New Plant Intelligence Options for More Transparency and Planning in the Production Process

March 16, 2020

Siemens has recently launched two new Plant Intelligence options for the WinCC Unified system: The “Performance Insight” and “Calendar” options extend the WinCC Unified visualization system with functionality for more transparency and structured planning in the production processes. The additional options can be individually combined according to application requirements and are fully integrated in the system, so that all functions are available to the user on various devices such as tablet or PC. By using the information thus obtained and planning ahead, costs can be reduced, and rejects avoided. In addition, production facilities can be better utilized, which increases effectiveness and efficiency.

The new Performance Insight option provides the user with a formula editor for the calculation of key performance indicators (KPI’s) according to ISO standard 22400 as well as a comprehensive choice of WinCC Controls for their display and for analysis purposes. The performance, quality and availability of the production plant can be visualized using a wide range of different formats such as bar charts, Gantt diagrams and multiline displays, allowing overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) to be calculated. Plant operators can record the entire production process status, from factory level down to individual machines, allowing systematic detection of optimization potential.

The “Calendar” option for the visualization of structured planning of production processes is now also available in WinCC. This function is used to define the running times of machines and plants and to create standard templates for regular production days and shifts. Furthermore, the calendar function can be used to plan the process execution relative to a timeline and in this way, for example, the start-up time of a machine before the begin of a work shift can be considered. Due to the consideration of operating times, the new “Calendar” option enables a more flexible planning of production processes and events.

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