Cementing the middle-ground position

The Australian SCADA company Citect is looking to occupy the middle ground between real-time plant information systems and business level ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems with its new Ampla MES (manufacturing execution systems) software suite.

According to sales and marketing manager Jeremy Bolton speaking at the recent UK launch, Ampla is the result of over 100 man-years of development. ‘It is an ISA-95 compliant, scalable suite of MES solutions,’ he says, ‘delivering real-time access to aggregated plant and business intelligence.’

Ampla systems are designed to gather data from all areas within an enterprise (ERP, SCADA, LIMS and so on), from the business level to the plant level, and provide real-time analysis of the data to drive continuous process improvements, cost reductions and improvements in productivity. Ampla performance modules, which sit on the same single platform, focus on specific aspects of the process, automatically gathering information about it. This data can then be presented as ‘dashboard’ key performance indicators (KPIs), making it easy for management to clearly understand the main production bottlenecks, causes of downtime and poor product quality.

A key benefit of Ampla, according to UK managing director Paul Hurst, is that it supports ‘an ISA-95 compliant equipment hierarchy tree, facilitating integration with ERP and EAM systems, as well as lower level systems.’ Citect claims significant return on investment in Ampla systems are typically delivered in 6-12 months.

An early adopter of the software was Adelaide Brighton Cement (ABC), Australia’s only national cement supplier. At its Angaston site in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, the plant has a capacity of 250 000tpa but had been operating at restricted output for some time due to outdated technology and processes. As part of a general upgrade, ABC approached Citect to help develop a downtime reporting system that would improve on the previous practice of gathering data from a number of sources — such as control room log sheets, Microsoft Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, SPC control charts and Citect’s own SCADA reports. All this data was then analysed and presented at weekly performance meetings.

Citect customised Ampla modules to measure asset utilisation, stoppage information and trend data. Since implementing the downtime reporting system, ABC has reported a 50% reduction in plant stoppages, and has reduced reporting and analysis time from three days to just one hour per month.