Software and IT engineering

Work processes

Fields of application

• Complete beverage bottling lines (food industry)

  • DSG Automation have developed a modular application in the Siemens Step 7 environment for the swift and reliable management of software controlling bottling plant conveyor belts. The product's main feature is the ease with which it can be configured based on the plant's specifications: it has actually been conceived and developed for maintenance engineers and hence it proves as simple to configure a new conveying system as it does to edit applications that have already been implemented with this tool. The application has already been customized and installed with excellent results in terms of line start-up and test speed in various bottling plants located in Mexico, North Africa and Eastern European countries.

• Traceability systems for prepared meat processing plants (food industry)

  • To comply with the regulations on traceability in the food production sector, DSG Automation have developed a management application based on custom language and relational database storage for controlling raw materials and finished products in a prepared meat processing plant based in Emilia. The application's distinguishing trait is the fact that it is shared across the production, storage and management departments since they are connected via a wireless network and the applications are mutually redundant so that data storage is guaranteed even in the event of a fault with the server, which is located in the management area. In practical terms, the operators' part in the process consists in working barcode readers. The barcodes are generated automatically by a dedicated printer, thus allowing the plant to trace incoming raw materials and create a record of products stored in the facility.

• Traceability systems for cereal products (food industry)

  • To comply with the regulations on traceability in the food production sector, DSG Automation have also developed a management application for cereal products that resembles the one described for prepared meat processing plants. The main difference lies in the fact that, in this case, the database is populated automatically with data exchanged with the PLCs and SCADA devices installed on the production systems.

• MES systems for managing iron and steel products (iron and steel industry)

  • The purpose of the application, which has been developed in an advanced language, is the bidirectional storage of data coming from the PLC-SCADA system and from the management level. The data exchanged regard work orders and their sequence (from management system to control system), while real production data, alarms and downtime data come from production. The MES system that has been developed (also called Level 2) consequently has the job of storing these data in a relational database and transferring them to the network's various units based on a schedule adjusted to meet specific requirements. The application described was installed in 2007 in Kentucky (USA).

• Tobacco primary processing plants (tobacco industry)

  • The applications developed in this industrial environment involve the use of software tools based on mathematical models in order to systematically reproduce the processes involved in the production of tobacco: humidifying, processing, drying and final flavouring. The software, whose control part was developed in the Siemens Step 7 environment, is designed to allow modular management of the equipment determined at the analytical stage to be involved in the process. The applications developed by means of these software libraries have been installed in various processing plants located in Europe, Asia and North Africa.

• Air treatment plants (pharmaceutical industry)

  • The SCADA application that has been developed refers to the pharmaceutical industry, where regulations in terms of the security of data storage and subsequent data processing is vital for the purpose of auditing. Consequently, DSG Automation had to analyse, develop and, lastly, test the application bearing in mind the need to comply fully with FDA regulations and, more specifically, with section 21CFR part 11. In this specific case, DSG Automation channelled their efforts into producing and approving reference protocols for both FAT and SAT tests. The application was installed in Italy in the production facility of a leading pharmaceutical company.

• Water osmosis, filtration and ultrafiltration plants (water treatment)

  • In this area of industry, DSG Automation have developed various software applications both for the PLC section and SCADA section. The applications usually feature distributed logic with an industrial communication network for the process control section and Ethernet connection for the section concerned with communication with the SCADA devices. The applications developed by DSG Automation have been installed in Europe and Asia

• Batching and mixing plants (cement factories-building products)

  • The software applications developed by DSG Automation with these features are installed, above all, in the construction and chemical industries. The specific batch processing requirement has enabled DSG Automation engineers to develop software tools and libraries, both for the PLC section and SCADA section, that are designed to meet the specific demands. The tools and libraries allow our engineers to configure the specific plant quickly, while ensuring the end user can control and monitor his available resources in an enjoyable and reliable way

• Semifinished product warehouses (timber industry)

  • The application was developed with a view to optimizing the available space in the warehouse and allowing for the possibility of the warehouse being operated continuously (24hrs a day). Rather than being filled based on fixed positions, storage in the warehouse is based on an algorithm developed by DSG Automation that determines the maximum load for that area. The resulting solution means machining centres downline from the warehouse can be fed and unloaded so that cycle requirements can be met while production is in progress and, at the same time, materials can be stored when the plant closes for the night. Indeed, the built-in features mean available resources can be controlled and monitored without the operator in attendance, except for the initial loading of semifinished products onto the roller conveyor, so that the storage stage can take place at night with the machining centres stopped. The application was installed in Italy for storing particleboard.

After-sales support

The final part of the service is the 24/7 customer support: this service ensures that the customer enjoys uninterrupted production for the entire life of the system installed.

The immediate, problem-solving response to customer requests - regarding systems and automated devices supplied either by DSG Automation or by third parties - is given by the team of specialized engineers offering a worldwide service.

For strategically important or particularly critical production processes, special support agreements and coordinated targeted preventive maintenance measures are arranged between DSG Automation and their partners.