Taking a map-based design approach is another layer of possibility for Digital Twins in Manufacturing between a SCADA system and a fully virtual environment. Put simply, think Google Maps, but for your facility. When fully zoomed out, you can see the whole building or campus, then as you zoom in, you can see more levels of detail: full building to a production line, production to individual work centers, work centers down to pieces of equipment. You could even zoom down to individual instruments!

This map-based concept is very easy to apply in Ignition’s Perspective Module with a few off the shelf tools for building out the plant floor side of the equation.

The Map

The first piece of the puzzle is the map itself. It can be a relatively simple or as detailed as you want it to be. Normally, the map will be broken up into a handful of zoom layers.

These zoom layers will typically follow the ISA-95 Equipment Hierarchy:

• Enterprise

• Site

• Area

• Line

• Cell

• Equipment

You can imagine the enterprise layer is like zooming out to view the entire United States, then the site level is like states, areas are cities, lines are streets, cells are city blocks, and pieces of equipment are individual buildings. Hopefully this metaphor helps the map view start to make sense quickly.

The top most zoomed-out layer will be your enterprise. In most cases the campus or facility. This layer will likely be in the shape of your building oriented in the way which makes the most sense for your users. Usually, it will also be designed to look decent on a wide screen monitor, so orienting the building on a North-South axis works well in most situations.

The next zoom layer typically represents production areas. These areas can be represented by rectangles inside the building. Within those rectangles are the production lines represented by more basic shapes. Cells and then equipment are usually represented with more detail showing the exact locations of the equipment within the cell—and the cells within the lines. Similar to Google Maps, as you zoom in you will get more detail as you get closer to the literal plant floor.

For the map to be useful, we will also need to display information on top of the map itself.

Graphic Overlays

You are probably already familiar with graphic overlays on maps and have seen them many times on your mobile device. On your phone, the overlaid information might be traffic on the roads, street names, or information about hotel or gas prices in your search area. An Ignition SCADA map is no different, except we will be looking at data and information about your process.

When tying into MES projects (especially OEE), a common overlay will be your current OEE data for the zoom level you have open—starting with the plant, then zooming into the areas, lines, cells, and equipment. Just like a typical OEE dashboard on an Andon Screen, you can use similar graphics on the map. In our experience, using color shaded squares with numeric values in them works well. The color of the square can be transparent as to not obscure the map below it, and can display red/yellow/green to indicate bad/okay/good OEE values in that location. The data will come from Ignition’s tag engine for the same real-time update capability you’ve come to expect.

As with any development in Ignition Perspective, we also heavily leverage template views for these graphics. You may want to use different templates for the different zoom levels or type of work station, and it is easy to include these on the map.

The other trick is laying out the graphics in the right spot and making them scale with the zoom level. The built-in scripting capabilities of the Perspective Map Component make this relatively straightforward. You can also make the graphics clickable to open up relevant windows or SCADA screens as needed. Then, it can all tie into an overall MES implementation by combining your ERP system with the Ignition Perspective Map to open up relevant ERP data for any portion of your process.

Based on the map layer setup, generating graphic overlay locations is a relatively straightforward process using a script. To get more detail in your graphics, it is possible to export the graphic shapes from CAD to directly import geolocation data into the Perspective Map Component and apply the relevant styles for color coding based on live data.

Additional Integrations

Once you’ve laid out the map and data is flowing, there are a few more options to consider for deploying this tool to your facility.

One option is to use the map display as a dashboard for Andon screens in the plant. Based on the physical location of the screens, you can set up an administrative interface to tie a TV to a zoom/pan location on the map. This allows you to display the area around the TV with the relevant dashboard data on the map.

If you have users with mobile devices using the Ignition Perspective Mobile App, they can turn on location tracking and their location can automatically load the map to show them what they are looking at on the plant floor, similar to using Corso Systems’ Geofencing project in Perspective.

Moving beyond the map and the process, it is also common to see process flow diagrams and material traffic overlaid onto the map with arrows. Along with the OEE graphics, these can be color coded to show the rate of material flow through any given part of the process.

You can also tie realtime location data from Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems in your facility to show the location of the AGVs on the map. The AGV graphics can be clickable to display a detailed view of what each AGV is carrying, where it is going, and any other relevant information you might need.

Wrapping Up

Using a map as part of an overall SCADA implementation is a unique and extremely powerful use case for the Perspective Module in the Ignition SCADA platform. If your facility is relatively new, you probably already have the CAD drawings you need to generate the map itself. If you also have an MES integration, getting data for the map is an easy task. If you don’t have this information handy, generating it at a useful level of detail is relatively easy to do with the drawing tools in Perspective—and you can even do it directly on the map.

There are a lot of possibilities for innovation using the Perspective Map Component. We have barely scratched the surface here. For a deeper dive into some of our plant map projects, more information on how you could leverage maps at your facility, or if you need help generating the map files for your project please reach out and let us know!