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OPC DA to UA Conversion (SANUSA)Nur Ilham Iskander, automation engineer at PT Sanusa Teknologi Utama (SANUSA) in Indonesia utilized OPC Expert to share OPC data between six factories (four cement and two power plants running Emerson ABB 800xa PLCs) and a separate control room. Ilham’s client wished to combine data from all six plants for further analysis and data science purposes. Ilham was also able to convert OPC DA data, which was used in some facilities, to OPC UA enabling the data to be easily stored, compared, and analyzed. Ilham was handicapped by his client’s PC server limitations, notably an 8GB RAM capacity, nearly all of which is required for production. He required a lightweight application that would not push the already strained servers over capacity. As OPC Expert is a single executable, there is no installation process, and it puts no strain on the PC it is running on. It can be run continuously and indefinitely without taking up server resources. For Ilham, it was the only viable solution which would successfully run in his client’s environment. Ilham created an OPC Tunnel between each six of his facilities and a separate central control room. A licensed copy of OPC Expert in each location enabled him to continuously compile data without having to change server configurations in any location or restart OPC Expert. Once the tunnels were successfully created, OPC Expert was able to convert the OPC DA data which was being used in select facilities to OPC UA, ensuring that all data being received in the control room was OPC UA format for easy analysis. OPC Expert was enabled as a service, ensuring that in the event of any equipment or server restarts OPC Expert would automatically start and no data would be lost.
Figure 1. Ilham collected data from 6 separate facilities, simultaneously converting OPC DA data to OPC UA while compiling for data science purposes. Ilham was able to implement OPC Expert without any interruption to his client’s production. Since OPC Expert does not require any installation or registry changes, Ilham simply copied OPC Expert onto the client’s PC and ran the program. No configuration changes had to be made at any facility which allowed his client to continue production while Ilham implemented OPC Expert’s tunnels. All Ilham needed to do was connect to the remote OPC servers with OPC Expert. Once connected, OPC Expert was able to receive real-time OPC data. It was a seamless transition. “The most important thing for us was to find a solution that did not interrupt production as well as not put the servers over capacity. OPC Expert was able to meet both of those needs and was set up quickly and efficiently. For us at Sanusa, having OPC Expert allows us to more solutions to present to our clients. We have plans to use OPC Expert in various production environments moving forward,” Ilham said.
About Sanusa Teknologi: Established in Bogor, Indonesia in 2011. At the beginning of the establishment, PT. Sanusa Teknologi Utama focuses its efforts on Smartcard and HRMS (Human Resources Management System). Currently, the company extent its business to compete with other company to develop the information and communication technology sector. Supported by company infrastructure, creativity, dedication and expertise with long experience as well as an extensive network makes PT Sanusa Teknologi Utama as one of the major players in services provider and consultant information and communication technology. PT Sanusa Teknologi Utama operates in a structured and systematic way so that they could gain trust from our partners who come from various backgrounds and interests, whether personal, business entities and government agencies. |
