Siemens SITRANS store IQ Smart Monitoring App

Be there without being there －

SITRANS store IQ
Foundry Furnace Monitoring

Situation
A foundry has an existing PLC whose main function was to monitor 5 furnace systems that uses 23 thermocouples to monitor various temperature aspects of the operation. Initially they had decided to purchase a new PLC that would give them a local view and alarming of those temperatures

Customers Challenge
The initial idea to purchase a new PLC for the required functionality had a cost and complication factor that led them to look at alternatives.

Solution
The Siemens Sales Channel partner introduced the idea of digitalization and remote monitoring solution. Working with the EIS team (Engineered Instrument Solutions) in Harleysville PA a system was developed that provided an IOT enclosure to monitor 23 thermocouple inputs, including a local display with the ability to set and monitor local alarms.

The Siemens solution included an S7-1200 controller with thermocouple modules to read furnace temperatures and display on a TP-700 HMI. In addition an IOT2040 gateway reads data via the S7 protocol and sends data to MindSphere, with the SITRANS store IQ monitoring App connected to the customers Ethernet plant network.

The hardware was configured, tested and shipped to the customer site. From there onboarding of the IoT was done via virtual meet with the support of the US PA DEL team.

Benefits
The Customer saw the advantage to remotely monitor these temperatures 24/7 on their mobile devices or PCs with the ability to alarm and notify their staff if temperature parameters left the desired ranges.

This in turn facilitates the operators to maintain the high production rates and maintain consistent dimensional accuracy of the casting process without sacrificing production time. The customer is happy with the solution and has been operating 24/7 with no issues. Alarms have been created and notifications assigned to staff.

As a result of the benefits seen, the customer has approached EIS requesting expansion of the SITRANS store IQ system into the casting mold creation process.

Customer “Having the temperature reading in front of us gives a great benefit in our ability to quickly react to process variations. We can easily notify our staff to resolve issues quickly and keep the operation running smoothly.”