â– Many years ago, NAMUR's board of directors had decided to put the topic of distributed intelligence as a new idea for process automation on the agenda of the 2014 annual meeting. They did not choose to talk about higher-performance process control systems, but instead studied how to meet the market requirements that determine the direction of the process industry. That is, how to optimize the small batch production process to make it consistent with mass production in terms of time and cost efficiency. To this end, WAGO, the sponsor of the NAMUR annual conference last year, proposed the groundbreaking program DIMA (Distributed Intelligent Modular System).
As one of the largest industries in the world, the current development of the process industry is determined by two factors: globalization and personalization. Globalization allows anyone to order products anywhere in the world from anywhere. As long as the Internet taps, the product will drift across the sea to your doorstep. Personalization is the fastest growing in the consumer goods industry including food, clothing and pharmaceuticals. Take the famous European startup company mymuesli.com as an example.
The company's business development is a model of individuation: since 2007, mymuseli.com's UK, French and German customers have created more than 5 billion types of cereals.
Needless to say, these trends pose a huge challenge to the manufacturing industry because individualized products are not the same as mass production products. Arranging production is not easy. The shortened product life cycle requires faster time-to-market, which further exacerbates the complexity of production arrangements. The manufacturing system once sought excellence in reliability, and now production flexibility has become the key to decision making. However, this change has taken a long time. The earliest requirement for higher production flexibility for modular systems was at the 2009 Tutzing seminar. In response to the issue of how to reduce the time it takes to launch a product to the market, about 100 scientists at the conference expressed their views. The conclusion is that the system must be modularly designed to provide manufacturers with the flexibility to act quickly and react. This concept originated from process technology and gained further development in the field of automation technology. It also matured with the release of the NAMUR recommended specification NE 148 in 2013. This proposal fully describes the challenges of automating modular process control systems.
Based on the NE 148, automation suppliers are forced to innovate head-on. WAGO's reaction to this is the development of DIMA (Distributed Intelligent Modular System).
â– DIMA - Distributed Intelligent Modular System
WAGO presented the DIMA plan for the first time at the NAMUR General Assembly in November last year. In order to develop this solution, the company's engineers have gone through six major tests and worked out six basic core modules:
Smart module
In order to take full advantage of modular automation, modules with autonomous integrity and independent automation capabilities must be used. First, this can protect the modules from being copied; second, they can quickly be integrated into the system and put into use; and thirdly, they can operate as independently as possible.
2. Interface
In order to prevent the entire industry from relying on a certain supplier or manufacturer, DIMA is independent of the manufacturer and builds on existing standards.
3. Technical protection
For a modular system, the equipment provided by the module supplier must be integrated in the upper control system of the plant-level system. At the same time, a neutral interface must be used between the system and the module. On the one hand this can protect the module supplier's proprietary technology, on the other hand it can protect the system operator's control process or production process.
4. Process control
The modular, distributed automation model for the process control system through DIMA is derived from the IT industry whose components are easily integrated into existing systems. For example, the printer can be directly connected and used without reprogramming its operating system. By using DIMA, system modules can also be easily integrated into the system architecture.
5. Visualization
In general, if a system consists of distributed modules produced by different manufacturers, each module provides its own visual icon. However, system operators do not like to control the interface is a hodgepodge of various different style icons, they need a more consistent look and feel. DIMA's solution to this problem is to create a database and refer to it during system engineering integration.
6. Security
Despite the open principles that are independent of the manufacturer, DIMA still provides maximum security against external attacks.
â– DIMA's technical implementation - the impact on the system structure
The traditional process equipment is controlled by a process management system that includes process control, HMI, and engineering design. This architecture has been widely accepted by people and will continue to be of use in the future, for example in the petrochemical industry. Unlike traditional process control equipment, partially modular process control equipment usually consists of a surplus system and a number of additional independent modules. In this case, the remote I/O system replaces the original coarse cable with a slim bus cable. Although the process control architecture of the device is already modularized, its communication and automation architecture is still highly centralized, so we must also consider centralized intelligence. Examples of partially modular architectures include centrifuges, agitators, filling equipment, tempering equipment and fermentation equipment. The functionality and complexity of the modules are independent of the modular architecture. This means that system designers must carefully consider each valve; part of the modularity will not reduce the workload of the entire project, but only to optimize the space (Figure 1).
