FEATURE PLCsy
Alan Norbury (left) in 1995, visiting a customer
from the products of other manufacturers with a more reasonable price, increased quality and a more diverse product line and new functions. This led to the universally-applicable S5 U series, which drove sales up rapidly.
Major advances in the U series were modularity, timing, counter capacity and communications modules. Modularity enabled engineers to connect S5 with other devices, like printers and monitors, to aid graphical programming to control engineering. Improved programming enabled high-speed counting and positioning for the food processing industry, with applications for labelling on bottles.
The advent of the S5-100U range, which
introduced a central processing unit (CPU) option, reduced switching times and enabled more complex and faster production processes.
Failsafe With this new-found speed plant, operator safety became paramount. Siemens developed an additional failsafe controller to the range, the S5-115F. Dave Pickles, Managing Director of industrial systems integrator Capula, started his career at Siemens as an apprentice engineer, working with Norbury, and was involved in training electricians to use the S5. He recalls a project he was involved with at Delta Rods in Wolverhampton, which replaced a 12m long solid-state control suite with the compact 110S for the processing of brass billets into wire.
“It was transformational moving from an enormous bank of panels,
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The Simatic S7S5 family
which were prone to failure, and vast complicated drawings mapping all the logic circuits to a compact unit and a screen for programming and diagnostics,” remembers Pickles. “Watching the lightbulb moment in these veteran engineers who were wary – and in some ways frightened by the change – was very rewarding. For me as a young engineer, it was fantastic to be part of that revolution. There was euphoria around this new technology that would transform the performance of a plant across all industries.”
Pickles also attributes the success of S5 to its price and performance. “The 100U was the fi rst micro-PLC under £100, at a time when alternatives were costing thousands of pounds. Suddenly, small- and medium-sized manufacturers had the same access to the power, fl exibility, speed and reliability as their much-bigger competition. It changed the game.”
During his 15-year career as a systems integrator away from Siemens, Pickles witnessed fi rst-hand the longevity of S5. “It is remarkable that decades later I am still opening cabinets in plants and fi nding S5 beavering away, given the advances we have made in automation. I suspect I’ll still be fi nding units that have been forgotten about in years to come.”
Forward moves For 16 years, S5 made progressive strides, paving the way for its replacement, the fi rst generation Simatic S7 in 1994. Its arrival heralded the beginning of the network era and another leap forward for automation, off ering more power,
speed, fl exibility, open communications and architecture and faster, more-intuitive diagnostics.
Hot on its heels in 1996 was another quantum leap in automation technology with the advent of Totally Integrated Automation (TIA), a Siemens concept that covers the entire production chain, from receipt to shipping. While the onward advance of automation has continued with Simatic S7-1200 Basic Controller, which set new fl exibility standards with extensive expansion and adaptability when it arrived in 2009, and the Simatic S7-1500 Advanced Controller series, a new milestone in terms of performance and effi ciency since 2013, the reliable S5 continued to drive the wheels of industrial production. “It is a testament to the robustness of S5 that, after 40 years, it is still a favourite among engineers across industry,” said Norbury. “I attribute that to its power, fl exibility, modularity and structured programming. But, it is now the time to move forward on to the next chapter in automation.” As to what the future will bring, Norbury believes the next stage for automation is artifi cial intelligence (AI) controlling production robots that solve new tasks autonomously, and factories that continuously optimise themselves.
“When I look back to the start of my career, focused on relays, contactors and pushbuttons, through automation and into software and virtualisation, I couldn’t have imagined that we would be where we are today,” said Norbury.
CONTACT:
Siemens
www.siemens.com
Automation | November 2020 9
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