Pharmaceutical Utilities Data Concentrator

Utilities (NAICS 221)

The Challenge

The Utilities Group of a local pharmaceutical manufacturing firm utilized a data concentrator to organize data from 48 different remote PLC's that controlled the manufacturing facilities critical utilities.  This information was accessed by a Wonderware HMI and data historian system.  Setpoints entered into the HMI were routed to the remote PLC's by the data concentrator.  The system design permitted several single points of failure such as a single processor and several failures resulted in GMP deviations, an unacceptable situation.  The existing PLC platform was also very limited in available memory limiting future expansion. Recognizing an opportunity to leverage advances in PLC design the customer issued a Request for Proposal specifying an Allen Bradley ControlLogix solution.

The Solution

The design of the system was performed with an eye on what could be improved upon, not just on recreating the existing program on a newer platform.  Redundancy was incorporated from the beginning with the use of redundant PLC racks, processors, power supplies and Control Net communication channels to a gateway PLC rack that contains the Ethernet and DH+ communication modules.  To read more on this solution follow the link on the right for the complete Project Spotlight.

This is just one of many solutions that Frakes Engineering has provided over the years.  If you have questions about this or other services that we provide, please feel free to contact us.

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