Polymorphism for State Machines

Alfred Theorin and Charlotta Johnsson, Lund University

In production industry today a lot of engineering time is required to develop and maintain control applications. One part of the control applications are the state machines which typically are written in Grafcet/SFC. Several efforts have been made to extend Grafcet/SFC to achieve more effective and convenient development, e.g. by introducing hierarchical structuring, reusable sub-state machines, and various means for convenient exception handling. Working with these extensions available also result in more maintainable and overviewable applications. The extensions are included in the Grafchart language, developed at Lund University, and have proved to both work and scale well for real applications. Extensions to support object orientated state machines have also been proposed and evaluated with good results, e.g. for batch applications.

Technician  Academia/R&D/Scientist  Engineer  Management

Leveraging Multiple Model Analysis for Non-Settling Slurry Flow through Pipes: A Design Approach for Pump Sizing and Control Valve Sizing

Babu Sivaraman, Flour Enterprises

An iterative design approach is presented for non-settling slurry flow analysis through pipes. The system analysis is used to verify piping configuration and sizing, pump sizing, and control valve sizing and location. Non-settling slurries are a mixture of high-percentage of fine solids (typically less than 100 microns) with water. The solids are suspended in the mixture and do not settle.
A spreadsheet is used for modeling and analyzing non-settling slurries (Bingham fluids) pipe flow under various flow rate conditions. The critical velocity criteria are verified for design and nominal flow rates for all pipelines in the system to identify any pipe size changes required to satisfy the velocity criteria. Once appropriate pipe sizes are chosen, a Bingham Plastic Viscosity model is created using a commercial pipe flow analysis and system modeling software tool to verify flow distribution and to verify control valve functionality in the system for the given flow rates . This iterative design approach provided the initial estimates for control valve pressure drops and allowed evaluations of alternate flow scenarios.

Applying Manufacturing Intelligence to OEE for Real-Time Decision Support

Jeffery Cawley, Northwest Analytics

High performing manufacturers depend on analytics based decision support for process management. Recent MESA studies demonstrate that actively using Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) is strongly correlated with superior corporate performance. MI is based on integrating data from all points in the manufacturing and distribution process, coupling it with transaction based business data and applying process-based analytics such as SPC and process capability analysis to accurately understand process behavior and manage process improvement. Enterprise manufacturing intelligence software is a suite of applications that integrates a company's manufacturing data from multiple sources to aid in reporting, analysis, visual summaries and passing data between enterprise-level and plant-floor systems. The combined data can be given a new structure to make locating information easier. The discussion provides a case study using OEE to monitor and improve performance of a bottling line. SPC based analytics are applied to the OEE values to identify problems and supply the basis for line performance improvement.

Energy Storage at the Heart of Wireless Sensor Networks

JAlex Bynum, Saft America, Inc.

Long life and performance of the energy source are key to achieving wireless sensor networks with sufficient autonomy and value to the system where they are deployed. Understanding the application use profile and environment while closely matching the electrochemistry to this profile, including performance models leads to predictable and satisfactory performance. Considerations include primary cells, secondary cells, and primary cells plus hybrid layer capacitors.

The load profile and environment are design drivers for the energy solution. Quiescent background currents and pulsed loads over a wide temperature range make up many of today's requirements. Typical solutions can include high energy density (1420 Wh/l) primary cells such as Li-SOCl2 coupled with a capacitor in parallel providing both energy and seconds of pulse capability. Secondary cells, which normally have considerable pulse capability, can also be considered if energy harvesting is available for charging.

This presentation includes application examples and system diagrams for primary and energy harvesting secondary applications. Additionally, a full range of electrochemistries and cell constructions are considered.