#Product Trends
OPC UA for production without machine downtime
Maintenance and machine downtimes minimized, system availability increased
Schönberg, July 2020
SITRAPLAS GmbH is a producer of high-performance engineering plastic compounds. Founded in 2005, the company is headquartered in the city of Bünde in the East Westphalia region of Germany. Their spectrum of services ranges from coloring engineering plastics to the development of customized polymer compounds for a wide variety of applications.
The Sitraplas team, over 40 employees strong, works in state-of-the-art production and laboratory facilities to quickly and reliably implement individual solutions. Their compounds are used by customers all over the world in challenging applications in the automotive, electrical engineering, and electronics industries, among others.
Equipment downtime costs time and money
Unplanned downtime is a nightmare for every company, but especially for continuous production facilities. Troubleshooting in the event of equipment failure is not only tedious and complex, but also very expensive. In turn, the lost time and resources associated with downtime can negatively impact both productivity and the competitiveness of the company.
Identify errors in real time via the company network
An important component of Industry 4.0 is the exchange of data during production. To this end, companies are increasingly adopting Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) as the industry standard for machine communication protocol. From production to servicing, OPC UA helps to optimize many aspects of plastics processing. By minimizing losses of time and products, OPC UA helps to maximize added value and product quality.
When metal separators are networked with plastic processing machines, the flow of information between machines can be monitored. Should any system error occur, the system operator instantly receives a notification and can address the issue immediately. A comprehensive overview of the different parameters under which the equipment is operating runs in real time over the company network.
Improved system availability and minimal downtime
The implementation of OPC UA communications protocol has had many benefits for Sitraplas. “Since we have been using OPC UA, we’ve had minimal maintenance and downtime,” says Tim Hencken, Managing Director of Sitraplas GmbH. “System availability has seen considerable improvements.”
Sesotec is among the very first providers of intelligent inspection and sorting systems for use in the plastics, food, and recycling industries. These innovations are testament to our commitment to customer satisfaction and Industry 4.0.
