Project
Founded in 1939, the Xuzhou Tobacco Factory, located in the eastern province of Jiangsu, is one of the largest tobacco factories in China with fixed assets of 1.7 billion RMB (around $125M) and an annual production yield of 0.5 million cartons of cigarettes.
The cigarette manufacturer was interested in implementing an innovative automation solution that would offer the flexibility to produce a larger number of product variants. In addition, customer system requirements called for easy traceability of production processes and an overall reduction of production costs.
Solution
Siemens provided a PROFINET-based solution which included 10 SIMATIC S7-400 CPUs with SIMATIC NET CP 443-1 Advanced Ethernet communication processors and over 60 SIMATIC ET 200S stations with integrated PROFINET interfaces.
WinCC HMI stations with SIMATIC Panel PCs and CP 1616 were also installed. SCALANCE X-400 industrial switches form the backbone of the network. Using PROFINET CBA (Component Based Automation) whereby modules of automation not only provided fast engineering but also the necessary production flexibility.
Conclusion
By shortening production duration and requirements, the new solution resulted in substantial cost reductions.The increased system flexibility offered by the modularity of the PROFINET CBA solution made faster production adaptation to market requirements possible. Moreover, the system now enables real-time recording of all aspects of the production processes.