My company has come out with very strict quarantine policies to mitigate the risk of the coronavirus. Many of our terminals have only a manager and operator on site, so a quarantine will completely kill the facility.
In order to avoid this we are considering remote loading. This is pretty easy at the PLC controlled terminals, but I have 2 facilities which still use physical buttons and large relay panels.
To get around this, I've been considering using remote I/O controlled by one of the processorts at another facility. I would just rig the outputs in parallel with the buttons and switches, and connect the indicators to the inputs. I could create an HMI which looks exactly like the control board and the we could load trucks.
Another option would be to install a MicroLogix with a little IO and do the same thing, but the control would be local.
I'm looking for opinions about this, and maybe options for less expensive processors and HMI software. My company uses Rockwell/AB exclusively, but in this case I could get away with something different if it's cheaper, easier, or quicker to get, provided we don't sacrifice reliability too much.
Any opinions will be welcomed, I know some of you guys are gurus and I'm hoping you'll critique the idea.
In order to avoid this we are considering remote loading. This is pretty easy at the PLC controlled terminals, but I have 2 facilities which still use physical buttons and large relay panels.
To get around this, I've been considering using remote I/O controlled by one of the processorts at another facility. I would just rig the outputs in parallel with the buttons and switches, and connect the indicators to the inputs. I could create an HMI which looks exactly like the control board and the we could load trucks.
Another option would be to install a MicroLogix with a little IO and do the same thing, but the control would be local.
I'm looking for opinions about this, and maybe options for less expensive processors and HMI software. My company uses Rockwell/AB exclusively, but in this case I could get away with something different if it's cheaper, easier, or quicker to get, provided we don't sacrifice reliability too much.
Any opinions will be welcomed, I know some of you guys are gurus and I'm hoping you'll critique the idea.