In order to meet the ever changing requirements of its growing customer base, the family owned bakery, Fischer Brot in Linz, Austria has constructed a brand new production facility. This large industrial bakery stands out because of its high-tech production capabilities. Engineers placed high demands on the supply partners involved in construction and commissioning of this new factory in order to achieve high levels of quality, performance and reliability.
Regarding the automation requirements, all the specifications stipulated Step7 programming technology and Speed7 315-2AG10 CPUs manufactured by VIPA, a subsidiary of Yaskawa. From their experience, the Fischer Brot technicians were convinced of the superior overall performance of the VIPA Speed7 product line, which is compatible with Siemens Simatic S7. This superior performance, particularly in the areas of efficiency, processing speed and interface diversity, offers the user a flexible, powerful and scalable automation solution.
Andreas Ortler, engineer and executive director of technology and data processing at Fischer Brot says: “My target is to use Speed7 315 controllers as a company-wide standard. This CPU is of top quality, it is extremely efficient and incredibly fast – some of the cycle times it provides cannot even be displayed since they are below 1 ms; and with VIPA I don’t have to commit to any surcharge policy or have any restrictions on the choice of CPUs.”
Ortler explains that since Siemens is the market leader in German-speaking countries, it was not a problem for the suppliers to meet these requirements. “For me it has always been clear that I would like to apply Speed7 315 CPUs made by VIPA as the hardware solution for our installations – specifically the Speed7 CPU. This CPU is compatible with the Simatic S7 platform,” he continues. “However, in comparison to the Simatic S7 315, which is comparable in size, the performance of the VIPA Speed7 CPU is better and the overall solution cost is considerably lower. Integrated as standard is a TCP/IP interface ample on-board memory. In addition the Speed7 CPUs are incredibly fast.”
Ortler had his first experience with VIPA CPUs during the design of a building control project at the headquarters in Linz: “l was looking for a cost-effective but high performance controller with reasonable interfaces and without any restrictions on the choice of CPUs, to automate the monitoring of a refrigerated warehouse,” he explains. “I was able to achieve this by using the product manufactured by VIPA. I tested the CPU sample intensively. Besides the monitoring of the refrigerated warehouse, the control on the illumination, heating and ventilating system were then successively implemented – and up to this day it is still running without a problem,” he reports. “After a year, it was clear to me that this CPU was of top quality, extremely efficient and incredibly fast”.
Due to his positive experience Ortler decided to replace an existing Simatic S7 CPU immediately with a Speed7 CPU from VIPA, thereby standardising on the efficient and fast Speed7 series. “My target is to apply VIPA controllers as a companywide standard,” he continues. “To be honest, for some applications, this high performance CPU is actually over dimensioned – but in any case, they are more cost-effective with the additional advantage that I only have to store one uniformed model of CPU for spare purposes”.
From industrial mixers, hoisting, tilting and kneading machines, small sized pastry machines, oven installations, transport conveyors, packing machines, box wash installations and including the entire building control technology with the refrigerated warehouse, the VIPA Speed7 CPUs have now been adopted as a standard within all areas of the new production facility. The project involved 13 different machine builders and system integrators.
The programming was done via Step7 from Siemens, while for the visualisation and recording of data WinCC was used. “The integration of VIPA devices works without a problem since the CPU internally simulates a Siemens CPU within the hardware configuration,” he reports. This enables the maintenance crew in Linz to access the control and the communication system on the plant at any time via a standard web browser. Ortler concludes: “The Speed7 devices run without a problem, the cycle times are outstanding, the compatibility to the World of Siemens product is impeccable – I cannot think of any better solution. I am very satisfied with VIPA, which has always offered high levels of customer service.”
For more information contact Jaco Taljaard, Yaskawa Southern Africa, +27 (0)11 608 3182, [email protected], www.yaskawa.za.com
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