SCADA Development for the TraXon Gearbox Housing Production
Implementation of SCADA at a production line in the field of commercial vehicles
In the second quarter of 2018, the ZF Friedrichshafen AG has started operations of a new production line for the gearbox housing production in the field of commercial vehicles. The Kontron AIS GmbH took over the SCADA development and adaptation to the manufacturing environment with various interfaces to machine suppliers, the MES and SAP of ZF. Furthermore, Kontron AIS assumed the entire IT project management.
“Kontron AIS has played a key role in the successful launch of the new production line and demonstrated its expertise in the automation environment.”
Ralf Schmid, Project management TraXon, ZF Friedrichshafen
Goals
- Development of the SCADA level by means of Microservices
- Assumption of the IT project management
- Ramp-up support for the line
- Assumption of the 24/7 standby
Challenge
- Application Active Message Queue as a transmission medium
- IT project management of the entire project
- Usage of new connectors to machines
Result
- Start of production in May 2018 as planned
- Production of up to 520 gearbox housings per day
- Tracking of the entire production process
Communication, data collection and project management
The implementation of the SCADA level is used for vertical communication between machines and the higher-level systems (MES, SAP), as well as for the central storage of process and production-relevant data. The resulting traceability of each produced gear housing is a basic requirement and of great importance in the automotive sector.
To communicate with the machines, on the side of the machine controllers (S7-1500 SINUMERIK), standard connectors are used for establishing the bidirectional communication to the SCADA level. The applied Microsoft services check and store the data in a corresponding database and provide the transfer to ZF´s MES and ERP system (SAP). Via SAP, manufacturing orders as well as the order of the housing commission for final assembly on the line (just-in-sequence) are transferred.
Within the “TraXon” project, Kontron AIS took on the overall IT project management in Friedrichshafen. The main focus was on the communication and coordination between the IT department of ZF, production departments, suppliers as well as the Kontron AIS development department.
