PIA Service has worked with Siemens’s TIA Portal for industrial automation for more than 10 years. In 2011 PIA was one of the early users of the TIA Portal. Reason for Siemens to publish an extensive item about us on their website. In this article John de Krijger (our owner) elaborates on the great advantages of using TIA Portal Openness: Automating time-consuming development work and shorter commissioning times for customers.
Interesting quotes from the article:
“We are filling the TIA Portal-library with standard function blocks that we developed ourselves. As a result we only need to develop the main routine execution of the software for projects. The outer layer of the software is generated. For instance we do not need to create 100 motor groups any more for a project with 100 motor groups. This is done automatically and quickly. Next to the time saved by this it also reduces the risk of mistakes and there is no dependency any more on one developer. We all develop at the same level and can swap people between various projects.”
“We can develop more quickly because we need to do less by hand. All defaults, such as alarms and colour settings, are already set. We have not used it yet on a real world project but this will happen soon.”
“My goal is to be in a situation soon where we don’t need a software engineer any more to make changes to a machine. The personnel shortage is obviously one of the factors in this. At this moment we are already able to put large installations into operation in less than two days and we are really close to a situation where we don’t need to go into the field any more for a commissioning. Training can take place virtually. When the software is finished we can simulate the functionality 100%. All of this results in shorter commissioning times and also savings for our customers.”
“PLC-programmers work in a different language than Openess-programmers but those boundaries are beginning to blur. It is becoming a combination more and more.” A combination that PIA Service is well versed in. “Like Siemens we want to lead in development. This allows us to further strengthen each other. This is the line we have to follow.”
