PROJECT DATA ACQUISITION

Data Acquisition System Generates 100,000 Reports a Year

This customer’s high quality media and diagnostic products are used in clinical, industrial, research, and academic laboratories.  Verified FDA compliance is a necessity.  The project objective was to improve reliability of process data collection and expand reporting capabilities.  

Pressure and temperature data is collected from the local plant and seven plants in other states for each run cycle of equipment such as autoclaves, evaporators, freeze dryers and kettles.  The previous system consisted of a PC-based HMI that displayed only trends of the variables per cycle.

The new system architecture consists of redundant HMI servers running Wonderware InTouch, a dedicated Wonderware Historian server, and highly reliable redundant Kepware I/O servers that route PLC-generated data from the LAN/WAN to the Historian.  An intranet website driven by MS SQL Reporting Services lets users generate reports.  Features include:

• Reporting website interface using any web browser
• Ability to print and email both on-demand and scheduled reports
• Choice of report formats including PDF, Excel, HTML and JPEG
• Ability to query data in the Transact-SQL programming language

The new Wonderware HMI replaced existing obsolete HMI applications at the local plant.  The Wonderware Historian continuously stores data as equipment cycles are completed so that any report or trend can be regenerated at any time.  

Since communications are the vulnerable point-of-failure when gathering data across the country, GCS implemented a custom system to immediately notify a failure via email.  A major challenge was vetting the vast number of reports.  The project team verified that pdfs were sent to the server, printed, and contained accurate data, and that the start/stop triggers functioned as programmed.