Software ensures procedure change records are kept

Where strict government regulations stipulate the need for extensive electronic records to be kept during the manufacturing process, this software keeps records on manufacturing process changes.

In some industries strict government regulations stipulate the need for extensive electronic records to be kept during the manufacturing process.

Two such industries are food and pharmaceutical, where the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US now demands compliance with 21 CFR Part ll.

This includes the capture and storage of the version control of PLC and other device programs in automated manufacturing processes.

GE Fanuc's CIMPLICITY Manager is a software management solution that assists FDA regulated companies in achieving 21 CFR Part ll.

The Louisiana-Pacific Coillte (LPC) installation in Waterford, Eire, manufactures wood based products.

Though this is in no way related to the food or pharmaceutical industries, LPC has long appreciated the benefits of being able to automatically monitor PLC fixes.

They have been successfully using CIMPLICITY Manager (and its forerunner) for over 2 years, soon after it became available.

Seamus Ryan, Electrical Maintenance Engineer at LPC, explained.

"GE Fanuc's CIMPLICITY Manager has proved especially beneficial to LP as the company works a continuous shift schedule of two 12-hour shifts, 7-days per week.

Any changes made during one shift are automatically recorded by CIMPLICITY Manager so that subsequent shifts have immediate access to version records on the system." At Waterford, LPC can manufacture up to 350,000m3 of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) per annum using Irish timber.

From the deep sea port alongside the plant, LP exports the OSB throughout Europe.

OSB is an economical timber-based board used for many applications in the construction industry, including flooring and portable buildings, and for DIY, packaging and furniture.

It is also used widely as hoarding for building sites.

As a joint venture between Louisiana Pacific and Coillte, the Irish state forestry company, it uses forest thinnings and treetops from Ireland's rapidly expanding forests of spruce and pine i.e renewable by-products.

After storage, where the percentage of water content is carefully controlled, the raw material has the bark removed.

It is then cut into wafers and dried.

The strands are coated with LP's proprietary mixture of phenol-based adhesive and water-resistant resin.

To construct an OSB panel, these pieces are oriented along the length on the outer layers, and in cross orientation on the inner layers.

On the thickest boards, 3 layers, comprised of a multitude of wood strands.027 inches thick, are compressed under extreme heat and pressure.

The process produces 24 feet x 8 feet sheets which are then cut into six 8 feet by 4 feet panels for shipping.

The environmentally-friendly manufacture results in very few waste products.

Particles from the debarking and waferising processes, and from the final tongue and grooving and sanding are all fed back into the manufacturing cycle.

The wafer orientation and lamination results in great strength, rigidity and stability.

It achieves a superior resistance to distortion, splitting and delamination compared to veneered boards, and unlike plywoods, does not use hardwood.

The manufacturing processes at the Waterford plant are highly automated, with ten PLCs controlling around 2500 I/Os.

It is vital to keep the plant up and running 24 hours per day, so troubleshooting the automated control systems is often done under pressure.

It is very important to log any PLC fixes that are carried out, and then to inform following shifts of these changes.

It was to ensure that the logging and reporting of changes was carried out 100% effectively that LP invested in CIMPLICTY Manager.

CIMPLICTY Manager runs in the background on three PCs on the network.

They only allow authorised personnel to carry out system changes and automatically record the identity of those people making changes.

They are capable of providing security, automated audit trails, version control and electronic change history, as well as documentation control of spreadsheets, CAD drawings and Word documents.

With a user-configurable interface that reflects the facilities and equipment at an installation, the integrated and scalable CIMPLICITY Manager package organises and automatically tracks every element of the automation and software systems.

An HTML interface allows customisation of a graphical plant layout, enabling point-and-click access to projects and devices on the system.

CIMPLICTY Manager will work with systems and software from virtually all manufacturers, so that existing control and legacy systems do not need replacing in order to achieve any necessary compliance.

CIMPLICITY Manager's Disaster Recovery also enables quick restoration of critical control PCs, with fast access to correct released versions.

Detailed reporting facilities enable presentation of historical data in user-defined formats.

Ryan added, "CIMPLICITY Manager automatically logs any changes to PLC programs that may result from a new project coming live, or from maintenance work taking place, during a shift.

We can establish the set conditions with just the click of a mouse, whereas before it could take up to 2 minutes.

We now have the ability to interrogate the system to establish the set conditions that resulted in one batch of products and compare them with settings for a later batch of products.".

Back to top