Continental

Increase Performance

In order to increase a system's performance, it is not always necessary to completely automate everything from scratch. For a vulcanisation system for manufacturing rubber bellows in the Continental plant in Vahrenwald, the engineers decided to leave the control as it was and to improve the performance only through higher data transparency. The condition for this measure was a simple, software-based data access from the SQL database to the controller. Angelo Bindi of Continental explains the solution.

Continental AG is a German publicly listed corporation in the automotive supply industry, headquartered in Hannover. In 2015, the company employed approximately 212,000 people at over 200 locations in 53 countries. In Germany, Continental is the market leader in tire production. Over the years, the corporation has evolved from a pure tire manufacturer into the largest automotive supplier in the world.

The origin of today's Continental AG was a small rubber processing company in Vahrenwalt near Hannover in the year 1869. At this traditional site, where the headquarters of the group are also located, rubber products for the automotive industry are produced to this day. Among others, two different production sites of ContiTech, where bellows for air spring systems are produced, are located here. These bellows are pieced together in a machine from several layers of elastomer and aramid fibre layers in order to increase the strength and are later crimped around a steel bar as part of the air spring system. "Our air spring systems are employed by all big car brands", Angelo Bindi, deputy director of industrial engineering at Continental AG, reports.

While the automation technology of one of the two systems was recently replaced completely, it was decided to leave the second vulcanisation system as it was with its older controller model of the Siemens S7-family. "The system is running stably and efficiently", A. Bindi adds. "Therefore there was no reason for significant changes". The different sensors and actuators are controlled with the Siemens S7-PLCs. There is no superior control system.

Access to Production Data

In order to further increase the production efficiency, it is, however, very important to gain seamless access to the production data. "It was our aim to extract all relevant system and production figures from the controller, in order to analyse it to further increase the system performance", the manager confirms. "Especially measurement readings should be transferred in cyclical time intervals." Doing the right thing with the right means – that is the essence of efficiency according to A. Bindi. This does not always mean that significant parts of the system have to replaced, as long as a stable and productive production is guaranteed.

But this does not mean that there is no room for improvement. An increase in system performance first of all requires maximum data transparency. "Up until now, measurement readings were sometimes written down manually", the qualified engineer tells us. "This process should definitely be automated." One option for implementing this would be retrospectively installing an OPC-UA module in the controller. But the plant operators wanted to make do without any sort of additional hardware. "We wanted a pure software solution", the automation expert emphasises.

Connecting the Controller and Database with the Software

This is when they came across the SQL4automation Connector solution in the technical journal "etz elektrotechnik & automation". This software solution conveniently connects an array of controllers with databases. It was developed for industrial use and meets high requirements when it comes to reliability and performance. "With SQL4automation, we have direct access to our production and system figures in our Microsoft-SQL database", A. Bindi happily relates. "We are now able to continuously analyse the system." All relevant figures are visualised with a traffic light control and the plant operators can see all important information concerning the condition of the system at a glance.

Data in the Correct Format

"SQL4automation was implemented here more than a year ago", A. Bindi reports. "Since it was put into operation, it has been running without any problems and provides the required mapped data right in the format that we need."

A simple licence for the software was all that was needed. The implementation effort was easily manageable with the standard library modules for the Siemens S7-PLC. "We are very content", the Continental manager concludes. "Only one installation and the reliable solution delivers results." Due to the success of the implementation, further systems at Continental have by now been equipped with the SQL4automation solution.