When a device adopts a control module and the module communicates with the process control and HMI system of the device as a distributed intelligence, it can be called a real module or a packaging unit, and such a module has a life cycle. In general, a service-oriented architecture can be used in this situation. Services are stored in modules and can be called by the system. In this way, the system designer faces the challenge of reverse programming according to proprietary module specifications. This may be both expensive and error-prone (Figure 2).
However, in a fully modular system architecture, the system modules are equipped with autonomous controllers, operator panels, and engineering designs. In this way, the engineering design of the entire system can be shared by the system manufacturer and the module manufacturer and can be performed individually. This means that you can often use different development environments for engineering design at different times and locations (Figure 3).
Therefore, implementing this architecture requires that the module integration of the entire system can be performed not only without the support of the module manufacturer, but also without any external assistance.
In the past, system designers needed to fully understand the module's specifications in order to correctly and completely integrate the modules into the system. Usually this requires reverse programming based on the module's specifications. When the module communication adopts fault protection design, the function of the module is integrated in the system engineering design, and when the HMI module is embedded, the system operator can understand the operation inside the module (Figure 4).
â– Integrated module without programming
Significantly reduce the complexity of engineering design, cost, and more importantly, reduce the error rate, WAGO is the original intention of DIMA. DIMA encapsulates the complexity and functionality of the module, which saves system builders engineering time. For this purpose, the module describes the module type package (MTP), a data packet that contains all the features of the module. The MTP contains the following information: communication parameters that allow the module to be connected; services that describe what processes the module can perform; information about operations and observations, that is, graphical information, as well as information about status, diagnostics, history, and archiving. The MTP contains everything necessary to describe the module. System engineering design simply calls MTP. At this point you can choose the services provided by the module, which will be integrated into the process chain of the production process. The process control connection of the module is then performed so that the process control, the HMI and the modules can communicate with each other (Figure 5).
By using MTP, the description of the module's characteristics is presented through a standardized and open format. Module features and services are determined by the module manufacturer. Because the module can provide its specific services to the process control system, it is not necessary to provide the module manufacturer with a standardized service catalog. The difference between what the module can provide and the services it needs should be made up of different services provided by different manufacturers' modules.
â– Engineering design without MTP interface
Even if the existing integrated software system does not have an MTP interface, MTP can be uploaded to the system. In this case, MTP can be loaded into WAGO's engineering software system e!COCKPIT and MTP is mapped to various possible engineering control systems such as SCADA, HMI, process control, MES or batch processing systems. Then read the MTP through the corresponding open interface of the software. In this process, the e!COCKPIT engineering software only acts as a conversion tool. Since the MTP description is in an open format, almost everyone can re-create it (Figure 6).
â– DIMA features
In the DIMA environment, modules and services are collectively referred to. Services can be processes, operations, or functions. It is entirely up to the module manufacturer to determine whether the module is to provide complex product services in a compound module or only to convert two valves and pumps. This method does not require any degree of integration or so-called module outlines, but it supports the system architecture that complies with IEC 61512 (Figure 7).
Each module that has been integrated into the system uses a specific, possibly completely different, icon than the other modules. If you simply load these different displays into the upper control system, the results will be confusing and you will not be able to form a unified display. In addition, this situation may also seriously affect the operational safety of the system. Especially in critical situations, because the same content information is associated with different icons, the operator cannot perform intuitive operations. In the DIMA framework, MTP does not contain graphic data at all, but only includes information that must be displayed in some way, such as temperature. This information will be called in the system design. At the same time, the system design software provides its own database for displaying information such as temperature. Then by calling the system data, different modules can be displayed in a unified manner to obtain a consistent appearance.
By selecting the desired service level, all methods from white to black boxes can be realized. For example, an operation can be implemented by black box only by setting a start/stop key, and its visualization can be implemented by white box so that all data and parameters can be seen.
â– Conclusion
DIMA is a method that can increase competitiveness in the process industry. It satisfies all requirements for modular automation, including the requirements of NAMUR's recommended specification NE 148. WAGO cooperated with Dresden University of Technology and the Federal Military University of Hamburg to present this concept and developed a prototype to prove the feasibility of DIMA. All of these were implemented without any patented technology. DIMA uses existing communication protocols and therefore no longer needs standardization. If the automation technology supplier needs to open the interface in an extremely controllable way and at the same time want to protect its own proprietary technology, then the DIMA concept is sufficient to meet the above requirements.
Text: Dr. Thomas Albers and Ulrich Hempen, WAGO
Picture: WAGO
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