IEN: How can manufacturers use existing technologies in new ways?
MacCleery: The overall trend here is to add to the existing custom hardware a more flexible hardware and software environment, where the complexities of a particular application can be easily translated into a control solution, and change is easy to implement. The key hardware component to make this a success is an industrially rugged and modular I/O platform that can easily be expanded, has a wide variety of plug-in I/O modules, rich networking capabilities, and can be located remotely throughout a manufacturing environment.
Another big trend is toward adding more accurate control and instrumentation hardware in the industrial setting. This is especially important in the consumer product industries such as food and beverage, where regulations may require that measurement accuracy is insured, and where efficiency improvements of a few percent can save millions of dollars per year. Industrial I/O hardware is now available that ships with a NIST traceable calibration certificate, a high accuracy 16-bit Delta-Sigma analog to digital converter (ADC), built-in noise filters, and active temperature compensation circuitry. In addition to that level of instrument grade measurement capability, these I/O modules also feature characteristics particularly suited to the needs of industrial automation users, such as built-in signal conditioning for direct connection of sensors and actuators, automatic self diagnostics, and automatic scaling from voltage or current to engineering units such as strain.
(See also response to the last question.)
IEN: What are the major concerns facing the controls sector in the next few years?
MacCleery: Due to increased pressure on manufacturing sectors from the economic downturn and expanding production in competitive foreign markets that benefit from relatively low cost of labor, many companies are looking for ways to increase profit margins and manufacturing efficiency through increased automation, but need a very fast return on their investment to justify the expense of these investments. The emerging new generation of programmable control systems lowers initial investment costs, due to its user-defined, software-powered, short-time-to-deployment nature, with many built-in tools to increase productivity. This is especially beneficial for smaller manufacturing operations that would otherwise find the costs prohibitive of contracting out the design, installation, and support of the automation system. With these newer tools, manufacturing engineers can develop and maintain their automation systems in-house, due to the ease of use of graphical development environments such as LabVIEW combined with industrially rugged modular I/O systems such as FieldPoint.
Cost is still a primary consideration, yet companies are increasingly realizing that there is also a cost associated with delaying modernization and efficiency improvements. It is also important to consider the entire cost of ownership, which includes initial startup costs as well as long-term support and maintenance. Users are increasingly motivated to move these tasks in-house, rather than contracting out.
IEN: How can they be addressed?
MacCleery: National Instruments'' FieldPoint™ is a modular industrial I/O system for measurement, control, and datalogging applications that demand industrial-grade hardware with easy installation and configuration. The FieldPoint modular I/O system gives engineers and scientists the freedom to quickly and easily place measurement nodes near sensors, avoiding the inconveniences and cost of point-to-point wiring. With a FieldPoint controller running LabVIEW™ Real-Time software, engineers and scientists can create powerful embedded systems with unmatched control and signal processing capabilities. For PC-based distributed measurements, FieldPoint I/O banks connect using Ethernet, serial, FOUNDATION Fieldbus, or wireless networks. FieldPoint provides high accuracy, isolated analog and digital I/O modules for direct connection of sensors and actuators in environments requiring wide temperature ranges, and industrial certifications for safety and electrical immunity. With NI FieldPoint, engineers and scientists can lower system costs and flexibly meet changing application needs with quick hardware setup and rapid system development.
With LabVIEW you can rapidly create test, measurement, control, and automation applications using intuitive graphical development. Quickly create user interfaces to interactively control your system. Easily specify system functionality by assembling block diagrams. LabVIEW combines ease of use, performance, and powerful functionality to deliver better productivity for your immediate needs, while providing scalability for long-term requirements. With LabVIEW 6.1, we introduced Remote Front Panels, which gives full bi-directional control of LabVIEW applications from a Web browser, with no programming.
Distributed FieldPoint FP-20xx real-time controllers feature an embedded Web browser that can automatically publish the front panel user interfaces for embedded applications and make them available to multiple clients via a standard Web browser. One Web browser client may take control of the application while up to 20 other clients are able to simultaneously view the front panel.
For SCADA, the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module is the ideal tool for your high-channel count and distributed applications. It offers data management tools, such as easy-to-use I/O configuration for high-channel count applications, automatic data logging, full alarm management and event logging, and real-time and historical trending. Also, with easy networking, including a networked real-time database for distributed logging, built-in security, and OPC connectivity, the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module provides tremendous ease of use to get your high-channel count system up and running quickly.
