Abstract
Fieldbus concepts were initially developed in the mid-1980's with wider acceptance starting in the 1990's - prompted by the advances in technology and ever increasing numbers and diversity of industrial specific products being introduced. This growing trend towards open fieldbuses and its associated potential benefits has prompted over 80% of industrial plants to evaluate these more advanced networks.With 200 or so different fieldbus systems on the market, this thesis focuses on the selection of an optimum fieldbus for machine control within the paper converting industry, in particular Georgia Pacific's plant in South Wales. In addition to this, the benefits of the optimum fieldbus are considered against the existing proprietary network and a recommendation given.
In order to provide a means of identifying the optimum fieldbus several tools and techniques have been used - elimination by evaluation, potential risk analysis, direct comparison cost analysis and finally a field trial.
The findings from this research demonstrates that fieldbus is a practical and effective technology for delivering real benefits to the end user as well as being economically viable when correctly selected for a particular application.
The results of this research leads the author to comprehensively recommend that Georgia Pacific adopt DeviceNet as the standard network for machine control within their paper converting process.
| Date of Award | Jun 2002 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Hefin Rowlands (Supervisor) |
Keywords
- machine control
- optimum fieldbus
- paper converting industry
- Georgia Pacific
- South Wales