Digitalization: Transformation in the process industry

Siemens will be demon­strat­ing how the com­bi­na­tion of the real and the dig­i­tal worlds empow­ers indus­tri­al com­pa­nies to act in a ver­sa­tile and sus­tain­able man­ner at the “Achema Pulse” live dig­i­tal event. Com­pa­nies in the process indus­try are fac­ing urgent and rapid­ly chang­ing chal­lenges. The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic in par­tic­u­lar has trans­formed demand pat­terns and glob­al sup­ply chains vir­tu­al­ly overnight. At the same time, indus­try-spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions and stan­dards are cre­at­ing new frame­work con­di­tions for pro­duc­tion. Dig­i­tal­iza­tion and automa­tion are the levers for mas­ter­ing these changes. Indus­tri­al IoT solu­tions can exploit the result­ing data to secure a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage since the intel­li­gent analy­sis, under­stand­ing and uti­liza­tion of the data allows com­pa­nies to adapt their process­es faster to chang­ing require­ments. The Dig­i­tal Enter­prise port­fo­lio makes this pos­si­ble by com­bin­ing the real world with the dig­i­tal world, thus enabling solu­tions for sim­u­la­tion, vir­tu­al process­es, remote access and con­nec­tiv­i­ty as well as pre­sent­ing ser­vice offer­ings for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Thanks to the cor­re­spond­ing indus­try-spe­cif­ic know-how, indi­vid­ual sec­tor require­ments can be tak­en into account.

Focus on industry-specific solutions

“Achema Pulse is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vid­ing impuls­es to our cus­tumers and gain­ing insights on how we can imple­ment the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion togeth­er. There will be a spe­cial empha­sis on the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and chem­i­cal indus­tries, and we look for­ward to shar­ing our exper­tise in these areas.”

- Eckard Eber­le, CEO of Siemens Process Automation

For com­pa­nies in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, win­ning the race against time is now more impor­tant than ever. The com­pa­ny is help­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies accel­er­ate their pro­duc­tion setups with the help of dig­i­tal­iza­tion and automa­tion. One exam­ple is the Mainz-based biotech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny BioN­Tech SE which has con­vert­ed an exist­ing facil­i­ty in Mar­burg for the pro­duc­tion of the Covid-19 vac­cine in record time with assis­tance from the con­cern. Through col­lab­o­ra­tion and the team of experts on site in Mar­burg, the project time­line for con­vert­ing the exist­ing facil­i­ty for the pro­duc­tion of mRNA-vac­cine was cut from around one year down to five months, where­by the imple­men­ta­tion of key parts of the new Man­u­fac­tur­ing Exe­cu­tion Sys­tem (MES) was reduced to two and half months.

In the future, the dig­i­tal twin can be increas­ing­ly used in vac­cine devel­op­ment. Glob­al health­care com­pa­ny Glax­o­SmithK­line (GSK) is col­lab­o­rat­ing with dig­i­tal­iza­tion expert and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion leader Atos to dig­i­tal­ize its vac­cine devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion process using the dig­i­tal twin. As the first appli­ca­tion for test­ing, GSK, Siemens and Atos have devel­oped a proof-of-con­cept dig­i­tal twin specif­i­cal­ly for the devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing of adju­vant tech­nolo­gies. Using mechan­i­cal mod­els and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), the part­ners devel­oped a hybrid mod­el to sim­u­late and mon­i­tor the process. As such, the dig­i­tal twin links the process para­me­ters to the qual­i­ty of the adju­vant, with the sen­sors and process ana­lyt­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy (PAT) feed­ing the twin with the infor­ma­tion need­ed to pre­dict the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. Any devi­a­tion from the opti­mal qual­i­ty is antic­i­pat­ed and caus­es the twin to act on the process para­me­ters and rec­ti­fy them to sat­is­fy the tar­get spec­i­fi­ca­tions. In the next step, GSK wants to work with the com­pa­ny to sup­port its vision to estab­lish and intro­duce new dig­i­tal twins for the entire vac­cine devel­op­ment process for new vac­cines. Thus, the dig­i­tal twins of prod­uct, pro­duc­tion and per­for­mance will be linked together. 

