Using an MBSE approach for automation control system selection in long steel products hot rolling plants

Abstract: Automation systems in long steel products hot rolling plants are prone to performance failures with the potential of serious negative impact on the business. The selection process of these automation systems therefore requires careful consideration of various selection factors to maximize plant performance. The need was therefore identified to investigate the use of a suitable management approach to guide engineering automation teams in the long steel products hot rolling plants in the selection of automation systems. At the core is the need for an in-depth understanding of the issues surrounding distributed and hierarchical automation systems in long steel products plants. This includes identifying the challenges during the selection process, using sound engineering management principles. Current automation selection techniques were investigated through a survey, interviews and a case study. It was then decided to use a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach, which utilises systems engineering principles together with digital technology to create models to simplify the understanding of complex problems and relationships. This was then used to develop a management framework for automation systems selection in support of the business case of long steel products hot rolling plants

Integración de comunicaciones a nivel de planta empleando sistemas ciber-físicos de producción de bajo coste

[Resumen] Los sistemas de automatización industrial actuales tienen que hacer frente a los desafíos que surgen al tratar de solventar las necesidades generadas por un mercado altamente competitivo. Estos desafíos conducen a la utilización de una nueva generación de sistemas de automatización basado en los denominados Sistemas Ciber-físicos de Producción (CPPS – Cyber-Physical Production Systems). Los CPPSs permiten la integración de sistemas de adquisición de datos tradicionales y novedosos sistemas de procesamiento inteligente de datos, con el objetivo de extraer información y mejorar el rendimiento general del sistema productivo. Para lograrlo, es necesario cerrar la brecha existente entre los sistemas de control y los niveles superiores. Este trabajo propone una aproximación en el desarrollo de aplicaciones bajo la norma IEC-61499 para el intercambio de datos entre el nivel de planta y las capas más altas empleando el estándar industrial OPC UA. La comunicación OPC UA ofrece mecanismos de suscripción que permiten una integración eficiente y sencilla de recursos que residen en diferentes dispositivos. Además, dado que la arquitectura OPC UA permite su ejecución incluso en dispositivos empotrados, la propuesta aportada en este artículo permite adquirir información de la planta empleando arquitecturas de bajo coste, al mismo tiempo que se posibilita un diseño basado en componentes con independencia de la plataforma hardware utilizada.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU) en el marco del proyecto UFI 11/28, por el MCYT y FEDER bajo el proyecto DPI2015-68602-R, y por el Ministerio de Educación e Investigación de Ecuador a través de subvención SENESCYT-2014Universidad del País Vasco = Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea; UFI 11/28https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.978849749808

Automation Architecture based on Cyber Physical Systems for Flexible Manufacturing within Oil&Gas Industry

