Extrusion Asia Edition 2-2020

Are these Industry 4.0 functionalities meanwhile parts of the standard equipment of granulators? Vogel : Not in all cases. Industry 4.0 functionality only gets into the focus of a customer when he wants to integrate granula- tion technology into his mainly automated processes of plastics processing. When this occurs, the information and communica- tion technology integration of the granulators into the produc- tion technology infrastructure plays a central role, so that their efficiency and availability can also be secured on a digital level. Can you be more specific about this aspect? Vogel : Imagine a plastics processor with the intention of inte- grating one or even several of our central or beside-the-press granulators into his material flow and automated production processes using conveyor belts, tilting devices, filling stations and other peripheral systems, in order to return residues and waste to production via a recycling circuit in a resource-saving manner. As part of such a project, various Industry 4.0 features in our granulators can provide valuable services. This is because it not only supports continuous system optimisation, but also serves quality assurance, allows process-accompanying moni- toring and can significantly improve the availability of a produc- tion line. Which Industry 4.0 functions should a granulator be equipped with in any case? Vogel : This is decided based on the concrete requirements of a project and the customer's goals. Many things are now feasible because we use numerous possibilities of modern sensor and interface technology as well as a range of established field bus systems. In this way many important process and machine data can be tapped, documented, processed, visualised and evaluat- ed. Do you have an illustrative example of this? Vogel : If the signal exchange between granulator and produc- tion line is configured, all statuses, actions and error events can be recorded and assigned. Based on this, critical situations can be reported with defined warning levels to the higher-level pro- duction control system, which then initiates suitable counter and corrective measures at an early stage. In addition, it is pos- sible to record all production-relevant performance parameters and material key figures of a granulator – such as throughput or the quality of the ground material – and to send them to the Operating Data Acquisition or Major Diagnostic Category sys- tems of the plastics processor for further evaluation. This also applies to the runtimes, energy consumption, performance peaks and many other parameters from the operation of the granulators. We can also arrange for all system messages to be communicated to the host computer and archived there for analysis and documentation. All this creates maximum transpa- rency about the performance of an automated system. So the plant operator also receives data on the imple- mentation of important process and quality improve- ments? Vogel : Correct. Not least because part of the data material pro- cessed via the signal exchange between the production line and the granulating plant is also available for Industry 4.0 functions, which enable a so-called Predictive Monitoring and increase the plant availability. For example, much of the collect- ed information can be prepared for predictive maintenance and Getecha的能源消耗优化工具可以对粉碎 设备的效率进行监控，并实现性能最佳化 Getecha's energy consumption tool enables efficiency monitoring and performance optimisation of grinding plants 一切都一目了然:Getecha造粒机触摸屏控 制面板，以及综合的进、出料技术 Everything at a glance: Control panel with touch screen on a Getecha granu- lator with integrated infeed and disch- arge technology 34 粉碎技术 – 采访 Extrusion Asia Edition 2/2020