Ignition’s modular architecture makes it easy for businesses to customize their system by building the exact industrial automation applications that they need. Its server-centric web-deployment model is flexible enough for any architecture and scalable enough for companies of any size. Ignition’s power and flexibility make it perfect for SCADA, EMS, IIoT and MES systems that work together seamlessly on one platform.

Older models of SCADA software have their series of drawbacks and limitations.

1. The biggest among them is that they are incredibly hard to customize to one’s needs and it can be somewhat difficult to integrate with other software or systems. On the other hand, Ignition was built with the possibility of customization in mind. In fact, it is an application-building platform, which allows the creation of the ideal application for a certain process. As a result, businesses are not obligated to mould their daily operations by the software, which can easily make their competitive advantages that result from the internal processes disappear.
2. Second, they didn’t make use of communication protocols, which means that it was difficult to get different hardware to broadcast and connect with each other. As a server software, Ignition acts as a hub for every system present on the plant floor. This system of total integration can assimilate all brands, models, and platforms, and can communicate with them, creating a stable and streamlined connection between IT and the production process. Furthermore, Ignition is the ideal platform for IIoT because it’s the only platform on the market that has the three core elements needed to make IIoT work: open connectivity, unlimited storage possibilities, and agile applications.
3. Third, SCADA, on its own, also doesn’t allow users to have easy access to real-time data. Most of its software designs use historians, which, in turn, use proprietary technology to store information. This means that time-series data is often kept away from the rest of the company’s data. This can lead to miscommunication or other time-sensitive issues. The information will be available, but only after hours or even days have passed, often making it irrelevant by that point. Luckily, however, Ignition has the ability to connect to different SQL databases simultaneously to log and store data. This means that it is available in real time. This will allow you to view and analyse real-time trends as they happen, or cross-reference any number of information points for greater precision and accuracy. Another advantage Ignition has in this context is that it facilitates a better understanding of what is going on by also giving you access to historical data for comparison.

Ignition is nothing more than a blank slate on which you can customize and adjust to your company’s needs. It works equally as well with any database or any operating system, regardless of the version and has a robust toolset for data acquisition, real-time status and process controls, optimized HMIs, and analytics. In short, Ignition is the ultimate and unlimited integrated software platform for SCADA, EMS, IIoT and MES.

Glossary:

• SCADA – Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition – a system of software and hardware elements that allows industrial organizations to control locally or remote industrial process by interacting directly with sensors and actuators and to monitor, gather and process real-time data;
• MES – Management Execution System – a system used in manufacturing to track and document the transformation of raw materials to finished goods. It provides information that helps manufacturing decision makers understand how current conditions on the plant floor can be optimized to improve production output;
• EMS – Energy Management System – a system used for monitoring, controlling, and optimizing the use of electricity, water, air, gas, etc;
• IIoT – Industrial Internet of Things – enables the acquisition and accessibility of far greater amounts of data at far greater speeds and efficiency by decoupling devices from applications;
• SQL – Structured Query Language) is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system;
• IT – Information technologies;

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In our experience, the investments in robot palletizing offer very high returns on investment (ROI) because it decreases significantly the labour costs. It is common for such investment to offer ROI from 25% to 50% on an annual basis. Moreover, since the palletization is usually at the end of the production process, the increased palletizing speed could potentially remove a bottleneck for the whole production. In this case, the investment has a huge immediate impact on the throughput and consequently on sales and cash flow. Then the ROI of such a project could be even higher.

In some cases when the production process upstream of the palletization is optimized and its capacity increased, the robot palletizing itself could become a bottleneck for the whole production. An obvious solution would be to add more palletizing robots. However, this is a significant investment, and sometimes it is not even feasible as the free floor space is limited. In such cases, it is better to investigate if the work of the existing robots could be optimized.  In the following article, we will highlight one such project.

Our customer needed to increase the palletizing capacity of his Fanuc robot as he has added new production capacity upstream of it. As a result, the palletizing robot has become a serious bottleneck for the whole production. Adding a second robot was possible, but the not preferable solution as the production floor space is very limited.  We analyzed the way the existing robot works and we found out that it is possible to optimize it so that its palletizing capacity would be greater than the production capacity of the upstream production.  We implemented several interrelated improvements:

• First, we organized buffering by introducing intelligent management of the conveyor belts. In the previous configuration, there was no buffer between the robot and the intermediate upstream operation – the bag filling. If the robot could not handle fast enough the palletization, the bag filling was becoming blocked and had to stop working. With the new buffer, we eliminated the blockage of the filling machine during technological downtime of the robot, for example when the full pallet was being replaced by an empty one. Notice on the video below, how the bags are lined up in front of the robot while the pallet is changing. When the second improvement described below was introduced, the robot is fast enough to compensate for the delay and exhaust the buffer. This measure alone increased the throughput by approximately 30%.
• Second, the speed of the robot was limited due to incorrect robot movement, exacerbated by the existing gripper’s gripper design. As a result, at greater speeds, the robot was dropping and sometimes tearing bags. We engineered and manufactured a new gripper, Siviko PBGT1, which has a better grip on the bags and allows for greater movement speeds. We also preprogrammed the robot and optimized its movements. This increased the palletizing speed and throughput by an additional 50%.

• The third step was to integrate the robot with the existing SCADA system that we have built on Ignition by Inductive Automation. Now the operators could easily change the palletization program of the robot in the same user-friendly interface. This eliminated undue idleness.

In the following video, you can see by yourself what the effect of optimization is. On the left side is the robot after the transportation system has already been optimized. On the right side is the robots after all improvement have been implemented. In this case, the robot is palletizing bags from two production lines so that its new capacity could be utilized.

Optimizing the work of the existing equipment or investment in new equipment is always a question that the management should consider. It saves money, time and space. If the palletization is a bottleneck, are you sure whether your palletizing robots working to their full capacity?

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