Industrial Automation Projects Research Articles

Experiences Modeling a OPC UA / DDS Gateway in AADL in the Context of Fog Computing

The legacy protocols still used in industrial automation are an obstacle to interoperability. In the meantime, while newer protocols are slowly replacing gateways, they can provide a bridge between new and legacy protocols. The Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL) was used in the Fog Computing for Robotics and Industrial Automation (FORA) project to model a Fog Computing Platform (FCP). Part of the FCP is an OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) / Data Distribution Service (DDS) gateway. The main goal was to develop an AADL model that allows the creation of platform-specific instances of such a gateway and the creation of other gateways. While the gateway model is incomplete, it formed the basis for several gateway prototypes. Challenges included complex data structures and tooling issues related to code generation. Nevertheless, the experiences with the AADL modeling of the gateway and the FCP were positive overall.

Technological Adaptation Model; an integrated application process to the productive chain in MyPyMES

The purpose of this work is to develop a new analysis proposal an integrate the tools in the management of productive technological evolution projects in the industrial area, through a technological and procedural assurance plan for change management, focused on the creation of value and innovation, in order to face the challenges of globalized competition, respond to a productive logic with characteristics of the so-called smart factory and thus close the technological gap. Among the significant tasks, the review and analysis of the means of integration was developed, to associate them with the existing knowledge generated in the interaction, with practical purposes in decision-making activities, for the construction of strategies, and daring actions to face challenges, that promote the change to contemporary technologies, rapid methodologies, for the design and management of engineering and industrial automation projects, in order to generate competitive advantage in MyPyMES. The results allowed the construction of a Technological Adaptation Model that supports MyPyMES.

Design of a general-purpose automation software based on Raspberry Pi

Embedded systems and open technologies play a fundamental role in implementing the Internet of Things in the industrial automation field. This paper is related to the engineering of a general-purpose automation software, based on a computerised system with Raspberry Pi operating as a digital logic controller. The automation solution regulates sequential and continuous processes of multiple input/output signals, and its functioning can be effectively configured according to the project's requirements. This software technology proposal aims to simplify obtaining a process control solution for industrial, laboratory, and home automation projects through computer-assisted design. This solution offers a pre-elaborated software structure and functionalities, allowing creators to obtain their results faster and with less effort, where commercial automation products demand deep expertise in programming languages, in process control technologies, and expend long developing times.

PUESTA EN MARCHA VIRTUAL DE LA AUTOMATIZACIÓN DE UNA PLANTA INDUSTRIAL

The operation stage of an industrial automation project begins with the commissioning process, where all the necessary adjustments are made to ensure the proper performance of the software developed and the devices involved in the automation sequences. This process can be somewhat delicate, since any aspect not foreseen in the software could delay the beginning of the project. In fact, any aspect of software, communication or assembly that is not considered can result in serious losses, given that many times fragile and expensive devices are used. Virtual commissioning has been in recent years a favorable solution to these problems, saving a lot of financial resources for companies wishing to implement automated processes. This paper presents a case study for the automation industry, in which a virtual scenario representing a bottling plant is able to communicate with any kind of PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers) through a communication protocol and a physical interface that work with real digital and analog signals. Both, the communication protocol and the physical interface, are original proposals developed in this work. Key Words: Virtual Commissioning, Industrial, Automation

Exploring of the Consequences of Human Resources Multitasking in Industrial Automation Projects: A Tool to Mitigate Impacts

Each industrial automation project includes tasks strongly depend on human factor many of which may belong to the critical path or chain of the project. Multitasking affects significantly human productivity. This reduction in productivity has as a direct result the delay of the primary task which may cause an overall delay to the project with cost and time overruns. A project should be seen in a global environment that of the company, where resources are shared among its portfolio of projects. Although multitasking might have negative results, it is something that cannot be eliminated, but it can be mitigated by project managers.This work presents the effects of multitasking in human productivity, especially when the tasks are complex, like PLC/SCADA software development. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, a simple tool is created to be used by project managers, in order to assist them in decision making. Criteria that influence these decisions are referenced and their priority vectors are proposed. Also, some real examples are given.A project manager faces a complex situation when they asked to decide allocation of resources and priorities among different projects. Parameters that are difficult to predict in real situations may have a significant role in the decision making process.There are a lot of published works based on AHP applications in different fields, but there is a gap in the field of industrial automation projects and the related project manager's decision making. This study focuses on these decision making process which determines which tasks should be paused or not for a better allocation of resources, taking into account the global environment of a technical company. The tool can be implemented with changing criteria and priority vectors to adapt to different type of projects. Future research could identify additional criteria and sub-criteria with different priority vectors, depending on different project specifications.

