Unlocked legacy-system data leads to $850,000 annual savings for Gumlink
By Malcolm Wheatley, senior contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2007 6:00:00 AM
The 40 packaging lines of Vejle, Denmark-based Gumlink churn out up to 35,000 tons of chewing gum each year. The number of packaging lines reflects the company's business model, explains Project Manager Michael Jensen.
Gumlink is a big contract manufacturer for own-label retailers and brand owners around the world. More than 100 chewing gum variants are in regular production, Jensen notes, with each variant typically produced in different product/package combinations on different lines. In production three shifts per day, five days a week, the packaging lines must be switched nimbly from one product/package specification to another—often several times each shift.
In late 2003, Gumlink managers realized significant improvements in efficiency were possible. Quantifiable information was needed for metrics such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE); the causes and duration of downtime; and the amount of waste incurred during manufacture.
An automated data-capture system was the obvious solution, yet the plant contained an enormous variety of systems and machines that in many cases had been augmented post-installation by automation equipment from different vendors, and embodying several generations of instrumentation technology.
Common woes
How to integrate data from automation equipment and manufacturing systems in a cost-effective and sensible time frame—without consuming excessive IT resources—is a common problem.
“The classic approach has been point-to-point integration,” observes Gregg LeBlanc, director of technical strategy for OSIsoft. “Users say: 'I've got this one piece of data from a sensor here, and I want to put it in an application over there.' The challenge lies in finding the information, and delivering it in a way that it can be used.”
Moreover, as the number of point-to-point integrations mount, costs for managing the tangle of connections can outweigh the benefits sought in building the data bridge in the first place.
One connection on its own isn't the issue, says Steve Garbrecht, Wonderware's program manager for platform products and SCADA. “It's the ability to change, update, and modify a great number of connections in a structured and controllable manner.”
Vendors of both automation equipment and enterprise application suites are addressing this challenge by extending their solutions to establish the required connections at the device level, as well as for the shop floor and enterprise application layers that furnish the contextual information.
In recent years, several small software vendors—including the former Lighthammer, the former IndX, and Activplant—introduced solutions that used Internet technologies to gather data from disparate plant-floor systems. Aggregation and analysis of the resulting information, delivered in near-real time as key performance indicators (KPI), allows quick reactions in dynamic environments, including changes in demand transmitted via ERP.
Both automation and enterprise vendors soon took notice of the emerging solution category. Lighthammer was bought by SAP and IndX by Siemens, for example. And other vendors soon offered their own “manufacturing intelligence” solutions, differentiated by the mode of manufacturing or industry segment served.
A more expansive view of manufacturing intelligence includes other means to the same end, with data integration achieved by plant-operations software suites that integrate with third-party systems in a manner similar to solutions from more narrowly focused manufacturing intelligence vendors.
Rockwell Software, Invensys Wonderware, and Invensys Process Systems are among the major automation vendors to introduce what could be called plant operations “production and performance suites.”
Manufacturing intelligence is thus defined as the application of analytics to data integrated from diverse sources in support of collaborative, real-time decision-making. It also implies integration of the plant floor with the enterprise, and the blending of financial and operational metrics to ensure the enterprise is focused on a common goal rather than optimization of one operational silo or another.
Back to the story
Gumlink's solution came in the form of GE Fanuc's Proficy suite of applications. A pilot project began in March 2004, with the two Proficy applications interfaced to eight high-volume production lines, each comprising seven or so linked machines. Most machines on the lines had been acquired in the last 10 years. However, some of the equipment—such as the packing machines that place capsules of gum on cut sheets of flat cardboard, which are then folded and glued to form a carton—was 15 years to 20 years old, and fitted with PLCs typical of the era.
On each packaging line, a Profibus network connects the selected data-collection devices to a newly installed front-end PLC, which captures the physical inputs going into each line, acts as a “data conduit,” and governs the line's stops and starts. An Ethernet link from this front-end PLC to an OPC server is the data route to Proficy Historian. In turn, Proficy Plant Applications accesses the data in the historian, and delivers an OEE “scoreboard” to a 42-inch plasma screen fitted to each line.
“We developed a 'data class' compatible with every PLC on the lines—new or old—so that the Proficy software was exposed to the same types of information, irrespective of where it was coming from,” says Jensen. “It was very simple: standardized information such as whether the machine was running, number of inputs, number of outputs, number of rejects, plus any alarms and warnings.”
