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Planning and monitoring preventive, condition-based, and reactive maintenance activities

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02.04.2009

The Siemens Industry Automation Division has upgraded their Simatic Maintenance Station software for the diagnosis and maintenance of plants and machinery. The focus of the new features in Version 2009 is diagnostic functionality and plant asset management.

Simatic Maintenance Station now offers functions for the efficient planning and monitoring of maintenance operations and jobs. It also allows devices in the field to access the Simatic Maintenance Station via a web client for remote maintenance. For example, Panel PCs with touch controls can be used to carry out diagnostic measures on-site.

Simatic Maintenance Station, a software option for the Simatic WinCC SCADA system, supports preventive, condition-based, and reactive maintenance activities of a plant in a central system. The software visualizes diagnostic and maintenance information – from a PC to network components all the way to controllers, switching, protection, and control units, as well as drives. The plant operator receives a uniform and clear status display.

Using this he can clearly identify components, systems, and plant units, assess them individually, and, where appropriate, respond quickly to special situations. Based on the condition of the components, appropriate measures for machinery and plant maintenance can be taken at the right time to reduce or even avoid downtimes. This contributes directly to lower maintenance costs and higher productivity. Simatic Maintenance Station passes on maintenance requests to other target systems, for example to a computer.

All operations are message-based, and are therefore easy to archive and understand. This results in an extensive database that can be analyzed with WinCC. The configuration of Maintenance Station is easy, because it uses Step 7 project data that are already available from the plant setup phase. Components from other manufacturers are incorporated using standards-based procedures.

Gerhard Stauss | Source: Siemens Industry Automation
Further information: www.siemens.com/automation/maintenance

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