Linde installs monitoring software across 350 sites worldwide

Echternach, Luxembourg, - Linde AG has chosen GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms' Proficy Historian and Proficy Plant Applications for use in its plants worldwide. The order, which also includes support services, is worth more than $1 million and will be deployed in 350 sites worldwide.

Munich, Germany-baed gases and engineering group Linde has almost 52,000 employees in around 100 countries. The group has expanded through several acquisitions in the last few years, which operated legacy manufacturing systems from a range of vendors.

While each part of Linde's business was satisfied with their installed system and were resistant to significant change, the group's management decided to standardise on a global historian infrastructure to support operating practices, production reporting, and information flow across the enterprise.

Linde, therefore. required a very large system (400,000 tags) and had high expectations for performance and scalability, according to Erik Udstuen, VP Software for GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms.

“This system will be key to Linde’s efforts for increasing production and decreasing energy costs,” said Udstuen. “The established equipment modeling and out-of-the-box reporting and analysis capabilities offered by Plant Applications would have required custom development with other industry solutions."

The new system forms the basis of a plant line information management system, comprising of a centralised historical database installation. It provides a plant data repository to collect, archive and distribute large volumes of real-time and plant floor information.

Several remote pperation centre systems access data via Proficy HMI/SCADA - iFIX on a terminal server basis to evaluate production data and to control processes. The information management system also includes plant applications software to process raw data, calculate and evaluate KPIs to optimise the efficiency of the gas production and increase the quality of the processes.

GE Fanuc will also install a real-time information portal to enable Linde management to retrieve production data and determine cost influences caused by certain production events.