Inductive Automation Blog

Glass Company Increases Profitability With True-North Metrics

HMI Glass was facing numerous challenges impacting profitability, leading to reduced earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) since 2018. The scope of the project was to utilize intelligent manufacturing data to implement a lean management model and drive cultural transformation. The success of the project was tied to fees based on performance and utilized a gainshare model based on a cost of poor-quality improvement.

Real-Time Data & Custom Drivers Allow Power Supplier to Anticipate Demand

First Gen is one of the oldest and largest conglomerates in the Philippines that has an interest in power generation and power distribution. While Energy Development Corporation is a diversified renewable energy company, both are under the First Philippine Holdings Corporation – A Lopez Group of Companies, who constantly strive to meet the needs of its customers. In June 2021, the Enhanced Wholesale Electricity Spot Market Design Operations (EWDO) was launched. This officially started the new regulations for shortening of the dispatch interval: instead of a per-hour basis, it was transitioned to a five-minute interval. First Gen and Energy Development Corporation (EDC) have adapted the five-minute interval in their Central Dispatch Operations (CDO). This new regulation was addressed by installing multiple Ignition gateways for faster data monitoring, collection, and secured control of power generation across more than 30+ power plants (and counting). Controtek developed customized drivers to get the real-time dispatch setpoints from the Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMOP) to meet the demands of the operations and compliance with the new regulation of the EWDO.

Digital Troubleshooting Guide Boosts Chemical Company's Efficiency

Cooley Group has a corporate Manufacturing 4.0/Digital Transformation initiative that it is implementing using the Ignition platform. RoviSys was brought on to help guide Cooley Group on this journey and develop the functionalities it needed in a templatized way that promotes scalability and supportability. Cooley Group requested the use of Ignition to develop a Digital Troubleshooting Guide that operators could use to help resolve downtime events impacting their OEE. For this project, RoviSys implemented a creative solution that gave Cooley Group exactly what it asked for, yet made it easy for it to build and configure on its own within the Ignition designer.

Water Utility Seamlessly Transitions Operating Systems and Speeds Development

Design and develop a new treatment plant HMI to replace WinCC and condense third-party applications into one platform.

Reliable Data Supports Cleaner Energy Initiative For 50 Sites

One of South Jersey Industries’ (SJI) key initiatives is to deliver on its commitment to provide cleaner energy. The generation of renewable natural gas facilities at dairy farms is a key production commitment for SJI. A modular production facility is required at each farm site, near the raw materials. The speed of deployment and number of sites involved demands the establishment of a universal architecture and platform for the integration of control and enterprise systems at the company. In addition, the distributed nature of the system and criticality to the energy infrastructure demand the highest level of security and reliability. Finally, SJI requires that all these sites be centrally monitored from an enterprise SCADA system that will also historize data for financial and regulatory reporting. The central importance of reliable data for continual operational financial justification proves the common Digital Transformation adage that “data is the new gas.” SJI Industries tasked Automated Control Concepts (ACC) to build a foundation for the application of key control and information technologies and systems that will allow the organization to realize world-class Digital Transformation and create a secure data pipeline. In doing so, SJI would be able to provide users at all levels of the organization with access to control system information. Through the strategic application of industrial information technologies, significant benefits are realized in the following areas: reliability, availability, visibility, and security. ACC successfully built and deployed this operational technology stack on Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform, which let ACC establish a scalable architecture to support plants/sites of varying sizes and complexity. The integration of data from the site’s control level, through various secure (DMZ) network layers to the corporate core network and cloud providers, has been addressed.

Enterprise SCADA Gives New Zealand Meat Producer Standardized Control

Tamaki Control implemented a new Ignition Perspective standards framework for ANZCO Foods. This framework replaced unsupported SCADA systems and enabled new automation projects and ERP API integration solutions across its 10 manufacturing and processing sites in New Zealand. The project involved upgrading or installing Ignition 8.1 at each site and connecting them on the Gateway Network through an enterprise architecture with the Enterprise Administration Module. The result is a cohesive and efficient system that has positioned ANZCO Foods for continued success.

New Control System Improves Safety And Compliance For Pharmaceutical Company

Initially, Zendal approached Optomation Systems to tackle their needs for monitoring unmanned storage units holding pharmaceutical final products for their customers. When Optomation introduced Ignition, it rapidly evolved into a larger project with a broader scope to encompass the data acquisition of varied equipment, process control and supervision, alarm notification, data historization, and automatic report generation. The main objective of the project was to implement a system that acts as a data repository for the information collected from the dedicated equipment in the different production areas and auxiliary services, both to satisfy regulatory requirements and prove compliance with CDMO obligations to customers. In addition, the system integrated new production areas into the system and expanded functionality to include control and supervision of several processes. Field devices and sensors are connected to controllers that execute automated sequences, and from Ignition, operators have full access to the operation, just like a traditional SCADA system.