Page 6 - EngineerIT March 2022

COVER STORY

Prepared for the future with seamless

data transparency

TwinCAT 3
IoT data agent

feeds the data lake
at Wienerberger
AG

© Beckhoff

n the globally competitive manufacturing sites in 29 countries, the group is one of the leading international suppliers of building materials
industry, every minute of time, every and infrastructure solutions. In order to be able to defend this pioneering position even in times
Igram of raw material and every kilowatt- of increasingly tougher global competition, the group launched a comprehensive digitalisation
hour of energy counts. The Wienerberger initiative. On the one hand, it promotes the production of smart products – for example, plastic
Group has faced this challenge for decades pipes that collect data on water levels or rainfall – and the development of new digital business
but recently, this leading international models. On the other hand, the company is doing everything in its power to increase transparency
supplier of innovative building materials in its own production sites.
and infrastructure solutions and, according
to the corporation, the world’s top brick From digital twins to operational excellence
producer, has leveraged TwinCAT and “data “Our vision is to create a digital twin of every production line in which not only process, planning
agent support” to achieve these goals. In and quality data are stored, but also, for example, detailed training course information for system
the course of a comprehensive digitalisation operators,” explains Roy Sibbald, manufacturing excellence officer at Wienerberger subsidiary Pipelife.
initiative, the group has started sending Ultimately, he wants to know about every single minute of production, and whether this period of
several million measured values to the cloud time was used productively or not. “If not, it wasn’t a good minute. The same goes for every gram
every day, for analysis to derive actionable of raw material we use. Was this turned into something that we could sell or what happened to it?
insights in all areas of the company as a basis The value of reliable answers to all these questions is enormous,” explains the expert, who, according
for targeted optimisation measures. to Manfred Heger, head of IT strategy, innovation and projects at Wienerberger, made a significant
Energy-efficient buildings, safe sewer contribution to advancing digitisation in the production environment.
systems, attractive public spaces: evidence Extrusion lines 21 and 26 at the Pipelife location in Wiener Neudorf were selected for a
of the Wienerberger Group’s expertise can solution’s proof of concept developed jointly with the solution providers TietoEVRY and HEAP
be found in all areas of life. The Vienna- Engineering GmbH as well as with Beckhoff. Plastic pipes with special quality requirements are
based producer of bricks, pipe systems and manufactured on these lines. “Here data on wall thickness, ovality, eccentricity, kilograms per
surface pavers, whose roots go back to 1819, metre, sawing pulses and much more must be captured,” says Andreas Roither-Voigt, senior
has been successfully driving the future of business consultant at TietoEVRY, describing a production process in which, among other things, it
building for 200 years. With 197 production is necessary to find out which pipes were cut to measure and in what time, and whether this really

EngineerIT | March 2022 | 4