Chemicals manufacturer Allessa Chemie has found a more mobile way of working by implementing Schad’s Extend7000 to monitor power distribution changes. Immediate notifications help reduce downtime and allows the company to enhance the use of its existing SCADA system to prevent production delays or disruption.
Allessa Chemie, a speciality chemicals manufacturer operating two plants in the Rheinland area of Germany, has selected the Extend7000 mobile SCADA solution from Schad for use at its Frankfurt-Fechenheim plant. The solution was purchased in order to more effectively monitor the consistency of energy distribution levels within its main 400V plant power supply around the clock, seven days a week.
Immediate notifications
For Allessa Chemie, changes to power distribution can cause losses to production levels during the manufacturing and compromise health and safety levels. As a result, the ability to have immediate notifications delivered directly into the hands of plant engineers offers many benefits, including reduced downtime. In addition, Extend7000 has been configured to trigger the use of switching devices and to observe the value of individual bus bars, both of which previously needed to be activated via the control room, causing delays to production schedules.
Currently, Schad’s mobile SCADA solution has been configured to monitor 540 parameters – 400 switch positions and 150 alarms – which are recorded and controlled by a Siemens Simatic S7-400 controller using PCS7 and monitored by its existing WinCC SCADA system from a fixed control room. Now, after implementing Extend7000, within seconds of a problem occurring, a notification is sent directly to an appropriate member of the engineering team, which ensures downtime is minimised.
Extend7000 has been integrated with the WinCC system so it can be extended easily in the future. Allessa Chemie has indicated that one of the most likely additional applications for Extend7000 Mobile SCADA will be within its wastewater treatment plant and plans to implement there shortly.
Continuous operation
“We are running a large continuous manufacturing operation 24/7 and needed to identify a way to improve the existing fixed monitoring capabilities,” said Klaus Knahl, head of EMR Operations and responsible for the use of electrical instrumentation and control technology at Allessa Chemie. “Extend7000 was the perfect solution and allowed us to continue using our existing SCADA system and simply enhance it to suit a more mobile way of working.”
A triple first
In addition to winning an important new customer, this project also culminated in a triple first for Schad, who recently expanded its operations with an office in London. Firstly a new application area, because the Allessa Chemie implementation marks the first time Extend7000 Mobile SCADA has been used to monitor and control an internal power supply within a manufacturing operation. Secondly, it is the first time Schad has integrated its mobile SCADA application to a Siemens S7-PLC via Profibus, illustrating the flexibility of Extend7000 to integrate easily with any PLC or existing SCADA system. And thirdly, after the system successfully went live within just two days, this represents the fastest project implementation undertaken by Schad’s services team to date.
“We believe the team at Allessa Chemie are delighted with their new monitoring capabilities and the speed with which they could introduce mobile working into their existing processes,” said James Hannay, managing director at Schad.
SCHAD
