At DuPont’s Fayetteville Works plant in Fayetteville, N.C., the company produces Tedlar polymer film used in the manufacturing of solar panels. With just 35 employees operating the two plants at this site, any extra help they can get to stay ahead of maintenance issues that could slow or stop production is critically beneficial.
“We have valves in operation that have had millions of direction changes,” said Anthony Kennedy, process controls engineer at the Fayetteville site, during his presentation at the Siemens Automation Summit 2019. “The valve manufacturers recommend checking the valves at every 100,000 changes. As a small plant, our dilemma isn’t knowing whether we need to repair or replace lots of valves; we know we do. The dilemma is knowing which ones to focus on first.”
为了解决这个难题,杜邦的费耶特维尔的作品plant started using Siemens Valve Monitoring app early this year. “The app helps us target the valves that need servicing or replacing the most,” said Kennedy, noting there are nearly 80 valves with Siemens Sipart PS2 positioners installed at the site.
在他在杜邦的角色，肯尼迪负责维护和编程西门子SIMATIC PCS 7分布式控制系统（DCS），该控制系统（DCS）控制站点上的植物。他解释说，尽管阀门与Profibus PA联网，但该公司未充分利用协议提供的诊断数据。这意味着阀门没有基于操作数据定期维护。他的特征是阀门的历史维护，即反应 - 也就是说，它们被修复仅作为运营问题出现。
With the Valve Monitoring App, plant workers can now see Sipart PS2 data more frequently and it can be accessed from the engineering station via a browser, said Kennedy. New data is cycled into the app every 24 hours.
The app’s home page has a monitoring tab and scheduling tab showing the status and all alerts on the connected valves. As a highlighted valve’s issues are addressed, they move from being “open” to “managed” once they have been placed into the app’s maintenance schedule.
为了帮助查看各种阀门问题，肯尼迪表示，该应用程序允许用户通过最近或下一个维护，服务到期日，位置和关键性来排序阀门。“您还可以深入深入阀门，以查看趋势，异常，并添加注释，并附上所有其他阀门数据以供将来参考，”他说。“对于不同的阀门，您甚至可以具有不同的kpis [关键性能指标] - 一个有助于表示泄漏修复的重点领域的因素。”
Along with the Valve Monitoring App, DuPont also installed a Siemens Simatic PDM Maintenance Station data collector as part of its Simatic PCS 7 architecture to further improve the site’s valve maintenance. The two computers installed for the Valve Monitoring App and PDM Maintenance Station are both 24V, DIN rail-mounted computers connected to the plant’s process control network. According to Kennedy, the installation process took just one day with the help of Siemens engineers at the site.
In the few months DuPont has been using the app, Kennedy said, “We have been better able to focus on the valves needing the most attention. Before we had access to all this valve data, we didn’t realize the way valve leakage could be used to predict that a valve was leaking through a top hat or when a linkage was loose or shifting on a valve.”
Beyond better identification of valve issues, the app has also heightened awareness of valve condition and is helping meet production goals without unscheduled downtime due to valve failure, Kennedy said, adding, "Proper valve function also improves process control and helps make the process run in a more stable mode."
He further added that the app has also enabled DuPont to train more of its technicians on valve operation.
杜邦的运营部门目前正在与公司的IT部门合作，允许从应用程序发送到云服务器的数据，以便为杜邦工厂可靠性工程师和维护技术人员更轻松地访问数据。肯尼迪表示，这种类型的连接可用于帮助连续更新应用程序并指向工厂工作人员可能最初看到的问题。
