Siemens software to provide advanced virtualization solutions for enhanced process reliability and disaster recovery scalability at Ocrim S.p.A.
To increase the reliability of processes, reduce negative impacts in disaster recovery and to make control systems more scalable, some of Ocrim's customers have requested a cutting-edge virtualized technological solution.
A request that the famous milling plant manufacturer has been able to meet because of its productive collaboration with Siemens, and in particular, with Siemens Digital Enterprise Services.
Among the most topical issues concerning industrial automation, one of the most discussed concerns are the potential and uses of artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit production.
In fact, many plant and machinery manufacturers aim to create solutions in which AI provides added value at production level, simplifying the work of operators.
This issue is also affecting sectors that have, to date, been accustomed to thinking in much more traditional terms, like companies that produce milling plants.
Ocrim is an example of this new approach, a business whose history, since 1945, has followed a very significant technological path, which has enabled it to become a global leader.
This is thanks to a farsighted management that has always put technological innovation at the center, identifying high-level partners and entering productive collaborations.
As is the case with Siemens, which became a partner of Ocrim 30 years ago.
With an average annual turnover of approximately 80 million euros and with its headquarters in Cremona/Italy, Ocrim designs and manufactures turnkey milling plants all over the world and is also a trusted partner in the supply of individual machines.
"We are able to offer ad hoc solutions to the end customer," explains Paolo Molinari, who has been with the company for 25 years and is now Head of its Electrical & Automation Department, "taking care the construction of the facility and tailor-made structure of the cereal processing and storage process."
Until recently, the main challenge for milling plant manufacturers was to move from semi-manual, if not fully manual, to automated production.
Today, however, according to Molinari, the goal is to build and supply plants with control systems that, although not yet completely autonomous, still make extensive use of AI functionality to expand and simplify management and operation.
Challenges that are anything but simple, which Ocrim has been able to successfully tackle over the years thanks to the partnership with Siemens.
When we build a plant with a capacity of 400 tons per day, we must be able to guarantee reliability and continuity, allowing operators to carry out the necessary production changes in the shortest time possible.
"Siemens has always been a leader in the field of process automation and at the time had already made a wide range of applications available to the market, which made it possible to refer to a single corporation and a single modus operandi," explained Molinari. "In a structured context such as ours, this uniformity of action represented considerable added value".
Beginning from a concrete technological need of certain clients in the Far East, two years ago Ocrim's collaboration with Siemens expanded to also encompass the Customer Services business unit.
"With a view to conceive new plants and renew existing ones, some customers, especially in the Far East began to ask us to migrate from a client server solution on physical machines to a virtualized solution for process automation and production control", said Molinari.
In fact, the primary objective of these companies was to maximize the reliability of processes thanks to more efficient control, while reducing impact in the event of disaster recovery.
"These customers," Molinari pointed out, "asked us for a scalable solution, in exchange for investment also aimed at expanding the plant's capacity, where they planned to find space in order to install new production lines. At the same time, they also needed the utmost reliability, from a cybersecurity as well as from a hardware and software point of view."
In the process industry, virtualization essentially means breaking the link between the IT part, consisting of operating systems and software applications, and physical hardware.
"The trend is to make operating systems and application software available in the form of virtual machines, managed by a hypervisor on interchangeable hardware. And to give less importance to the physical system on which the software is running, bypassing a type of management that is today proving to be increasingly expensive in terms of energy, space and obsolescence management", explains Pasquale Santamaria, Siemens After Sales Service Specialist.
To meet this need, Siemens has now been offering an Industrial Automation DataCenter based on SIMATIC Virtualization as a Service for several years, a solution that aims to meet the fundamental requirements of this type of architecture, with maximum effectiveness and maximum economic efficiency.
Industrial Automation DataCenter also makes it easier to handle disaster recovery situations with SIMATIC DCS / SCADA Infrastructure Back and Restore, since the ease and speed with which it is possible to back up and then restore virtualized systems guarantee an immediate recovery of plant functionality in the event of any problems.
"In our specific case," Molinari concluded, "the support of Siemens and its team was extremely valuable as it allowed us to perfectly identify, both from a hardware and software point of view, the technological asset to be used in these plants and also to select it based on the needs and computing power calibrated on the lines we went to check. This has also allowed us to transfer this reduced investment to the end customer."
Maintenance of upgrading of PC-based distributed control systems
Discover the expertise of our service professionals, advanced technologies and sustainable digitalization solutions.