Database as automation hub

Huba Control AG from Würenlos, Switzerland, develops, manufactures and sells components for measuring the physical quantities of pressure and flow. These include pressure switches, sensors, pressure transmitters and flow sensors. "The company successfully produces products in Switzerland for industrial and building automation," confirms Stefan Keller, Head of Control Engineering at INSYS Industriesysteme AG in Münsingen, Switzerland. INSYS designed, built and commissioned the fully automatic production plant at Huba on a turnkey basis. In the plant, sensors are manufactured with assembly and joining processes, labeled and tested with the highest flexibility.

"Everything runs automatically through to the finished sensor," adds Keller. To fully meet customer requirements, annual quantities range between one piece and thousands of parts depending on the product. "Express orders can also be implemented quickly, even squeezed in between other jobs," emphasizes the Professional Bachelor ODEC in Informatics Engineering.

Orders directly from the ERP system

"All orders come directly from the ERP system," continues Keller. The AP+ system decides on order execution also based on the plant status and the material available in the warehouse, which is recorded in the system. The required individual parts come from the parts warehouse magazine controlled by the ERP system and are transferred via an assembly feed system. "Almost in real-time, it is checked which material is in stock for which order," he adds. It is even taken into account that certain housings in the warehouse have been cleaned and therefore must be processed within a certain time. The ERP system learns which parts are required for a product to be manufactured through the connection to engineering. "The processing cells are each equipped with their own object-oriented CODESYS 3.5 soft PLC," continues the automation specialist. Each cell in turn consists of different stations. Everything is highly modular in design.

How does the dynamic production system handle batch size 1 and chaotic manufacturing? S. Keller answers: "The core of the automation architecture is that all required data, such as setting parameters, are stored in a central SQL database and not in the plant controller." The complete data communication of the plant runs via a database, which is also connected to the ERP database. Only this constellation makes it possible to assemble parts for 40.32 million different sensors (not counting customer-specific labeling) with high flexibility.

Automating automation

"The controller only knows the type that is currently to be produced," reports Keller. "The respective current data set is fetched by the PLC from the SQL database via the SQL4automation Connector." The controller is thus completely relieved of data handling. "The Connector takes over the effective connection to the MS SQL Server via the ODBC communication channel with high reliability," emphasizes Keller. "This creates new possibilities: A supervisory control system with OPC server is no longer required." The PLC or robot controller sends the database query via the Connector itself and receives the response in a form readable by the controller. The reaction time for such a query is between 100 ms and 250 ms, even with huge data volumes.

These queries require only minimal additional effort in PLC programming. The SQL4automation Connector only needs to be configured. "In return, the entire middle layer with the required engineering and maintenance effort is eliminated," says Keller. "In total, this means a high efficiency gain and an important step toward automating automation."

When new parts arrive at the station on the workpiece carrier, the ID is read and the controller queries the database to determine what should be produced and in what order. "The so-called marriage of the order from the ERP system with the parameters from the database takes place at the head station," explains Keller. Each station queries its own parameters. The Ultimate version of the Connector with 50 connections is used. But even that is not enough for this application, which requires approximately 200 links. "We therefore programmed a shared point that checks the availability of links," explains Keller. This further increases flexibility: the stations no longer need to share fixed connections. "Only the SQL4automation Connector enables us to build such flexible production systems," he emphasizes.

Great potential for Industry 4.0

Production at Huba is characterized by complete vertical and horizontal integration. "There is no alternative to database connectivity via the SQL4automation Connector," emphasizes the automation specialist. INSYS has been using this technology for three years. "Huba is our key plant," underscores Keller. "Extensive experience has been gained in the meantime." INSYS implements up to 25 projects per year in this way.

"The database solution with the SQL4automation Connector has enormous potential that is still far too little utilized in automation technology and is also excellently suited for Industry 4.0," concludes Keller. He is convinced that an intelligent database must be at the center of Industry 4.0.