plcopen_motion_control_library_control_plcopen_

PLCopen

®

for efficiency in automation

The PLCopen Motion Control Library:

Changing the landscape of industrial control

Introduction

The world is not stable, resulting in changing requirements. These changes

consumers by making the suppliers responsible and liable, require

producers to change their way of production. On top of this they have to

produce more efficiently, for instance to serve their shareholders or produce

less waste.

The suppliers in the food & beverage (or even pharmaceutical) sectors

transfer their requirements to their machine suppliers, which in turn transfer

them to their control suppliers. The control plays a crucial role in fulfilling

these new requirements. To be more specific: the application software is

crucial. And to make that effective, standardization is needed.

This paper presents such a standard, being implemented across different

weighing, bagging, cartonning, flow wrapping, form-fill-seal, labeling,

palletizing, and includes a wide variety of application domains within a

packaging plant. Each application provides a unique set of requirements

specific to both industries and regions. Pharmaceutical plants must track

products accurately through every stage of the manufacturing process. Food

and beverage suppliers are also concerned about product tracking; however,

the ability for a plant to respond to wide variability in container sizes and

labeling is absolutely imperative today.

Overall, changes in consumer needs and/or wishes include customization,

personalization, and convenience. These changes happen in the distribution

To cope with these consumer changes, the packaging industry is putting

pressure on the leading packaging machine builders to better fulfill their

needs in:

 Smaller footprints

 Faster startups

 Flat to lower cost per function completed

 Higher speeds

 Improved efficiency

 Faster changeovers

 Better quality package

All these changing requirements are heavily reflected in the control

architecture. And motion control, especially servo-based, plays an ever

increasing role in this.

A packaging control system deals with Human Machine Interfaces, Logic

and Sequencing Control Systems, Motion Control Systems including drive

technologies, Network Architectures incl. Business System Integration,

Interface technologies to drives and other actuators and sensors.

All these aspects are controlled by software, playing an ever increasing

role. Since these multiple environments need to be integrated, standards and

motion control point of view, a mechatronics design is needed. This means

that mechanics in the machine are replaced by electronic solutions in the

form of digital; motion control. For example a rigid CAMshaft is replaced

by a combination of multiple drives/motors. The control software in these

mechatronics solutions provides the flexibility here.

To solve this cost effectively, the packaging machinery must take

advantage of the latest software, networking, and operating system

technologies to enable machinery to be flexible enough for today’s

manufacturing requirements. Manufacturing plants need equipment that is

less complex, more flexible, easier to maintain, and with smaller footprints.

The name of the game – Software

Motion integration issues have emerged to the forefront, along with

maintainability and connectivity to automation solutions. Unfortunately, the

motion control market is a fragmented market, providing a wide variety of

incompatible systems. with different architectures and software tools for

development, installation and maintenance. This incompatibility incurs

considerable costs: applying different implementations is confusing,

engineering becomes difficult, and the software is not reusable across

platforms. Overall this means there is too little harmonization providing

flexible solutions which are open to new developments. Meaning not only

harmonizing the programming languages, like done within the worldwide

 Less hardware dependence

 Higher level of reusable code

 Transparent programs

 Lower commissioning, installation and maintenance costs

 Wide industry acceptance

 And last but not least: reduction in training costs

The role of PLCopen

PLCopen, and resulted in the definition of a PLCopen Motion Control

reusability of the application software increased, the cost involved in

training and support reduced, and the application becomes scalable across

different levels of control. As such it is based on IEC 61131-3 Function

Blocks, creating application program which are commonly understandable

and re-usable across platforms. Due to the data hiding and encapsulation, it

is usable on different architectures, like from centralized to distributed

control. And as such it is open to existing and future technologies. Overall,

this standardization is expected to cover around 80% of the motion control

market.

The definition, consisting nowadays of multiple parts, has been done via the