Wine producer expands use of control system

The wine producer, Henri Maire, has been relying on GE Fanuc's Cimplicity HMI for its building management for a number of years, and is now using it to expand its control and monitoring system

The wine producer, Henri Maire, has been relying on GE Fanuc's Cimplicity HMI for its building management for a number of years.

Given the positive experience, the company has decided to use the software to expand its control and monitoring system.

The well-known French wine producer Henri Maire is based in the Jura region.

Depending on the yield, it produces between 7 and 8 million bottles of wine annually.

Both management and production are located in a large building complex in Arbois.

In order to succeed in the highly competitive French wine market, Henri Maire adopted new methods years ago.

Having implemented a modern building management system, it managed to significantly reduce costs.

The concept for the building management was provided by the system integrator Nemotek which specialises in this field and has developed a standard solution.

This solution is based on the control and monitoring software Cimplicity HMI and is individually adapted to each customer's requirements.

When asked about his opinion on Cimplicity HMI, Fabrice Monney from Nemotek commented, "Cimplicity HMI is simply an excellent product.

With its open networking architecture and support for a wide variety of protocols, it provides the flexibility we need." In the field of building management, this is particularly important, as many individual solutions need to be integrated within a global concept.

This can either be done in a single step or, more typically, progressively over the years.

At Henri Maire, 16 different individual solutions have been integrated into the building management system during the past six years.

Thus, power consumption, heating, sunshades, lighting and security devices are now being controlled by Cimplicity according to time and load requirements.

To do so, the entire application collects data from over 200 data points.

An Ethernet LAN provides the connection between the PC running the control and monitoring software and the four installed PLCs, the latter communicating with the I/O level via the GE Fanuc Genius Bus.

With reduced costs, higher security standards, easier maintenance and a safer power supply, the building management system has provided benefits to Henri Maire.

Cost savings were achieved through a reduction of the power consumption, for example in more controlled use of interior and exterior lighting.

Furthermore, the system enabled a considerable reduction in overall energy costs.

The power rate can vary significantly over the day.

Now, whenever it exceeds a value pre-defined by Henri Maire, the external power supply is cut off, with the required energy provided by two in-house diesel-driven generators instead.

A further advantage is in the alarm system provided by Cimplicity HMI.

All alarms issued by the system are forwarded to the telephone switchboard via an Ethernet link and displayed on a data panel.

The operator at the switching centre then informs the responsible technicians.

If no operator is available, the alarms are transmitted to the responsible person via mobile phone and SMS.

The management is always notified of all alarms via SMS and can thus take appropriate actions in case of failures or problems.

Remote access to the visualisation system is also possible from anywhere in the world, with only a PC, an appropriate modem and an authorisation (user name / password) required to view the current system status in real-time or even to change system settings.

Pierre-Louis Valot, Purchasing Manager at Henri Maire, commented, "We have a highly flexible system which we have progressively expanded.

The system has more than paid for itself over the years." This satisfaction is also reflected in the planned investments.

Among others, the system is due to be upgraded to include the fire detection system and further security devices within the next few years.

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