Add in the challenge of inspecting for radioactive contamination and you have a huge problem facing steel manufacturers. Every shipment of scrap steel is a potential source of material that has been in contact with radioactive materials at some point. Whether it's coming from nuclear power sites, health-care construction, or other, it's a huge risk. If radioactive contaminated steel makes it into the production cycle, it can shut down entire mills and result in costs from $2 to $20 million and higher. If radioactivity gets into the bag house of a steel mill, all the filters have to be replaced at a cost of $2 million, not including downtime, scrap, and lost production costs. Manufacturers accepting scrap steel uses sensors to scan train cars, trucks, and other transport vehicles for radiation at as many as 12 points of entry in large mills. The problem is that detecting radioactivity is something that takes exposure time. You don't just point a sensor a train car and in a second detect the radiation. If you detected it that fast, you personally have a huge problem if you're standing there! Train cars, trucks, etc. have to pass through detection stations at a very slow speed, which is monitored. If they pass too quickly, they are supposed to stop, back up, and go through again at the proper speed. The problem is that these rigorous rules may not always consistently and strictly enforced as the mill demands. Even when procedures are strictly followed, there is the problem of making sure the right people are notified quickly, and the contaminated load isolated before it can contaminate any other materials. Add to this the need for proper recordkeeping and you have a huge challenge. The sensors used to check for radioactivity were a point solution and depended too much on a human element to respond appropriately. There was usually no central monitoring, tracking, notification, and system of accountability in most mills.
KCC wanted to make sure PanoRAMa would be well accepted and a good plant citizen capable of integrating with the various standard HMI/SCADA packages in their clients mills. Faced with the need to move data between a central application and four different consuming applications plus HMI/SCADA systems, KCC turned to OPC. KCC Software applied a great deal of domain specific expertise in building PanoRAMa, and OPC was the software glue that enabled them to focus their energies on applying their expertise, not building software connections. PanoRAMa uses the OPC DA standard to move data between the central application and the four different consumers. Scott Martin, President of KCC software, turned to Software Toolbox for the tools to help him make all this happen in the time he needed and within his budget. First, Scott added an OPC DA Server interface to the PanoRAMa central application using the Slik-DA OPC server rapid development toolkit. Doing this gave PanoRAMa the application the open doors to be able to serve data to its own client applications but also to other standard HMI/SCADA packages. To develop his client applications, Scott used the Software Toolbox OPC Data Control to avoid having to become an expert on all the OPC interfaces and rapidly deploy a wide variety of client applications in the PanoRAMa solution. Scott Martin adds, "Software Toolbox's products and more importantly, their expertise in how to apply them, and willingness to answer all my questions quickly and support me in my development effort, saved us thousands of dollars in time and effort. Nathan Pocock's expertise in VB6 and Visual Studio.NET, their application to OPC, and in applying Slik-DA and OPC Data Control was extremely helpful in getting me going fast. Combine this with the savings that OPC provided by giving us a standard, open interface for PanoRAMa and OPC has been great for KCC Software."
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