Automation of a cosmetic production with the integration of a production planning system
URSA Chemie GmbH, based in Montabaur, was founded in 1970 by the companies Zschimmer & Schwarz GmbH & Co. Chemische Fabriken, Lahnstein and URSAPHARM Arzneimittel GmbH, Saarbrücken.
URSA Chemie is a modern, innovative company engaged in the manufacture of chemical and cosmetic products. Customer satisfaction, protection of the environment as well as employee satisfaction are the primary goals of the company. Through consistent process and employee orientation, these goals form the basis for continuous improvement (CIP) of business and environmental performance.
The task was to automate a complete production plant for cosmetic products and additives. The entire production consists of five production boilers and six raw material tanks. Both the raw material store and the five production boilers were to be equipped with their own PC-based visualization. The recipe processing system was to transfer the production tasks and recipe steps to the plant control system via a production planning system specially developed by the operator. The task was solved with a central PLC (Siemens S7-400) and a data server for the visualization (Wizcon Supervisor).
Six distributed clients of the visualization are used to control the five boilers and the tank farm. The data exchange between visualization and production planning software is realized via a software module developed especially for this application. Via a text-based interface, both the production orders are fetched from the planning system and the results of the individual production steps are returned to the planning system and the downstream quality inspection. The text-based data is exchanged with the central PLC via the open C interface of the Wizcon Supervisor visualization.
Due to this open architecture, the entire production planning, down to the parameter level of individual production steps, is in the hands of the operator. Thus, an extension of the functionality can be realized quickly and without programming effort at the interface between planning and executing instance of the production.
The complete FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) was carried out with the support of the WinMod simulation software, which was used to simulate the I/O level of the PLC. This significantly reduced the time required and thus also the costs, both for the FAT and for the subsequent commissioning.
Cosmetics production
Automation technology
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