Integrated Manufacturing Solutions IMS 2002 Paper

IMS 2002
26-27 June 2002 I-X Center Cleveland, OH

Copyright 2002 by ISA The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society. All rights reserved. Not for resale. Produced in the United States of America. ISA 67 Alexander Drive P.O. Box 12277 Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 Phone: (919) 549-8411 Fax: (919) 549-8288 Email: info@isa.org ISANetwork: http://www.isa.org

E-MAINTENANCE: CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN AUTOMATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Franco Gatti Product Manager ABB Energy Automation S.p.A. 20099 Sesto San Giovanni (MI) Italy

KEYWORDS Enterprise Asset Management, Computerized Maintenance Management, Condition Monitors

ABSTRACT
Effective asset management requires a seamless integration of information at all levels of the enterprise, from the field instrumentation up to the ERP systems. Diagnostic information generated by ever smarter field instruments must be collected by the control system. The control system, in turn, must exploit its powerful computing capabilities to combine this information with more sophisticated prediction and monitoring algorithms and tools, and present a complete picture of the asset status to the plant operating personnel, the maintenance personnel on site and off site, and, most importantly, to the computerized maintenance management system. From this point on, the information is in the domain of the enterprise information technology and may contribute to the enterprise-wide resource planning in terms of maintenance scheduling, resource allocation, production management and so on. The combination of automation, information and internet technology today enables the flow of data throughout all the collaborating components of the enterprise, and the success of automation system vendors will depend on their ability to take advantage of these technological trends to provide solutions to the customers demand for enterprise asset optimization.

INTRODUCTION
The introduction of computing technology in the industrial world has historically followed two different avenues, mainly driven by specific requirements of the users in the enterprise. While on one side of the business one can witness an increasing use of computers in the area of plant equipment control (DCS, Digital Control System), on the other side information technology has been adopted in support of the business demands of the management (ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning). In a similar fashion, these two domains (DCS and ERP) have been following different evolutionary paths leading to a gap, both in terms of technology and culture, which has been widening to the point of making it impossible to find knowledge and skills crossing the boundaries between the two. To describe this situation, two statements borrowed from advertising in a trade magazine (the vendors and magazines name have been omitted for obvious reasons) seem very effective: your companys manufacturing system is from Mars, and its e-business is from Venus: it is no wonder, then, that one communicates up a storm on the Internet, while the others hunkered down building inventory, or that one has a voracious appetite, while the others working to get lean. Or on those rare occasions when they try to talk to each other, its in different languages. No manufacturing professional wants to use software written by accountants and the same is true in reverse for the financial professional. While these statements are obviously exaggerating to make a point, they do point to a fundamental technological and cultural divide which has been hampering the vertical integration of the enterprise. Although the theoretical idea of a seamlessly integrated technology portfolio has been around for years, not just the cynics have believed that the reality of this idea remains far below the ideal, particularly among smaller manufacturing companies thought not to have the technological savvy, dollars, and motivation to link their systems [2]. This perception has been in the last few years a motivating factor in the DCS and ERP vendors drive to find ways to bridge the gap between the two world and provide to the enterprise a portfolio of true solutions vertically spanning the whole of their customers business. This paper will focus on a specific area of enterprise integration, commonly referred to as EAM (Enterprise Asset Management). Once relegated to the backwaters of manufacturing automation software, CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Systems), recently renamed EAM, has now assumed front-rank importance because it can improve profit for expensive manufacturing operations [3]. This paper will review the current technology and market trends and standards, discuss the objectives and principles of EAM, analyze the common integration architectures and finally present two concrete application examples where the technology has been successfully tested and introduced in real customer installations.

