Crystal ball gazing: process technology in 2006

As we sit down to a well-deserved Christmas dinner and await the arrival of the New Year, thoughts of work will be far from our attention. But very soon we'll have to return to the office or factory to begin a new working year, one that will no doubt bring new innovations and developments to make our work easier, faster and more productive. What's New in Process Technology magazine asked some of the industry's leading figures, both suppliers and end users, to look into our crystal ball and predict what the future will bring.

Mr Andrew Finch, Weidmuller

The future will see the continuing expansion of ethernet and bus technology for signal transmission, to a point where hardwiring will be retained for almost no other purpose than power transmission. The computer revolution will finally arrive in the industrial markets and the days of hard-wired controls are numbered.

Ethernet transmission will move through wiring similar to the current office lines to control motors, drives and control systems via ethernet, and bus technology will be used for simpler installations.

The possibility of ethernet transmission over power cables is also coming closer, although there are still significant regulatory and standardisation issues to overcome. Some signals can already be sent over power cables, but widespread use of this technology requires the establishment of standard layering arrangements and administrative protocols. This is the domain of the energy companies, power utilities and associations such as the AEEMA, IICA and others.

Once the standardisation issues are resolved, appropriate products will have to be developed that ensure the safety and reliability of the system - it is an entirely different concept and one which Weidmuller is very interested in.

Industrial wireless systems for the control of motors and machinery is less likely in the near to medium term, the problem being protection. Whilst modem technology has vastly improved over past years, there is still the possibility of spikes causing unintended control actions in factories, which is a major safety issue. Industrial networks must be licensed and dedicated to the machines they control, with allocated, stable and secure frequencies. Frequency stability has vastly improved but is still short of the level of integrity offered by ethernet and bus systems.

Mr Robert Merola, SEW-Eurodrive Australia

Geographically isolated from many major markets, Australian manufacturers miss out on numerous advantages enjoyed by their Northern Hemisphere counterparts. Yet, against these odds, our manufacturing sector just continues to expand and prosper.

In industries such as packaging, materials handling and automation, Australian companies are continually looking to improve processes by building faster, more accurate machinery with improved throughput. In recent times, we've seen many OEMs make the move to powerful servo control. This has had a dramatic impact on both production accuracy and throughput, plus provided significant reductions to ongoing running costs.

What Australian OEMs actually need are service, support and supply programs that are responsive to local needs and time-line requirements: order to delivery in less than a week, plus total technical support.

Australia has a reputation for intellectual property in key knowledge areas such as engineering. We also have significant investments in overseas developments and enterprises. Australia already services a number of Asian markets through the export of electrical energy technology and know-how, and the demand for these is expected to grow steadily over the next decade.

We have a duty to retain and grow such Australian intellectual resources, because once you lose the expertise it's hard to get it back. It's not enough to supply Australian manufacturers with high-quality products: we believe technology suppliers all have a responsibility to further progress the technology heart of Australia.

When it comes down to it, Australians want to buy Australian. There's comfort in knowing where and when your requirements will be satisfied, especially when the answers are 'here and now'. We typically get feedback from customers saying that our local assembly means one less thing to worry about, almost like a buffer. This provides them some margin for error: our fast turnaround and understanding of local issues essentially 'picks up the slack'.

We see the need to continually invest in new assembly facilities and methods, as well as local up-skilling, which will in turn help advance Australian manufacturing. It might be a big investment in the short term, but the dividends will certainly pay in the long term.

Mr Ray Almgren, National Instruments

Most users are asking for evolutionary developments, not revolutionary changes. This is a classic situation where end users can see more short-term combinations of technologies and ways to continuously improve products, but not the technological leaps that will drive the products of tomorrow. Today, the requests we get are for a combination of PC and PLC technology. New programmable automation controllers (PACs) that combine the software flexibility of a PC with the ruggedness and reliability of a PLC are very popular. Engineers need the capability to combine multiple control domains, such as digital logic, process control, motion control and machine vision, as well as the ability to perform embedded data logging, web based communication, HMI and advanced control using model or model-free control methods. The open software language and multi-domain capability make PACs a powerful option for engineers struggling to increase efficiency and add new capability to their plants.

Although PACs represent the cutting edge of programmable controllers, the future for PACs can be seen by looking at the latest PC and embedded software. One example is the ability to use software to define hardware. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are electronic components commonly used by electronics manufacturers to create custom chips, allowing intelligence to be placed in new devices. These devices consist of configurable logic blocks that can perform a variety of functions: programmable interconnects that act as switches to connect the function blocks together and I/O blocks that pass data into and out of the chip. By defining the functionality of the configurable logic blocks and the way they are connected to each other and to the I/O, electronics designers can create custom chips without the expense of producing a custom ASIC. FPGAs are like having a computer that literally rewires its internal circuitry to run your application. New software technology is making FPGA performance available to controls engineers. The convergence of PC, PLC, and embedded technologies will drive the innovations of the next decade, providing more efficient control, faster loop response and the ability to incorporate high-speed measurements into plant control systems.

