A study on industrial communication networking: ethernet based implementation

Recent enhancement of the industrial communication and networking has made it possible to apply Ethernet networks at all levels of industrial automation, especially at controller level where the data exchange in real-time communication is mandatory. This report presents a study on the development of industrial communication network based on the Ethernet and thus implementation towards Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system. The Ethernet module is installed onto supervisory OMRON PLC to integrate the various stations in the CIM-70A system which located at Robotic Laboratory in KUiTTHO. The workability of this communication technique was analyzed and compared with the conventional serial communication which widely used in automation networking systems. Through this approach, the communication and integration of CIM systems can be accessed easily and hence available to be upgraded to the management and enterprise levels of automation

A study on industrial communication networking: ethernet based implementation

Recent enhancement of an industrial communication and networking technology has made it possible to apply Ethernet networks at all levels of industrial automation, especially at controller level where the data exchange in real-time communication is mandatory. This thesis presents a study on the development of industrial communication network based on the Ethernet and its implementation on a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM-70A) system which located at Robotic Laboratory in KUiTTHO. The Ethernet module was installed on supervisory OMRON PLC to integrate the various stations in the ClM-70A system. The workability of this communication technique was analyzed and compared with the conventional serial communication which is widely used in automation networking systems. Through this approach, the communication and integration of elM systems can be accessed easily and hence available to be upgraded to the management and enterprise levels of automation

Implementation of functional safety in a robotic manufacturing cell using iec 61508 standard and siemens technology

The past 50 years have seen a staggering amount of change in the technology and the business of process automation. The programmable logic controller (PLC) based control and monitoring system is a proven technology used to not only control processes but also to perform safety functions for processes in many industrial applications. There are many opportunities for improvements in any process or manufacturing system. One of the opportunities is achieving accurate safety function for measurement and process control to prevent human injury or death. The programmable electronic systems (PES) such as PLC systems are increasingly being used to perform safety functions as an integral part of the process or plant control system. A Robotic Manufacturing Cell is an example of a PES system and is used as an experimental setup for this work. The IEC 61508 standard defines various phases involved in the overall safety lifecycle for the PES system. This thesis study concentrates on such phases that include safety analysis methods, selection of an appropriate safety control system, implementation of safety as per the standard and safety validation. In this study four test cases are selected to perform safety analysis and implementation. It is verified how the conventional safety analysis method (FMEA) can be used to estimate the risk associated with each test case. As recommended by IEC 61508, a Risk-Graph method is used to calculate the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) requirement for each test case. A number of factors are required to be considered for selecting the appropriate safety control system architecture. After studying these factors and the safety analysis results, the Siemens safety PLC-based control system with SIL 3 configuration is selected for this application. IEC 61508 also recommends implementation of independent control systems for normal operation and safety. This study demonstrates how two independent PLC based control systems, one for normal operations and other for safety-related functions, are implemented to offer the most effective solution for this application. This is achieved by using PLCs from two different manufacturers, a non-safety PLC for normal operations and a Siemens safety PLC for safety-related functions. This study focuses on Machine Safety, and it can be used as a guideline for implementation of functional safety in real-life manufacturing environment

Deliberative architecture for smart sensors in the filtering operation of a water purification plant

The increase of applications for industrial smart sensors is booming, mainly due to the use of distributed automation architectures, industrial evolution and recent technological advances, which guide the industry to a greater degree of automation, integration and globalization. In this research work, an architecture for deliberative-type intelligent industrial sensors is proposed, based on the BDI (Belief Desire Intentions) model, adaptable to the measurement of different variables of the filtering process of a water purification plant. An intelligent sensor with functions of signal digitalization, self-calibration, alarm generation, communication with PLC, user interface for parameter adjustment, and analysis with data extrapolation have been arranged. For decision making, the use of fuzzy logic techniques has been considered, which allows imprecise parameters to be appropriately represented, simplifying decision problem solving in the industrial environment, generating stable and fast systems with low processing requirements. The proposed architecture has been modelled, simulated and validated using UML language in conjunction with Petri nets, which facilitate the representation of discrete system events, presenting them clearly and precisely. In the implementation and testing of the prototype, C/C ++ language has been used in an 8-bit microcontroller, experimentally corroborating the operation of the device, which allowed evaluating the behavior of a pseudo-intelligent agent based on the requirements of the water treatment plant, and also through comparisons with similar works developed by other researchers

SEABASS: Symmetric-keychain Encryption and Authentication for Building Automation Systems

There is an increasing security risk in Building Automation Systems (BAS) in that its communication is unprotected, resulting in the adversary having the capability to inject spurious commands to the actuators to alter the behaviour of BAS. The communication between the Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) and the controller (PLC) is vulnerable as there is no secret key being used to protect the authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of the sensor data and commands. We propose SEABASS, a lightweight key management scheme to distribute and manage session keys between HMI and PLCs, providing a secure communication channel between any two communicating devices in BAS through a symmetric-key based hash-chain encryption and authentication of message exchange. Our scheme facilitates automatic renewal of session keys periodically based on the use of a reversed hash-chain. A prototype was implemented using the BACnet/IP communication protocol and the preliminary results show that the symmetric keychain approach is lightweight and incurs low latency

Customer Retention in Service Industry

Customer retention is previously considered as the last resort of a company in traditional marketing approach rather than a way to improve long term profit (Krishnan & Govindarajan, 2013). This is because traditional way of marketing strategy tends to focus more on attracting new customers than satisfying the existing customers. However, as globalization continue to precede, low growth and highly competitive marketplace shows that retaining customers is the more effective way to sustain a company against inroad competition. It is found by some studies showing that companies which emphasize on attracting new customers are actually earning to cover up the regular loss of existing customers without them noticing. Thus, winning new customers are considered a risky way to be profitable (Rosenberg & Czepiel, 1984). Many previous literature reviews also showed the importance of customer retention in increasing company revenue. More companies are now changing their marketing and management strategies to reach out to their existing customers in order to prevent them for opting for service provided by competitive company. A number of researches posit that customer retention increase profitability by lowering the cost used to attract new customers. It is supported by studies showing that there is increase in profit to as high as 95% if customer retention of the company increases by 5% (Sharmeela-Banu et al., 2012). Many researchers came into agreement that repeated customers are the more valuable asset compared to new customers in today’s market (Climis, 2016). Meanwhile, it can be seen in today’s world economy, service industry has emerged to be one of the fastest growing sectors among the others. Customers are considered the real asset to service industry due to the nature of this industry which prioritizes relationship between customers with the service (Alshurideh, 2016). This makes it even more crucial for this industry to practice customer retention strategies in order to survive and grow in the very competitive marketplace. As such, this study intends to explore literatures pertaining to definitions, measures, importance and factors that influence customer retention in service industry as well as to discuss on possible strategies to be applied based on the studies