Ignition SCADA & Rockwell PLC Upgrades Improve Packaging Line Performance

Summary

A leading product manufacturing company needed assistance modernizing two chemical-packaging lines with the goal of integrating Ignition for greater OEE data visibility. As an Ignition Premier Integrator with Rockwell expertise, DMC’s Manufacturing Automation team was brought in to facilitate hardware upgrades and implement a line-control Ignition application.

DMC updated 25+ machine cells to communicate with Ignition and include line-speed balancing logic to centralize operator control. This implementation not only reduced downtime and improved product throughput, but it also improved data documentation to further drive OEE improvements.

Customer Benefits

Solution

DMC began the project by updating legacy Rockwell hardware across the two lines to provide Ethernet connectivity to each machine cell for Ignition. DMC also designed a new OT network and configured a dedicated server to lay the foundation for the new Ignition SCADA system.

Status Monitoring and Reporting

The Automation team implemented custom downtime and state tracking on each PLC that writes data directly to a SQL database for historical analysis. Each PLC was updated to report the following states where applicable: Running, Idle, Faulted, Blocked, Starved, and Recovery. DMC then created overview screens for each line that display the live state of each connected machine. This allows operators immediate visibility into what is inhibiting product flow across the line without having to monitor each machine cell individually.

The downtime tracking screens were also configured to display in-state times for each machine, providing operators and administrators with a more detailed view into downtime and OEE metrics. Additional historian screens were configured to allow the operators to trend selected data from each machine, such as throughput (product-per-minute) tags and speed setpoints. This state implementation provides operators with real-time visibility and historical tracking, vastly improving the customer’s ability to analyze performance and determine areas for improvement across the line.

Remote Control and Line Commands

In addition to enhanced state visibility, DMC implemented centralized control logic to utilize remote start/stop/reset commands, along with speed setpoints for normal and recovery modes. The added functionality enables full line control to send start/stop/reset commands to each connected PLC simultaneously. This centralized control significantly reduces startup and shutdown times compared to operating each machine individually.

Line Balancing and Speed Recipe Management

With the centralized PLC communication established, DMC was able to optimize line speeds and implement improved line-balancing measures. Operators can now directly set critical machine speeds via Line Speed Profile screens, which serve as a recipe system for each product type.  These setpoints are then utilized on each PLC depending on whether it is recovering from being starved/blocked or in normal operation.

Cascading recovery logic was also added to select machines on the lines to ramp up machine speed (recovery speed setpoint) when the downstream machines are recovering from a stop condition. This allows production on portions of the line to be sped up to compensate for reduced throughput caused by downtime.

The recipe system allows operators to set up different speed profiles per machine for each product type on the line. This significantly reduces changeover time by automatically updating each machine’s speed from the Ignition HMIs. Overall, operator intervention and downtime decreased due to dynamic machine speed adjustments as a response to system states.

Results

DMC developed a custom Ignition SCADA application that displays clients on IPC workstations across the line. The application includes line overview screens, alarm and tag-historian tables, and line-speed recipe screens. This streamlined UI decreases changeover time between products and the need for operators to interact with each individual machine. Additionally, the tag historian and state tracking screens enable the customer to review downtime tracking for all machines on the line at once. This provides greater data visibility for all employees, from operators to executives, and provides more context to drive further improvements across the lines.