Mr Quentin Mateski, Alcoa Fastening Systems

The next manufacturing technology that we expect will see widespread adoption is automated inspection systems. The equipment and associated communication network and software have all progressed to a level where reliable, high-speed fault detection is possible. At the same time, the cost of the systems has become affordable enough for us to consider deploying this technology across all our manufacturing lines.

As an example, we are trialling the camera systems on our 'Recoil' helically wound wire thread insert manufacturing line where the cycle time is 2.5 to 3 seconds. We are finding that the cameras and supporting systems give us consistently reliable detection of faulty and out-of-spec product.

What we would like to see in the future is not a big leap, just continuing improvement in the reliability of manufacturing equipment. What the camera systems cannot do is pinpoint the cause of defects, or predict the likely occurrence of a malfunction. The next step could be a predictive system that can monitor the tooling and equipment and warn the operator of an impending malfunction. Such a system would be able to indicate the cause of the malfunction and enable preventive action to be taken before material and time is wasted.

Mr Harry Mulder, Omron Electronics

The future of PLCs (and HMIs for that matter) will undoubtedly include faster, more functional CPUs. Communication networks, too, will undoubtedly be faster and wireless technology, too, will become more readily available, although applications will be still be limited.

Customers will continue to demand less propriety networks in favour of more open communication systems, as evidenced by the success of DeviceNet and others. The popularity of ethernet will be accelerated, with industrial I/O networks such as DeviceNet/IP and Modbus/IP leveraging off its success. It's quite likely that other standards will also use ethernet as their foundation technology.

Today, PLCs and HMIs are different entities. These will increasingly become integrated so that the lines between the two eventually blur, and they perhaps even become one entity. Traditional SCADA systems, too, could become integrated within this system.

The IEC61131-3 language has served the PLC industry well, improving the general quality and reusability of programming software. As PLCs continue to break into the lower end of the DCS market, it is possible that this particular standard will be expanded to include process loop control style programming. How well this extension of the standard is accepted by industry and customers remains to be seen, but the call for a standard as this market segment matures will become louder and louder.

The integration of mechatronic products into PLCs will continue and with good reason. However, as remote devices (eg, servos/drives) become increasingly intelligent, it could be that programs themselves become more and more distributed across devices (connected over a high-speed, completely transparent network). However, the programming facilities will have improved to such an extent as to abstract away from users the place where programs reside. Connection to any device in a system will be via a single point.

The internet seems set to become the network of choice for external transfer of data, with web-serving (and IE) doing a chunk of the job currently done by SCADA systems. SCADA systems themselves will evolve upwards into the MES/ERP area, but the entire software suite (including programming/configuration) will eventually fit seamlessly together.

Mr Chris Chan, Rockwell Automation Australia

While there are very definite trends in factory automation, it is important to understand the 'macro' manufacturing issues that are behind these trends. The core objectives in industry today are to realise improved production flexibility, optimal up time and throughput, reduced down time and time-to-market, and minimal cost of plant ownership and unit production. These core manufacturing issues represent the 'here and now' scenario on factory floors across Australia.

As a direct result, there are three distinct automation sector trends emerging in Australian industry. We have seen the beginnings of these in 2005 and can expect to see a great deal more in 2006:

• Integrated Architecture: The main drive here is towards the seamless integration of the plant automation and information system right across the enterprise. This includes the plant floor itself, the ERP platform, the computerised maintenance management system (CMMS), warehousing, purchasing and even e-business portals. Such complete connectivity is described by Rockwell Automation as Integrated Architecture.
• Advanced safety control: We are witnessing a greater push for more integrated safety control and automation systems. This is happening on two levels: firstly, within the plant-wide information networks, and increasingly, within the control platforms themselves. At this stage, these are just emerging trends. The latter, which will ultimately see safety control and standard control fully and seamlessly integrated into the greater control system, is particularly exciting.
• Strategic maintenance strategies: There is a clear trend away from costly and reactive 'breakdown' maintenance methods, to what is known as strategic maintenance strategies: an optimal mix of predictive and preventative maintenance, coupled with conventional breakdown maintenance. Such strategic maintenance strategies are founded on real-time plant information and, as a result, demand the rich information base provided by the plant-wide Integrated Architecture mentioned earlier.