Plant and machine manufacturers and operators require high-performance monitoring to ensure the highest possible availability of their equipment. Production requires continuous optimisation, and malfunctions need to be detected as early as possible. Batch-based measurement data is vital for quality purposes. This means increasingly more data needs be acquired, requiring an intelligent database system. Servicing plans are becoming increasingly based on remote access to plant and machine data.

The practice of acquiring and evaluating machine and process data has now reached high levels. Manufacturers and operators also want their existing infrastructure of controls and interfaces to be used. Highly differentiated machine generations with a diversity of interfaces are now capable of being connected to data loggers.

Plant and machine monitoring needs to be highly flexible

• Plant and process monitoring generally begins with the individual machine and plant components. Once a monitoring concept has proven itself, further elements can be included. Hardware and software components of a monitoring system must therefore be scalable to provide the required flexibility.
• Applications for system monitoring are highly diverse ranging from the management of plant availability, capacity utilization, output, the recording of individual plant parameters such as temperatures, pressures and vibrations through to alarm functions when predefined limit values are exceeded.
• Furthermore, a range of very different requirements need to be met in a machine pool which has expanded over a period of time. Diverse analog and digital inputs need to be combined with various interfaces ranging from PROFIBUS and ModBus through to manufacturer-independent OPC connections.
• Special tasks are often required such as batch-based storage of production data, evaluation of sporadic faults in a production line, and exporting of process data to an existing SQL database.

User support for automated solutions

• User-friendly full solutions using hardware, software and engineering services facilitate fast plant and machine monitoring that meet specific user requirements. Measurement procedures, processes, task monitoring, alarms and regular reports can then undergo automation.
• Scalable measurement and monitoring technology, from low-channel Loggito Loggers through to modular ProfiMessage devices, can be flexibly adapted to the size of any plant and machinery. A special feature of such technology is that, due to the small amount of space it requires, it can be easily integrated into existing infrastructures.
• High-performance measurement software provides measurement and process data acquisition, data evaluation and visualisation through to fully automated solutions. Furthermore, neither programming nor specialist knowledge is required for its implementation.
• Remote access to plant and machine data enables monitoring away from the plant and machine’s location. ProfiSignal Web allows process and plant data to be acquired decentrally, stored centrally and accessed from anywhere using any type of device.