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.