Factory-wide visualisation streamlines utility management

Nagoya Works, one of the main factories in Mitsubishi Electric’s factory automation business, is home to over 30 buildings dedicated to production, administration and services, supporting the many teams of diverse employees who work at this vast facility. Within the premises, significant infrastructure has been built to supply electricity, air and steam throughout the factory.

For the stable supply of such resources it is crucial to regularly check the operational status of the utility infrastructure and the load factors of the equipment. The Environment Promotion Section of Nagoya Works’ Manufacturing Systems Division is responsible for taking care of the infrastructure equipment, meaning they not only perform regular maintenance and repairs on equipment, but also monitor the operational status and undertake precautionary measures that will prevent any major problems from occurring. Without such measures any lack of resources may, for example, lead to downtimes in production, or cause overloads that lead to machine breakdowns.

Previously, the members of the environment team had to patrol the buildings and facilities, collecting operational data from individual monitoring systems in power substations and steam boilers. This was quite time-consuming since they were all separate systems. Even after they collected the data, they had to add it to a system diagram to analyse the load conditions on the wiring and piping that connects the equipment. This took more than just man-hours.

“We needed to update the system diagram every time the system configuration changed, and what’s more, we had to be able to understand the status from the data in the diagrams, which depended highly on the skills of each individual,” said Ryohei Kitada from the Environment Promotion Section. “When installing new equipment, we would also have to do a cross-sectional verification to check if the capacity of the current infrastructure would be enough. Therefore, we needed to find a way to bring together the operational data from all the utility equipment in the factory to achieve one-stop access.”

As a solution to these challenges, the team turned to GENESIS64, a SCADA software that makes it possible to integrate and visualise various sources of data, in this case the utility data at Nagoya Works.

Operational data from equipment throughout the plant tracked and visualised every 10 seconds

Most of the energy monitoring systems for the buildings were already controlled by PLCs that were connected to the in-house LAN. This meant that all the data could be collected by an OPC UA server, and then visualised by the GENESIS64 software.

The team was easily able to achieve factory-wide integrated monitoring of their energy infrastructure. The energy consumption and equipment status in every building was now displayed on GENESIS64 and updated in intervals of 10 seconds. Information spanning multiple pieces of equipment could also be reviewed systematically on a single screen.

Another benefit of using GENESIS64 was that they were able to check the real-time operational data of infrastructure equipment, making it possible to react quickly in the case of equipment malfunctions. Being able to understand the equipment status without having to patrol the factory helped reduce downtime and improve productivity.

They were also able to build the factory-wide system without needing to make large investments. This was possible because individual monitoring systems for most equipment already leveraged PLCs, so the new system only required the addition of Ethernet modules to connect them to the in-house network.

“The only problem was the steam boilers, which didn’t use PLCs but used a monitoring system that was unique to their manufacturer. We therefore added a PLC to the existing monitoring system to make it possible to connect it to Ethernet and the OPC UA server, and then display the data in GENESIS64,” Kitada explained.

There were additional benefits from this integrated monitoring system. Since the team was now able to have one-stop access to all the utility data, they were able to simplify the monitoring systems used by each piece of equipment.

“In particular, the extra-high-voltage electrical substations were previously equipped with multiple monitoring terminals and panels, but thanks to the integrated monitoring achieved with GENESIS64 we were able to eliminate a number of devices and reduce operational costs by about one million yen annually,” Kitada said.

Agile shift to remote working

Nagoya Works started using GENESIS64 for monitoring the energy infrastructure within its factory in 2020, and this unexpectedly provided an additional benefit. With people being encouraged to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kitada and his colleagues were able to shift to remote working right from the start.

Infrastructure data monitored with GENESIS64 could be displayed in a web browser, which does not provide any access to the control system. “All you need is something like a VPN to connect to the LAN, and then you can safely monitor infrastructure equipment remotely,” Kitada said. “When we started using GENESIS64, we didn’t think that remote working would become this important. Consequently, I really feel glad that we went for this system.

“If we access a desktop PC remotely, only one person can access the system at a time, but with the web-browser based GENESIS64, multiple people can view data simultaneously, so I am now able to teach or give instructions to the junior staff remotely as we look together at the same data.”

“Abundant examples of GENESIS64 installations show it is capable of monitoring not only production lines but also utilities and infrastructure equipment in factories,” said Ikuto Matsuyuki from the Software Section, Sales Department, Nagoya Works, Mitsubishi Electric. “In this case, we were able to prove the capabilities of GENESIS64 ourselves by building up a system that made the most of its strengths, such as integrated monitoring and the analysis of data from a variety of systems and equipment, as well as its flexibility in remote access.

“Going forward, we want GENESIS64 to be able to monitor energy consumption data in even smaller time intervals and expand the scope of the systems and equipment it can monitor, like how much energy is being used for air conditioning and lighting. Our goal is to make it into an industrial manufacturing solution for those seeking to achieve carbon neutrality.”

Image caption: Adding a PLC enabled the team to easily collect and monitor data from the steam boilers’ existing monitoring system.