Tag: wireless

Leading automotive tier one leverages project management, technical capabilities and class-leading Integrated Architecture products

The Rockwell Automation Global Solutions team in the Czech Republic was challenged with project managing, designing, installing and commissioning a complete turnkey door module assembly line

Background: Pyeong Hwa Automotive (PHA) is a world leader in the automotive subassembly business. Headquartered in Korea, the company operates seven plants in Korea, seven plants in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, China, India and the USA and three worldwide sales branches.

The company’s Czech Republic plant, PHA Czech s.r.o., in Český Těšín, 300 km east north of Prague, started production in 2008 and employs 300 people. Its primary focus is to produce door modules for a leading Korean automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM). However, it also produces non-module door hinges, bonnet/hood hinges, tailgate hinges and tailgate latches for a number of other leading automotive OEMs.

In a recent development programme, the Rockwell Automation® Global Solutions team in the Czech Republic was tasked by PHA Czech s.r.o. to develop a complete control solution for a front/rear, left/right turnkey door module assembly line and end-of-line (EOL) test stations. The project scope for the team, which has been working with PHA since 2006, involved project management, administration, hardware and software design, cabinet manufacture, site installation, commissioning and production start-up.

Challenge: The assembly line – the fifth to be developed by Rockwell Automation for PHA – had to be designed to meet demanding production capacities and targets; capable of building 850 car sets per day, yet flexible enough to support building up to 1,000 car sets per day. It also would be the first door module line built on a conveyor concept, where the panels move on pallets and the operators stay in one place.

In addition, PHA wanted enhanced quality levels and various process optimisation steps based on both knowledge from previous installs and newer standards and targets defined by more recent end-user customer requirements. A comprehensive machine and personnel safety solution was also part of the brief.

Solution: For the complete door module car set assembly, there are two lines (front and rear) with conveyors carrying the front door module down one side and the rear down the other. These modules are then assembled in parallel using an identical sequence. Assembly operations include: pulley pre-assembly and riveting; drum winding; window regulator assembly; motor and speaker assembly; latch placement and the incorporation of a side-impact sensor and wire harness. The end-of-line (EOL) inspection stations then undertake full door module functionality tests and motor noise sound inspection (in a sound room), deploying a Poka Yoke quality system.

According to Rockwell Automation Account Manager Miroslav Novotny: “This was a complex project, which was made easier thanks to our Integrated Architecture® portfolio. The main line controllers on the front and rear lines are Allen-Bradley ControlLogix® 1756 L73 programmable automation controllers (PACs). The chain conveyors and motors, which handle all aspects of pallet movement are controlled using Allen-Bradley PowerFlex® 525 variable-speed AC drives. This comprises lateral and up and down movement of the pallets between workstations, and control of the recirculating conveyor, which takes empty pallets back to the beginning of the production line.”

The ControlLogix PAC collects, collates and controls all the signals from the various assembly stations using Allen-Bradley Stratix™ managed switches and Allen-Bradley POINT I/O™ modules on an EtherNet/IP™ network. This is to accommodate the long distances involved, including the primary conveyor which is 15 m long. At the end of the line, in the testing stations, four Allen-Bradley CompactLogix™ PACs are used, two in the sound rooms and two in final inspection. The ControlLogix PAC also oversees a robot used on part of the line.

The automation solution is completed by a wide variety of Allen-Bradley low-voltage products, including buttons, sensors and other accessories, inside the cabinets deployed at each station. Finally, the line’s safety infrastructure, which complies with all local safety legislation, comprises a number of Allen-Bradley safety gates, linked together with emergency stops at each station, all connected in series to safety relays within the main control cabinet.

Rockwell Automation Global Solutions Team Leader in The Czech Republic, Petr Veselý, explains: “I have worked with PHA for 10 years now.  For this project we met with their engineers, who gave us a very detailed specification, including 3D models of the final product. They also gave us their expectations regarding timings and volume targets. We delivered a complete solution – from the control architecture and software to supervision of the whole line, including all mechanical and electrical elements. We also dealt with three local mechanical assembly suppliers and once the concept had been created, we then handled all of the approvals within PHA.

“Once the mechanical design had been approved,” Veselý continues, “the manufacturing go-ahead was given and the electrical concept was developed. Upon approval, we employed four programmers from the Rockwell Automation office in Prague to create the software application. Two programmers worked on the main line and two on the inspection stations. Studio 5000® was used for visualisation and, in answer to one of PHA’s primary demands for flexibility, we applied customised application windows. Each station uses a separate all-in-one PC touch panel (18 on the main line and 11 in the standalone and test stations) running C++ applications. Further visualisation and control of the main conveyor is supplied by two Allen-Bradley PanelView Plus™ HMIs.

