SIMATIC Maintenance Station
User interface for efficient maintenance
Consistently high productivity is the competitive requirement
par excellence in every production. Production
downtimes should be avoided if possible or - if that cannot
be accomplished completely - be kept as minor as possible.
Frequently, downtimes are also caused by less than optimal
maintenance. Here, intelligent maintenance strategies
can be employed, whose essential goal is to make the
maintenance plannable, as a result of which downtimes are
considerably reduced
Benefits
- Visualization of the maintenance information of the
entire automation system
- Automatic derivation of the data from the hardware
configurations
- Manufacturer-spanning display of service and maintenance
data
- Traceability of events and operator actions via automated
alarms, which form the basis for later analyses
to optimize the plant
- Consistency and homogeneity of data, visualization
and operation with the SCADA system and maintenance
station
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Efficient maintenance is possible in connection with the
WinCC option package SIMATIC Maintenance Station. Thereby it is irrelevant
whether the process visualization and maintenance
functionality run on a common computer or on separate
devices. Since the same operating and monitoring tools are being
employed, the display can be switched between SCADA
and maintenance at any time. The advantage is obvious:
The operator can at any time also obtain an overview
of current identification & maintenance (I&M) information,
without having to interrupt the process.
Fig. Monitoring of the plant status via automatically generated screens
Generating instead of programming
The maintenance station is configured by selecting the
automation systems to be displayed from STEP 7 to create a
hardware configuration. With this hardware configuration,
the maintenance station recognizes which devices belong
to the plant and creates an image for the maintenance in
WinCC. The integration of components is based on established
standards and is possible for a large number of devices
from different manufacturers.
The project generates itself automatically in the form of
hierarchically structured, already connected WinCC screens
- without additional programming work for the user- and
then is automatically transferred to the Maintenance Station.
New hardware components brought into the hardware configuration of STEP 7
are automatically made available to the
maintenance station. A manual updating is not necessary,
follow-up costs are avoided.
Corrective/preventive maintenance
In runtime, the maintenance station displays all connected
control components, switching units, drives, etc. and monitors
the current plant status using uniform symbols. In doing
so, the program not just responds to errors once they have
occurred (i.e. corrective maintenance), but also to measures
entered into the system that are to prevent errors prior
to their occurrence (preventive maintenance). Such timedependent
or load-dependent measures take place regularly
and/or after a certain number of operating cycles, operating
hours or load peaks, and can be scheduled in such a way as
to optimally utilize the existing resources.
The SIMATIC Maintenance Station offers perfect support
for performing the maintenance. In doing so, it generates
a comprehensive database for the later optimization of the
plant and ultimately results in reduced maintenance costs.
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