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new HMIs to old PLCs
CANNOCK-BASED Nicholl Food Packaging
is one of the UK’s largest food packaging
companies, and specialises in
manufacturing aluminium foil containers
and catering disposables for the food
industry. Its 10-acre site houses one of
Europe’s most advanced production
facilities and includes many electronically
controlled presses.
Some of the site’s HMIs had been
installed several years ago and were
becoming unreliable. “We were
experiencing ongoing problems with failure
of our existing HMIs, some apparently
caused by machine vibration,” explains
engineering manager, Joe Taylor. “We
spent a long time trying to rectify the
problem, but were eventually left with no
alternative but to look for replacements.
A key consideration in this search was to
ensure open connectivity so that the
replacements would be compatible with
the plant’s existing PLCs. Nicholl chose
HMIs from Schneider Electric’s Magelis
range. One attraction was the HMIs’
flexible programming which provided a
seamless transition between the old
interfaces and the new ones.
“Our previous HMIs had physical
function buttons, whereas the Schneider
Electric products have touchscreens,” Taylor
explains. “However, we were able to
configure the screen to match exactly the
layout that our operatives were familiar
with, which meant that we did not have
the time or inconvenience of re-training to
the new models. That made it a very
smooth transition for us.”
Production at the Nicholl site is organised
into three shifts with operations running
continuously from 10pm on Sundays to
10pm on Fridays. Using the new HMIs’
Web-gate feature, Taylor can log onto the
production system remotely from anywhere
with an Internet connection, to monitor
operations and to check for faults.
The compact, robust HMIs have cut
downtime significantly. To date, some 18
Magelis XBT GT4330 HMIs have been
installed, including one that has been built
into a machine made at Cannock for the
company’s site in France. Taylor is planning
« The new HMIs at Nicholl’s Cannock plant have
been linked to the site’s existing PLCs
to expand the replacement programme to
cover all 46 of the pressing lines in
Cannock.
He says that the HMIs “have the scope
to do a lot more with them. When we have
completed the replacement programme,
we will have more opportunities to add
new functions to our systems.”
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