CINFA plant management system

America

Cinfa was carrying out a major project for the construction of a new plant with a high level of automation. This plant was designed to manage all production and logistics operations, including internal material handling and storage of raw materials, work-in-process (WIP) and finished products, through a multitude of isolated applications.

The main challenge was to create a control centre that would allow all these applications to interact without changing their native communication protocols, and that could monitor and send messages according to the production plan. The solution envisaged by Cinfa was not simply a communication middleware, but an orchestrator of all the messages needed at each stage of production, based on the overall status of the plant.

Without this application, the new plant could not be started up successfully, and the first batch of product was less than a year away from going into production. In addition, in the pharmaceutical sector, every application must go through a thorough and lengthy validation process before going live.

After scouring the market for a solution, we decided to develop the FMS application using the Ignition platform. This solution plays a key role in the orchestration of plant operations, acting as a link between previously isolated or disconnected systems and subsystems. Ignition’s SCADA/MES capabilities made it possible to address, with a single solution, different needs for both production monitoring and management. Our Industry 4.0 team with the Factory Management System (FMS) has transformed Cinfa’s plant by integrating production equipment, internal logistics, warehousing and much more into a single access platform.

Digital transformation : Industry 4.0