Case Study
Project objective
The customer has an obsolete installation where most of the actions are performed manually and the system monitoring and raw material loading is done through a Visual Basic application on Windows 95 computers.
In view of the high risk generated by equipment failure and possible human errors in production, the customer is advised to upgrade the entire system under the following premises:
- Upgrade control hardware (redundant Siemens PLCs and SCADA are offered).
- Automatic/manual control of all plant devices and signals through two SCADA clients minimizing the actions required by personnel.
- Installation of distributed periphery suitable for ATEX zone and installation of the equipment in different buildings in order to ensure the operation in case of an emergency.
- Comply with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 to maintain Data Integrity.
- Split the start-up into two phases to always have one of the two reactors running.
- The system is based on Siemens hardware and software with S7-400H and WinCC SCADA controllers, both redundant.
- WinCC SCADA client with 4 independent screens in the control room and an IPC ATEX panel in the raw material loading area.
- User management via SIMATIC Logon.
- Audit Trail server to save all user actions and changes to system parameters.
- Comprehensive management of custom recipes created from WinCC and located in the PLC.
- Generation of batch reports once finished automatically by a printer and saving of the data on the server for future review and validation of the same by quality from a Windows application created to measure.
- Complete system validation: SAT, FAT, IQ, OQ and PQ tests.