I though i could be realy cool if it is possible if I book a Resource i Outlook (a Meeting room).. the Resource booking can be "picked up" by OPC server and be used in my Mangment system so it can turn on the heat/cooling/sun screen and so on...

Any Ideas anyone

 

If you are using HMI software E.G RSView, Citect, etc., write a bit of code to send you an Email or Rcv Email and process it, thus carrying out the task that you require.

If you are not using HMI Software then have a google with the subject of "PERL + OPC", perl is a very powerful scripting language that you should be able to put to use in you application

Regards,
Matt

 

Send e-mails to a PC, with the command as part of the subject (or the first line of the contents). Write a program to read each incoming e-mail, and respond to the commands. Have the client PC control the target devices (or at least communicate to the controller).

 

Not sure, but try this:
http://www.matrikonopc.com/products/opc-drivers/details.asp?driver=943
http://www.matrikonopc.com/products/opc-drivers/details.asp?driver=1210

I took a look at it a few months ago and it really gives access to an awful lot of stuff down in the Windows engine room. I would not be surprised if you could find something from Outlook in there which you could use. It is a free download. Let us know if you get something working. I am keen to see stuff working the other way around: schedule a maintenance appointment in
outlook if something breaks.

I also recall seeing some other OPC server that scans for a text file in a directory. Data presented reflects stuff in the text file.

Jonas Berge
SMAR
===========
[email protected]
www.smar.com
Learn fieldbus and Ethernet at your own pace: www.isa.org/fieldbuses
Learn OPC and automation software at your own pace: www.isa.org/autosoftware

 

In reply to Jonas Berge - I don't think that using MS-Outlook (or other similar calendaring systems) to schedule breakdown response would be very useful. Calendaring systems work on the model of several parties negotiating a meeting at some time in the future. Specific parties are invited, and the problem is one of manually finding a common time which is acceptable to all.

With a break-down situation, you want any one of several people to get an automatic and immediate request to go somewhere. The problem is one of finding a suitable person or persons who is on duty and not already working on a higher priority problem. If the first party doesn't respond within a time period, then the request would be sent to the next in line. At some point, the problem would be escalated to the supervisor or management level.

An automatic maintenance call-out system seems quite feasible, and indeed I wouldn't be surprised to find something like it already in use. It would however be much more sophisticated than a typical office worker oriented calendaring program.

 

Michael

10 years ago I used a product called Win911 to inform an operator(s) of problems at a unmanned water treatment plant. The alarms were extracted from Fix, prioritized and sent to an alphanumeric pager for transmission to the operator and/or others. The operator (who is on duty and maybe enjoying a bbq or sports game) would receive the page, read the message and decide the correct action by doing nothing or dialing into the plant using the supplied laptop and PcAnywhere (modifying the process or calling service personnel). This process involved a calendar schedule (who is on duty, second duty, etc at this time) of 1st thru N recipients and would sequence through them in that priority. Although service is a bit different than operations, the correct selection of alarms could allow the same procedure to work for demand service.

Dennis
[email protected]

 

In reply to Dennis - What would be needed to be added to the paging system you have described is:

1) A connection to the time and attendance system to get a list of who is actually present and available, rather than normally present at that time.

2) A list of what resources are currently free and not assigned to another task.

3) The ability to manually request additional resources (if the first person who examines the problem decides they need help).

4) Some sort of work load balancing system to ensure that the work is distributed fairly.

5) A priority system, so that resources can be moved from lower priority jobs to higher priority ones if necessary.

6) A connection to the maintenace history records, so the downtime of the machine and maintenance hours can be logged.

7) A connection to the maintenance stores system, so that spare parts can be checked out against the alarm which initiated the repair action.

8) Some sort of historical reporting software to allow the supervisors to keep track of what their personnel have been up to.

Each machine which needed attention would send alarm and status information to a central server. The central server software would parse the alarms and classify the problems. The server software would then send the dispatch information directly to the mobile (cell) phone of the person it selected to respond to the problem. The phones would have pre-programmed response messages to allow the selected personnel to communicate back to the server.

The above would require the software to be part of a centralised maintenance management system, since it would need to balance resources between all the machines in the plant. This more or less automates some of a maintenance
supervisor's job, and is probably only worth while in a very large plant.

The above doesn't sound very difficult though, so I would not be at all surprised if I were to hear that there are maintenance management packages which already do this.

 

Yes I agree with Matt.

If you are using a standard HMI (as Pcvue) you can also use a software dedicated to manage teams, calendars, etc... I know one we are distibuting. It's Alert from a french company called Micromedia.
Contact me if you want more details.

Nicolas Kunzer
PCVUE SEA - Scada softwares and automation solutions.
[email protected]
http://www.pcvue-sea.com