Automated Loading Documentation

It’s uncommon to find systems in production plants that combine the three different worlds smoothly. A project by WAGO and TTS-Automation shows exactly how providing an open control and protocol landscape can achieve this. This project combines the IT environment, process technology and logistics to implement an efficient, safe, well-documented loading processes.

That goal is not to simply install a camera that films everything like a surveillance camera. Our solution evaluates the loading situation intelligently and generates useful images with important information for documentation in compliance with data protection regulations,” explains Striegel. Since this challenge is far from trivial, each individual customer application involves its own project.

For most requests, the aim is to use the recorded images to generate documentation proving that the correct goods and container types for the order were loaded onto the correct truck and that the load was secured. The software adds a timestamp and order number to the images it has identified as containing significant information; these are then burned into the image data, making subsequent manipulation more difficult.

In order to develop a functioning product from the initial requests from logistics departments in the chemical industry, one obstacle in particular had to be overcome first. One of the first challenges for the technicians at TTS Automation was a major one and lay in connecting the camera to the controllers and adjacent systems: “We spent a long time searching before we found an automation company offering a controller that supported the necessary protocols across the board – WAGO,” says Striegel, describing the initial steps. We always use WAGO in projects where many different decentralized, distributed field signals need to be acquired quickly and easily, and local intelligence is added to optimize the process for customer-specific project requirements. In this way, the data obtained with the help of the controller is carried over into the IT environment and made available to the various user groups – fusing the words of OT and IT, so to speak.

In each project, TTS Automation develops customer-specific software that runs on the WAGO controller and communicates with the end user’s specific bus system. The variety of interfaces is large: In addition to the connection to the specific ERP system to read out the order data and store the documentation, the system must also communicate with the controllers at the process control level. “The ERP system tells us what data to collect, but the higher-level controller has to specify when we should do so. This is a balancing act, and it’s getting more and more difficult for us, since more and more requirements are being added related to digitization and the Internet of Things,” says Striegel, describing the challenges.

When it comes to loading operations with forklifts, there is definitely potential for optimization when Big Data and artificial intelligence are taken into account. This could be leveraged by expanding the use of existing devices: “Route optimization based on existing data is one possibility. If a software solution can combine the information from the exact storage location in the warehouse with information about the truck to load, it’s possible to decrease loading times and reduce or avoid potentially dangerous forklift crossings,” says Laufmann.

In this way, an intelligent combination of measurement technology, open and flexible protocols and powerful control technology is capable not of only handling simple control tasks, but also of modeling complex documentation processes with a wide variety of interfaces – and doing so where different departments and their requirements interact.