Höganäs AB is the world's largest producer of metal powders. Their business concept is to develop, manufacture and market iron and non-ferrous metal powders. Höganäs needed to exchange plant data between different sites. No data loss was allowed, even if the link between the sites was down. Therefore, data had to be sent with store and forward functionality.
The first objective of the project was to asynchronously transport plant data between ABB Advant and Intellution FIX. Microsoft Message Queuing was the technology used to transport data, since Höganäs had in-house experience with this system. The decision was made to use an XML-schema when sending data via the message queuing system. As a result, many different clients could send data to the two control systems, or consume data sent by any of the control systems.
Höganäs AB contacted Benima to help them solve the problem presented. They selected the Matrikon OPC Server for Intellution FIX. An OPC Client was developed by Benima SydVäst AB to handle data between the Fix OPC Server and the message queuing system. A client was developed by Höganäs AB to handle data between ABB Advant and the message queuing system.
At present, roughly 100 points are used in the Intellution FIX Classic 6.0 system. The update frequency is roughly 20 points per minute. Since Matrikon’s OPC products have proved to work well before, their OPC Server for Intellution FIX was a natural choice.
Support from Matrikon was good and the system has been fault free since June 2001. The Matrikon OPC Server is proving to work well. Based on the project’s success, the sy