Continuing profinet Lutèce, a production company from Horst which processes mushrooms since 1910, has recently done a few fusions and takeovers. The result of this are three production locations. Three buildings with five production lines of different quality and setup. “An area like this typically has many and heavy competitors” says John Vrolijk, technical manager of Lutèce. After the takeovers we searched for the solution that resulted in the most possible productivity.
Eventually there was decided to create two out of these three locations. Three fully automated production lines are produced based on existing elements. Vrolijk: “After the management made the decision, we wanted to see results as soon as possible. That is why we asked Van den Akker Electric Engineering to transport the existing machines from the production lines to the two locations with the most efficient way and to fully automate the lines”. Van den Akker, engineering company with establishments in Rosmalen and Oss saw this as a very nice opportunity.
Choise
Lutèce fully automated based on Profinet, choise of Arno van den Akker, director of Van den Akker says: “The project requires a special treatment. Lutèce is a production company and the time without production had to be minimized. Lutèce told Van den Akker that they wanted three fully automated production lines. The solution also had to be future proof. So it had to maintain its value after ten years or even a longer periode of time”. Michael Ruijs, manager of Van den Akker, says: “Lutèce is planning to optimise and that is only possible if flexible expansions are possible”. “That last aspect made that we came into contact with Siemens”, adds Van den Akker.
Ethernet solution
“In the field you do hear some talk about other Pro. net solutions”, says Michael Ruijs. “Profinet was for us a logical choise because we already had experience with Profibus and also we are a young team that has experience with ethernet and TCP/IP solutions. This combined knowledge made the choise for us more easy. And we did very good, concluding from the progress of this project. We have moved one production line in four weeks time, installed and fully automated with Profinet”.
At this moment there has already been a test run and the results are positive. Van den Akker has Profinet the only bus in the whole production line that is being controlled with one central CPU – implemented. Ruijs: “The advantage of Pro. net is that it is many times faster because everything works with TCP/IP. Another advantage of using the Internet Protocol is that it is easy to implement with other critical company applications. Besides that all automation components are connected to the same network and programmers are able to log and program the whole production line wireless en from a distance. Also the engineering goes faster and using the FastConnect technique results in even less project time”.
Future vision
Vrolijk sees many efficiency possibilities now that Profinet is implemented in a production line of Lutèce: “Lutèce must always work on cost reduction to keep ahead from the competitors. And that also means that we will add more production lines to our Profinet network”.
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(Source: Siemens Sieformatie, Year 34, number 1, 2006)