Motivation
Nowadays, the rapid technical progress provides quite a different basis for a control system. All persons, who were involved in the development of the BatchGuide, teamed up again to continue the successful concept of the BatchGuide. The new System BatchXpert came into being, developed according to the latest state of the art by the GEFASOFT AG in cooperation with the company MLogics, to meet the increasingly complex needs of today’s industry in process control.
The increasingly demanding standards of the industry in respect of historical data acquisition, led to one of the substantial improvements over this predecessor is the improvement in process data acquisition and batch history tracking, together with powerful tools to manage and evaluate these historical data. Also, government regulations demand increasingly detailed and traceable records of the production processes of modern industry, as they are included into the BatchXpert system.
Concept
Mlogics, the company developing the BatchXpert system, was founded in Uruguay in 2006 by German professionals who also developed the BatchGuide. After more than two years of development in cooperation with “Gefasoft AG”, the BatchXpert Process Control System was introduced in the year 2010 to the market, and included amongst other features, Regulators based on “fuzzy logics”.
The graphical interface was implemented with the SCADA system “GraphPic ® 8” from the “Gefasoft AG” and includes specialized process management components known as “BatchXPert”. The complete system is continuously standardized. This includes the standardization of the PLC frame program flow as well as all visualization components and functional modules (alarm system, reporting, PDA, etc.).
Plant Expansions
The system is completely designed to be easily expandable and extensible. It allows for easy connection of new hardware components (eg. valves) directly after electrical wiring through the complete supply of all modules in the PLC and visualization. All settings and programming is pre adjusted to only connect the new equipment. No programming needed for basic operability of new equipment.
Thanks to the integrated Help System, which contains explanations of all symbols, colors and functions of the system, the system requires only minimum training periods.
Standardized PLC Program
The PLC program is implemented based on Simatic S7, so it can be used in all Simatic S7 compatible PLCs, such as Speed7 from Vipa or S7 from Siemens. The PLC program of BatchXpert is completely standardized with modularity and ease of use for the programmer in mind. It includes standardized program blocks, Interfaces, and control modules, to significantly reduce Engineering times of a BatchXpert application. This PLC program is design with various characteristics in mind – from short cycle times to maximum of standardization of both hardware and software. Of course, the Application implements various configurations, so that the standardized components can be adjusted to the project’s needs.
Some features of the system BatchXpert are:
- 120 units (sequences)
- 1600 actuators (motors, valves, …)
- 1600 Digital Input (Trigger, Vacuum sensors, …)
- 480 analog inputs (temperatures, pressures, ..)
- 320 Meters (Flow Measurements)
- 320 Regulators (PIDs), and several more modules ..