Results:

According to Novotny: “This successful project delivery demonstrates the professionalism and capabilities of our Global Solutions team, not only in the provision of technical solutions but also in the delivery of complete project management. The experience and skills obtained in this instance will be adopted as a basis for further similar opportunities in the automotive market, including future projects with PHA. Indeed, we are already in discussions with PHA for the provision of another door assembly for a different car model.”

Przemysław Sakowicz, Manufacturing Engineer at PHA Czech s.r.o. cites fast support, good relations and previous good experiences of working with Rockwell Automation as the primary reasons for using the leading automation provider again: “I know exactly what quality I can expect from Rockwell Automation, it has a very good team of programmers that reacts quickly to any issues or challenges we face. We had multiple customer audits before and during project start up and the auditors were very satisfied with what we have developed with Rockwell Automation, which is very important for us. I would particularly like to thank Petr Veselý and his team for the project fulfilment and management; they met all the requirements from my side.

“With regards to specific benefits of the Rockwell Automation solution,” Sakowicz concludes, “as well as hitting the production targets, we expect to see significantly reduced programming for the new line we are developing as well as the easy tuning and manipulation of the software we have seen in this solution. The Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture has also delivered a more flexible and open platform for both remote troubleshooting and local maintenance.”

Wireless technology gains momentum

With just about every walk of life openly embracing the freedom offered by wireless technology, why does it seem that industry has lagged behind? We look at some of the perceived issues and how many of the leading suppliers are starting to address these and develop industry-specific software and hardware solutions.

One of the most important prospects for the industrial fieldbus arena is the incorporation and deployment of wireless infrastructures and capabilities into industrial products, equipment, processes and facilities. Speed and bandwidth improvements have made this approach inevitable, as industrial companies also attempt to leverage the same benefits they see from wireless solutions in other walks of life.

As Manufacturing 4.0 and the so-called “Internet of things” philosophy begins to permeate into the mind-set of industry leaders, more and more suppliers are releasing wireless- and internet-capable equipment in order to leverage the wireless protocols that already exist for a number of established and proven communication solutions. Most of these solutions are simply wireless variants of their existing wired counterparts. They deliver the same functionality, but with the obvious benefit of significantly less cabling.

A wireless approach offers many benefits, especially in remote and geographically dispersed installations, where a traditional wired infrastructure would potentially be difficult to deploy and maintain. A good example would be in a liquid or gas storage facility, which would typically deploy multiple sensors to gather a wide variety of state data, such as level, temperature, volume, flow, etc. This data eventually needs to be fed back to a central repository, which could be kilometres from the furthest sensor. With wireless access points and repeaters, a single wireless network could easily replace many hundreds of kilometres of cabling.

Industry has been slower on the uptake of wireless, arguably because it demands more from its solutions in terms of signal quality, bandwidth, speed and robustness.

With many of us experiencing domestic wireless issues, such as signal drop offs and less-than-ideal router performance, it is understandable that some of these misgivings have rubbed off and have made their way into the business sector. A two second delay in handshaking between your PC and a wireless office printer is one thing, but the same delay in a factory environment could stop a production line. For this reason, the industrial arena demands more capable hardware specifically designed to operate in critical manufacturing and process applications.

The other issue with wireless in a sensitive industrial environment is security, with wireless Ethernet being a big target. However, security solutions are often sold hand-in-hand with industrial wireless suites, allowing industrial wireless networks to be integrated with (but ring fenced from) enterprise solutions using gateways and buffer zones.

RS currently offers a range of wireless-capable products, covering multiple protocols from many leading vendors. These products range in size and complexity from wireless pushbuttons from Schneider Electric, up to wireless access points from Omron. These leading vendors, and many others like them, are introducing new technology on a regular basis and much of it will leverage the flexibility and ease of use available from wireless infrastructures. Access points also open up wireless capabilities to just about any type of industrial hardware you care to mention, as long as it can ultimately ‘talk’ with the more popular communication protocols such as Ethernet.

The beauty of most standardised wireless solutions is that they tend to be ‘agnostic’ in the fact that a certified products from any vendors should happily operate side by side with products from another vendor and deliver data over a common shared network. This lack of a closed approach means that users also have a much broader base of products to choose from, especially down at the lower levels. In most instances, an automation suite, whether it be wireless or not, will be designed in the same way, with higher-level components such as PLCs, drives, HMIs, etc. all coming from a  single supplier, but the lower level (low voltage) components can be sourced from other suppliers. They don’t even have to be wireless themselves as wireless I/O modules – which offer wireless data/signal transfer to and from PLCs – are readily available.

Industrial wireless technology is only going to get better as products evolve in line with revised standards, enhanced technology, greater bandwidths and faster speeds. One only has to look at the way Ethernet has evolved over the last 40 years to see how a single, basic protocol has mutated into to the most widespread commercial and industrial communications solution on the planet. It may be that in the next 10 years wireless will overtake wired solutions and become the industry standard. With investigations gathering speed into, among other things, wireless energy transfer, the future certainly looks interesting.

This article was written for Publitek on behalf of RS Components.