[ES] Es evidente que en los próximos años gran parte de las tecnologías recogidas bajo el marco de la denominada Industria 4.0 tendrá un profundo impacto en todas las empresas y entre ellas, en las relacionadas con la explotación y producción de petróleo y gas. La automatización de bajo coste promueve arquitecturas de referencia rentables y nuevos enfoques de desarrollo para aumentar la flexibilidad y la eficiencia de las operaciones de producción en una planta industrial. En este sentido, OPC UA, proporciona acceso local y remoto a la información de planta, facilitando un mecanismo reconocido de integración tanto horizontal como vertical de manera correcta, segura y eficiente. El objetivo principal de este artículo es presentar una arquitectura abierta para la integración vertical basada en sistemas ciber-físicos de producción, configurados bajo la norma IEC 61499 y usando OPC UA, apta para su utilización en la fabricación flexible en la industria de petróleo ygas.[EN] It is clear that in the next few years most of the technologies involved in the so-called Industry 4.0 will have a deep impact on manufacturing companies, including those related to Oil & Gas exploration and production. Low cost automation promotes reference architectures and development approaches aiming at increasing the flexibility and efficiency of production operations in industrial plants. In this sense, OPC UA, in addition to allowing companies to join the Industry 4.0 initiative, provides local and remote access to plant information, enabling a recognized mechanism for both, horizontal and vertical integration in a reliable, safe and efficient way. The contribution of this article is an open architecture for vertical integration based on cyber-physical production systems, configured under IEC 61499 and using OPC UA, suitable to achieve flexible manufacturing within Oil & Gas industry.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por el MINECO/FEDER, UE del Gobierno de España bajo el proyecto DPI2015-68602-R y por el Gobierno Vasco/EJ bajo el reconocimiento de grupo de investigación IT914-16. Así mismo como al Gobierno Ecuatoriano a través de la Beca SENESCYT “Convocatoria abierta 2013”.García, MV.; Irisarri, E.; Pérez, F.; Estévez, E.; Marcos, M. (2018). Arquitectura de Automatización basada en Sistemas Ciberfísicos para la Fabricación Flexible en la Industria de Petróleo y Gas. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática industrial. 15(2):156-166. https://doi.org/10.4995/riai.2017.8823OJS156166152DIAC, 2017. IEC 61499 Implementation for Distributed. 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In 2016 Second International Conference on Event-based Control, Communication, and Signal Processing (EBCCSP). IEEE, pp. 1-8. Available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7605263/.Rentschler, M., Trsek, H. & Durkop, L., 2016. OPC UA extension for IP auto-configuration in cyber-physical systems. In 2016 IEEE 14th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN). IEEE, pp. 26-31. Available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7819128/.Sande, O., Fojcik, M. & Cupek, R., 2010. OPC UA Based Solutions for Integrated Operations. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 79, pp.76-83. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13861-4_8Schwab, C., Tangermann, M. & Ferrarini, L., 2005. Web based methodology for engineering and maintenance of distributed control systems: the TORERO approach. In INDIN '05. 2005 3rd IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics, 2005. IEEE, pp. 32-37. 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Bundle : A Group-Based Programming Abstraction for Cyber-Physical Systems. , 8(2), pp.379-392.Vyatkin, V., Cheng Pang & Tripakis, S., 2015. Towards cyber-physical agnosticism by enhancing IEC 61499 with PTIDES model of computations. In IECON 2015 - 41st Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. IEEE, pp. 001970-001975. Available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7392389/.Wang, L. et al., 2001. Realizing Holonic Control with Function Blocks. Integr. Comput.-Aided Eng., 8(1), pp.81-93. Available at: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1275723.1275730.Wang, L., Keshavarzmanesh, S. & Feng, H.Y., 2008. Design of adaptive function blocks for dynamic assembly planning and control. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 27(1), pp.45-51. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmsy.2008.06.003Wang, L., Song, Y. & Gao, Q., 2009. Designing function blocks for distributed process planning and adaptive control. 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Design and Performance of a XBee 900 MHz Acquisition System Aimed at Industrial Applications

Wireless technologies are being introduced in industrial applications since they provide certain benefits, such as the flexibility to modify the layout of the nodes, improving connectivity with monitoring and decision nodes, adapting to mobile devices and reducing or eliminating cabling. However, companies are still reluctant to use them in time-critical applications, and consequently, more research is needed in order to be massively deployed in industrial environments. This paper goes in this direction by presenting a novel wireless acquisition system aimed at industrial applications. This system embeds a low-cost technology, such as XBee, not frequently considered for deterministic applications, for deploying industrial applications that must fulfill certain QoS requirements. The use of XBee 900 MHz modules allows for the use of the 2.4 GHz band for other purposes, such as connecting to cloud services, without causing interferences with critical applications. The system implements a time-slotted media access (TDMA) approach with a timely transmission scheduling of the messages on top of the XBee 900 MHz technology. The paper discusses the details of the acquisition system, including the topology, the nodes involved, the so-called coordinator node and smart measuring nodes, and the design of the frames. Smart measuring nodes are implemented by an original PCB which were specifically designed and manufactured. This board eases the connection of the sensors to the acquisition system. Experimental tests were carried out to validate the presented wireless acquisition system. Its applicability is shown in an industrial scenario for monitoring the positioning of an aeronautical reconfigurable tooling prototype. Both wired and wireless technologies were used to compare the variables monitored. The results proved that the followed approach may be an alternative for monitoring big machinery in indoor industrial environments, becoming especially suitable for acquiring values from sensors located in mobile parts or difficult-to-reach places.This research was funded by the Basque Government, through the project EKOHEGAZ (ELKARTEK KK-2021/00092), Diputación Foral de Álava (DFA) through the project CONAVANTER, and to the UPV/EHU through the project GIU20/063

