Partnership for sustainable access management

Starrag and Pilz have main­tained a close and trusting coop­er­a­tion for more than 20 years. Pilz is Star­rag’s partner for automa­tion and safety; for Pilz, Starrag was an “early adopter” of inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts and solu­tions.

Well-founded prac­tical expe­ri­ence and expec­ta­tions from the cus­tomer’s per­spec­tive, together with devel­op­ment exper­tise and anchoring in numerous indus­trial sec­tors, create mutual syn­er­gies. “We very much value our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pilz, which was con­struc­tive and coop­er­a­tive from the start. In fact, we have crit­i­cally tested and opti­mised prod­ucts and solu­tions more than once and brought them to matu­rity together”, says Ulf Keiling, Team Leader Hard­ware HMPS at Starrag.

Shortly after its market launch, the classic PIT­mode was in series use at Starrag and has proven itself to this day as a reli­able, easy-to-use oper­ating mode selec­tion and access per­mis­sion system.

Flexible and safe key systems as state of the art

Rigid key sys­tems are passé. Modern oper­ating mode selec­tion and access per­mis­sion sys­tems such as PIT­mode from Pilz have already met with broad approval among machine and plant oper­a­tors in recent years. Dif­ferent oper­ating modes require coor­di­nated com­pe­ten­cies and clearly defined user rights. For example these include set-up or retooling, checking the required func­tions on the work­piece, mon­i­toring quality levels, and ser­vice and main­te­nance tasks. Even inte­grated entry and access per­mis­sion sys­tems for Safety & Secu­rity are increas­ingly becoming stan­dard. The aim is this: to ensure that oper­a­tors are as safe as pos­sible in their respec­tive work sit­u­a­tion, and to ensure that sys­tems are nei­ther dam­aged nor stand idle for long periods of time in the event of acci­dental or even delib­erate misuse. The focus is increas­ingly shifting to the “Secu­rity” aspect.

Highest priority for Safety & Security in the package

When updating the plant, Starrag has always strived to make machine oper­a­tion more intu­itive, more effi­cient and at the same time safer. When Starrag was faced with updating its Heckert com­pact machines, opti­mising the oper­ating and safety con­cept was also included. The highly com­plex 5‑axis hor­i­zontal machining cen­tres with inte­grated tool mag­a­zine take on a multi-stage task set of turning, drilling and milling. Among other things, they man­u­fac­ture and process engine casting blocks or tur­bine blades with com­plex geome­tries for the avi­a­tion industry. Max­imum pre­ci­sion and effi­cient process work­flows are equally in demand. Inte­grated safety solu­tions such as PIT­mode ensure the integrity of human and machine.

Ulf Keiling knows that there is still more to do: “We want to make oper­ating errors or neg­li­gent actions resulting in plant down­time even less likely in the future. In addi­tion to the classic safety issues, secu­rity aspects play an increas­ingly impor­tant role today. That is why modern access per­mis­sion man­age­ment must clearly and unequiv­o­cally con­trol who has access to which machine and process data.”

From classic to “future”

With PIT­mode classic, users have access to a keypad with four oper­ating modes and a key inter­face. How­ever, the keys with the indi­vidual oper­ating modes were pre­de­fined and could not be cus­tomised. The idea and aim was an inno­v­a­tive, flex­ible and cus­tomis­able entry and access man­age­ment system that covers Safety and Secu­rity aspects in equal mea­sure.

Pilz worked in close coop­er­a­tion with Starrag to bring the suc­cessor solu­tion to series pro­duc­tion: Today, plant and machine oper­a­tors can cus­tomise their keys them­selves and allo­cate them an indi­vidual pass­word. One note­worthy detail and also a side spec­i­fi­ca­tion: as holes of 22.5 mm are stan­dard on Starrag con­trol panels, it should be pos­sible to inte­grate the slot, keypad and USB ter­minal accord­ingly.

Key to comprehensive safety

Suc­cessor to the well-proven PIT­mode is PIT­mode fusion: the com­plete, down­ward-com­pat­ible solu­tion for Safety & Secu­rity con­sists of the read/write unit PITreader with RFID tech­nology and inte­grated web server, plus the Safe Eval­u­a­tion Unit (SEU). This com­bines the reader, keypad and safety con­troller. With clear, unequiv­ocal per­mis­sion man­age­ment, PIT­mode fusion ensures that a plant oper­ator only receives the rights for the respec­tive plant cor­re­sponding to their qual­i­fi­ca­tions and skills. The dif­fer­ence to PIT­mode lies in the indi­vid­u­al­i­sa­tion: “With PIT­mode fusion, machine oper­a­tors can use the soft­ware on the PC to para­me­terise generic keys, which are tai­lored pre­cisely to the respec­tive users and their tasks”, Ulf Keiling explains.

When an oper­ator uses their per­son­alised key, the plant con­troller only enables the per­mis­sions intended for them. One key can also cover sev­eral machines: for example, the key owner may be autho­rised to carry out main­te­nance on one machine and adjust­ments on another. Also, indi­vidual oper­ator guid­ance can be pro­vided with a cus­tomised dis­play, for example. In plain lan­guage, this means that only the oper­ating graphics that are suit­able for the task or the user appear on the oper­ating panel of the respec­tive machine.

Already firmly in sight: EU Machinery Regulation from 2027

The new com­plete solu­tion for Safety & Secu­rity PIT­mode fusion increases both safety for the oper­ator and pro­tec­tion against oper­ating errors and manip­u­la­tion. In con­junc­tion with the oper­a­tion ele­ment PIT oe 4s and the data inter­face PIT oe USB, which can be acti­vated depending on per­mis­sions, PIT­mode fusion is set­ting new stan­dards, par­tic­u­larly in terms of secu­rity. Oper­a­tors have a wealth of options for indi­vidual user man­age­ment. Employees are pro­vided with diverse data access rights. For example, only ser­vice employees with the appro­priate key can use the PIT oe USB inter­face in the pre­de­fined “ser­vice mode”. This means that data cannot be accessed by unau­tho­rised per­sons. That increases secu­rity on the machine. PIT­mode fusion is equipped with an Eth­ernet inter­face. By net­working the indi­vidual readers, old or unre­turned keys can be deac­ti­vated on one or more machines.

Dozens of Starrag sys­tems fea­turing the flex­ible, pio­neering entry and access per­mis­sion system are now in use by cus­tomers. “PIT­mode fusion will com­pletely replace the classic PIT­mode. Pri­marily because it offers sig­nif­i­cantly higher stan­dards for Safety and Secu­rity, with a view to the EU Machinery Reg­u­la­tion that comes into force in 2027. “This rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant added value for our cus­tomers,” says Ulf Keiling, sum­marising.