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by James F. Manji, Contributing Editor Posted on Friday, November 03, 2006 3:10:08 PM   | Abstract: | A $300 million machining-and-assembly addition to Chrysler's engine plant in Kenosha, WI, is busily churning out 200-hp, 2.7-litre V-6 engines for the next generation of Cab-Forward cars to be introduced this fall |
CONTROL MGT. A $300 million machining-and-assembly addition to Chrysler's engine plant in Kenosha, WI, is busily churning out 200-hp, 2.7-litre V-6 engines for the next generation of Cab-Forward cars to be introduced this fall. The performance and response of this engine is eclipsed only by that of the facility that produces them. Once Chrysler releases an engine design, the plant's distributed automation helps integrators speed the engine to production in about 27 months, a far cry from the three or four years typical for U.S. automakers. The new addition can produce up to 400,000 engines per year. "In terms of technology, the new plant stands out in three important ways," says Mark Fleszar, supervisor of controls and plant facilities for advanced engine manufacturing at Chrysler. "First, Kenosha features the most extensively distributed and networked automation system ever applied to automobile manufacturing. Every processing station and every major function gets its own Telemecanique PLC. This plant marks the first major application of this brand of PLC in the U.S. "More than 1,400 PLCs, along with 1,400 human-machine interface [HMI] panels and scores of interlinked networks, serve the plant's block, head, crankshaft, camshaft, and rod-machining lines, as well as the engine assembly lines. There are no central PLCs performing supervisory control." Second, the plant boasts the first kit-built lines for engine-block and engine-head machining. Upon arrival from Europe, the stations were placed, connected to the transfer bar, aligned, piped, wired, energized, networked, cycled, and then integrated with adjacent stations. Often, the time it took from power-on to automatic operation was as short as two days. "Previous machines have taken up to three weeks to power-up. With the kit-built stations, startup was ongoing. "Every station has its own distributed control and HMI. As such, our supplier was able to prototype, build, test, and start up each as a standalone unit," he continues. "Station controls are small enough for Chrysler people to tackle-perhaps 40 I/O points and a couple of [motion] axes. Compare that to the thousands of I/O points and hundreds of axes found in centralized control systems. Our distributed control and power supplies cost a bit more than the remote power supplies, I/O, and racks required by a centralized control system, but we enjoy tremendous flexibility, quicker installations, and less required training." AMERICAN KEIRETSU. The third important technological feature is the complete application of automation and control standards throughout the plant. By forging an American-style Keiretsu, Chrysler and Square D Co. (Palatine, IL) were able to jointly develop, standardize, specify, and impose on some 80 machine OEMs a set of common control and design standards. Pleased with the success of the 2.7-litre engine program, Chrysler has also selected Square D as its partner for a new 4.7-litre engine plant in Detroit. Before building stations, OEMs received PC disks detailing hardware and software standards, hardware configuration and integration rules, and programs for most functions, fault modes, documentation, network addressing, HMI displays, PLC memory mapping, and more. Over time, Chrysler personnel couldn't help but memorize the common station PLC addresses and I/O, which helped them later during startup. CAD templates for system components were also developed for OEMs to drop into drawings. "Equipment must follow IEC standards, minimizing cost and size," says Fleszar. "We chose IEC equipment and cost-effective 24-Vdc I/O to help Kenosha compete with any other engine plant anywhere in the world." Page : 1 2 3 ... NEXT |