In the chem­i­cal indus­try, the biggest chal­lenges lie in the fact that plants must run reli­ably and safe­ly. The “Dig­i­tal Work­er” is a con­cept that allows oper­at­ing per­son­nel to dig­i­tize and auto­mate work in the field using state-of-the-art tech­nolo­gies such as aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR). This approach sup­ports the user in the dig­i­ti­za­tion of work­flows in process plants and in paper­less pro­cess­ing, pro­mot­ing remote access thanks to elec­tron­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion, access infor­ma­tion and guid­ance by intel­li­gent devices. Against this back­drop, spe­cial­ty chem­i­cals com­pa­ny Lanxess con­tin­ues to dri­ve for­ward dig­i­tal­iza­tion in its pro­duc­tion plants. Over the next three years, the spe­cial­ty chem­i­cals com­pa­ny will intro­duce mobile oper­a­tions and main­te­nance. In a first step, around 400,000 paper-based oper­a­tions and main­te­nance check­lists used every year will be replaced by dig­i­tal equiv­a­lents, then filled out on tablets. Lanxess is sup­port­ed by Siemens to dig­i­tize its check­lists. For this, the Moby.Check soft­ware will be used,  which runs on tablets and can be con­trolled using either the key­board or voice com­mands. Moby.Check has a flex­i­ble oper­at­ing con­cept allow­ing users to cre­ate pro­duc­tion, ser­vic­ing and main­te­nance check­lists on their PC – with­out any pro­gram­ming work or train­ing in advance. In addi­tion to more effi­cient pro­cess­ing, the error rate of man­u­al trans­mis­sion can be reduced, and doc­u­men­ta­tion sim­pli­fied. The Dig­i­tal Work­er sup­ports the trans­for­ma­tion from ana­log to dig­i­tal work­flows and can also exploit the poten­tial of the dig­i­tal twin in the field. Appli­ca­tions based on AI con­tribute to high­er plant avail­abil­i­ty through the ear­ly detec­tion of anom­alies. And pre­dic­tive main­te­nance plan­ning means that out­ages and rou­tine main­te­nance work are avoided.

As a spe­cif­ic offer­ing for the chem­i­cal and oil & gas indus­tries, Siemens offers not only the explo­sion-proof motors of the Simotics XP series, but also motors of the Simotics SD series for envi­ron­ments with­out explo­sion haz­ard in the Chem­star ver­sion. They are equipped with pre-con­fig­ured chem­i­cal-spe­cif­ic options. Both motor series, avail­able with options, oper­ate reli­ably and ener­gy-effi­cient­ly even under extreme con­di­tions and offer all rel­e­vant certificates.

Modularization as the key to meeting new requirements with ease

To meet the demands of short inno­va­tion cycles and adap­ta­tions to new prod­uct port­fo­lios, sys­tems must be quick and easy to expand. The pre­req­ui­site for this are stan­dard­ized, cross-ven­dor inter­faces for the effi­cient con­fig­u­ra­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and inte­gra­tion of mod­u­lar plants. An inter­face of this type is defined in the MTP (Mod­ule Type Pack­age). This pro­to­col defines the infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy aspect of process mod­els or plant sec­tions in such a way that they can eas­i­ly be inte­grat­ed into a com­pre­hen­sive automa­tion solu­tion, for exam­ple the Simat­ic PCS neo web-based process con­trol sys­tem. The mod­ules are assem­bled to form an over­all process, facil­i­tat­ing their mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol. At Achema Pulse, the exam­ple of the coop­er­a­tion between Siemens and Mer­ck will demon­strate how a mod­u­lar pro­duc­tion plant based on MTP min­i­mizes engi­neer­ing effort and per­mits fast and ver­sa­tile process adaptations.

New IIoT solutions for faster data transmission and reliable data acquisition

“As part of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, new trends are emerg­ing in the process indus­try, which we are dri­ving with our solu­tions and inno­va­tions,” explains Eber­le. “We regard 5G as one of the most impor­tant tech­nolo­gies in the indus­tri­al IoT con­text. It means we can trans­fer data quick­ly and reli­ably over pow­er­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works to exact­ly where it is need­ed. This makes pro­duc­tion plants more flex­i­ble, autonomous and effi­cient.” Scalance MUM856‑1 is the first indus­tri­al 5G router from Siemens. 

With its wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the robust Sitrans MS200 Mul­ti­sen­sor forms the hard­ware basis for the col­lec­tion of vibra­tion and tem­per­a­ture data in mechan­i­cal sys­tem com­po­nents. Via a Blue­tooth con­nec­tion, the data is sent to the Sitrans CC220 indus­tri­al gate­way where it is encrypt­ed before being trans­mit­ted from there to the cloud. Sitrans SCM IQ has an anom­aly detec­tion fea­ture which is based on machine learn­ing. It con­stant­ly mon­i­tors and ana­lyzes all sen­sor val­ues and swift­ly detects any devi­a­tions from the intend­ed oper­at­ing state. Via the app, anom­alies in plant behav­ior can be doc­u­ment­ed for imme­di­ate dis­tri­b­u­tion to alert a pre­de­fined group of users. The Sitrans SCM IQ sys­tem com­pris­es mul­ti­sen­sors, gate­way and app, and can be used in all indus­tri­al plants with mechan­i­cal or rotat­ing sys­tem com­po­nents. Sched­uled to be avail­able from sum­mer 2021, it allows pre­vi­ous­ly unused data from field devices to be used for the pre­emp­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion of immi­nent device fail­ures in advance, thus reduc­ing main­te­nance costs and avoid­ing unplanned downtimes.

Sustainability as a guiding principle

As Eber­le empha­sizes: “Our offer not only meets the require­ments of our cus­tomers, it also con­sti­tutes a con­tri­bu­tion to sus­tain­abil­i­ty.” Accord­ing­ly, Achema Pulse will also be offer­ing ses­sions on the top­ics of chem­i­cal recy­cling and sustainability.