Home Features Companies Bridge the gap and Unlock vendor limitations with Control Logic

Bridge the gap and Unlock vendor limitations with Control Logic

May 16, 2022

4808

Bridge the gap and Unlock vendor limitations

Today’s technology has set new benchmarks and possibilities to safely manage environmental responsibilities across thousands of square kilometres for mining operators. According to Control Logic’s product marketing manager, Martin Daines. New opportunities existing in transparent information flows right down to the real-world sensors.

Daines says an Australian Tier 1 mining company looked for an optimum way to safely manage its environmental responsibilities through the capture of environmental dust and water quality metrics.

With hundreds of environmental field sensors strategically positioned around the mine site connected to a Red Lion’s FlexEdge Intelligent Edge Automation Platform. Daines says this environmental data is continuously fed to a centrally hosted cloud historian and dashboard, allowing the business to make insightful decisions to assist their sustainable mining techniques and regularity compliance.

According to Mr Daines “The FlexEdge brings nearly two decades of industrial automation to the IT realm, effectively bridging the gap between process and business systems, business logic deployed at the edge while providing a future-proof solution for changing business needs”.

Daines calls the FlexEdge an open platform that enables customers to choose the system architecture that bypasses the burden of existing software and hardware limitation while enhancing cyber security integrity.

“This is a massive challenge for mine operators to overcome today. The open platform extends to the field hardware because of the various IO and over 300 protocols the FlexEdge supports, therefore lab-quality sensors could be chosen that otherwise wouldn’t be on the table”, Daines says.

“In simplest terms, the Red Lion FlexEdge provides a scalable solution to integrate complex multi-vendor environments for the industrial sector that solves multiple problems,” Mr Daines said. “In fact, too many (problems) because it’s impossible to label this product into a specific box.”

Daines goes on to say “with its connectivity being modular and forward-thinking, the product natively supports 4G, GPS, Wifi, Ethernet, USB, Serial, and real-world digital and analogue IO. While supporting cloud, SQL, OPC and industrial Fieldbus protocol connectivity. This means real-time automation devices and sensors can now talk to each other effortlessly, but also be connected to the great cloud and business architecture securely through the on-board firewall router”

Daines says what binds everything together is Red Lion’s free programming software Crimson, which configures everything from firmware, VPN, protocol conversion, IEC61131 RTU Logic Control, email/SMS alerts, data logging and web pages, contained in one configuration is what makes Red Lion’s solution powerful.

But it’s also the journey of implementation and ongoing maintenance that Red Lion has solved through a mass deployment HMTL dashboard tool, Sixview Manager. It makes for a solution that’s straightforward, repeatable, reliable, secure and scalable.” In the end, the FlexEdge helps customers reduce costs, improve data security, and increase productivity.”

Mr Daines says this is why partnering with a company like Control Logic, which has capabilities across all industries in different capacities with access to over 20 global suppliers, is advantageous.

“In the same way, we partner with our suppliers to get the resolve for our customers,” he says.

“With our integrated approach, solutions for the digitalisation of plants and processes, and profound industry expertise, we can help improve your overall plant performance and secure your long-term competitiveness,” Daines concludes.