At the Hannover Messe 2018, Siemens will be showcasing a comprehensive series of examples which demonstrate how users can harness the potential of Industry 4.0 by implementing Digital Enterprise solutions. The focus of the booth in Hall 9 will be on the industry-specific implementation of Digital Enterprise solutions over the whole life cycle. Examples from food and beverages, electronics and machine building as well as the chemical, fibre and oil & gas industries will illustrate how companies of any size and from any industry can increase their competitiveness with individual digital solutions – through greater flexibility, efficiency and quality as well as shorter times to market. Concrete use cases and references from Siemens and partners such as OEMs as well as the new global user organisation Mindsphere World will all be presented in the Mindsphere Lounge.
Along for the ride is Mindsphere Version 3.0, which is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers a more powerful development environment with open APIs (application programming interfaces) plus additional analytical features and extended connectivity.
Targeting Champions League victory
Jan Mrosik, CEO of the Siemens Digital Factory Division and Chairman of Mindsphere World, cites a current example of how Mindsphere is used. The turf of the Munich Allianz Arena, where Bayern Munich plays its home games, will soon be connected to Mindsphere. Turf data such as irrigation, illumination times, forced ventilation, mowing and fertiliser cycles, etc. will in future be recorded and evaluated by means of big data analyses. “That way, you can get an accurate idea of the condition the lawn is in at any given time and provide the greenkeeper with predictive tips based on the weather forecast, so that the grass is kept in as immaculate a state as possible”, Mrosik explains. After all, Bayern play best on a green pitch. Unfortunately, that also applies to their opponents.
In addition to this exciting application from the point of view of football fans, specific uses also exist for the process industries. Jürgen Brandes, CEO of the Process Industries and Drives Division, emphasises: “It’s time to leverage the potential and benefits of digitalisation in order to optimise the entire value chain in the process industries”. This applies just as much to new (greenfield) plants as to legacy (brownfield) sites. One important first step is to make consistent use of the static and dynamic data which is already available within the company to create transparency across the complete life cycle. “Thanks to our profound electrification and automation expertise, we help companies implement their individual digital transformation. The products and services we offer are always tailored to the added value and business models of our customers.” This is where the new Siemens “Digitalisation Consulting” concept comes into play. It entails working together with customers to sound out a firm’s digital scope all along the value chain and draw up a digitalisation roadmap including a calculation of the necessary investment.
The digital twin of a process production plant plays a key role here. Digital twinning takes place during the engineering phase and continues to be updated and enriched by additional data throughout the plant’s life cycle. The ongoing analysis of process data and additional smart sensor data from the field level of a production plant opens up a whole new transparency dimension, enabling significant improvements in terms of maintenance and servicing. The digital twin also offers decisive advantages when it comes to commissioning. Version 9.1 of the Simit simulation software further simplifies combinations of virtual plant commissioning and operator training, speeding up the actual commissioning procedure by as much as 60% and reducing unwanted downtime periods to a minimum, particularly during plant conversion and migration processes.
Intelligent drives
Another innovation featured at the Hannover Messe will be Sidrive IQ, a digital platform for evaluating drive data using Mindsphere. It provides plant and machine operators with a totally new dimension in data transparency for installed drive systems, simplifying fleet management and optimising servicing activities. The data is continuously analysed, saving time and enhancing plant availability, for instance through the early identification and elimination of possible error sources. These virtues of Sidrive IQ form the basis for greater drive efficiency and productivity across the entire life cycle.
Smart energy management
Smooth production and continuous processes are impossible to imagine without a constant energy supply. The ever-increasing demand for power in industry calls for new solutions to reduce energy costs by improving efficiency and hence competitiveness. One focus of the Siemens booth in Hannover will be on the benefits of seamless interaction between reliable and safe power supply solutions, communication-enabled measuring devices and sophisticated analytics. This establishes the energy transparency which is vital for optimum energy management. “That also includes finding smart ways of dealing with the rising flood of data which already exists in the power distribution sector today”, says Ralf Christian, CEO of the Energy Management Division.
Siemens has therefore upgraded its Sitop PSU8600 power supply system by adding new, supplementary modules to transform it into an uninterruptible direct current (DC) power supply. To achieve this, the DC UPS module (UPS8600) uses the energy stored in BAT8600 battery modules to keep the system up and running in the event of a power failure and extends the previous bridging times permitted by the buffer modules from a few minutes to several hours. The PSU8600 has up to 36 outputs, each of which can be adjusted between 4 and 28 V and buffered if a power failure occurs. To maximise the buffering time for important loads, certain outputs can also be shut down selectively. The Sitop PSU8600 is particularly suitable for applications which place stringent demands on reliability and ease of integration, for example in the automotive, food or pharmaceutical industries or in plant and special-purpose machinery building. The enhanced availability with the UPS8600 means this power supply is also ideal for process applications in the chemical, oil and gas sectors.
Digital maintenance assistant
With its Comos Mobile Operations App, Siemens provides plant maintenance personnel working in the process industries with a handy support tool for their maintenance work and to help manage events as they occur in the field. Its intuitive, user-friendly graphical interface is divided into two clearly structured areas: Maintenance and Events. The app’s redlining function allows maintenance technicians to work on documents directly by editing and adding information on the go, enabling faster response times. The app is linked to the Comos Asset Information Management System, which affords access to any required plant data at any time. Information imported using the app is then resynchronised with Comos.
On the home screen, users can access their own work packages directly on the Maintenance tab, where upcoming maintenance tasks are listed together with additional details such as materials required, maintenance documentation and equipment-specific information. The Events tab can be used to log faults in the plant and assign them a title, designation and priority level. Each event is given a date and time stamp and can be selectively addressed to a specific team member for follow-up. The pinning function allows individual work packages from the app to be pinned to the home screen as a kind of super-fast shortcut. The synchronisation with the Comos Asset Management System moreover means that users can access the latest plant data as and when needed. This simultaneously provides a fast and simple way of updating the information stored in Comos, the standardised system for maintaining and managing the database which is used to create a plant’s digital twin. The redlining function lets users edit existing documentation or document anomalies in a plant’s actual condition in the form of texts, photos or videos utilising multimedia tools. This guarantees consistent, end-to-end digital data management down to the field level and back. The maintenance personnel in the office can also access this seamless, transparent documentation on the plant status. And to speed up the identification of assets in the field, users can log in using the QR code or RFID scanner function. The app comes with a multi-level security concept and does not require an Internet access. Industries such as water and wastewater, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas or the energy supply sector will probably derive the greatest benefit from the new app.
Suchwort: cpp0118siemens
Hall 9, Booth D53
Dr. Bernd Rademacher
Editor
