Reviewer details
Name: Marko Trninic
Position/Designation: Project engineer
Company: Unilever South Africa Foods
Telephone: 083 519 5053/011 898 5352
E-mail: [email protected]
Product details
Vendor: Rockwell Automation
Contact person: Rudolf van Wyk
Product name and version: RSView SE 3.2
Telephone: 011 654 9700
E-mail: [email protected]
URL: www.rockwellautomation.com
General
Q: What industry (eg, mining, food and beverage, automotive etc) is the scada being applied in? Describe the application briefly.
A: Margarine processing plant.
Used for the make-up of margarine blends that supplies 14 packing lines running 24 hours, seven days a week.
Q: Who did the system integration?
A: Quad Automation.
Q: Approximately how many man-hours did the integration take?
A: 640 hours.
Q: How is the after-sales support handled (eg, remote-dial-up, e-mail etc)?
A: Internal support through stand-by cover and remote dial-up as well as Rockwell field engineering support.
Q: What sort of licensing agreement is used on the system? Does one licence cover all modules, or can the user only buy those modules that he wishes to use?
A: Separate licence for each client, data server, development software and HMI servers. RSView SE server licences are not based on the size of the HMI tag database, but are priced on the number of displays used within the HMI application.
System architecture
Q: How many tag points/I/O does the installation have? Analog? Digital? Maximum possible?
A: 6354 tags in total being used. Analog: 2370, Digital: 3984.
Q: What operating system is the scada running on (eg, Windows NT, Unix etc)?
A: Windows 2000 domain.
Q: What impressed you most about the architecture? Open standards, wide range of drivers, the ability to upgrade, etc? Please elaborate.
A: Being a fully distributed system with a vast amount of flexibility in terms of implementation of a distributed architecture. Also compatibility with a wide range of OPC drivers.
Q: Is the system integrated onto an intranet or the Internet? If so, does the configuration allow simple remote monitoring, or is it configured to allow full remote control? If not, what level of intranet/Internet control does the scada allow for future use?
A: The system is not integrated into Internet due to network security reasons. The use of intranet is seen as unnecessary.
Q: What sort of redundancy is built into the system?
A: Cold backup. There are two HMI servers, if one fails the other available HMI server can be pointed to from any client.
Graphics
Q: Describe the graphics development process - eg, did you use standard library images, or did you have to draw images from scratch?
A: In order to accommodate the site standard, the use of standard scada library images is not possible. However, a number of images were used and customised to suit the site standard.
Q: How would you describe the library of graphic images?
A: Very useful for non-standard applications.
Q: Did you use any 'special' images (eg, embedded video clips, photographs, 3D images etc).
A: No.
Compatibility
Q: Did you run the scada in conjunction with any third-party application software? Describe.
A: Due to the use of third party PLCs such as Honeywell's IPC PLC, OPC drivers such as MasNet and Applicom were used as data servers.
Q: Does the scada allow for the user to create scripts to perform specific tasks? Describe.
A: Full compatibility with Visual Basic allows for scripting, however there is a definite limitation as to the usage of scripting within the system.
Management reporting
Q: Is a trending and historical data reporting system included? Please elaborate.
A: All analog values, control valves and flowmeters are trended for a period of a month. Historian software package is used for all historical trending of up to six months. It is used primarily on all critical devices that could have an impact on quality of an end product.
Q: Is a management reporting system included in the package?
A: No.
Q: Is the system integrated into a manufacturing execution system?
A: It is integrated into the Recipe Manager system used for downloading of recipes.
Q: Is the scada system integrated into a management reporting or control system (eg, SAP, Baan)?
A: Alarms and activity logs are integrated into the reporting system in the form of Crystal Reports.
Q: Who integrated the scada into the MES and ERP?
A: Quad Automation.
Q: Describe the integration process.
A:
1. Standards, prototype and its approval.
2. Development.
3. Testing.
4. FAT.
5. Commissioning.
6. Optimisation.
7. Hand-over and documentation.
Q: Was any additional software development needed? Please elaborate.
A: Use of Visual Basic scripting to achieve customised functionality.
Conclusion
Q: What impressed you the most about the system? What was the predominant feature (or features) that made you decide to employ this scada, rather than another (ie, ease of use, support from the vendor, upgrade path, redundancy features etc)?
A:
* Being a true distributed scada system.
* Remote development using RS View Studio software.
* Organised tag database structure.
* Security management through Windows domain.
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