Manganese Metal Company chooses the Adroit solution.
MMC, one of the largest manganese suppliers in the world, produces pure selenium-free electrolytic manganese to meet the specialised needs of its customers around the globe. The manganese is manufactured using an electro-plating process at the company’s production facility in Nelspruit, South Africa. MMC have been using a scada solution from Adroit at the facility since it became the preferred choice as an upgrade to a legacy control system in 2000.
Operation at the plant is controlled by 12 scada machines each connected to a programmable logic controller (PLC) which can vary from old Modicon 984s to the latest Telemecanique Premium series. The PLCs are operated standalone and the scada machines are connected using an office network.
The PCs are used as the human machine interface (HMI) in a supervisory role while all critical process control is carried out on the PLCs, system design allows the plant to run without the scada for short periods. Licensing is an all-inclusive package from Adroit for 75–1500 point systems with free upgrades. Most after-sales support is supplied telephonically or via e-mail, in extreme instances, Adroit sends out a support technician for on site assistance.
The most intensive application at MMC is a 1500 scan point Hasp with a total of 1136 points used. These include all digital and analogue I/O with some manipulated in different ways such as expressions and marshalling. This specific machine is connected to a Modicon 984 and a Spectrum Teleranger with two remote stations. Updates are recorded in the archive once per day and backup is run on a server maintained by the company’s IT department for all 12 machines.
MMC’s Henk van der Westhuizen comments, “We were impressed with the wide range of drivers available on Adroit, all drivers needed for our oldest to newest PLCs were supplied standard. All the mimics are available on our intranet for remote viewing from any office machine with remote view installed, and remote control is available to us as an option should we want to implement it in the future.”
The wide range of graphic wizards saved a lot of time for the developers and during the design process of each new application consideration was given to re-usable objects and standards were implemented throughout the project. All mimics were developed as true replicas of the plant, which made the adoption by, and training of, operations staff very easy.
At MMC control parameters are very important and precision control is done using an SQL database and Excel to write and read into tags. Control parameters derived from analysers can be read into the Adroit system and sent on to the PLC, or operators can simply select normal PLC set-point control.
Trending and historical data are both featured by Adroit and historical data for up to 35 days is set as standard at MMC. Any trend point can be selected and exported onto an Excel spreadsheet or can be viewed in the historical mode, as trend lines are static reflecting the values obtained from the current data log file. Different views of an historical trend line may be selected by resetting the time period, or by zooming.
Alarming is a feature that can easily fail in its usefulness if not managed properly and only alarmed tags of real importance to the operators are used. Alarms have further been rated on their importance and are displayed in different colours to highlight their importance to the operator. A modem from Adroit was installed on a trial basis on one of the critical machines to assist with alarm management. Critical alarms trigger an SMS send to pre-programmed cell numbers.
Van der Westhuizen concludes, “Adroit is a complete system, it complies with all the requirements needed on our specific plant and specifically the VCR feature is very handy in supplying data to all stakeholders. Another feature from Adroit is the new versions that we get on our agreement with them, these contain new features that we did not think of previously and with this development of the product we are sure of a long term relationship. Adroit is a South African company and its willingness to assist in special applications makes it a sure choice for our company.”
For more information contact Adroit Technologies, +27 (0)11 658 8100, [email protected], www.adroit.co.za
| Tel: | +27 11 658 8100 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
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