MARKET OUTLOOK
This section will focus on the results of surveys recently conducted by the ARC Advisory Group and by the Managing Automation magazine. These two analysis provide a clear view of the current situations in the business of EAM and point to the direction in which DCS and ERP vendors will need to move (and in few cases are already moving) in order to satisfy the markets demands and gain a leadership position in this segment. THE INTEGRATED ENTERPRISE MOVES CLOSER TO REALITY [2] This survey, prepared by the Managing Automation magazine and published in the Oct. 2001 issue, highlights two important points: the increasing adoption of enterprise integration solutions the importance attributed by customers to EAM aspects The results are based on questionnaires filled in by 139 respondents at senior level, including corporate and financial management, MIS and automation manufacturing management, and show that only 7% of respondent have made no plans of investing in this area, as opposed to a 66% which already have projects in execution (to a varying degree of completeness). The reduction of downtime and maintenance, which is the primary objective of EAM, is considered the major internal goal for enterprise integration. Only Customer Responsiveness and Service (which can be considered external goals) receive a higher rating. The key indications highlighted by this survey are that the customers attention toward this solutions is currently significant, and that the problems addressed by EAM, although not their topmost priority, are certainly one of the major expectations in terms of return on the investment. EVOLVING EAM SOLUTIONS MARKET AND DELIVERED BENEFITS [4] This ARC Strategy Advisory is only focused on the results of a survey on the implementation of EAM solutions. One observation is fundamental for the discussion of this paper: Failure and Predictive analysis is a function that saw less use by respondents (60% of respondents cited frequent or regular use of this function). After all, there remains a limited level of true connectivity between current EAM/CMMS solutions and realtime information from plant and shop floor equipment Certainly, major automation suppliers and their EAM partners are working to address this issue, but a tightly integrated solution remains elusive This paper will discuss later the results of the implementation of such solutions in two real world examples.

STANDARDS
There is an ongoing effort, on the part of international committees, organizations and vendors alliances to define a common model and language for the exchange of information among enterprise systems which should lead, in their objectives, to the ability of such systems to integrate their functions and deliver integrated vertical solutions in the several areas of the enterprise management. For the purpose of this discussion, two of such standards have been selected which, when applied in combination, provide a formalization of both the communication semantics and transactional model for the interaction of enterprise systems. These standards are the ANSI/ISA-95.00.01-2000 and MIMOSA.

ANSI/ISA95.00.012000: ENTERPRISE-CONTROL SYSTEM INTEGRATION [5] OVERVIEW This section provides a very brief summary of the standard. A full discussion of ANSI/ISA95.00.01-2000 is outside the scope of this paper. Part 1 of the standard provides models and terminology for defining the interfaces between an enterprises business systems and its manufacturing control systems. The models and terminology defined in this standard: emphasize good integration practices of control systems with enterprise systems during the entire life cycle of the systems; can be used to improve existing integration capabilities of manufacturing control systems with enterprise systems; and can be applied regardless of the degree of automation. Figure 1 shows a simplified view of the functional hierarchy covered by the standard.

Figure 1 - Functional hierarchy Maintenance activities span across the levels. At level 4:

Collecting and maintaining raw material and spare parts usage and available inventory, and providing data for purchase of raw material and spare parts. Collecting and maintaining machinery and equipment use and life history files necessary for preventive and predictive maintenance planning. Modifying the basic plant production schedule for orders received, based on resource availability changes, energy sources available, power demand levels, and maintenance requirements. Developing optimum preventive maintenance and equipment renovation schedules in coordination with the basic plant production schedule. Determining the optimum inventory levels of raw materials, energy sources, spare parts, and goods in process at each storage point. These functions also include materials requirements planning (MRP) and spare parts procurement. Modifying the basic plant production schedule as necessary whenever major production interruptions occur. Capacity planning, based on all of the above activities. Maintenance activities in level 3 include: Performing data collection and off-line analysis as required by engineering functions. This may include statistical quality analysis and related control functions. Modifying production schedules to compensate for plant production interruptions that may occur in its area of responsibility. .

Figure 2 - Functional Enterprise-Control model Figure 2 shows the complete model of interaction as defined by the standard. As seen in this picture, section 10.0 is entirely focused on Maintenance Management activities.

MIMOSA

MIMOSA (Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance) is an alliance that enables Enterprise Asset Optimization resulting from the productized integration of building, plant and equipment data into and with Enterprise Business Information. At its inception, MIMOSA sought to be a catalyst for the adoption of modern machinery management practices and to facilitate this by enabling the practical integration of predictive maintenance data emanating from the variety of proprietary sources participating in the market. This effort led to the development of the Common Relational Information Schema (CRIS) data exchange specification, as well as an associated set of data exchange methodologies. Early releases of CRIS concentrated on data sets associated with machine vibration. More recent releases of CRIS have expanded in scope to include core data-set specifications for most of the typically available types of machinery condition data as well as logical points of interface with enterprise business information systems. Associated data exchange methodologies have evolved from flat-file transfers to interactive SQL based integration. Most recently, MIMOSA has begun developing a series of Applications Program Interfaces (APIs) based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), the emerging standard for cross-platform information integration. These APIs consist of Document Type Definition (DTD) sets associated with specific, predefined classes of maintenance related information to be integrated. Future work on CRIS will continue to expand the breadth and depth of data-set specifications while the associated data exchange methodologies are being enhanced to include business object based techniques [6]. Again, a detailed discussion on the MIMOSA objectives is not in the scope of this paper. CRIS definitions can be freely downloaded from the MIMOSA web site.

