While rigorous backup procedures are a cornerstone of any self-respecting IT facility, the same cannot be said for industrial automation applications. However, their growing complexity and wealth of enterprise-critical information has necessitated a new breed of change management solutions that are designed to operate in the mission-critical and constantly-changing environment of robots, PLCs and scada systems. MASS AutoSave from MDT Software is such a solution and it has proved its worth at SABMiller's Alrode brewery.
SAB was looking for software version control, central source code warehousing for Alrode (local server), security for users and workstations, historical logging of changes and events for auditing and troubleshooting purposes as well as the automated detection of variances in software code and data.
The goal of the project was to fully replace a previous UNIX-based software change management (SCM) system from MDT Software with their new Windows-based system. This was to be accomplished within one month including end-user training.
SAB also wanted to capitalise on AutoSave's ability to preserve the integrity of and changes made to such documents as recipes, User Requirement Specifications, Control Function Specifications and any additional customised SAB reports as well as other critical documents.
"We chose AutoSave after an exhaustive evaluation of all vendors of such solutions," says Ben Groenewald, process control engineer for SAB Alrode. "Not only was it the best fit for our extensive range of PLCs and existing Wonderware solutions but it is also competitively priced and backed by sound local and international references. We also have an excellent relationship with Futuristix and have enjoyed its high level of training and support for many years."
A single AutoSave Server operates with two agents (one in Brewing and the other in Packaging and Utilities) to scan and compare software versions in approximately 115 Allen-Bradley PLCs every day (15 clients and growing). AutoSave is the common development interface for all PLCs, HMIs and batch recipe files as well as approximately 50 Devicenet networks (the largest such configuration in the southern hemisphere).
"We achieved all our initial objectives and have immediately realised some important benefits," says Groenewald. "Not only have the systems exposed numerous differences in code but all our programmes and backups are finally and completely up-to-date. Any changes are automatically reported to the maintenance engineer daily. By no longer having to make backups, the technicians' time has been freed for more productive activities such as maintenance. Other benefits that we have experienced include the ease of implementation of the system, its ease of integration with other packages and the fact that it now serves as a single interface to all our control software."
For more information contact Justin Tweedie, Futuristix, 0861WONDER, [email protected]
About SABMiller
In July 2002, the Miller Brewing Company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of South African Breweries plc and SAB was renamed SABMiller plc. From its South African origins, SABMiller has become one of the world's largest brewing companies. With operations in over 40 countries, it has more beer brands in the world's top 50 than any other brewer and it ranks among the top three brewers in more than 30 countries. Every minute of every day, consumers the world over drink an average of over 46 000 pints of SABMiller beer. SABMiller is the world's largest bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola products outside the US.
About MASS AutoSave
MASS AutoSave manages changes to a wide variety of realtime industrial automation devices. Those devices include PLCs, robots, drive systems, human-machine interfaces, computer-based realtime control and data acquisition systems as well as documents that are related to those systems. Benefits include realtime version control, reduced process downtime, fast and accurate recovery, location of unknown changes, complete source warehousing, historical records, source code protection and insurance against mishaps.
In use by over 4000 end-users worldwide, AutoSave is an enterprise source management solution providing a full suite of tools to protect, save, restore, discover and track changes for industrial programmable devices and source files. The use of AutoSave results in a secure, well documented, controlled environment that reduces coordination constraints, wasted effort and safety concerns. AutoSave allows end-users to manage named versions and numbered ancestors of all automation project files, programmes and documentation while providing historical tracking and the secured, central storage of configuration information.
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