Machine stoppages aren't always connected to alarms, and these “soft stops,” as they're called, require an operator to enter a “reason code” identifying the cause of the stoppage, if the OEE data is to be accurate. So until Proficy receives a reason code, explains Jensen, the machines are barred from restarting.
Overall, says Jensen, there has been a 10-percent increase in production efficiency, with significantly less waste and downtime. In the event of equipment breakdown, maintenance engineers are automatically alerted via an SMS (short messaging service) text message to their cell phones, while increased operational visibility from real-time metrics and KPIs drives innumerable business improvements. Overall, says Jensen, the GE Fanuc software delivered an ROI in less than three months, contributing to documented annual savings of $850,000.
Key to the success of the installation has been the design of the “data class” that acts as a bridge between the plant floor and the Proficy applications. “It's a very simple interface: a data class with just 10 defined variables that are almost always present in the PLC,” says Jensen. “They just need outputting from the PLC for us to be able to use them.”
With Proficy now installed on 18 of the plant's 40 lines, Gumlink is planning to retrofit a further six or seven lines with the software, says Jensen. “The remaining lines are probably so little used that the payback would be minimal,” he concedes.
All new equipment brought into the plant—including three new machines being commissioned at present—is ordered with the GE Fanuc interfaces specified as standard.
“Standards such as OPC go a long way, but especially in environments where there are high-speed, mission-critical 'failover' requirements, you need something else,” says GE Fanuc's Leppiaho.
“Accordingly, we have a huge library of more than 600 legacy device drivers simply because we recognize the importance of being able to provide interfaces in such situations.”
New perspectives
Longer term in the manufacturing intelligence space, Incuity, for example, talks of being able to view plant-floor systems and pieces of equipment in their true enterprise and plant-floor context: seeing a pump, for example, as a pump—but also seeing it as a combination of such things as data from its control system, including pressure, flow and speed; the material going through it within the context of a bill of material or work order; its parts list as seen by maintenance systems; and its capital asset management status as seen by an asset management or ERP system.
Iconics, too, has a new perspective. According to CEO Russ Agrusa, Microsoft has spent five years and $20 billion developing Vista—not to mention its SharePoint portal technology, and its role developing the XAML graphical file format for the Windows Presentation Foundation. That means it's simply a matter of getting the information out of the device layer and letting ordinary tools like Microsoft Excel Server running under Vista handle the chore of delivering the manufacturing intelligence. “You don't need a dedicated manufacturing intelligence or business intelligence solution,” he enthuses.
For its part, Activplant concedes that it built a technology platform specifically to address the challenges of interfacing with legacy plant-floor systems—and struggled to find buyers. “Technology platform projects die very quickly,” mourns Activplant Chief Product Strategist Dennis Cocco. “They aren't seen as high ROI.”
Target a high-ROI problem, though, and it's another matter entirely. Though focused on productivity improvements following from OEE, Activplant's technology platform remains the “power under the hood.”
“We're still investing in platform development, but to get through the door and close deals, we're focusing on high-ROI applications of it,” says Cocco. “A 5-percent improvement in productivity is tangible, and something you can bank.”
In short, while Gumlink remains very much a template for today, it's an open question as to whether that template will be as valid in five or 10 years' time.
For more information:
Activeplant: APMS www.activplant.com
Acumence: Manufacturing Business Intelligence Solutions www.acumence.com
Aspen Technology: InfoPlus21 www.aspentech.com
Eyelit: Eyelit Intelligence www.eyelit.com
GE Fanuc: Proficy Performance& Execution www.gefanuc.com
Iconics: ICONICS BizViz Suite www.iconics.com
Incuity: Incuity EMI www.incuity.com
Informance: Informance Enterprise Solution www.informance.com
Invensys Process Systems: InFusion www.invensys.com/ps
OSIsoft: Real-time Performance Management (RtPM) Platform www.osisoft.com
Parsec Automation: TrakSYS www.parsec-corp.com
Rockwell Automation: FactoryTalk www.RockwellAutomation.com
SAP: xMII www.sap.com
Siemens: SIMATIC IT Intelligence Suite www.sea.siemens.com
Wonderware: Production and Performance Management Software www.wonderware.com
Featured Company
Most Recent Resources
- FICO™ Xpress Optimization Suite Schedules Big Profits For Clients
- Strategic Pricing: Three Steps to Higher Profit Margins
- Driving Innovation Through Lean Product Development Practices
- Demand Planning Maturity Model Strategies for Demand-Driven...
- Simulation-Driven Product Development:Will Form Finally Follow...