INFRASTRUCTURES
The major obstacle on the way to true vertical integration between business and production systems can be identified in the technological gap between these two worlds which, as anticipated earlier in this paper, have historically followed two independent evolutionary paths. However, the advent of Personal Computers and Ethernet networking has created the foundation for the construction of a bridge. PCs have been introduced and gained acceptance in both the DCS and ERP worlds, introducing a common element in both systems. The downshift from mainframes and up-shift from microcomputers has naturally brought the two environments closer. Ethernet networking and the adoption of TCP/IP as a de-facto standard in local- and wide-area networks have provided the final element to enable communications between Mars and Venus. Real-time information, although still processed by mostly proprietary DCS technology, is being made available to PC-based supervisory station. On the other side of the divide, ERP systems are relying more and more on infrastructures where the PC is playing an ever increasing role, when not entirely replacing the original mainframes. Unfortunately, if the process of narrowing the gap were to stop at this level, it would be similar to providing telephones to parties across the world: they would be able to

communicate voice signals, but without a common language, real communication would still not happen. The solution to this last problem is the definition of the meaning of the information which needs to be exchanged or, in other words, the definition of a common language and of what information are relevant for this type of exchange. This is the goal of at least two standards, which will be discussed in some of the following sections. Additionally, vendors will need to be serious about overhauling their product lines with the need for Enterprise Integration in mind, and make sure that they provide a reference architecture, and the tools and software technology to put it in place, where components from the DCS and ERP worlds will plug, play and be able to exchange meaningful information. This can be accomplished through a plant-centric architecture where each enterprise object is a modular building block from which to create total production scenarios. Figure 3 shows a logical view of a plant-centric architecture where modular aspects from the DCS world appears and live in the same infrastructure as aspects from the ERP world.

Figure 3 - Plant-centric architecture for vertical Enterprise Integration

A CONCRETE EXAMPLE
COMMON ASPECTS

Both examples discussed in this section are based on the IndustrialIT architecture by ABB. With reference to the ANSI/ISA-95.00.01-2000 standard, level 0, 1 and 2 are based on products of the ControlIT, FieldIT and OperateIT lines. Level 3 is based on InformIT Plant Information Management (Tenore). Level 4 is based on SAP, and in particular on the PM module for the EAM solution. Communication between Level 0, 1 and 2 is outside the scope of this paper and will not be discussed here. Communication between these levels and level 3 is based on OPC. Communication between level 3 and level 4 is based on XML, used as a transport for MIMOSA CRIS transactions implementing ANSI/ISA-95.00.91-2000 information flow. Figure 4 shows the reference architecture of the system where the two examples have been deployed. The examples will focus on value added components, which take advantage of the communication capabilities of the integrated architecture to deliver value added solutions. These solution will draw upon the combined experiences and know how of the customer and the vendor.

Figure 4 - Architecture of the system supporting the two examples

PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

Predictive Maintenance is not a new discipline, and a good number of software tools already exist which are capable of assessing the health status of critical equipment and diagnose potential and impending failures which may decrease the plant performance. Most of the times, however, these tools work stand alone, providing information to engineering and maintenance personnel which then needs to take the required corrective actions. Furthermore, plant data needs to be made available to these programs in some type of electronic format (e.g. CSV files), requiring manual extraction and formatting, adding to the already heavy workload of the plant operating personnel. Another issue is that condition monitoring, in many cases, relies heavily on the expertise of the maintenance personnel, which may integrated or even replace the services delivered by these tools. To address both of these shortcomings, two features have been added to the system in Figure 7: An integration architecture for commercial condition monitoring tools which automates the data collection and notifies the system of potential situations where maintenance actions may be required. Integrating the tools in the system is made easy by the Aspect Object technology, which support the modeling of plant components using software objects. Properties are associated to the objects using the ActiveX integration architecture. Using OPC as a communication protocol, plant information is extracted from the plant and made available to the condition monitoring tool which, in turn, will send maintenance triggers back to the system should it detect the need for such an action. Operators and maintenance personnel will be able to navigate through the Plant, and access all the properties of objects in the Plant Structure using context sensitive menus. One of these properties will be the Condition Monitoring tool. Figure 5 shows an example of a scenario for addressing faults. Figure 6 shows an example of a condition monitoring tool which analyzes deviation from a statistical model of the piece of equipment: the picture shows the behavior of a drifting sensor. This tools is integrated as a property of the Aspect Object Sensor.

