Industrial wireless is predicted to be one of the next inflection points down the evolutionary path of industrial automation, and it’s about way more than just the ‘savings’ on wiring.
Today’s technology holds the potential for the installation of wireless sensors capable of honing manufacturing to the degree of profitability required for survival in the modern marketplace. There are a large number and variety of applications that can now be optimised to levels that in the past were simply not attainable. Some of these include equipment health monitoring and continuous capture of measurements that previously had to be logged manually by a technician with a clipboard.
Wireless transmitters can also provide simple solutions for applications traditionally considered difficult, even impossible, to measure. These include rotating kilns (or any rotating machinery for that matter) where the expensive slip-ring arrangements can be replaced by wireless sensors. Submerged arc furnaces are another candidate, since the RF signals are not subject to interference from the large magnetic fields radiating around the electrodes.
However, the full potential of wireless technology is considerably broader than just the extra efficiencies associated with these newfound process measurement applications. The era of the mobile worker is dawning and many of the latest generation of engineers cannot even imagine a world without Bluetooth, WiFi and a plethora of mobile devices.
These technologies are fundamentally changing the industrial environment and providing new opportunities for improvements in lean manufacturing. Equipped with iPads and plant-wide wireless networks, the modern worker is no longer tied to a workstation. In fact, they are now equipped to do a lot more with a lot less.
For instance, the modern asset optimisation solutions that are available can send contextualised information to a plant engineer doing his daily rounds. If the vibration signature of a pump changed during the night, the engineer can be alerted based on his GPS location and can stop and take a closer look when he gets there. From the plant application interface on his tablet device, said engineer can change over to the standby pump if required and schedule a maintenance request for the faulty equipment. The maintenance manager, perhaps doing an inspection in another part of the factory, would then be informed immediately via an email or sms and be able to access the same information used to alert his engineering colleague.
Futurists like Jim Pinto believe that the eventual goal for industrial wireless will be to network devices that are self-sensing, self-controlling and self-optimising, automatically and without human intervention. This is the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) that GE has forecast to be its next huge growth arena. It represents a completely new application for information technology that will totally subsume previous business models. So much so, that GE has set aside some $2 bn for technology investment over the next few years.
However, one of the obstacles to adoption is the confusion caused by the bewildering array of new wireless standards that are emerging. For process measurement applications, the two front-runners are WirelessHART and ISA 100 with ZigBee re-emerging as a viable platform for connecting large numbers of I/O points. These standards are all based on IEEE 802.15.4 and incorporate self-organising mesh network capability at the device level.
For plant-wide backhaul networks there is WiFi, based on the IEEE 802.11 variants, and the higher power WiMax (IEEE 802.16) for longer distance applications. For short distances (less than 5 metres) Bluetooth uses less power than WiFi and is best suited for the elimination of cables between line-powered equipment and its extensions, for example keyboards or printers. In factory and process plants, it is typically used to connect control-room devices.
To help make sense of it all, my Technews colleagues and I have produced the 2014 edition of the Technews Industry Guide – Wireless. We aim to provide you, our readers, with a one-stop reference for all matters industrial wireless. In this edition you will find everything from articles describing the cutting-edge of the technology – PID control over a wireless network – through white papers written to help you set up a wireless infrastructure, and then on to application stories that show the solutions that are possible today. We have also included a product showcase together with a listing of all the local vendors and a handy set of tables for easy cross referencing. I hope you find it all useful and remember to drop us a line about your wireless projects, we are already on the lookout for articles to feature in next year’s issue.
Steven Meyer
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