A method for training an operator of a spray drying plant, the spray drying plant including a plurality of plant elements including pre-processing elements, a spray drying element, post-processing elements, powder recovery elements, and a programmable logic controller, PLC. The method including the steps of: obtaining a transient model of the spray drying plant, wherein the transient model includes transient sub-models of the plurality of plant elements; calculating repeatedly simulated sensor data based on the obtained transient model, using a processing unit; displaying on a display a training human machine interface, tHMI, configured to communicate with the transient model of the spray drying plant, and to display the simulated sensor data and control data for the transient model; and updating the transient model based on operator input on the tHMI, for controlling the transient model of the spray drying plant.

A system and method for detecting a failure in a redundant signal path during operation of the redundant path is disclosed. A test signal is sequentially injected into each signal path while an input signal is conducted by the other signal path not receiving the test signal. The test signal is selected at a frequency to verify operation of a filter connected in series along each path. A processor generates the test signal, injects the test signal at the input of the filter, and receives the output of the filter. The processor then generates a frequency response of the filter in each signal path as a function of the output from the filter and of the original test signal. The frequency response obtained along each of the redundant signal paths is compared to each other to detect a failure of one of the filters present along the respective signal paths.

A control system includes a control unit configured to control a control object and communicate with an external device, and a relay unit configured to relay access from the external device to the control unit. The relay unit includes a reception unit configured to receive an authentication request from a request source, an authentication unit configured to authenticate validity of the request source upon receipt of the authentication request by the reception unit, and an access management unit configured to control a restriction level of access from the external device to the control unit when the validity of the request source is authenticated by the authentication unit.

The present invention facilitates the confirmation of the state of a slave device. This terminal monitoring device (10) comprises: a terminal information acquisition unit (14) for acquiring, from terminals of a network, terminal information including the addresses of the respective terminals, information for each type, and information pertaining to communication states; and a terminal list screen generation unit (151) that generates a terminal list screen on which selection boxes for displaying the terminals and the terminal information are disposed side by side on the basis of the terminal information and that displays the generated screen on a display unit (12).

A control device has first and second control units. The first unit includes a timing unit which measures elapsed time and instructs the start of a first safety signal circuit test based on the time, and a first circuit test control unit which, when a safety signal circuit output signal has been output to a first circuit, or output thereof has stopped, detects whether a safety signal circuit input signal is input, and executes the first safety signal circuit test. The second unit is provided with an implementation verifying unit which verifies whether the first safety signal circuit test is complete, and a second circuit test control unit which, after verification, when a safety signal circuit output signal is output to a second circuit, or when output thereof has stopped, detects whether a safety signal circuit input signal is input, and executes a second safety signal circuit test.

A first input unit receives an analog signal from a pair of input terminals, to which a sensor is connected, as a differential input via a pair of first input lines between which a first resistor is interposed. The analog signal input device converts the analog signals read via the first input unit and a second input unit having a similar configuration into a multi-bit digital signal and outputs the digital signal. When a prescribed instruction is received, a current is supplied from one of the pair of first input lines to a power supply line, and it is determined that there an open circuit when the output of the second input unit obtained when the output of the first input unit has increased in response to the current supply from the current supply unit is equal to or larger than a predetermined threshold value.

A communication simplifier system and method simplify communication between a client application and a single-board data processing system using a tethering architecture. In at least one embodiment, the communication simplifier system and method allows a software developer to build a communication tethering application for the single-board data processing system, define a communication connection strategy, and add a client communication tethering application to a remote computer system, such as a mobile or desktop client computer system, to handle communication with the single-board data processing system. The client computer system also offloads processing from the single-board data processing system by including a processing logic application to implement additional logic to process data received by the single-board data processing system.

According to an aspect, there is provided a method for monitoring quality of loose tube fiber optic cable during manufacture in a secondary coating line. Initially, a trained machine-learning algorithm for calculating expected values of one or more quality metrics of manufactured loose tube fiber optic cable based on values of the one or more production process parameters of the secondary coating line is maintained in a machine-learning database. A computing system monitors one or more values of the one or more production process parameters during miming of the secondary coating line and calculates, in real-time during the monitoring, one or more expected values of the one or more quality metrics using the trained machine-learning algorithm with the monitored values of the one or more production process parameters as input. The computing system outputs at least the one or more expected values of the one or more quality metrics to a user device.

Current approaches to integrating industrial ecosystems, for instance integrating automation functions across different vendors, lack efficiencies and capabilities. For example, system integrators are often required to develop special software that functions as a proxy or adaptor between different systems. In such cases, the proxy or adaptor is often specific to a particular set of equipment or vendors, and which can limit reusability, among other technical drawbacks. Embodiments described herein overcome one or more of the described-herein shortcomings or technical problems by providing methods, systems, and apparatuses for automatically generating connecters that enable interoperability between different ecosystems in automated industrial systems, and that define semantics that are specific to a given ecosystem. Further, such connectors can be re-used by the given ecosystem.

A control system includes a support device used for developing a user program to be executed on a controller, and a display device that provides a supervisory control screen by referring to information held by the controller. The support device extracts a relationship between an output signal and one or more input signals defined by the user program and generates input-output correspondence information, and transmits the input-output correspondence information or screen data reflecting the input-output correspondence information to the display device. The display device provides, on the basis of the input-output correspondence information or the screen data reflecting the input-output correspondence information, the supervisory control screen showing the current value of a selected output signal and the current value of one or more input signals associated with the output signal by referring to the values of input and output signals held by the controller.