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E Tech Group, a leading provider of advanced engineering solutions, is excited to announce that it has attained Ignition Premier Integrator status. This prestigious recognition is awarded by Inductive Automation, the developer of the Ignition SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) platform.
Outdated systems have the potential to transform assets into liabilities. It is important to know the signs and risks of using outdated systems, and when it is the right time to invest in a modern solution. This was a challenge faced by a company specializing in environmental management services who was operating eleven water well sites across a five-mile area. These sites were being controlled by legacy PLCs and HMIs and relied on slow serial radios for communication, posing several risks such as high maintenance costs, poor HMI responsiveness, and limited scalability due to the outdated equipment. The customer recognized how their outdated system negatively affected their productivity and efficiency which prompted them to seek engineering support. The company engaged E Tech Group to design and deploy a modern solution, which included upgrading their PLC, HMI, and radio controls as well as install an additional water well to expand their operations.
Before installing the new water well, the project team focused on updating the customer’s existing hardware which included the PLCs, HMIs, and radio controls. E Tech Group partnered with Applied Technology Group, a company specialized in radio controls, to investigate how to implement a modern Ethernet communications protocol for the customer with minimal disruption to their operations. The research concluded that the best order to implement the upgrades was in two phases. The first phase was to upgrade the Access Point (AP) radio at the customer’s control office, and then upgrade the remote radios that communicate to the AP radio and the main control PLC. With this information, E Tech Group began developing the updated system.
The project team upgraded 13 legacy SLC controllers and Panel Views for newer CompactLogix controllers and Panel View 7 Plus terminals, using Studio5000 and FactoryTalk View Studio to program them. The application also integrated Inductive Automation’s Ignition Perspective SCADA system which provided an operation and management overview of the wells status to the customer’s local and corporate offices.
The project team set up an intermediate infrastructure at the customer’s control office that could run the water well upgrades in parallel with the legacy system. The team installed the new PLCs to run concurrently with the legacy PLCs, and configured messaging between the controllers so the main legacy PLC was unaware of the upgrades.
The team then upgraded the customer’s networking communications from serial radios to Ethernet radios with a more powerful antenna. Lastly, the project team decommissioned the legacy PLC and converted the water wells to run exclusively on the upgraded system.
Throughout this process, E Tech Group also resolved challenges with the customer’s remote water wells which faced poor connections from antenna height limitations. The team implemented a store-and-forward capability for the remote radios, which transmitted data to a closer radio station and then forwarded to the main AP radio to improve data connectivity.
After modernizing the existing water wells, E Tech Group installed and commissioned the new water well.
The project, including the design and control panel construction for the new water well, was completed in just a few short months. E Tech Group successfully supported the modernization of the customer’s outdated system by assigning subject matter experts in network design, radio configuration, PLC/HMI coding and conversions, and the Ignition Perspective module to the project. The implementation of the new system resulted in significant enhancements for the customer in terms of speed and reliability. They now have real-time data available on a per-second basis instead of waiting for minutes, allowing them to depend on it more effectively. Moreover, the customer managed to expand their existing infrastructure by integrating the new water well, effectively meeting their growing demands and overcoming the challenges posed by their previous outdated system.
Outdated controls can pose many operational challenges. Companies that operate with outdated controls often experience frequent downtime, expensive or obsolete hardware replacement parts, or few personnel with knowledge to perform maintenance on legacy systems. These challenges were faced by a long-running California winery who needed to modernize the controls for their red fermentation process. The winery needed to address how a system upgrade would impact their operations and engaged E Tech Group to create a PLC and SCADA upgrade solution.
Solution
The first step was to create a well-documented project plan. E Tech Group analyzed the existing system design and detailed existing hardware components, software configurations, and network connections. This step was crucial to have an accurate picture of their current control environment to mitigate production impacts during the implementation phase.
The project team upgraded hardware and reconfigured the customer’s existing Ignition SCADA software for seamless post-upgrade operations. The original red fermentation process was conformed with three areas: pump over area, continuous press area, and decanters area. Previously, each area had their own PLC but the upgraded system connected an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix PLC as the main controller and remote IO was added to control the three areas into one. The system was programmed with ladder logic to the customer’s existing Ignition SCADA software, and seven new PanelView Plus HMIs were also programmed with FactoryTalk View ME as the customer’s choice visualization software.
The project team leveraged their PLC programming, Ignition SCADA software, and controls engineering expertise to resolve software compatibility issues, bugs in the programming code, and electrical connection challenges. The team supported the project to resolve these challenges and performed extensive testing. With the PLC and SCADA upgrade complete, the customer was able to improve the uptime of its red fermentation process and eliminated the key challenges of legacy system maintenance.
Complex upgrades require advanced expertise. Experienced system integrators will use a holistic approach to fully scope automation system upgrades and consider how the project’s complexities will impact the customer’s budget, uptime, timeline, or performance requirements. An example of this was a PLC-5 and SCADA application upgrade for a leading rice milling company. The company had an obsolete PLC-5 controlling their rice finishing line, in addition to an obsolete SCADA application controlling their entire facility. The legacy SCADA system was costly to keep operational, and the existing network caused communications issues between the customer’s production areas. The customer needed a new PLC program to be installed within a 48-hour timeframe to minimize production impacts, and the existing SCADA system needed to remain operational during the migration to Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform. E Tech Group was engaged as the customer’s choice system integrator given their advanced expertise in system migration and the successful execution of projects at the customer’s other facilities.
E Tech Group’s goal is to set the customer up for long-term success, not just short-term gains. The project team created a site inventory of the customer’s existing PLCs, network, computers, and applications. PLC specifications were quickly defined, and long lead items were ordered. The project team remained in constant communication with the customer to keep them well-informed across the different project stages and how to best utilize the new system. The project included upgrades to servers, computer, and network switches in collaboration with the customer’s IT department, the upgrade to Ignition SCADA software across six applications with approximately 500 screens, and the upgrade to two ControlLogix PLC chassis.
The SCADA upgrade was completed in several phases and each application was upgraded individually. This helped minimize impacts to the customer’s production efforts and enabled the legacy and new SCADA applications to run simultaneously so the customer’s personnel could learn the new SCADA software. E Tech Group staffed the project with subject matter experts in the Ignition SCADA platform, control engineering, and complex system migrations. E Tech Group leverages this diverse, multidisciplinary engineering approach to create intelligent automation solutions for the customer’s long-term success and the opportunity to support their operations in the years to come.
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