Rockwell Automation Revamp Gives BASF Rapid Implementation and Lower Maintenance Costs

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On a Saturday morning in February, everything was ready. The plant was powered down and the entire loading facility came to a halt. The transfer of products from the production area to the shipping bay was also suspended — but not for long.

“The whole system had been pre-assembled, so all we needed to do was connect ControlNet. After two or three hours we were able to restart the plant and begin testing,” explains Frübis. “The old remote I/O modules worked with the new controllers with no problems.”

By Monday morning the team was ready to start transferring a test load onto a truck, and by the afternoon the loading facility was back to normal and running like clockwork — half a day earlier than planned.

Since the new automation system was commissioned, BASF’s polymer dispersion loading facility has continued to run well. Thanks to the lower maintenance costs of the new system, the project’s payback time is short.

BASF has signed a life-cycle agreement with Rockwell Automation which includes a spare parts contract with defined costs as well as phone support and service availability around the clock. The agreement helps make sure that the collaboration between the two companies will continue to function smoothly up to 2018.

Further upgrades are planned before that date, with work already underway to further optimize system efficiency. “From my perspective, the migration went off very effectively and was a great success,” concludes Frübis. “For a similar application involving Rockwell Automation migration, we would take the same approach as for this project — and hopefully achieve the same level of success.”

* The author is Project Leader with Rockwell Automation Solutions GmbH, SSB Application Center, Karlsruhe/Germany.

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