May 2019

| APPLICATIONS | Y psomed Group, an international medical technology company specialising in the development and manufacture of injection and infusion systems for the self-injection of liquid medicines, has selected Harting as a collaborative partner in a development project to retrofit legacy protocol plastic injection moulding machines with an integrated Industry 4.0 digital control system that is also linked with a factory-wide MES/ERP system. This approach offers simple and minimal physical integration with an existing production line for a reasonably low level of investment, with long-term benefits including improved productivity, cost savings and extended machine lifetimes. An important element of Industry 4.0 is the ability to apply digitisation to the production environment by adding more intelligence into existing processes. Initially manufacturers have been wary of Industry 4.0, on the assumption that effective implementation would require major (and expensive) changes to production lines. However, through a digital retrofit approach, it is possible to “smarten” up existing processes for minimal cost over a short period of time, resulting in a fast return on investment and immediate productivity gains. Digital retrofit provides four different ways to improve production processes, increase cost savings and extend the lifetime of different types of machinery: Legacy machine protocol conversion Condition monitoring (including energy measurement) Asset management Predictive maintenance. Legacy machine protocol conversion Central machine monitoring and process optimisation offer the best way to ensure that production lines and their associated constituent parts operate more effectively and economically. Many machines in well- established production lines, which may be between 15 and 30 years old, can still perform their main functional tasks successfully. However, they do so much less efficiently than their modern-day counterparts. For example, they do not have the same level of computing power, enough memory capacity to record and store relevant data, or the ability to communicate with their modern equivalents. In many cases, these machines also use data formats and communications protocols from the 1980s and 1990s, which are no longer used by today’s PLCs and industrial PCs. A prime example of a production environment that accommodates mixed protocol legacy machines is a plastics injection moulding machine (PIMM) line. Such machines, when well maintained, can attain as much as a 30-year operational life. However, some of the older software protocol operating languages (e.g. EUROMAP 15) cannot be directly connected to a modern factory MES (Manufacturing Execution System) without expensive annual custom software licensing charges. In many factories these machines still require individual programming by an operator, which can be very time-consuming in larger installations - potentially requiring input from multiple personnel. A solution to these challenges is offered by Harting’s MICA (Modular Industrial Computing Architecture): an edge computing device in the form of a digitally retrofittable IP67 package with Linux-based open-source software. This modular software and Ypsomed and Harting have collaborated on the development of Industry 4.0 digital control systems for retrofitting to plastic injection moulding machines. Smart Machines & Factories reports. www.smartmachinesandfactories.com May 2019 | 43 | Smartening existing processes