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Italian "Industry 4.0 National Plan" Implementation for Packaging Line

Posted in HMI and SCADA, Manufacturing Automation and Intelligence, MES, Packaging Machinery Programming, PLC Programming, Siemens PLC

Summary

DMC worked with a food and beverage manufacturer in Italy to ensure that a new packaging line in their facility conformed to the "Industry 4.0 National Plan" under the Hyper Amortization category. DMC's solution leveraged its deep knowledge and experience in industry standards and Siemens best practices to deliver a solution that bridged the gap between machine control and the client's existing Wonderware MES system.

Solution

DMC's client was adding a packaging line to their facility and requested Siemens Automation hardware. Because the machine builder primarily built their machines with Allen Bradley hardware, DMC was brought in to provide support for the startup process.

Under the Italian Industry 4.0 National Plan, companies are encouraged to invest in Industry 4.0 technologies through tax incentives. Investment costs are increased by 150% of their value through Hyper Amortization, and 40% through Super Amortization. The goals here are to support Italian companies when they make tangible investments in technological and digital transformation.

The scope of the work DMC was responsible for primarily consisted of four machines on the packaging line. Each machine had it's own PLC. DMC was tasked with ensuring that the communication with the Wonderware MES system was compliant with the Industry 4.0 National Plan requirement under the Hyper Amortization category.

To achieve this compliance, DMC developed a library to be used across all machines. The functionality of the library was to aggregate all of the relevant machine data, process and format it into the correct data structures, and to send that data on to the Wonderware MES system as well as pass commands from the Wonderware MES system down to the machine. The library developed was flexible enough to be used on the vastly different machines while still ensuring that the proper data was passed between the machines and the higher level system.

DMC was a natural fit for this role due to our familiarity with this customer's code, our experience working with and programming in the Siemens and Wonderware environments, and our background in using the PackML architecture on packaging lines as this is was the basis for the Industry 4.0 National Plan requirement in this application. Ultimately, the solution provided met all of the customer's and the Italian government's requirements for Hyper Amortization.​

Learn more about DMC's work in the Packaging Machinery industry, Food and Beverage industry, and our partnership with Siemens. Contact us for any assistance regarding PLC Programming and MES Systems.

Customer Benefits

  • Alignment with Italian Industry 4.0 National Plan requirements under the Hyper Amortization category
  • Integration of the new packaging line with the existing Wonderware MES system
  • Creation of library and template project for simplified implementation on other lines/machines

Technologies