Exaquantum Traveling Sales Diary

Do you know what Exaquantum is? It is a solution-based package for plant information management systems(PIMS). To describe it in a few words, it is a database system that stores data and directly exports it to an Excel spreadsheet. There are other functions to create graphics and trend displays, but those are secondary importance.

[Operation Monitoring with Exaquantum]
A chemical company in Kanagawa Prefecture (Japan) decided to make a trial use of Exaquantum. They wanted to monitor the operation of a bottling line where bottles are filled with chemicals, sealed with lids, labeled, and placed in cardboard boxes. I knew Yokogawa had a lot of experience in chemical process control, but it was quite new to deal with a discrete control line. I had promised to sit down with the customer and design an application in just one work week that would solve their problems.

 Most of the operators on the line were rather new to their assignments, and so their job descriptions specified that they had to write operation reports whenever the line stopped due to a machine failure or some other reason. As long as the line managed to keep running, the operators seemed not to care at all about individual machine conditions. The managers had no way to analyze why the operation ratio of the line had decreased because there was no report on machine conditions. So, we agreed to begin with basic data acquisition.

We started out to collect operation and failure signals from the line and all the PLC controlled machines. Based on the operation monitoring data, we then drew charts and made the operation rate calculations. It was fortunate that the customer's person in charge was a PC-wiz, and he helped me create the graphics. Five charts were done in only two days.

It took us some time to figure out how to process the data that had been obtained, but once the outline was laid out, we managed to output the daily operation reports in just two days. The rest of the work flew by easily. The customer said, “Hey, it’s so simple and easy. Let's do some more! I had no way to deny his request.

Once all the procedures were completed, we were able to visualize the operation ratio for all the production lines in the plant, and the failure rate of each machine was reported in a timely fashion. Bottles filled with chemical solution started to flow off the bottling line.

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Nabe-san’s Favorites

I came across a delicious Anpan bun when I was working with the above-mentioned chemical company. It is sold at a very small bakery near the local train station.  From the outside Anpan looks like an ordinary white bread roll, but it is filled with red bean paste.  The original form of this bread with red bean paste was created in the mid 1870’s and it is said to be a masterpiece of  the East (=red bean paste) meeting the West (=bread).  The one I recommend is rich in taste, heavy with paste, and the bread part is as thin as a sheet of paper. More information on Anpan can be found at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anpan

About the author: Hisashi Watanabe is in charge of Exaquantum sales promotion and marketing.  He carries a demonstration unit with him and visits customers all over Japan every day.  He is usually called “Nabe-san” for short, which comes from his family name, but some call him “Zo-san” (which means "elephant" in Japanese). No, he does not have a long nose, though!  He loves eating and drinking, especially when he visits places away from home, and he has a huge database of great and unique restaurants and shops near customer sites that not even the customers or the local sales people are aware of.  He loves this job that takes him to so many different places.