Alternately, National Instruments Lookout is an easy-to-use Web-enabled human machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software system for demanding manufacturing and process control applications. With Lookout, developing your HMI/SCADA application takes less time, delivering substantial savings on overall project costs.
IEN: What innovations are in store for users in equipment, software, communication standards, and/or systems?
MacCleery: Thanks to industrial grade components and know-how derived from the long history of programmable logic controllers (PLCs), a new generation of industrially rugged embedded controllers designed from top to bottom for manufacturing environments and measurement and control are emerging. The new hardware is making engineers rethink their ideas about the way they program and use industrial controllers. These new systems are programmed using an intuitive graphical development environment. Due to the power and reliability of real-time operating systems, they are single-handedly able to perform many tasks. The result is that custom hardware devices that are designed for a single task can be replaced with a single controller that is capable of doing more. Likewise, rigid programming tools are being replaced with more flexible programming environments consisting of libraries of function blocks that can be used as-is, or modified to suit the exact needs of the application. These development environments combine all the programming power of a full programming language with the ability to partition the application and configure time-critical priority for the critical loops.
A single industrial controller is now capable of performing multiple tasks, and is able to prioritize the critical control loops above all else. One controller can be used to open and close valves, run analog control loops, log data, perform real-time simulation and analysis, and communicate over serial, phone, and Ethernet. The controller can publish its I/O data automatically to an OPC server and SCADA software package located on a host machine, or be configured for completely standalone operation. These control systems must and do perform reliably even in electrically noisy manufacturing environments, thanks to industrial grade components and know-how derived from the long history of more traditional programmable controllers.
IEN: Is e-manufacturing a significant factor? Why/Why not?
MacCleery: Ethernet-enabled technology is growing rapidly, moving into the factory floor, and bringing e-manufacturing capabilities along with it. Ethernet-enabled systems make it easier to build enterprise connectivity all the way from the devices, controllers, and actuators on the factory floor up to the boardroom. Although most installations are not completely integrated, some level of e-manufacturing is necessary to meet modern business demands and expectations -- particularly for larger enterprises.
To focus more on the Ethernet-enabled technology at the core, these are some of the factors driving these systems:
- Ethernet is growing rapidly. VDC market research suggests that industrial distributed and remote I/O products with Ethernet interfaces will increase from 11% of the total in 2000 to 26% of the total by 2005 (http://www.vdc-corp.com/).
- Ethernet infrastructure is now built into most buildings, so installation costs are less. Network administrators and technicians are already skilled in installation and debugging of Ethernet. This makes Ethernet faster, easier to install, and less expensive to maintain.
- Improvements and technology developed for consumer technology are finding their way into the industrial sector, and vice versa. Consumer electronic components are simply replaced by industrial grade counterparts with design specifications such as industrial temperature range, isolation, and EMC compliance. The trend is toward programmable controllers that can do much more than their predecessors. File (FTP) and Web (HTTP) servers are now built in, and the controllers can programmatically publish data to external FTP servers or other network servers and databases.
- An advantage of Ethernet is that you can run more than one protocol over the same network. Fieldbus standards for Ethernet communication are maturing. We recommend a dedicated Ethernet subnet for the industrial fieldbus.
IEN: Is the drive toward lean/flexible manufacturing impacting this sector? In what ways?
MacCleery: The pressure for increased efficiency and reduced cost is driving the manufacturing sector toward more user-defined rather than vendor-defined solutions. Full featured, flexible, and intelligent programming environments such as LabVIEW put the manufacturing sector in the driver''s seat by allowing engineers to develop a customized solution that fits the exact needs of the application.
My advice would be to evaluate any control and instrumentation system in terms of its reliability and your productivity in using it. Does it offer the productivity features that will allow you to get up and running quickly and adapt to the changing demands of the market? Is it designed for harsh industrial environments? Does it offer a mean time before failure (MTBF) rating of 25 years or more?
IEN: Can companies integrate advanced control technology with legacy/traditional parts of the enterprise?
MacCleery: The new generation of intelligent control systems, such as NI FieldPoint, integrate well with legacy/traditional components and add advanced analog control, measurement, and signal processing capabilities to the systems. Technology such as OPC connects devices to the same host computer or SCADA package, even across different fieldbuses. Programming environments such as LabVIEW have the ability to communicate via Ethernet or serial ports to a wide array of external devices such as PLCs, peripherals such as bar code readers, and LCD/Keypad MMI devices.
