Operational excellence

Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Andreas Rösch

Operational excellence is the systematic improvement of performance with a clear focus on increasing value. Sustainable improvements are generally achieved through reductions in costs and particularly through reductions in tied-up capital, but also by increasing turnover and customer satisfaction. The reduction of tied-up capital represents a key variable for process industries in relation to operational excellence, as millions of Euros are as before stored as a precaution in silos and tank farms, in order to be able to satisfy the demands of process control.

The critical issue is the previously available threshold between the process control level and the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) level: the material conversion processes have only one time-delayed information flow into the material management modules of the ERP systems, such as SAP or Charisma. This barrier to operational excellence in process technology is eliminated by the utilization of the Plant iT modular software system, for materials management is an integral part of the process control system.

20 years of experience of software development and of numerous applications in various sectors have gone into this process control system. The Plant iT modules comprise of

All system modules have a central engineering environment with a consolidated data pool and an integrated interface for parameterization. All system and configuration data can be accessed in this environment via a directory structure similar to that of Windows Explorer. User administration, message profiles, pools of graphical elements for visualization etc. are accessible in this way as is the complete plant structure right down to the individual actuators and sensors that can be parameterized using cascaded location keys. Even entire sequences within processes can be parameterized to the greatest possible extent, so that programming is largely replaced by parameterization.

Plant Batch iT, the high-performance system for recipe and job management, has been developed for the specific requirements of recipe-controlled batch processes, as they are used at Kiesel GmbH & Co KG. Plant, process and recipe modelling takes place either in strict conformance with ISA S88 or simplified models derived from it. The processing of parts lists, which can also be assumed by external systems, simplifies the treatment of a large number of different articles in connection with process specifications. The full recording and logging of all job and batch data produces security in relation to verification obligations. In addition to inventory administration, integrated materials management provides an integrated data basis for batch tracking.

With Batch iT and its integrated materials management, Kiesel as an internationally acting manufacturer of laying systems for tiles, natural stone, parquet and elastic flooring has secured the route to operational excellence, for the over 100 products that are in part produced on request of customers make the highest demands on logistics and production processes.

In the past, the production of building chemical products, such as tile cement, jointing compounds, flooring material adhesives, parquet adhesives, filling compounds, products for the base preparation and sealing materials, at the Esslingen location has not only tied up capital in the raw materials warehouse, but also resulted in high expenses for the process control in order to allow recipes to be re-run accurately at any time. In order to further expand the technological leadership that Kiesel demands for its product ranges and be able to secure this advantage, the company’s management decided to replace the existing, heterogeneous automation system landscape with a modern process control system. The decision for Plant iT was based on three fundamental features of this process control system:

Two Simatic S7 controllers with distributed ET 200M peripherals are used for the control of both production plants for dry and liquid products with 28 silos, four automatic scales, two hand-held scales for small components, two mixers, two mixing containers and two bottling systems. A single server provides central data management and serves as an ERP interface for booking materials in real time. A network set up just for production and the installation of operator stations at all workplaces provides employees with seamless transparency of all business processes from receipt of raw materials via production, the laboratory and packaging to dispatch.

The high efficiency of Plant iT can be seen in the hand weighing of small components – a well-known bottleneck in many batch processes. Plant iT also provides the operator with detailed information on upcoming jobs in several parallel screen forms, so that the small components required at a later stage can be weighed in advance in accordance with the dosing instructions at the operator station. This high degree of flexibility provides the plant operator with the freedom to plan work individually in advance and to use Plant iT so that existing experience and knowledge of operating personnel enables production to be as seamless as possible, even at the hand-dosing station. The pre-weighed small components are given a bar code label and are put into interim storage. If this specific recipe is run in the plant and the plant operator requests the already weighed quantities for dosing, the operator verifies the correct selection of the small components using a bar code scanner directly at the dosing station.

The individual components of Plant iT are controlled and gravimetrically dosed also on the production line for liquid products. The mixture containers used on this line are also administrated directly by the process control system, so that the operators always know where each container is and which product it contains.

Information on all processed materials, current consumption and amounts produced are available in real time. This creates optimal conditions for the purchase and delivery of just-in-time raw materials and thus the achievement of lowest possible inventory stocks with the lowest possible tied-up capital. In the final expansion phase, disposition of materials is handled by the materials management function of Plant iT and that begins with the receipt of the raw materials. Incoming goods are handled in future not by the ERP system, but by the process control system. The link to the ERP ensures in particular that the monetary assessment of materials stocks is updated promptly. In this way, the Plant iT process control system for Kiesel Bauchemie enables both an increase in quality by means of process stabilization and also makes the company a forerunner on the path to operational excellence in the process industry.

cpp 410

The Plant iT family at a glance

Kiesel Bauchemie GmbH & Co.KG, Esslingen

Mitsubishi Electric and ProLeiT have agreed to port the Plant iT process control system to the Mitsubi-shi Melsec System Q controller.

The terms of the partnership agreement between the two companies include development of the PLC-based Plant iT process control system to enable full configurability for technology functions in process plants. The system gives users a platform for efficient engineering and scalable safety functionality in process control systems, combined with maximum transparency for the production and engineering staff. Use of an architecture that gets by without a compiler enables a very high degree of flexibility, including intervention in active processes. In addition to installations in new plants, the system can also be retrofitted to existing plants and used to optimise current processes.

The first phase of the Plant iT for Mitsubishi project will include basic central control functions, a production data management system and a configurable interface to external systems.