EA Upgrades Siegfried’s Automation Platform, Decreasing Downtime 

Siegfried

Customer Background

Siegfried is a worldwide company that provides products and tailor-made services that integrate seamlessly into a customer’s value chain. The company offers pharmaceutical industry partners a comprehensive range of services – from developing drug substances to product development, registration, manufacturing, packaging, and logistics. Siegfried approached Enterprise Automation in 2019 to audit and upgrade their control systems.

Project Background

The Siegfried Irvine facility is contracted to produce various pharmaceuticals within its production facility. This facility holds an array of equipment and services to support this purpose. The CIP SIP system is one of these, designed specifically to clean and sterilize equipment. The project scope was initially to audit their PLCs and determine which to replace, as several PLCs were beginning to disconnect frequently, leading to more downtime than Siegfried preferred. They also wanted to update their SCADA system from System Platform 2012 R2 to 2020 using high-performance graphics with OMI visualization engine.

After EA performed the audit, the project’s scope evolved, including replacing all end-of-life PLCs and platform upgrades to improve security working alongside their corporate IT group.

EA Solutions

EA’s work with Siegfried involved significant upgrades to its SCADA and PLC systems. After auditing their SCADA system, EA upgraded Siegfried’s system to System Platform 2020 with OMI and created 34 new screens modeled on their previous system, resulting in increased functionality and a standardized, high-performance graphical interface.

EA also created a new virtualized environment with more than 20 VMs to better segregate networks and add redundancy to improve security. In addition, the screens were updated with alarm callouts using TopView alarm management software.

Coinciding with the SCADA system upgrade, Siegfried opted to update any outdated or non-standardized PLCs. Through EA’s planning and effort to create a cohesive, future-proof system for Siegfried, ten different Opto22 PLC panels with new Allen Bradley CompactLogix PLC panels we’re installed. This led to current and supported PLC hardware, increased functionality, and enhanced or better documentation and panel conditions than previously existed.

The upgrades brought several positive results, including better visibility of process issues, improved alarm callouts, and a well-documented system. Due to the increased visibility within the newly upgraded system, the Siegfried team identified several chronic issues they were unaware of and plans to have mitigation projects initiated to resolve them. The upgraded PLCs and SCADA system we’re validated by a joint team of Siegfried and EA engineers in a limited window of facility downtime. The system allows for increased control over individual processes, enabling them to tactically isolate and approach issues without taking the whole system down to resolve.