Transformation with Safety, Security and Automation

Cornerstones of automation projects

As early as 2009, Pilz was pur­suing the Industry 4.0 approach with the automa­tion system PSS 4000, phys­i­cally mixing safety and automa­tion, but log­i­cally sep­a­rating them from one another – safety was guar­an­teed, no matter what hap­pened in the stan­dard sec­tion.

Today, Pilz offers holistic automa­tion solu­tions, which sup­port the industry in its tran­si­tion to a Safe and Secure sector, with “pure”, i.e. stan­dard automa­tion con­tin­uing to play an impor­tant role.

How­ever, it is impor­tant to make the overall package man­age­able and easy for the user to imple­ment. To achieve this, rel­e­vant cor­ner­stones such as diag­nos­tics, solu­tion flex­i­bility or also con­nec­tivity must be taken into account, because the industry must man­u­fac­ture its prod­ucts with high pro­duc­tivity. Diag­nos­tics, flex­i­bility and con­nec­tivity also form the basis that enables this.

Cornerstone: Diagnostics

Diag­nos­tics must be avail­able to the user at any time, for example. They must speak plain lan­guage and, above all, be acces­sible regard­less of loca­tion. Users should always keep their plant and machinery firmly in sight, so that the pro­duc­tion processes for decen­tralised sys­tems can run as smoothly as pos­sible without major dis­rup­tions, or so that com­mis­sioning can be car­ried out more quickly.

Indus­trial PCs used as IIoT gate­ways pro­vide such diag­nostic sce­narios. Pilz can help here with the Indus­tri­alPI indus­trial PC: users can easily incor­po­rate it into existing system archi­tec­tures. It col­lects process or oper­a­tional data in the imme­diate vicinity of plant and machinery, for example, and trans­fers it directly to a com­pany cloud.

The IO-Link Safety Master from Pilz also has reli­able diag­nos­tics “on screen”: it extends the func­tions of a con­ven­tional IO-Link Master in the area of func­tional safety by adding the option for safe com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but that’s not all. Appli­ca­tions can also be con­fig­ured and com­mis­sioned more easily via the inte­grated web server – and diag­nosed more quickly. The gen­eral aim of the “Diag­nos­tics” cor­ner­stone is clear: high pro­duc­tivity.

Cornerstone: Solution flexibility

The Indus­tri­alPI also rep­re­sents an easy-to-use solu­tion for the imple­men­ta­tion of Indus­trie 4.0 con­cepts. It is an open, mod­ular indus­trial PC that uses Linux, a freely avail­able open source soft­ware, as its oper­ating system and offers numerous expan­sion mod­ules. As a result, the indus­trial PC can be used as a gateway in Indus­trial IoT envi­ron­ments (IIoT) or as a Soft PLC in the widest range of appli­ca­tions.

Two types are avail­able, making it a flex­ible player: it is par­tic­u­larly suit­able as a soft PLC for automa­tion appli­ca­tions. It con­trols plant and machinery: poten­tial appli­ca­tion areas would be portal machines used to sort bat­tery cells or carton erec­tors in the pack­aging industry, for example. It under­takes drive tasks – whether these are pure con­trol appli­ca­tions or syn­chro­nous axis move­ments in a machine’s pow­er­train.

Flex­ible plant con­cepts are also pos­sible with the IOLS Master: four IO-Link Safety Ports (Class A) are avail­able, plus an addi­tional four ports, each with two con­fig­urable safe dig­ital inputs or out­puts. The sen­sors and actu­a­tors “share” the same con­nec­tion, as needed. As a result, users can make their design more flex­ible, and/or expand it. Ulti­mately, the flex­i­bility of the solu­tion ensures that pro­duc­tion remains adapt­able to dif­ferent require­ments.

Cornerstone: Connectivity

The third cor­ner­stone is con­nec­tivity. The result is seam­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion at field level. Open, flex­ible IIoT archi­tec­tures are the basis. Only dynamic solu­tion approaches enable mutual col­lab­o­ra­tion to work across numerous devices, instal­la­tions and appli­ca­tions.

Users can employ the Indus­tri­alPI as a gateway, data col­lector and diag­nostic unit in con­junc­tion with the safe small con­troller PNOZ­multi 2 and the automa­tion system PSS 4000, because the indus­trial solu­tion ensures data exchange between the Internet of Things and cloud ser­vices.

A fur­ther look at the issue of con­nec­tivity in prac­tice shows that it must be able to manage both safety-related and stan­dard com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This is where the IO-Link Safety Master PDP67 from Pilz puts its focus. It processes IO-Link Safety, fail­safe, IO-Link and stan­dard sig­nals. The Master “directs” sen­sors and field devices as part of Pilz’s IO-Link Safety System. The safety-related IO-Link Safety sen­sors in the system pro­vide it with impor­tant status infor­ma­tion and there­fore offer more, i.e. intel­li­gent, diag­nostic options.

If state of the art, the cor­ner­stone of con­nec­tivity paves the way for trans­for­ma­tion, whereby greater avail­ability has prag­matic ben­e­fits for the user.