Intelligent diagnostics add bottom-line value

Gary Provis from Siemens Industrial Automation believes taking advantage of easy-to-use intelligent diagnostic solutions can add real value to a business.

The benefit of intelligent diagnostics in a system or process setting are increasingly forcing the agenda for manufacturers and process companies alike as they seek to maintain a competitive edge.

Identifying system or production faults and solving them quickly, or preventing issues before they even occur can be a key challenge for any plant, whether it's a complex automotive production line, a water utility company with many disparate treatment plants or a bottling plant in the food and beverage sector where downtime impacts the bottom line.

Provis said it is not just a case of intelligent diagnostics being 'nice to have' for companies, but, nowadays, more a strategic necessity to help stay ahead of the competition.

In the automotive industry, for example, a simple fault on a large-scale production line that brings it to a halt could take up to an hour to detect by on-site engineers and then to correct from an engineering maintenance standpoint.

With average cost estimates of production-downtime-per-hour in such a case running at something approaching GBP10,000, it is little wonder that quickly detecting and fixing what are often straightforward problems is in the best interest of any manufacturing or process company that simply must keep production downtime to a minimum.

The pressures to maintain production competitiveness are building all the time.

Companies are seeking ways to increase operational efficiencies, reduce costs and maintain production levels at a time when the worldwide recessionary forces are bearing down on firms both large and small.

On-site maintenance and engineering manpower is being reduced meaning the resources to spot and deal with problems at any given moment are increasingly being stretched.

If you add to this the absolute requirement to keep plant running ensuring high availability, the need to identify and solve problems speedily, the wish to reduce overall maintenance engineering costs and the desire to set up proactive maintenance schedules to prevent problems occurring in the first place, it is clear that help is required.

That help is available in the form of intelligent diagnostics either from an overall system or specific process point of view.

Embracing the benefits that intelligent diagnostics can deliver will help support all of the above company aims, helping them battle with pressures on all fronts.

Indeed, it could be argued that while production and existing demand levels are falling because of the worldwide downturn, the forward-thinking business should be addressing such issues and putting in place solutions that will mean they are well placed when the economy picks itself up again in the months and years to come.

Diagnostics in an overall system environment can underpin areas such as memory faults, short-circuits, wire-breaks or module failure helping them to be quickly identified or rectified, while in a process or plant setting, diagnostics can help detect faulty states in a plant-specific process such as interlocks not being performed, actuator runtime errors being spotted or limit-switch faults being detected.

Whatever the scenario, diagnostic intelligence solutions can help deliver the ultimate objective for any business: high plant availability and high productivity levels.

System diagnostics is a function for detecting errors in the components of the automation system and then crucially communicating them to the system manager.

Such measures are beneficial in almost all phases of the production lifecycle and the real benefit is that they do not hinder but support the user, especially as they are easy-to-install, easy-to-use and require minimal engineering to put in place.

In essence, the diagnostic solution for the system manager is intelligence-driven and highly accessible.

System diagnostics can be utilised on either an overall engineering PC or on individual human-machine interface (HMI) units, giving automatic reporting of system errors both system-wide (even across bus boundaries - both type of bus and media independent), as well as giving the source location while providing an automatic display of the cause of the error in understandable plain text.

In short, they provide quick and easy access to the right information for corrective action.

For companies put off the intelligent-diagnostics route, thinking it will be both highly complex and expensive, the technology exists to alleviate such concerns and a comprehensive all-embracing diagnostic solution can be implemented in a relatively short start-up time and cost-effective manner.

The level of detail available can offer real help and support for the hard-pressed maintenance and plant engineers.

For example, system signal error messages can make all procedures traceable; which fault occurred and when? When was it acknowledged? When was the fault rectified?
The functionality of signalling system errors and the subsequent diagnostic status can be embraced on various systems, whether they are automation systems such as Siemens Simatic or through fieldbus systems such as Profibus or Profinet.

The outcome is overall diagnostic-driven transparency across the network that will deliver high plant availability thanks to fast error location and lead to speedy system start-up and automatic documentation back-up.

The next step is that of preventative maintenance and here the acquisition of diagnostic information will aid the development of maintenance strategies, for example, ongoing testing of the temperature of the CPU, the fan speed and many others.

The available information or 'intelligence' can then be managed on a proactive basis so that potential faults can be addressed before they become a live issue and a system comes to an expensive standstill.

From an everyday process standpoint, diagnostics can play a full part in keeping a plant running.

Used by machine or plant operators and maintenance personnel, the key tool is the HMI, which will provide reliable detection of errors in the process, identify the source of the error thanks to clear messages and clarify the corrective action to be taken to get the plant working again as speedily as possible.

With automatic generation of individual monitoring programmes and integration into the HMI, and the ability to select criteria analysis that matches the particular need of the process in question, the operators and maintenance personnel can have the right type of information to hand at the right time to make a real difference in terms of intelligence-led information and, ultimately, crucial time-saving achievement.

It means they will know what has happened, where it has happened, when it happened and what to do to rectify the situation in a pressurised scenario when downtime means money off bottom-line profits.

The basic functions of process diagnostics will help detect errors, for instance, runtime error of a slide valve, and record and report the error.

Sitting alongside the intelligent approach via the HMI, using the criteria analysis already agreed and set up, diagnostics information will determine and display the signals that caused the error and give a true and accurate picture of the situation.

The future use of intelligent diagnostics can embrace the advantages of the internet even outside the plant with, for example, OEMs able to access the diagnostic profile of a remotely situated machine and potentially offer advice over the telephone to solve a fault, without the need, for instance, to despatch an engineer on a long and expensive trip to solve what could be a simple fault.

At a time when every penny counts in terms of manufacturing or process competiveness, intelligence-led diagnostics is an area that can add real bottom-line value.

Solutions can be quickly installed, give fast detection and display of process faults, are easy-to-use, can be made bespoke to specific plant operations, and can be targeted to service applications if required.

An intelligence-led diagnostic implementation strategy can play a central role in helping to keep a system working effectively and a production plant working harder.

It can help save money and enable businesses to operate more efficiently.

If companies are faced with questions concerning high plant availability and cost reduction, then intelligent diagnostics should be part of the answer.

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