INDUSTRY: MANUFACTURING WONDERWARE SOUTHERN AFRICA

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

About Plascon SA

In 1889 a young Welshman called Herbert Evans arrived in Johannesburg and started Herbert Evans & Co. During the 1940s, while Herbert Evans & Co was expanding rapidly, a young businessman named Solly Rudner was helping to build a company called Chrome Chemicals - the manufacturer of Plascon Paint. The brand became so popular that in 1945 a new Company, “Plascon Paints and Chemical Industries” was formed. In 1970, the two companies merged and Plascon Evans was formed.

Plascon SA is a company with a history of more than a hundred years. It was the first South African paint company to manufacture ready-mixed products and continues with this tradition by bringing many new products and improvements to the market.

Plascon’s Mobeni plant in Kwa-Zulu-Natal is involved with the manufacture of paint, alkyd resin and vesiculated bead. It’s also the water and solvent-based centre of focus for solvent-based products.

Recognisable brands produced at Mobeni include Velvaglo, the Woodcare range of varnishes, Super Universal Enamel as well as stoep (patio) and road-marking paints among others. The batching is limited to the liquid components only, the powders being loaded by hand. Batch sizes range from 800L to10,000L depending on customer demand.

With respect to paint batches, consistency is the order of the day. Strict recipe control, traceable batch parameters and consistent quality

are the hallmarks of leading companies in the paint and coatings industry and Plascon is one of those leaders. This is a story about

safeguarding past investments while engineering for the future.

Plascon Mobeni - Batch implementation Plascon paints a brighter production picture with help from Wonderware

Background

Plascon was one of the first South African companies to implement InBatch (Wonderware’s batch

management solution) in 1995/6 but since then, many things had changed at the Mobeni plant with the

result that the existing batching system model could no longer cope with the plant’s evolution.

To complicate matters, the Mobeni plant manufactures a wide range of products from premium

decorative paint to road marking paint. For this reason, the plant is specifically designed to be flexible and

to cope with challenging production schedules.

The existing batch control at the General Paints plant was achieved through a batching model running on

an InBatch server. An InBatch development client was available to the plant chemist for creating recipes.

A stand-alone InTouch application served as the SCADA system for the plant as well as a batch client to

InBatch. This also served as the InTouch development client.

Why upgrade?

The current infrastructure and system could not meet Plascon’s business objective which was to produce

products of the highest quality, while coping with challenging production schedules in an increasingly

competitive market. At the same time, any new solution would also have to maintain production

efficiencies and effectively manage resources.

One of the main reasons why things had to change was that the InBatch model had not been kept up to

date with the plant changes that had occurred since commissioning in 1995. This led to some batches

having to be run manually resulting in poor production efficiency and traceability. Production scheduling

also became more difficult as plant equipment availability and usage needed to be planned manually.

These were all challenges to Plascon’s commitment to sustained product quality and prompted the need

for change.

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Plascon Mobeni - Batch implementation WONDERWARE SOUTHERN AFRICA

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Apart from these issues, Plascon had also developed new production

methodologies that would help the plant achieve its business objectives

and that needed to be implemented. At the same time, it was decided

that ISA-88 batch standards and tag-naming conventions would be

adopted. All these changes meant that the old InBatch model would

have to be replaced with a newly-designed batching model and that the

stand-alone InTouch HMI / SCADA system would have to follow suit as it

was replaced with a complete System Platform (Application Server)

implementation.

Operational requirements

While the new implementation would have to address numerous issues

and problems, it would also have to provide a clear, simple and reliable

operator interface:

Batch recipes would have to be clearly defined and created so that

batches could be run with minimal dependence on operators.

Batch statuses and interlocks would have to be clearly displayed on

the SCADA system when operator intervention was required.

A reliable semi-automatic mode of batching would have to be made

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Figure 1: The migration from plant model to object templates using ISA-88 standards

Figure 2: Topology of Plascon Mobeni’s General Paints Plant

Plascon Mobeni - Batch implementation WONDERWARE SOUTHERN AFRICA

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

available in case the InBatch server ever went off line,

either through planned maintenance or an

unforeseen occurrence.

Solution selection

Plascon selected system integrator Convenient Software

Solutions (CSS) because of their excellent track record in

chemical process control and expertise in batching

implementations. They are Wonderware-approved and

ArchestrA-certified system integrators who are fully

trained across a host of Wonderware products.

“Wonderware solutions were selected for the batch

implementation project because of the diverse range of

products available and the ease with which they can be

integrated,” says Zaine Domingo, National Automation

Project Engineer at Plascon. “The standards created using

the Wonderware Application Server mean that the

different plants on site can be amalgamated into a single

Galaxy with huge savings in engineering cost and time.”

For batch control, InBatch was retained since it has been in

use at Plascon for many years and not just at the Mobeni site. “InBatch

has proved itself to be reliable and extremely stable,” says Gus Krüger of

CSS. “It has highly-configurable plant modelling capabilities, which

makes it possible to model the plant according to its logical production

units, while allowing for the physical and production constraints that are

imposed on the plant. This is exactly what was required by a plant

needing to draw maximum utilisation of its production facility. For the

operator interface, Wonderware InTouch 10 was used in conjunction

with System Platform 3.”

