Switchover time and quality are the major factors when Tricon Techsoft recontrols a running automation system and to avoid expensive surprises, Tricon Techsoft are always thoroughly prepared. Virtual commissioning in Experior is an important part of that preparation – assuring the control platform quality and minimizing the risks.

Sometimes automation systems that have been reliable for decades just don’t work the way they should anymore. Maybe the hardware is worn down and obsolete, or maybe the operation has outgrown the system capacity. No matter the reason, the control platform of the system would need a thorough tune-up – and in such cases, Tricon Techsoft is the company to team up with.

As a supplier of automation solutions to a number of industries, Tricon Techsoft is involved in both green field projects and recontrol projects but according to CEO Paul Robert Warming, it is the recontrol projects that best demonstrate Tricon Techsoft’s strengths:

“With time as an even larger factor than in other projects, recontrol projects really show the importance of being as thoroughly prepared, as we are. Our use of virtual commissioning in Experior is major contributor to us being so prepared”, he says.

No room for surprises
Tricon Techsoft’s preparation is especially important in recontrol projects, because they’ll be working on a running system. The time spend on system integration and commissioning in such projects is extremely expensive for the end-user, who’ll have to shut down operation. At Tricon Techsoft, they are very humbled by that fact:

”We have great respect for the end-user’s core business. It is their “money maker” that we’re dealing with, so there’s simply no room for surprises,” Paul Robert Warming says.

Thus, when Tricon Techsoft go onsite, they are under a huge pressure to make the system work in the first try – and they usually only have limited access to the running system to integrate the new control platform. Everything must be done in between a tight production that is in operation nearly 24/7.

”It is alfa omega that it works, when we press the start button on Monday morning – without unexpected disturbances in the planned production,” Paul Robert Warming adds.

Quality assurance and risk minimization with Experior
From the time Tricon Techsoft has finished the reverse engineering and the documentation of the old automation system’s functionality and starts to develop, program and design the new control platform, Experior is an important part of their work process.

“We use Experior continuously during the development process. Whenever one of our programmers finished programming a new area, he’ll test its functionality in Experior . In that way we can quickly find out, where the problems and bottlenecks will arise,” Tricon Techsoft CEO Paul Robert Warming says.

Other than that, Tricon Techsoft use Experior to test the system’s overall functionality before they go onsite in a VFAT – a Virtual Factory Acceptance Test. And the end-user of the system is always invited to join.

“At the VFAT, the end-user can see that the control platform controls the 3D model to acts exactly as their system does. It gives the end-user a strong sense of security to see that we are properly prepared,” Paul Robert Warming says.

Overall, the use of Experior provides Tricon Techsoft with several major benefits:

“In the past we wouldn’t discover bugs before we went onsite, and at that stage we can’t afford too many surprises. With Experior, we can test all the parts of the system at a much earlier stage, which minimizes the risk of costly surprises and ensures a higher quality in the control software,” Paul Robert Warming says.

Other than using Experior in recontrol projects, Tricon Techsoft also virtually commissions control platforms they’ve developed for new logistics, transport & sorting systems. Virtual commissioning has actually been an integrated part of their work processes for many years, and you can read more about which benefits that provides them with here.