Bayer’s Muscatine, Iowa, plant produces 70% of North America’s Roundup herbicide, as well as 100% of acetanilide selective chemical products and 100% of Bayer’s dicamba formulation. The facility sits on a 150-acre campus with more than 450 employees and eight operating units, including four DeltaV control systems.
Kurt Schlawin, manufacturing technologist, process control engineer, Bayer, was looking for the ability to get process information to a cell phone and eliminate unnecessary alarm notifications to personnel.
“Our facility runs 24/7, but engineers and leadership are only there during the day,” said Schlawin. “We wanted to minimize the time in front of a laptop and push that information to cell phones.” The answer was the DeltaV Mobile app.
“Smartphones have changed the way we access data,” said Ben Jackman, global sales manager, mobility, Emerson, who jointly presented with Schlawin at the 2019 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Nashville, Tennessee. “We’re finally seeing some of the positive effects, such as access to real-time data and alarms, in the industrial space.”
Some positive effects of mobile technology, specifically DeltaV Mobile, include reduction of the reliance on fixed consoles for accessing process information; enabling more timely engineering responses to abnormal conditions; reducing the number of DeltaV system alarms to which process operators can’t respond; and targeting alarms and alerts to the appropriate people.
“The DeltaV Mobile app allows you to have access to process data and your graphics,” said Jackman. “It allows you to see trends and alarms and set notifications. DeltaV Mobile is a read-only native extension of DeltaV, featuring four capabilities: notifications, including email, text or push; alarm lists organized by preference; watch lists, including any parameter from DeltaV or OPC; and trends.”
The Muscatine facility currently has four DeltaV systems and one PLC connected into the mobile server. Off-site employees can connect via VPN. The DeltaV Mobile system is managed by IT. “I had to have a lot of conversations with our IT department and conduct a Bayer ISO risk assessment,” explained Schlawin. “They approved our risk assessment. I learned you need web certificates set up internally for DeltaV Mobile. The software installation was easy, and the documentation was straightforward.”
“If anything fails, we can send a notification to our engineers, so they can take action more quickly.” Bayer’s Kurt Schlawin praised the virtues of mobility at the 2019 Emerson Global Users Exchange.
“The first use case was the monitoring of production status when people were off-shift or on call,” explained Schlawin. “They want to watch specific steps, but not the entire batch. With DeltaV Mobile, they can choose two ways to get the information. They can see the batch steps, or they can get a push notification—for example, wake me up when it gets to Step 6, so I can watch that.”
Another use case is to track process-safety updates and quality. “Any time we have a safety integrity level (SIL) activate, we treat that as a near miss,” said Schlawin. “Previously, I had to create custom scripting for each one of these interlocks. With DeltaV Mobile, that’s built-in. It’s also more robust. If we add a new interlock, the notifications will be automatic.”
The third use case is relaying the right information to the right personnel. “If communication goes down, operations receives an alarm, and they have to call the process-control group,” explained Schlawin. “With DeltaV Mobile, we can target the right individual. Or, if it goes to multiple people, someone can claim the alarm, so multiple people aren’t responding to the same issue.”
For the facility’s cross-contamination tests on the first batch of product, taking samples had sometimes been forgotten. “We can send notifications to engineers and help remind them to contact the area and be sure the sample is taken,” said Schlawin.
The fourth use case is tracking hardware device alerts and health. “As we put more devices in our controllers, the index number drops. Custom control modules are used to monitor DeltaV diagnostics, and a custom graphic was created with custom scripting. The operator has to call the process-control engineer when he gets the alarm.”
The last use case is the tracking of KPIs. “A lot of our leaders don’t have access to DeltaV,” said Schlawin. “With DeltaV Mobile, the production leader can log in. He has direct read-only access to KPIs and production status with his own personalized watch lists.”
Many of the positive effects have been evident already at Bayer. The DeltaV Mobile system is quicker, better and faster than remote access through laptop for read-only access, said Schlawin. “It’s reduced nuisance DeltaV alarms from the console. More data is in the hands of key personnel, and access is faster for troubleshooting and monitoring.”
The app also reduces engineering response times and the potential for lost production time. Employees’ work-life balance is improved because of VPN access. The app has simplified operator displays and eliminated the need for custom scripting. It also enables faster engineering response to off-hour process-related issues.
“With DeltaV Mobile, if anything fails, we can send a notification to our engineers, so they can take action more quickly,” summarized Schlawin.