Several significant control system contracts have been awarded to automation and control specialist Siemens, of Halfway House, Gauteng, Automation and Drives automation product manager Cornu Perold tells Engineering News.

These include a drying line for Sappi Swaziland and a contract for the Palabora underground mining project (Pump) near Phalaborwa in the Northern Province.

Both contracts involve Siemens’ Simatic PCS7 control system which, reports Perold, is the flagship control system offered by the company.

The Pump project is a long-term project and, once completed, will be one of the biggest PCS7 installations in the world.

The company has launched its new Simatic WinAC computer-based control system, which is a Simatic controller running on Windows NT.

Like the rest of the Simatic family of controllers, the new system uses the standard Simatic Step7 toolset to program, making these programs interchangeable between the traditional hardware-based controllers and the new system.

This product will be focused mainly on the small-to-medium market, where there is a high degree of integration required for high-intensity software applications.

“What makes this product unique is that it will soon run under Windows CE, which will make it more suited to real-time applications,” says Perold.

The MP 270 multipanel operator interface from the Simatic human-machine interface stable also runs on Windows CE, making it the ideal partner for WinAC.

These products were developed in Germany, and have been on the world market for just under a month.

“Automation allows for flexibility of a control application, giving the user the ability to alter a system quickly and efficiently to cater for changing production requirements due to rapidly-changing market needs,” says Perold.

In addition, due to the possible integration with higher-level systems, it makes data available wherever it is needed.

“You can have your process data available immediately in your plant-management system, resulting in informed decisions based on current and accurate information,” says Perold.

Data is captured once, and then becomes available throughout the facility, with all components and systems comprising the automation solution being configured, programmed, started-up, tested and monitored using a single totally-integrated and modularly-designed building-block system.

Siemens Automation and Drives is represented worldwide, and has about 50 000 employees.

It invests about DM1,3-billion yearly in research and development.

To subscribe to Engineering News's print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.