Page 7 - EngineerIT March 2022

COVER STORY

was done to an accuracy of one millimetre. communication bridges between machines of different ages and different origins, and on
The measuring tasks are supported by the the other hand, it acts as a gateway to the cloud. “With a total of 197 production sites in 29
EL1512 and EL5151 EtherCAT terminals countries, we are dealing with an extremely heterogeneous machine landscape and numerous
from Beckhoff. “One I/O terminal enables protocols that have to be brought down to a common denominator. In some cases, EL6001
the direct connection of encoders, while the EtherCAT terminals are required as serial RS232 interfaces to establish the required connections;
other transmits the current counter readings in others, this works via OPC UA,” explains Lukas Pechhacker.
in real time for calculating the pipe lengths in
TwinCAT software – all on the edge gateway,” Perfect teamwork
explains the control engineer. As Beckhoff Solution Providers, both HEAP Engineering and TietoEVRY understand how to fully
leverage the possibilities of PC- and etherCAT-based control technology. “Everyone on our project
Industrial PC as an edge device team can simply trust that the other person knows exactly what they are doing and that they
In the meantime, millions of data from always keep an eye on the big picture in everything they do,” praises Manfred Heger. Due to
different Wienerberger Group plants are coronavirus-related travel restrictions, two production sites were even remotely connected to the
stored in the cloud every day for analysis loT network – one in Sweden and the other in the Netherlands. “Local electricians provided the
purposes. For a clear assignment of the crucial details about the existing infrastructure. Then the required components were ordered from
transmitted signals, they are provided with Beckhoff and preconfigured by HEAP Engineering to allow for simple plug-and-play connection
unmistakable factory, line and machine type on site. Then HEAP Engineering stepped back in to perform the final configuration via a secure
codes. “We joined forces to create a ’single remote connection, and we set the appropriate course in the cloud or took care of the data
source of truth’ to make the company’s quality checks,” says TietoEVRY employee Manuel Hausjell, describing a perfect collaboration.
vision of ‘all relevant data online – all the “There are always new ideas coming in about what else we could do to improve day-to-day
time’ a reality. Among other things, it was to operations in our plants: running benchmarking between the individual sites, achieving quality
ensure that ultimately every user is provided improvements, supporting predictive maintenance, using fewer resources and much more,” says
with the information relevant to him or her. Roy Sibbald, aware that digitisation is an ongoing process. “You can only become lean if valid
“Regardless of whether a data scientist plans comparative data is available, and the beauty of our system is that it is easily expandable and
to use the raw data as an input for machine scalable,” the manufacturing excellence officer sums up.
learning models or whether these are Additionally, current transformers are being placed more and more frequently in the
already consolidated and/or concentrated manufacturing facilities right now because, after all, not only every minute and every gram, but
for incorporation into various reporting tools, also every kilowatt-hour of energy counts. Thus, the project also makes significant contributions
they must be complete and correct in any with sustainability goals for the reduction of CO2 as well as energy and raw material consumption.
case,” emphasises Manuel Hausjell, IoT and Also, with the subsequent implementation of QR code recognition, the adaptability of the installed
data consultant at TietoEVRY. solution has already been proven. “All we had to do was activate the vision software licenses on the
Accordingly, the way in which the IPC, connect a camera via ethernet and thereby expand the edge gateway with TwinCAT vision to
individual machines are integrated into the include image processing in real time. Of course, the QR codes that have been read are transferred
Internet of Things network has also been to the cloud with the TwinCAT IoT data agent. The data is also available for use in the MES and ERP
standardised and specified by the project system,” says Balazs Bezeczky, head of the Beckhoff sales office in Vienna. n
managers. An ultra-compact C6030 industrial
PC from Beckhoff plays a central role as For more information contact Dane Potter, Beckhoff Automation,
gatekeeper to the Azure IoT hub in the Tel: +27 11 795 2898 / +27 79 493 2288, email: danep@beckhoff.co.za
cloud. Its compact design and a multi-core
processor performance of up to 3,6 GHz
per core make it the perfect edge device, as
Lukas Pechhacker, managing director of HEAP
Engineering, explains: “This is the advantage
of PC-based control technology – the control
devices can be scaled to requirements and
offer sufficient performance reserves for
data pre-processing on site. In the case of
winders, for example, the sampling intervals
are in the millisecond range. That’s why edge
computing is used here to translate into
revolutions per minute in order to keep the
flow of information to the cloud in check.”
The C6030 with TwinCAT 3 IoT data
agent generally has to take on many
“interpreter” functions: on the one hand, © Beckhoff
it uses TwinCAT ADS and OPC UA to build

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