CP343-1 ERPC and deviceWISE: Improving plant-to-enterprise connectivity and machine-to-machine communications
Today it is getting more and more important to have a close coupling between the production process and the IT-systems. Data needs to be provided in real-time from the plant-floor in order to make the right strategic decisions at the enterprise level.
Siemens, in cooperation with ILS technology, has developed a PLC-based solution which allows the user to connect the Siemens S7-300 PLC via the new CP343-1 ERPC and the software deviceWISE directly to a database (e.g. Oracle, MySQL, SQL) or to a message and queuing system like IBM Websphere.
“Today that kind of connection is usually provided by a PC, which introduces a large fault domain into the system,” says Stefan Sattler, PROFINET Marketing Manager for Siemens Industries, Inc. “Apart from the fact that it adds a maintenance headache and requires regular updates, what happens if that PC fails? Who fixes it? Is it owned by production or the IT department?”
The data exchange between S7 and the PC/manufacturing execution system also needs to be set up and usually requires some kind of middleware that also needs to be maintained. The whole thing could become very complex, very quickly.
In contrast, the setup of a connection in deviceWISE is easy and generally doesn’t require any programming in the PLC or changes in the database. The CP343-1 ERPC can also store the data in case of a network failure and forward the data when the communication is restored. As a result, production can continue and doesn’t need to stop.
Another challenge faced today is enabling PLC systems from different vendors to exchange data between each other. Traditionally that meant if you wanted to bring a new system into an installation changes were also required in the existing systems to make it work.
The combination of CP343-1 ERPC and deviceWISE also provides help to meet this challenge. It is now possible to connect a S7-300 system via Ethernet, for example, to Rockwell PLCs (like SLC, PLC5, CompactLogix and ControlLogix) without changing any line of code on the Rockwell side. This results in reduced programming costs, faster time to start-up, and not having to meddle with working equipment.
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Hi I have a customer that has been intrested in MES for quite some time.
How and where can i acquire additional information and training on the ERPC System.
Regards
David Rampersad
Senior Automation Technician.
TOSL ENGINEERING LIMITED.