4.1 Oil Lubrication System Simulator
In Manufacturing industries, fluid automation plays an important role in many sections.
Of all the sections, one important section is lubrication of heavy machinery. Heavy ma-chinery, which constitute of large number of mechanical components, are tend to wear and become rusty depending on the usage. Hence in order to overcome these, all the me-chanical moving parts in the machinery are lubricated with liquids.
Circulating oil lubrication method is one such method, which is most commonly used in lubricating heavy machinery. In this method, the oil is initially pumped from the tank into the machinery for lubrication purpose. Once the points are lubricated, the oil returns to tank where it is filtered and cooled down. Then the process repeats again. Since, this is an important piece of machinery which secures long and smooth running of other heavy machinery, monitoring this becomes an important aspect. Hence this has been cho-sen as a medium for testing the framework.
Usually, the lubrication is a long run process; hence if this system is to be moni-tored, it takes a longer duration. This is where the simulator’s come into play. Simulator is a device/software, which does the simulation of a real world process over time. In here too, a simulator has been used for the Oil Lubrication System in-order to simulate the real system. The Oil Lubrication System (OLS) simulator has been developed as part of eScop project in Tampere University of Technology and it is available as an open source for study and research purpose[57].
Figure 31 Oil Lubrication System Simulator
The simulator has many special features like,
• Customization: The simulator allows to create any number of sub components (Measuring Station, Flow Meter) with the required specs.
• Time based Simulation: The simulator has the option to fast forward the simu-lation to a particular period of time.
• Monitoring and HMI: The simulator has a monitoring and HMI. The monitoring window displays the sensor vales and also has the options for time related con-trols. While the HMI displays the alarms and has the options to simulate scenarios like changing oil, filter and doing maintenance. The monitoring interface with the fast forwarding option is shown in Figure 32 and the HMI is shown in Figure 33.
Figure 32 OLS Simulator Monitoring Screen
Figure 33 OLS Simulator HMI
OLS Simulator is available online[68] and the source files are available in gitlab[69] as open source. For the purpose of this thesis, the simulator was run in the local computer with the source from gitlab.
4.2 Oil Lubrication System Production Industry
Oil Lubrication System production industry is the place where the lubrication systems are produced. Fluidhouse is one such company which produces Oil Lubrication Systems[70].
This use case is particularly inspired from the Fluidhouse production environment. The framework was tested for its capabilities as Manufacturing Execution System by deploy-ing in this scenario.
Circulating Oil Lubrication System varies in size depending upon the application.
Usually, they are available with tank capacity of more than 100 litres. Due to their size and complex assembly, they are generally manufactured by human labour. The produc-tion environment which consists of human labour has many legacy systems in the shop floor level and the enterprise level. The complete architecture of the production environ-ment is given in the Figure 34.
Figure 34 OLS Production Industry Architecture
In the production environment, while an order is received for Lubrication System, it is received in quantities more than one. Hence each order is referred to a project and subprojects are allocated for each individual elements in that quantity. The production environment consists of legacy client applications which are developed with Ignition SCADA and Java. The legacy systems are discussed below.
DB Server
DB (Data Base) Server is an MS SQL server which is hold all the data with respect to the production environment. Production Organizer, Time Tracker and Product Tracker are
the systems that store and retrieve the data. While the REST Translator just retrieves the data and provides them to the external systems.
Ignition Server
Ignition Server is a SCADA based system from Inductive Automation. This is a server based system which enables the user to create the multiple client applications for enter-prise applications.
Production Organizer
Production Organizer represents the user-end of the Ignition Server in the form of Ignition Clients. The main function of the production organizer is to register a project, allocate resources, design the project, place order for the project, etc.
Time Tracker
Time Tracker is the application which are hosted in Android tablets with NFC support.
An application that uses employee’s RFID cards and tags to register and login users. Once the user logs into the application, the user then can manage his times with respect to each project.
Product Tracker
Product Tracker is a Java based client app available in the Android tablet’s. It is used to register the NFC tag of the product to the respective project. Later, when the registered tag is viewed at the shop floor, it gives the complete details of the project.
REST Translator
The REST translator is a web-service gateway of sorts. It is a REST-based system that translates between the Database server and other external systems. The RESTful Services available from the translator are shown in Figure 35.
Figure 35 Swagger REST Translator Interface