Electricity + Control February 2018

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

of tools to help users to set up data visualisation dashboards that transform the data into highly rel- evant and accessible information. Human beings can then make sound decisions to implement im- provement action,” he says. New at Automation Fair 2017 Last year, Rockwell Automation introduced its Al- len-Bradley PowerFlex® 755T premium drive VFD, with low harmonics as a scalable drive options for motor control applications.With Integrated Motion on EtherNet/IP™, these drives can be placed on the same networks as Kinetix® servo drives, mak- ing them an ideal Connected Enterprise product. “This year we have expanded the rating and port- folio of the PowerFlex 755T VFD AC-drive range to include the 755TL drive for harmonic mitigation; the 755TR drive for regenerative solutions and the 755TM drive system for common bus solutions. “We have also launched a new GuardLogix L8SP safety controller. Working alongside a standard ControlLogix processor, which offers SIL 2 safety certification on its own, the L8SP is a high-performance controller offering SIL 3 per- formance when safe, high-speed control of 70 to 100 axes is required,” notes Donato. With its two-processor architecture (1oo2), the GuardLogix system consists of a safety primary and a verifying partner processor – and the L8SP safety partner is part of the system, so it is auto- matically configured with no additional setup, con- figuration or downloads required. In addition, to support the expansion in the use of data analytics, Rockwell Automation has intro- duced CompactLogix 5480 controllers, which also embed Quad core processing – three processors dedicated to Logix-based real-time machine control and one that uses Windows 10 IoT Enterprise run- ning in parallel. The controller therefore supports embedded Windows applications for analytics, data gathering, and predictive computations – “and should the Windows based system crash for any reason, the Logix controller remains unaffected”. Conclusion In concluding our interview, Donato cites the new Rockwell Automation SCIO project as at the forefront of the digitisation revolution. “Our Fac- toryTalk Analytics Platform offers scalable, Edge, On Premises or Cloud based analytics that make for the easiest installation and use of connected machine or device technology.

it possible for finance departments to determine the exact profitability of the mine and how to max- imise net income,” he explains. Responding to the connectivity question for rural Africa, Donato says: “all of our solutions are scala- ble. They do not need to take data out of the local network. We call this an Edge solution and it acts exactly like our cloud-based solutions but the data is being locally stored, managed and analysed via a machine or facility’s internal networks,” he explains. On the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for analytics, he says that usually a data expert has to be involved in the analytics process. “AI uses purpose-developed and application-specific ex- pert systems that can already clean, validate and pre-process huge amounts of the data, making the analysis process much simpler for end-users. Through our new platforms, data mash-ups guide decision makers in the right direction, while hu- man beings need only identify the data relation- ships that most interested them. “Also, though, the artificial intelligence algo- rithms deliberately look for interrelationships and correlations between the data streams that might be useful, identifying correlations that may not yet have been thought of and indentifying new patterns that might be impacting efficiency and/or reliability,” he adds. Describing a success story in the food and bev- erage industry, he says that a recent installation was set up to reduce the number of cleaning cycles on a batch production system susceptible to micro- biological contamination. “By using predictive ana- lytics, we were able to safely reduce the number of cleaning cycles so as to keep production levels as high as possible,” he says, adding that the sys- tem actively predicts the onset of unsafe conditions based on the collected data from the processing stream, so the number of cleaning cycles can be minimised without increasing contamination risks. At the heart of Rockwell Automation’s Con- nected Enterprise solutions are implementation simplicity, interoperability and openness. “We have developed libraries and numerous easy use

Rockwell Automation EMEA president, Thomas Donato.

Andrew Ellis, champion of Project SCIO, presenting Project SCIO.

Peter Middleton is a Crown Publications editor. Enquiries: Michelle Junius, Email: mjunius@ra.rockwell.com

30 Electricity + Control

FEBRUARY 2018