8. Case Study:
Winder with OPC UA
to Meet Italian Industry 4.0 Plan

Introduction

Sima Winding Technology, a part of Dietze + Schell Group, is a specialized manufacturer of high performance winders for all types of synthetic fibers with 40 years of experience in the market.
Sima WT offers customized solutions, specifically tailored and optimized according to their customers’ requirements, acting as a consultant for the optimization of processes and the attainment of company objectives.

Their success depends on the specialization in what they know and do best, which is designing and manufacturing Take-Up Winders.

Application description

One example is the B2-xxx-TS-EBV2 series. Suitable for the parallel winding of monofilament with diameter from 0.07 to 3.00 mm and multi-filaments from 400 to 6,000 deniers on all types of flanged bobbin and biconical cores.
The design consists of a central section where the winding heads are located, a steel structure located at the front end of the machine supporting the thread separators and an electrical cabinet with control panel and touch-screen interface for the management of the winding parameters at the rear end.

Introduction to Italian Industry 4.0 Plan

In the last years the request of interconnection between the factory IT infrastructure and the OT level increased significantly, thanks also to the Italian “Industrial Plan 4.0”, a new plan offering tax incentives to the industrial sector to encourage competitiveness and investment in innovation.
One of the requirements to access the benefits of this plan is the bi-directional communication between the machine and the factory.
Sima WT chose OPC UA as the preferred protocol to achieve this requirement in the easiest way possible.
Thanks to the integrated OPC UA server in the NJ/NX-series Machine Automation Controller, the bridge between IT and OT was enabled just in a few settings without purchasing additional hardware modules or licenses.
The controller’s variables related to the machine status and the information regarding the production are easily published by the OPC UA server, as well as the variables related to the machine parameters that can be modified directly from the IT level.

The NX102 Series comes equipped with database connection functionality in addition to OPC UA server functionality.
One controller can be connected to both the higher-level system and database: MES or SCADA via OPC UA, and SQL Server or Oracle database used for traceability via database connection.

Customer interview

Thanks to the availability of these technologies, customers are starting to prefer OPC UA instead of CSV file exchanged via FTP connection.
Based on the Sima WT experience, the ease of data exchange and flexibility are the main benefits of this solution.

1. 1. Outline of OPC UA "The Industrial Interoperability Standard"
2. 2. Features of OPC UA “Connected, Communicated, Secured”
3. 3. Activities of OPC UA (1) Collaboration
4. 4. Activities of OPC UA (2) Compliance
5. 5. OPC UA Products and Case Studies
6. 6. Update on OPC UA
7. 7. The proliferation and evolution of OPC UA
8. 8. Case Study (Winder with OPC UA)
9. 9. A New Initiative for OPC UA