Best ways to gather data throughout the whole building

[Bendanator 0]

Hello everyone,

I was hoping to ask what ideas or things people have done to gather data and info. I work for a pvc manufacturing company and we have over 35 lines of equipment. My goal is to connect each line to our network and start to gather data from them. Such as pounds of material ran on each line, how many runtime hours are on a line to base our PM’s off of. I know I can network to excel but I would have to get each line back to the same computer that has rslinx installed on. I also know there is a ton of scada Systems out there, but have never setup one or built a scada system. End goal would be to allow some info to be available to the management team and others to maintenance and engineers. Not to just one computer. Look forward to any feedback on this. Thanks in advance.

[pcmccartney1 141]

To many options.  Sounds more like a SCADA with some Historian.

Needless to say, Rockwell has solutions through FactoryTalk View SE.  Get your wallet out.

Cheaper solution would be Ignite.

Cheapest (possibly free, but still highly recommended) AdvancedHMI.  Find gclshortt in this forum and reach out to him.  Tons of experience and could steer you in the right direction.

Edited 21 Feb 2020 by pcmccartney1

[BobLfoot 301]

Excellent answer pcmccartney1 only one product I would add to the list OSISOFT Pi is worth considering.  It's what's under the hood of Rockwell Historian, but less expensive and cross-vendor friendly.

[pcmccartney1 141]

Agreed that Pi is an excellent historian, but still needs something to visualize the data.  Does Pi have it's own PC based HMI or dashboard capability?

If not, then Bendanator would still need to then create an Excel with live data connection via the OPC capability of Pi.  Possibly, that Excel file could be "shared" through Windows from a network location.

Just seems like a lot of work.  If I were investing my time and money, I would lean towards the SCADA solution. 

[NevergoldMel 38]

VTscada

 

[Dan Davis 0]

Hi,

you should check mySCADA at www.myscada.org they specialize on production line visualisation and control and they are good at it. Check their demo at demo.myscada.org it looks like it exactly fits to your requirements :)

 

Have a good day

 

[BobLfoot 301]

PCMCcartney ; Yes OSISoft PI has always had ProcessBook , but more recently 2017+ they have come out with PI Vision.  Pi Vision is a web based tool which allows you to serve PI Data into graphic displays built with your browser.