This choice of solutions would also allow for flexible expansion – a vital

attribute as this project was not only seen as a stand-alone

implementation, but also as the first phase of many. The entire Mobeni

site will eventually be integrated into a central architecture, the

standards for which would be created during this project.

To summarise, the selected Wonderware solutions included: InBatch

Server and Development Client, Information Server, Historian, System

Platform (based on ArchestrA technology) and an InTouch View Client.

Implementation

Implementation was started in January 2008 and finished in November

of the same year. “Due to the solution and production requirements,

the scope of work on this project included a complete PLC and InBatch

reengineering,” says Krüger.

The production methodologies of the General Paints plant were built

into the InBatch model. This was done by explicitly placing limitations on

which finishing tanks can be used for the batching of any one particular

raw material. “The physical layout of the plant makes it possible for raw

materials to be transferred to many different tanks,” says Krüger.

“However, with the InBatch model, it is now possible to have particular

finishing tanks dedicated to particular types of products. InBatch now

arbitrates the usages of finishing tanks and this eliminates the possibility

of product contamination and helps improve quality control.”

One InTouch view station is provided that functions as a SCADA system

for the plant as well as a client for batch control through the InBatch

server. Storage tank levels are displayed for daily stock-taking purposes

and batching statuses are indicated by means of interlock displays.

The tag naming conventions were based on ISA standards and the first

phase of the project was the development of these standards.

Thereafter they were rolled out to the Application Server Galaxy in the

form of object and graphic templates. All automation objects in the

plant model were derived from these standards.

Two Automation Object Servers (AOSs) were installed. A fail-over

partnership was configured between the AOSs, as well as a store-and-

forward capability should connection to the plant Historian be lost or

the Historian server ever be taken down for maintenance.

The development of the InBatch plant model was based on ISA-88

standards. This was done in accordance with a batching philosophy that

was clearly defined at the outset of the project. The InBatch recipes

control the selection of material storage units for each batching phase,

as well as the amount of material to be batched. Recipe editing and

additions are done by the plant chemist using an InBatch client.

Customised reports from Crystal Reporting can be incorporated into any

of InBatch’s extensive range of pre-defined reports and published to the

Wonderware Information Server for access by personnel who can make

best use of the valuable information they contain.

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“This first phase implementation has paved the way for all sections of the plant to be integrated into one system. Future upgrades will be more cost effective, not only from a Rands and cents perspective, but also from an implementation time and downtime point of view.” Andrew Alexander, National Engineering Manager at Plascon

Figure 3: InTouch view of the plant

Plascon Mobeni - Batch implementation WONDERWARE SOUTHERN AFRICA

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

For further information contact Jaco Markwat at Wonderware Southern Africa

tel: +27 11 607 8303 | e-mail: jaco.markwat@wonderware.co.za

“Insofar as I’m concerned, the system has three main outstanding

features,” says Domingo. “The first is the enforcement of standards by

the Application Server which considerably reduces engineering time in

the long run. The second is that InBatch has a highly configurable plant

modelling capability. No matter how unique a plant or how specialised a

batching operation, an operationally-accurate plant model can be

created. This ensures that plant resources, both equipment and

materials, will be managed reliably during batching phases. Lastly, the

comprehensive reporting facilities provided by InBatch ensure that the

right information is available to the people who need it.”

Plant shutdowns were scheduled in order to do I/O testing. The

commissioning itself was a hot swap with the new PLC, the new SCADA

system and the new InBatch model going live immediately.

“Commissioning a live plant extended the overall commissioning longer

than anticipated,” says Krüger. “It was not a viable option to

commission the new batching system in parallel to the existing one. A

hot swap approach was planned, and because of this, plant availability

played a large role, as well as the all-important production schedules

that had to be adhered to.”

“By clearly defining and adhering to standards, any additions or

modifications to automation objects in the plant model was a simple

and painless process,” adds Domingo. “Following Wonderware

recommended best practices in the development stages resulted in

seamless upgrades to new patch versions for Application Server and

InTouch.”

Benefits

High quality product – this is now par for the course. The reliable

batching system has minimised the negative effects that the

unpredictable human factor can have on quality.

Optimised recipes - with a reliable batch server, recipes can now be

optimised to work to the strengths of the plant and increase

production and cost efficiencies.

Scalability and flexibility – the ground work (e.g. standards, naming

conventions, etc) has been done for the integration of the various

sections of the plant into one cohesive system.

Conclusion

This implementation is an excellent example of successful

upgradeability while protecting existing investments. Increasingly,

manufacturers are looking to unifying their production and business

information assets for improved control and decision support at all

levels of their organisations. That’s why industrial software technology

that builds a solid application foundation, helps integrate solutions and

enforces standards is today at the top of many shopping lists.

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“The standards created using the Wonderware Application Server mean that the different plants on site can be amalgamated into a singly Galaxy with huge savings in engineering cost and time.” Zaine Domingo, National Automation Project Engineer at Plascon