Mes-erp

[Mike66]

Hi guys,
I work in a relative small company where whe brew beer. We have 3 production lines were the beer is bottled. We now need to implement a system to gather some data from the plc's of the production lines. (machine status,-speed,-failers,-... and also some data needs to be stored).
We don't want to spend a lot of money on a MES or ERP system, these tings are to big for us.
Have some of you any idee what alternatief there is, a specialy the way to store the data is somthing we don't now how to do it.

Thanks for anny respond.

[ndzied1]

Originally Posted by Mike66

We don't want to spend a lot of money on a MES or ERP system, these tings are to big for us.

If your salary is not counted as money then you should write a custom Visual Basic application with the free version of Microsoft Visual Studio. You can write whatever drivers you want; whatever features you want, whatever data collection system you want. So long as your salary is not included, it will cost the company nothing.

When you figure your salary into the picture you may find that a pre-packaged solution is not so expensive....

That said, you may find this software useful and not very expensive: Beijer Electronics Data Collector

[Tharon]

You may be able to use the existing PLC on the lines to collect the information, and merely display it on an HMI. Rather than doing a full blown SCADA, just get a shared network, preferably existing, and an HMI that would be able to communicate on this network.

We've done similar things to smaller production lines with a handful of PLCs and a C-More operator interface from Automation Direct. Attach it to one PLC, and gather data from the other PLCs with the new "main" PLC.

It's cheaper than a big system, but of course has a lot more limits as to what it can/cannot do.

[mrtweaver]

An idea might be to look at Inductive Automations FSQL product if you dont want the full blown package. THe FSQL would take the data from your PLC's and other operator interfaces and place it in a database (SQL, Oracle, EXCEL, etc..) then you can take that information and write code in some way familiar to you (ie: Crytal Report, SQL reporting, etc..) to display and print the data in a way that make sence to the bosses. Their tech support at Inductive is top notch and their product allows unlimited development with 2 hour run time limit. And the cost is reasonable. Check it out. www.inductiveautomation.com

[SteinCollector]

Bosch Rexroth makes a line of HMIs in which the programming software, also has some fairly far reaching MES capabilities.

The base software is around $300-$600, and also programs their PLCs and drives, but I think there may be extra fees depending on what you want to activate.

Not sure offhand what the HMIs cost

[Mike66]

Thanks for the repleys guys,

After to days of thinking about it looks like its gone be a scada app. whit "Intouch". (Dessision of the IT guys).

We gonna link the PLC's to a opc server, then over ethernet to a intouch app. and an sql-dataserver.
I have no experience working whit "intouch" and "SQL".
Hoopfely it works out,
if not, please help.

Gr. Mike

[Alan Case]

I will come and install it for you for free product.
Regards Alan

[Mike66]

do that

[surferb]

I second MRTWeaver's FactorySQL recommendation for an SQL "data gatherer".

BTW, Intouch is Wonderware's HMI package. What you're describing would probably be Historian (previously Industrial SQL), or one of their many other products that fall under the Archestra umbrella. Other vendors would use their own versions of "historians".

Finally ndzied1 is dead right. You could write a custom application to do such things, but there are many pre-canned packages on the market to do it. That (relatively) simple function would take a considerable effort to write. It's "free" in the same way writing your own custom Linux kernel is - that is if your time isn't worth anything.

[Dua Anjing]

Originally Posted by Alan Case

I will come and install it for you for free product.
Regards Alan

Interesting the longer you work the more "product" you get the less "productive" you become so the longer you have to work, so the "product"....etc need an apprentice ?

MES-Burp