In any continuous manufacturing process, the capital expenditure of installation is a small part of total lifecycle costs. The greatest cost penalties occur in step changes or downtime.
Siemens' Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) is an open system technology that combines high availability with easy, predictive maintenance together with Siemens' Enterprise Asset management system, SIMATIC IT and Maintegrity. Although fully capable of providing a total, enterprise-wide solution, TIA is also scalable for implementation in levels. Ease of programming and centralised engineering from one point reduce installation and commissioning time and TIA provides genuine open systems integration with Ethernet, Profibus DP and PA and other platforms.
Cutting manufacturing costs
Competitiveness depends on controlling production costs to ensure the right pricing of products for market. The greatest danger to cost control is downtime, causing loss of production with continuous processes that can take days to re-stabilise. Siemens says that TIA is a unique, open system technology that addresses this issue with two major features - high availability with bumpless transfer to hot stand-by systems and predictive maintenance to avoid failures or tripping.
Acquisitions
TIA is a claimed world-first from Siemens Automation & Drives (A&D), one of the top five suppliers of process automation and said to be number two worldwide in process control rankings. The range of offerings from A&D has been strengthened recently with the acquisition of Moore Process Automation Solutions, best known for its APACS+ distributed control system and for Quadlog, the TšV certified integrated safety system. Other acquisitions include Applied Automation in the USA and Turbo-Werk Messtechnik in Germany. These acquisitions widen the scope of competence of A&D to provide enhanced total customer solutions such as entire automobile factories or petrochemical refineries.
Applications
TIA can be applied in a wide range of industries including mining, metals, food and beverage, chemical and petrochemical, energy, paper and pulp, motor and manufacturing amongst others. Some recently completed or about to be commissioned projects in southern Africa include the de Beers Combined Treatment Plant at Kimberley where Siemens A&D was responsible for the engineering and programming of the TIA system with 16 automation stations based on S7 416/7 processors.
The Anglo Platinum Waterval Plant near Rustenburg is a high availability, hot stand-by system with redundant communications networks and the Maandagshoek project is for the Anglo Platinum LGP acid plant. In Springs, Gauteng, the Braumat system installed for Stellenbosch Farmers Winery is only the third PCS7 TIA brewery site in the world. South African Breweries Chairman's Report this year praises the iBhayi Brewery in Port Elizabeth with its TIA S7 solution as having the lowest production cost per hectolitre of any of its breweries. Bateman Titaco Ferro-Alloys adopted S7, WinCC and Simocode solutions for its Machadodorp Furnace and PCS7 for the Rustenburg furnace.
Features
In operation, TIA provides a significant level of realtime data with a high information flow availability and intelligent switchgear. The unified modular system accommodates multivendor products including controllers on a PLC or PC platform, human/machine interface systems, drives, distributed I/O devices and process control systems. The complete spectrum has a unique feature in its threefold-unified strategy for data management, communications and configuring/programming. Value is added by bundling products and services from different areas such as automation systems, process automation and large drives and true open systems integration with Ethernet and Profibus networks.
Benefits
TIA saves installation and commissioning time with the ease of installing the modular products and programming the entire system with centralised engineering from one point. The predictive maintenance program allows operators to set the system parameters online and the realtime information flow reduces product failures and unnecessary maintenance procedures. High availability systems ensure minimal process interruptions with system changes that are virtually undetectable to the ordinary observer. This focus on avoiding downtime, even if with a temporary reduction in throughput, is what makes TIA so effective in reducing the lifecycle cost of ownership of manufacturing processes and increasing the price competitiveness of customers' products.
Siemens Automation & Drives
(011) 652 2000
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