While some philosophers disagree and mathematicians continue to search for an equation that relates the two, the adage, “time is money” is an undeniable truth for machine builders. Shorter time spent in the development stage translates into lower engineering costs and faster time to market — and ultimately a faster return-on-investment. In today’s competitive business climate — time truly is money.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the design phase of a machine’s control system. Programming is typically the most time-consuming and costly stage of the machine development process, sometimes consuming up to 80 percent of a control system’s budget. As such, it represents one of the most likely areas to make improvements. However, in order to optimize programming, OEMs must first recognize common inefficiencies in the programming stage.
In any machine design project, code has to be developed for each individual machine operation in order for the machine to perform its specified function. With any given code, consistency and efficiency can vary greatly, thereby increasing the possibility of unintentional errors, extended debugging time, and design inefficiencies.
Meanwhile, there are additional factors that amplify the time and money spent during the design phase, including end user specifications, regulatory pressures, and industry standards. For this reason, several OEMs develop their own programming standards to help their customers meet these requirements. However, in cases where machines come from several different OEMs, end users are still faced with the difficult task of integrating each machine into their line.
To help OEMs clearly identify specifications, use more efficient programming approaches, and meet various industry standards, power programming, a PackML programming methodology, provides an integrated, modular approach to application development. power programming gives OEMs pre-tested modules of code based on standardized programming methods and best practices acquired through years of experience, that help programmers save time and money during the design, implementation, and maintenance of machines. OEMs can use and reuse this code — directly resulting in reduced design time (and, consequently, reduced costs) for machine projects.
Power programming’s specifications, HMI templates, and pre-written basic and fault code are designed around current, open standards and industry guidelines, allowing OEMs to improve programming speed, flexibility, and accuracy. It also contains all the routines and local tags necessary for operation. Any linkage needed to external tags is done by RSLogix5000 aliasing feature, making each program fully reusable without having to rewrite tag addresses.
Power programming offers more than a dozen different templates for the most common functions in machine development. For example, the axis module template includes modules for homing, jogging, and moving — key functions for motion control applications. Programmers can customize these modules for a particular axis, and if a different axis requires similar functionality, the module can easily be copied and pasted wherever it’s needed.
Since “time is money” during machine development, machine builders can save both by utilizing a power programming toolkit. The ability to reuse modules of code across projects and the methodology saves time during tests, startup, and troubleshooting.
Machine builders often spend a significant amount of time testing their machines and diagnosing various problems. With the pre-defined modules in power programming, the same code is used from machine to machine and testing time is reduced. Engineers automatically know the state of the machine and the conditions required to move from one state to the next.
Mike Wagner is a business development manager at Rockwell Automation, 1201 S. Second St., Milwaukee, WI 53204. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota. More information is available at www.ab.com/powerprogramming or by calling 414-382-2000.
Saving Time in Programming
Power programming can help reduce time in machine design. One company recently found that out first-hand.
Brazil-based Fabrima is a packaging OEM that serves the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries. Offering packing machines, weighers/feeders, cartoners, case packers, and blister machines, the company recently launched its new Flexibag system — a four-axis, continuous vertical wrapper.
One week before the Fispal trade show in Sau Paulo, Brazil — one of the largest trade shows for OEMs in the food and pharmaceutical industries — Fabrima wanted to add an extra option to its new Flexibag vertical wrapper. Rather than demonstrating the wrapper in continuous mode, the company wanted to have it operate in both continuous and intermittent modes.
Typically, a change of this magnitude would take programmers two or more weeks to accommodate. However, the machine was designed using power programming methodology from Rockwell Automation. The change took programmers just two days to complete.