Exploring the consequences of human multitasking in industrial automation projects: a tool to mitigate impacts – Part II

Abstract Each industrial automation project includes tasks that strongly depend on human factors, many of which may belong to the critical path or chain of the project. Multitask­ing significantly affects human productivity. The reduction in productivity has a direct result of delaying the primary task, which may cause an overall delay to the project with cost and time overruns. A project should be seen with respect to a global environment, such as that of a company, where resources are shared among its portfolio of projects. Although multitask­ing might have negative results, it is something that cannot be eliminated but can be mitigated by project managers. This article presents the effects of multitasking on human productivity, especially when the tasks are complex, like programmable logic controller (PLC)/supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software development. Using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method, a simple tool is created to be used by project managers, in order to assist them in decision-making. Criteria that influence these decisions are referenced, and their priority vectors are proposed. In addition, some real examples are given. Project managers face a complex situation when they are asked to decide on the allocation of resources and priori­ties among different projects. Parameters that are difficult to predict in real situations may have a significant role in the decision-making process. There are a lot of published works based on AHP appli­cations in different fields, but there is a gap in the field of industrial automation projects and the related project manager’s decision-making. This study focuses on these decision-making processes that determine which tasks should be paused or not for a better allocation of resources, taking into account the global environment of a technical company. The tool can be implemented with changing criteria and priority vectors to adapt to different types of projects. Future research could identify additional criteria and subcriteria with dif­ferent priority vectors, depending on different project specifications. This article is the extended version (Part II) of CCC 2017 Procedia Engineering paper.

PLC based Automatic Distillation and Collection of Ethanol-Water Solution

This paper demonstrates the design and implementation of a binary distillation and collection of Ethanol-Water solution. The PLC based distillation and collection of the liquids is one of the innovative industrial automation projects. The conventional design contains a PLC based automated model of liquid distillation and collection systems, where PLC (SIMATIC S7-300) is used as the controlling brain of the system and distillation and collection are the two main units of the designed system. The distillation control system separates the homogeneous mixture of water and alcohol (ethanol) by comparing the current temperature of the solution of the continuous solution feeding to the column with the boiling points of individual compounds and collection system collects the separated solvents into the bottles placed on the conveyor belt. The monitoring and controlling of the whole systems are evaluated on the basis of temperature and level of the specific units under consideration of atmospheric pressure. Thus the accurate working of process control can lead to smooth operation of the system, preventing unwanted failures, shutdowns and providing notable cost saving and reliability.

Industrial Automation as a Cloud Service

New cloud services are being developed to support a wide variety of real-life applications. In this paper, we introduce a new cloud service: industrial automation, which includes different functionalities from feedback control and telemetry to plant optimization and enterprise management. We focus our study on the feedback control layer as the most time-critical and demanding functionality. Today’s large-scale industrial automation projects are expensive and time-consuming. Hence, we propose a new cloud-based automation architecture, and we analyze cost and time savings under the proposed architecture. We show that significant cost and time savings can be achieved, mainly due to the virtualization of controllers and the reduction of hardware cost and associated labor. However, the major difficulties in providing cloud-based industrial automation systems are timeliness and reliability. Offering automation functionalities from the cloud over the Internet puts the controlled processes at risk due to varying communication delays and potential failure of virtual machines and/or links. Thus, we design an adaptive delay compensator and a distributed fault tolerance algorithm to mitigate delays and failures, respectively. We theoretically analyze the performance of the proposed architecture when compared to the traditional systems and prove zero or negligible change in performance. To experimentally evaluate our approach, we implement our controllers on commercial clouds and use them to control: (i) a physical model of a solar power plant, where we show that the fault-tolerance algorithm effectively makes the system unaware of faults, and (ii) industry-standard emulation with large injected delays and disturbances, where we show that the proposed cloud-based controllers perform indistinguishably from the best-known counterparts: local controllers.