Reliable Control Applications with Wireless Communication Technologies: Application to Robotic Systems

The nature of wireless propagation may reduce the QoS of the applications, such that some packages can be delayed or lost. For this reason, the design of wireless control applications must be faced in a holistic way to avoid degrading the performance of the control algorithms. This paper is aimed at improving the reliability of wireless control applications in the event of communication degradation or temporary loss at the wireless links. Two controller levels are used: sophisticated algorithms providing better performance are executed in a central node, whereas local independent controllers, implemented as back-up controllers, are executed next to the process in case of QoS degradation. This work presents a reliable strategy for switching between central and local controllers avoiding that plants may become uncontrolled. For validation purposes, the presented approach was used to control a planar robot. A Fuzzy Logic control algorithm was implemented as a main controller at a high performance computing platform. A back-up controller was implemented on an edge device. This approach avoids the robot becoming uncontrolled in case of communication failure. Although a planar robot was chosen in this work, the presented approach may be extended to other processes. XBee 900 MHz communication technology was selected for control tasks, leaving the 2.4 GHz band for integration with cloud services. Several experiments are presented to analyze the behavior of the control application under different circumstances. The results proved that our approach allows the use of wireless communications, even in critical control applications.This research was funded by the Basque Government through the project EKOHEGAZ (ELKARTEK KK-2021/00092), by Diputación Foral de Álava (DFA) through the project CONAVANTER, and by UPV/EHU through the project GIU20/063

Metodologías para el diseño de sistemas de control distribuido bajo el estándar IEC 61499 aplicados al control de procesos

167 p.Es evidente que en los próximos años gran parte de las tecnologías recogidas bajo el marco de la denominada Industria 4.0 tendrá un profundo impacto en todas las empresas y, entre ellas, las relacionadas con la explotación y producción de petróleo y gas. Sin embargo, la apresurada adopción de tecnologías de la información sin un conocimiento adecuado de las mismas y su aplicación a los diferentes aspectos de los sistemas de control de planta, sistema de planificación de recursos empresariales (Enterprise Resource Planning ¿ ERP) y sistemas orientados a la ejecución de la fabricación (Manufacturing Execution Systems ¿ MES) puede derivar en que las compañías de petróleo y gas automaticen sus sistemas industriales con un injustificado alto coste, de manera potencialmente peligrosa y propensa a errores. La automatización de bajo coste promueve arquitecturas de referencia rentables y nuevos enfoques de desarrollo para aumentar la flexibilidad y la eficiencia de las opera-ciones de producción en una planta industrial. Esto ha llevado a la adopción por parte este tipo de empresas de estándares de redes industriales para las comunicaciones a todos los niveles. En este sentido, OPC UA, además de permitir adherirse a las empresas a la iniciativa de la Industria 4.0, proporciona acceso local y remoto a la información de planta, facilitando un mecanismo reconocido de integración tanto horizontal como vertical de manera correcta, segura y eficiente. El objetivo principal de esta tesis doctoral es presentar una arquitectura abierta para la integración vertical basada en sistemas ciber-físicos de producción, configurados bajo la norma IEC 61499 y usando OPC UA, apta para su utilización en la fabricación flexible en la industria de petróleo y ga