Integrated drive systems: The quest for peak performance

There are three main areas associated with IDS:

Horizontal Integration

Horizontal integration is concerned with the drive train itself by looking at and specifying components that are perfectly matched to the application. For example, variable speed drives, motors, gearboxes and couplings. Correct specification leads to a drive train that is perfectly matched to the loading requirements and it also ensures efficiency and reliability throughout the lifecycle.  By sourcing and specifying from a single source a customer or user can align their engineering and business needs directly to the supplier, working in partnership to ensure applications such as baggage handling equipment or warehouse conveyors achieve their maximum potential.

Vertical Integration

Most modern machinery – whether installed in an airport, chemical works or car plant – will have some form of communication to either a higher level system or controller. This is used for control but also for data acquisition. The ability to predict a problem is now a reality with IDS; drive systems on machines can supply up-to-date information regarding their condition and any variables, ‘breakdown’ situations can be avoided and routine maintenance can be planned, thus enabling a reduction in unplanned delays within a busy manufacturing or process environment. The vertical Integration path can be used to monitor performance and energy usage, and whether the equipment is being used to its full potential; not just local monitoring but remote monitoring, too. This philosophy is an all-encompassing approach adopted by Siemens and known as Totally Integrated Automation (TIA). TIA allows seamless integration of technology and the ability to connect, diagnose and monitor all aspects of equipment.

Lifecycle integration

All machinery at some point will need to be upgraded or components replaced. The lifecycle dimension complements the other two dimensions of IDS, ensuring that a drive system is always working at its maximum potential, but also providing support and advice throughout the entire lifecycle of the machine. Lifecycle support is unique in that the support is provided on a global scale, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Lifecycle integration wraps the data-rich optimised drive train with software and services that produce significant reductions in the total cost of ownership (TCO), allowing plant and equipment operators to focus on maximising tonnes processed per hour or number of units/products/systems manufactured per day. 

Intelligent devices can improve the reliability and quality of communications and make remote diagnostics management easier. By telling us when they require maintenance, costly breakdowns are avoided. Intelligent motor management control units can detect errors in processes and systems before they become faults – these clever units function independently of the process and provide information previously only dreamt of.

For companies like Siemens, by working with customers to fully optimise drive trains, the size of components (such as motors and gearboxes) can often be reduced yet still meet the application’s needs.

Smart data

The increasing digitalisation of condition monitoring is bringing safer, more energy efficient and environmentally friendly considerations to the front of operations for companies embracing the challenges.  

Plant downtime is costly and almost entirely avoidable if you have the right information to hand – this is what smart data does.  By designing in efficiencies as early as the planning stage in any project requiring a power driven system, companies can not only leverage in energy savings from the start, they can ensure their systems are future-proof when it comes to global system standards.

For example, the use of converter-fed motors can produce energy savings of up to 70%. Advanced technologies can help bring truly integrated solutions with seamless communication to the control and automation processes, for any industry.