Figure 5 - Scenario for Addressing Faults

Figure 6 - View of a drifting sensor

Figure 7 - View of a custom Condition Monitor

An environment which the maintenance personnel can use to build their own condition monitors and use them in addition to, or instead of, the commercial tools of point 1. The important point is, however, that commercial and home-made monitors may be seen as properties of the plant object in exactly the same way. In this example, thanks to a cooperation between the automation supplier and customer, a library of condition monitors for a power plant has been built. The automation vendor has supplied the Condition Monitor Development Kit (CMDK), while the customer has supplied its experience in the operation of the plant. Error! Reference source not found. shows a visual representation of a custom Condition Monitor. The creation of the visual aspect is supported by the CMDK, which also helps the user to create the association of tag values and diagnostic functions

FIELDBUS DIAGNOSTICS

Another interesting example of value added to the integration architecture of Figure 4 is based on the availability of diagnostic information of field devices through fieldbus technology. The device used in the example is a Motor Control Center (MCC), connected to the DCS with a Profibus fieldbus. Thanks to the high information content of fieldbus protocols, which can carry a wealth of diagnostic information in addition to the field values and commands, it is possible to take advantage of local condition monitors embedded in the intelligent MCC and provide a view of such monitors as aspects, exactly in the same way discussed in the previous example. The advantage of such approach is that the equipment vendor, which has the best knowledge for such purpose, is capable of providing condition monitors specialized for the installed equipment. Profibus (or filedbus in general) will then provide the transport mechanism for delivering the results of the monitoring to the DCS which, in turn, will integrate and use this information for Asset Optimization Purposes. Figure 8 shows a list of embedded Condition Monitors providing maintenance triggers, through Profibus, to the EAM solution.
Monitoring Features Motor Phase Current Thermal Capacity Mains Voltage and Frequency Power Factor Active Power Reactive Power Overload Underload Time to Trip Time to Reset Motor Temperature Earth Leakage Number of Remaining Starts Number of Trips Hours Run Contactor Operations Rotation Speed Under Voltage and Auto-Restart MCU 1 MCU 2

Figure 8 - MCC Embedded Condition Monitors

CONCLUSIONS
As discussed in the previous sections, it is becoming apparent that vendors of both DCS and ERP systems are investing more and more effort in the creation of the necessary infrastructure

to enable cross-boundary communications. International standards are in the process of defining data structures, interfaces and transactional models to take advantage of such infrastructures and formalizing the type and nature of information to be exchanged. In a few cases such standards are already released and usable (ANSI/ISA-95.00.01-2000 and MIMOSA). In this situation, providing technology and infrastructure to support these standards and in general enable the communication of DCS and CMMS system will soon lose its importance as a competitive advantage. Automation vendors will have to make a significant effort to exploit their expertise, possibly in partnership with their customers, to add value to these infrastructure by means of real EAM solutions which must include, in addition to the ability to exchange information, tools and software to increase the significance of this information. The examples discussed in this paper show how, using existing technology and customer know how, combined with state of the art integration architectures, it is possible to deliver real value to end users by insuring that significant diagnostic information is easily accessible to plant and maintenance personnel and promptly acted upon, potentially without manual intervention.

ACRONYMS
DCS ERP EAM CMMS TCO TCP/IP MIMOSA CRIS XML API OPC CMDK MCC Digital Control System Enterprise Resource Planning Enterprise Asset Management Computerized Maintenance Management System Total Cost of Ownership Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance Common Relational Information Schema Extended Markup Language Application Programming Interface OLE for Process Control Condition Monitors Developmentg Kit Motor Control Center

REFERENCES AND CREDITS

1. Bever, Ken, Integration Key To Asset Optimization, Maintenance Technology Magazine, Sep. 1999 2. Brousell, David R., The Integrated Enterprise Moves Closer To Reality, Managing Automation, Oct. 2001 3. Manji, James F., CMMS Comes of Age, Managing Automation, Feb. 1999

4. Various, Evolving EAM Solutions Market and Delivered Benefits, ARC Advisory Group, Jun. 2001 5. Various, ANSI/ISA-95.00.01-2000 Enterprise-Control System Integration, Part I: Models and Terminology, ISA, Jul. 2001 6. Johnston, Alan T., Maintenance as a Part of The Enterprise (Initiating the Dialogue with MIMOSA), Virtual Convergence, Apr. 1998 7. Various, Aspect Object technology from ABB, Solution to the corporate information management problem, ABB Corporate Brochure (available through www.abb.com), 2001