Support for Maintenance Processes Using RFID

Safe­ty is of utmost impor­tance dur­ing the trans­port of poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous process media in chem­i­cal pro­cess­ing plants. To ensure safe­ty at all times, reg­u­lar inspec­tion and main­te­nance of hoses is required by law.RFID hand­helds enable main­te­nance process­es to be per­formed and doc­u­ment­ed efficiently

Intuitive Software Allows for Easy Verification of Maintenance Performed

RFID hand­helds from Pepperl+Fuchs and ecom paired with cus­tom soft­ware from Neo­cep­tion allow for con­ve­nient and effi­cient main­te­nance, even in haz­ardous areas. Each hose is clear­ly iden­ti­fi­able via a UHF RFID tag, which includes the fol­low­ing information:

• Equip­ment number
• Test date/time
• Hose length and diameter
• Con­duc­tiv­i­ty
• Test pres­sure
• Date of the next inspection

Using the RFID hand­held and the “hose man­ag­er” soft­ware from the Pepperl+Fuchs start-up Neo­cep­tion, the audi­tor is guid­ed through the main­te­nance pro­ce­dure step-by-step. Auto­mat­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and user-friend­ly soft­ware vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate errors. The results of the test can be seam­less­ly trans­ferred to a back-end sys­tem and serve as the doc­u­men­ta­tion and proof of the tests car­ried out. Dur­ing the process of design­ing the user inter­faces, care was tak­en to ensure that they were ergonom­i­cal and glove-operable.

More Benefits from Additional Functions

Addi­tion­al func­tions help sup­port work process­es even bet­ter. A local­iza­tion func­tion, which eval­u­ates the strength of the tag’s response sig­nal, helps to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the time need­ed to search for a test object. In addi­tion to RFID, all opti­cal 1‑D and 2‑D codes can also be read via the inte­grat­ed imager.

Regular maintenance is required to ensure that chemical plants are operating safely

Pepperl+Fuchs is a provider of indus­tri­al sen­sors and explo­sion pro­tec­tion. Based on an intense dia­logue with our cus­tomers for more than 70 years we con­tin­ue to devel­op new com­po­nents and solu­tions, which sup­port their appli­ca­tions the best way pos­si­ble. For the land­mark top­ic Indus­trie 4.0 (Indus­tri­al Inter­net of Things) we devel­op inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies that pave the way to the dig­i­tal net­worked pro­duc­tion and to data trans­fer across all hier­ar­chy lev­els — even beyond com­pa­nies´ boundaries.

Industrial sensors: focus on the market

Mar­ket-spe­cif­ic solu­tions dom­i­nate an exten­sive port­fo­lio of indus­tri­al sen­sors that cov­ers all appli­ca­tions the mar­ket requires from today´s automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy. From the induc­tive and capac­i­tive to the pho­to­elec­tri­cal and high­ly pre­cise ultra­son­ic sen­sors, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems and many more Pepperl+Fuchs offers all cur­rent oper­at­ing prin­ci­ples in a broad variety.

Sensorik4.0 pro­vides sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy for Indus­trie 4.0. Our tech­nolo­gies enable sen­sors with­out dif­fi­cul­ty to com­mu­ni­cate hor­i­zon­tal­ly with­in the pro­duc­tion process and to exchange data ver­ti­cal­ly — even into high­er-lev­el infor­ma­tion sys­tems such as MES or ERP.

Process interfaces: secure applications

Com­po­nents and tech­nolo­gies for use in haz­ardous areas are designed to fit the most spe­cif­ic require­ments in the indus­tries we serve. They guar­an­tee max­i­mum avail­abil­i­ty at max­i­mum safe­ty. Iso­lat­ed bar­ri­ers, sig­nal iso­la­tors, remote I/O or field­bus sys­tems, HMIs and many oth­er tech­nolo­gies offer solu­tions for a wide range of appli­ca­tions includ­ing cer­ti­fied pack­aged solu­tions and all types of explo­sion protection.

Ex-Protection4.0 brings dig­i­tal net­worked Indus­trie 4.0‑production struc­tures to process indus­tries. With con­cept stud­ies like Eth­er­net for Process Automa­tion inte­grat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion through­out all lev­els of an automa­tion sys­tem via Eth­er­net becomes fea­si­ble — for the first time ever even down to the filed level.