Industrielle Automatisierungssysteme GmbH

RTC-32 Preventive Maintenance Issues

Preventive Maintenance Issues come in two flavors:

For both issues the early and qualified notification of the responsible Maintenance Group is crucial for avoiding a loss of valuable production time.

We have considered these issues and are using two independent strategies:

Detect and signal a problem to the maintenance group via SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol). Footnote: Simple does not mean trivial!

This option is possible and working as long as the PC hardware itself is alive and we have a working network connection to the mail server.

In an active installation we have implemented the following error detection and notification related to hardware problems:

1. Detection of communication errors with the connected scanner

2. Detection of communication errors with the digital I/O system (Interbus-S)

3. Detection of a main-blower malfunction

4. Detection of a CPU blower malfunction

5. Detection of a backlight illumination malfunction of the LCD screen

6. Detection of a high temperature alert

Detecting malfunctions of certain components (for example the CPU blower) also guarantees, that repair actions can be initiated BEFORE the CPU dies because of being overheated.

Software related:

1. Malfunction of sending captured data to the host system (invalid data could have been entered manually, which is not being accepted by the host system. This could cause a blocked FIFO and an accumulation of data due to subsequently captured data)

2. Send statistical data (for example production counters) in a pre-configured interval.

See also Details of SMTP implementation

The second strategy is used if the system is not capable of sending messages to a mail server.

   SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol):

• Companies running a SNMP management system like TIVOLI (IBM) or FACTORY-MANAGER (PHOENIX-CONTACT) in their facilities are enabled to include the RTC-32 station in their network monitoring and get alerts in case the station is not working anymore. The current implementation includes the definitions if MIB-II

See also Details of SNMP implementation   RTC-32 System documentation (PDF 2.6 M)