New information technology will help South Africa to cope with its IT skills shortages so that efficiency in manufacturing, and water and electricity services can be improved.
Pursuing its strategy of skills transfer to Africa by bringing in a new generation of 'smart' electronic control systems for public utilities, manufacturing, agriculture and mining, France's Schneider Electric has launched in South Africa its Telemecanique SafeEthernet automated security technology only a few months after it debuted in Europe.
It is the latest development in linked technologies, which enable the Internet and the standard Ethernet technologies that network computers around the world, to be used across a wide range of public and private sector enterprises. Car companies have been quick to adopt the new Telemecanique automated hybrid security systems for their European production lines. Hence the company can be expected to extend this technology to its South African factories, which must meet the same global standards.
Other local applications of Schneider Electric's family of control systems using the Internet and the standard Ethernet cabling already installed in factories, offices and public utilities throughout South Africa are expected. These include food processing, and two major concerns facing the country being the more efficient handling of water and electrical energy.
"Particularly important for South Africa is that these new additions to Schneider Electric's Transparent Ready (TR) portfolio of open, Web-enabled automation products can be adapted to so many practical uses without demanding high levels of local expertise," says Linda Eales, automation product manager for Schneider Electric South Africa.
The company is doing its best to train up people to help meet this shortfall, but it is an international problem which needs also to be tackled by using the top global experts to programme their unique talents into making smarter devices. This has been at the core of its Modbus TCP/IP-based TR concept which was introduced in 1998 and has been developing ever since. Schneider has now installed more than 250 000 TR products, which makes it one of the world leaders in installed industrial Ethernet systems.
These systems, along with Schneider's use of open Internet Web standards, empower IT and engineering people without high-level specialist IT networking skills to design and adapt production and processing systems to meet international standards. A report by technology research company, IDC, commissioned by Cisco Systems, predicts that by 2009 demand for these specialist skills in South Africa will exceed availability by 24%, holding back the economic growth essential for job creation.
"Schneider's Transparent Ready smart devices and the support and training services backing them can make a major contribution to easing this problem for South Africa," says Eales. "In this context, transparent means that the end users are able to exercise control over processes without needing to understand the underlying technology."
Schneider Electric's strategy is to provide products, particularly the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at the centre of many processes, that are open and simple to integrate into a wide variety of environments. These Transparent Ready products use standard, readily available open source and commercial technologies with which many local engineers and IT specialists are familiar. Thus these essential new technologies can be introduced faster and more easily in Africa without a high training requirement.
"For example, Schneider Electric solutions are already used widely overseas in water distribution and waste water treatment networks, which require a high degree of precision in data measurement and monitoring. We expect to extend our services in these fields throughout Africa, where the authorities and operators face major challenges in achieving public health and environmental objectives within limited budgets."
An example of this aspect of the Transparent Ready technologies is Schneider's Web server with built-in modem, which provides a central supervisor with transparent remote access to the PLC's controlling pump substations, tanks and other water supply installations. This system ensures effective communications over the networks linking central staff with remote facilities, manages the alarms, stocks data and other operational requirements, even communicating with staff automatically by e-mail or SMS.
Similar applications include energy optimisation in electricity distribution using Ethernet TCP/IP, which is expected to be a critical requirement in South Africa as energy resources are stretched to keep up with increasing industrial and social needs. There are important environmental benefits also in the more efficient conversion of fossil fuel energy resources and reductions in gas emissions contributing to the greenhouse effect.
Schneider Electric has made energy efficiency one of its main strategic thrusts. Its aim is to give local electrical generation and distribution authorities total control of electricity consumption, so that consumption, both economically and environmentally, can be optimised. This will improve energy availability and make it far easier to anticipate future needs.
By having control and management systems that are Transparent Ready, it is possible to cope with situations ranging from the basic to the most complex with solutions that are flexible, simple to implement and suitable for both new and renovated installations.
Some installations use Schneider controllers that have their own on-board Web servers linked to the company's intranet network. Plant managers, heads of production or other staff in charge of electricity for an installation can retrieve electrical information in a simple and effective way. Information overload and confusion resulting from a stream of irrelevant data is prevented because Schneider Electric's experts have programmed into the system exactly what information is essential for the end users to receive to ensure that they operate the installation safely and efficiently.
This requires a substantial amount of sophisticated 'e-analysis', including remote information processing to deal with the on-going analysis of loads and consumption to achieve optimal operation, together with anticipating and dealing with occasional problems. There is even a technology called Faulty Device Replacement, which allows maintenance personnel to reconfigure equipment automatically and remotely. These and other machine-to-human interactions with local staff take place within their own familiar Intranet infrastructure.
Schneider's deployment of Transparent Ready began in the United States in 2003 and is now spreading rapidly around the world because it conforms to key international standards and is proving its practical benefits in the enormous range of applications covered by thousands of installations.
Among the international standards of increasing importance to South Africa is the use of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) in computerised documentation and communications. XML is also being incorporated in European Union standards, and in word processing and other software. Schneider has introduced its SOAP/XML Web Services, which allows a PLC Web server to use the same language as IT applications. This enables IT specialists to design applications for direct, realtime access to PLC data.
(SOAP is an acronym for Simple Object Access Protocol, which combines with the functionality of XML to make data communications and storage very quick, effective and reliable.)
Similarly, intelligent Web gateways allow existing PLCs and the whole range of Schneider Modbus and Uni-Telway devices to be integrated into Ethernet TCP/IP architectures. A service called Web Diagnostic uses the Web pages built into Telemecanique products to access information such as PLC configurations, measured data, variables and alarms via any Web browser.
Sealed sensors, such as those used to count cans and control other functions in food processing and packaging facilities, use high-speed Ethernet TCP/IP communications to provide contact-free data transfer to PLCs.
Schneider says that Ethernet TCP/IP will now adapt itself to any field topology, including daisy-chain, star and loop. The TR products use two TCP/IP ports to eliminate the need for network switches and to simplify cabling. This results in savings that make Ethernet/IP's costs similar to those of proprietary fieldbuses.
Overall cost reduction is achieved via a single network with direct connections between all the spheres of the company (IT systems, automatic functions and electricity distribution). This allows transparent access to data for greater relevance of information at a lower cost.
The simplicity of the Web technologies built into Transparent Ready products makes the systems accessible to all authorised users, without any prior training or programming.
The flexibility of the Ethernet TCP/IP technology opens the way to new areas of application such as large machines, and the remote management of substations in the water sector and in electricity distribution.
For more information contact Linda Eales, Schneider Electric South Africa, +27 (0) 11 254 6400.
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