me perform better?”

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Read More | Posted In: Blogs, Digitalization, IIoT

Documenting Your Manufacturing Ecosystem

Understanding your manufacturing ecosystem is one thing, but documenting it is just as important. Having extensive documentation of the manufacturing ecosystem, helps those who aren’t involved in daily, plant-floor operations make informed decisions. Your manufacturing ecosystem is the system you use for making your product(s), and fully documenting and understanding this ecosystem will help the decision-making process of your organization.

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The Benefits of Off-The-Shelf SOP Management Software

Being able to keep track of every step and every bit of data is a major necessity for every organization. An off-the-shelf standard operating procedure software is one way to implement new processes and keep track of business operating standards.

Tracking manual operations in discrete, batch, and continuous manufacturing processes can greatly benefit from off-the-shelf products. Clearly specifying your procedures, enforcing their execution, and capturing pertinent data are all major benefits that can be quickly and easily be obtained by implementing off-the-shelf, procedure management software.

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The Importance of Material Tracing

Traceability on a processing or production line is incredibly important, especially when it comes to food products, where having the ability to track every ingredient down to the source is crucial to the health and safety of the consumers.

As parts of the country begin to move out of COVID-19 shutdowns, we have been hearing about “contact tracing” as a tool for containing a secondary spread of the disease. Material, lot tracing, or traceability has been part of producing safe food products for a long time. The concepts behind contact tracing and material tracing are similar.

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News

Batch Forensics: Class-based Unit Coordination Utilizing Link Groups

Batch Forensics: The Case for Procedural Unit Tags

Batch Forensics: Additional Report Parameters Enhance Process Performance

Batch Forensics: The Case of the FactoryTalk Batch Timers

Batch Forensics by ECS Solutions

Manufacturing Digitalization That Works

Documenting Your Manufacturing Ecosystem

The Benefits of Off-The-Shelf SOP Management Software

The Importance of Material Tracing