Execution and evaluation of complex industrial automation and control projects using the systems engineering approach

AbstractThis paper presents the results of our implementation and evaluation studies of industrial automation and control projects in the process industries using the systems engineering approach. Industrial Automation and Control (IAC) projects are complex technical projects including state‐of‐the‐art large bill of materials, multidisciplinary engineering resources, and a considerable amount of capital. The factors that are critical to the successful implementation of IAC projects are identified and discussed based on the literature and the experience gained in various large‐ and medium‐size industrial applications. The hierarchical structure of modern IAC systems and milestones of project implementation are also presented. A case study in the steel making processes is introduced to demonstrate the substantial benefits of incorporating systems engineering approaches into the successful implementation of IAC projects. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 14: 193–207, 2011

A Survey of Ethernet Redundancy Methods for Real-Time Ethernet Networks and its Possible Improvements

Industrial Ethernet switches, form the network backbone in automotive production, substation automation systems, intelligent transport systems, and other major industrial automation projects. In the operation of industrial switches, the recovery time of a switch is vital for its applicability. In the last few years, a large number of solutions have emerged among the switch manufacturers which have been accompanied by standardisation activities in IEC. This paper gives a brief introduction of the industrial requirements for network redundancy and discusses details of existing solutions with a special focus on the ring topology. A possible optimisation of existing Ethernet based industrial switches is also discussed.

Automatic generation of integrated high level conceptual designs

Medium and large size Industrial Automation projects are usually complex and they have many technology views, such as the control subsystem view, the mechanic subsystem view, etc. This paper presents an experience in building conceptual integrated models of industrial automated systems with the information modelling language Express, and a specially attention is given to the description of a semiautomatic process to create high level (conceptual) designs from those high level models. These automated error less generated designs will be used later as a seed for next project phases results: simulations to check requirements conformance, mechanical manufacturing drawings, electrical drawings, control code, etc. The final objective of the method is to get all these detailed results fast and with quality.

Temporal Reasoning on Object-Oriented Real-Time Specifications by using Constraint Propagation Techniques

This paper describes the design and implementation of a temporal reasoning module, which has been developed within the context of an object-oriented framework for supporting the requirements engineering phase of real-time industrial automation projects. Constraint propagation techniques and object-oriented concepts are taken into account during the inference process. Through hierarchization and modularization of the real-time specification, a better handling of complexity is achieved. The paper highlights the main characteristics of the temporal reasoning module, which has been satisfactorily applied in some case studies with real-time industrial automation.

Discrete Event Control Methods: A Review

Programmable logic controllers or more generally microprocessor/computer based controllers have played a significant role in advancing industrial automation. A majority of them are designed and implemented with relay ladder logic (RLL) programming. Recently new methods are emerging with the objectives to handle large industrial automation projects and improve understandability, flexibility, and maintainability of the resulting design. This paper overviews and evaluates these approaches through a level control process example. Among them are: direct implementation of RLL, logic diagrams, timing/sequence diagrams, state diagrams, Petri nets, and sequential function charts. Their major advantages and disadvantages are indicated.

Managing factory automation projects

Abstract Implementing advanced manufacturing technologies such as flexible manufacturing systems and CAD/CAM has been much more difficult and lengthy for companies than expected. Out of necessity, firms have thus turned to project management approaches to achieve the benefits of these automated systems within reasonable time and cost limitations. In general, project management has worked well for such complex systems, particularly where standard project management tools have been employed in the process. This paper illustrates the major project management concepts and techniques used in a number of industrial automation projects. The focus is on project planning, implementation, and control, including the issues of budgeting, scheduling, resource allocation, monitoring, information system design, and post-auditing.