"Matrikon's OPC server for Foxboro I/A provided us with the ease of use, stability and data access that we needed to properly implement a Data Acquisition System."
Sohail Zaidi, E&I Manager for ICI Pakistan
Innovative Automation & Engineering Limited (IAEL), an integrator based in Pakistan, was contracted by ICI Pakistan Limited in early 2004 to establish a system whereby their polyester fiber plant could acquire critical data to calculate the plant’s process efficiency. The system would calculate the amount of raw utilities, such as steam, nitrogen, water and electricity, needed to produce polyester fiber. By integrating an intelligent Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, ICI would be able to reduce routine maintenance costs.
Six distributed data acquisition systems, Allen-Bradley ControlLogix PLCs, were connected to the main Foxboro Distributed Control System (DCS), over a high-speed deterministic ControlNet communication network. In addition, remote Modbus RTUs gathered electric power information. Process parameters already available in the existing Foxboro DCS-based process control system and required for the objective process-efficiency calculation were accessed through OPC. Arif Shuja, Technical Sales Engineer with Innovative Automation & Engineering, said, "Integrating OPC not only saved costs but also saved the enormous task of implementing a parallel instrumentation system."
The project was successfully implemented as a complete turn-key solution. Rockwell’s RSView32 HMI was to be used to display the data from the Foxboro DCS. Innovative Automation & Engineering choose to install Matrikon’