A Plantwide PLC Upgrade with Minimal Downtime for a Large Feed Plant
A major feed processor needed to upgrade a large facility with minimal downtime.
Challenge
The producer had several PLCs and HMIs on obsolete hardware. The system was comprised of approximately 20 racks of I/O and three different PLCs. The hardware had to be upgraded using minimal downtime. The upgrade included replacing HMIs on different platforms.
Solution
The upgrade included:
- PLC-5 to ControlLogix conversion kits (7 racks)
- SLC to CompactLogix conversion (1 rack)
- RSView32 to FactoryTalk View SE conversion
- PanelView 700 to PanelView Plus 6 700 conversion
- Remote rack RIO network to EtherNet/IP conversion
- VFDs RIO to EtherNet/IP conversion
- Mettler-Toledo scales RIO to EtherNet/IP conversion
Results
After the controls hardware was upgraded over a long weekend, the operators saw no discernible difference, other than the HMI experiencing faster performance.
